It had been so long since she numbed out she had forgotten how good it felt afterward, alert and relaxed, the pop of caffeine and the mellow of alcohol. She brushed the grit off her ass and went inside, reminding herself that he had never left for good. He’d be back. She was sure of it.
She went to the toilet to see if she could get the ring back. It had been heavy and small, maybe the force of the flush hadn’t been enough to drag it all the way down. Maybe she could reach for it. She lifted the padded seat and straddled the bowl, snaked her hand into the hole and felt around with her fingers, careful not to knock the ring out of reach. She shifted and dropped her right shoulder to gain a few extra inches, resting her cheek against the lavender rim. She wiggled her fingers in tiny increments until at last she grazed the ring with her knuckle. Her fingers were bundled and couldn’t grasp, so she pulled her hand back and reapproached to center the ring in the hole, then dragged it slowly with the tip of her middle finger. She pulled it out, dripping water in a trail across the floor, and ran it under the tap. She set it aside, washed her hands, and held the ring to the light.
“What a fuckin’ drama queen,” she said aloud. She didn’t know about diamonds but it looked costly. She had a hard time believing he’d spent money on it and figured he must have lifted it off someone, some Houston socialite with skinny fingers. She put it on, held out her hand. It was beautiful in itself, twinkled against her skin, but she felt ridiculous wearing it. Impractical and uncomfortable. She tugged and screwed it over her knuckle and slipped it into the pocket of her backpack.
Chapter Thirteen
The next day Kit woke up sprawled across the bed. She had wondered if Manny would have slipped in while she slept, as he sometimes had, or if he would roll in that evening smoking someone else’s cigarettes, drunk and cranky. He’d been gone at least two days before, maybe three. She wasn’t worried. She folded a stick of peppermint gum into her mouth, wiggled her feet into her boots, and took off for some food.
The receptionist directed her to a supermarket about two miles down the road, and she set to walking. She checked the pocket of her jeans and found about a hundred bucks from their last run. Manny was “treasurer” and always handled the money, but she had slipped a couple fifties before he took inventory. She often took a cut without his knowledge as a small tax for the risks she took for him.
She walked through the brightly lit aisles of the supermarket and filled her basket with all the food she knew he liked. Instant coffee, hickory meat sticks, Fritos, bean dip. After the cashier had rung up her items, she pocketed her change and walked the long stretch of highway back to the motel. She replayed his proposal over and over again, each time like a kick to the ribs. How could she have been so ungrateful, so stupid? He had bluffed about other things to get his way, but not this.
By the time she got back to the room, she found herself so hungry for Manny that she tore the room apart looking for some piece of him. But he hadn’t stayed long enough to unpack. There was only an empty lemon drops tin, crushed underfoot. She picked it up and pried it open and smelled its citrusy dust, licked a little that had gathered in the seam, and cried. She wept over the days they had spent together, the things she had never told him. She wished she could cut him out of her, but he was now a vital organ and nothing else seemed to work right without him.
In her fit, she had torn the sliding closet door from its runners. Hanging from a hook inside the closet was her beat-up backpack, the one she’d had when Manny found her. In the outer pouch were the phone numbers and addresses she had saved, Red’s and Eleanor’s. Then she unzipped the main compartment and pulled out its precious contents: the pink shell souvenir from Galveston, the plastic baggie containing the note from her mother, and Manny’s ring. She pressed the note to her cheek and tried to imagine her mother scribbling the instructions on the hood of a car, but all she saw were colorless geometric shapes. Then she held the tiny chandelier to the light and twirled it. Its strands of pink shells tinkled against each other and reminded her of the feeling that day, of hopeful surrender, that day she signed herself over to him. Last, she put the ring on her finger and held it out, felt its facets and smooth band and the claw that held the stone. He must have loved her when he picked it out, he must have wanted to keep her. That had been something, hadn’t it?
She wiped her eyes and put the note back and zipped the pocket closed. She put Dolly in the closet and brought the slatted doors together, for it pained her to look at pretty things. People loved beauty. They couldn’t help it. Kit was not beautiful, but she had, she thought, been loved. Despite all the wrong she had done, and wrong done to her, Manny had seen something in her. He had taken her along and shown her his trade. They had been partners, and she had carried her weight and then some. She should be grateful to have felt his love at all, but she wished she’d never met him, now that it was gone, and she was alone. Alone.
Kit ran out of food a week after Manny left, and had given the rest of her money to the manager, who demanded payment for the room. She was still short but convinced him to let her stay another night on the promise that Manny would be back with money. By now she was reckoning with the fact that Manny was gone for good. It was only a matter of time before the manager unlocked the door and clipped the chain to shoo her out like the trash she was, always had been. Hours ago, she had finally summoned the will to leave the bed to pee and had worked through the steps she would take, movement by movement. She would crawl if she had to. But before she could pull the sheets away from her legs, her bladder had let go. There was so little urine, a bright pungent splash of it, that she rolled to the other side of the bed, grateful she would not have to get up after all.
She was just beginning to drift into sleep when the phone rang. The sound cut across the room and startled her. She froze and listened, wondering if she had conjured it. It rang again, echoing. She groped across the bed, pushed herself up, and reached out for the phone. She was so weak she dropped the receiver and collapsed back onto the bed, then, groping, she found the receiver again and raised it to her ear.
In the background there was a soupy noise of music and chatting and then someone cleared his throat and spoke.
“You’re still there,” he said. The relief swept her upright. She squeezed her eyes shut and bit the back of her hand. He couldn’t know how much he’d hurt her. She closed her eyes to focus on his voice, which was heavy with whiskey.
“I knew it,” he said, “I knew you’d wait for me.” The sweet and slow of his voice dripped over her. She listened in a kind of rapture.
“I picked up a job in Oklahoma,” he said. “Scored pretty big, you would have loved it.”
She imagined him working without her or, worse, with someone else.
“You giving me the silent treatment?” he said, irritated already.