In the months that followed Manny’s return, Kit was meticulous about keeping him happy, doing nothing to risk losing him again. They bounced from motel to motel, as usual, never long enough to be remembered, and to Kit’s relief, Manny hewed close to the holdup rules they’d established. She wondered if he, too, had been spooked by their separation.
One night, after an easy job looting a filling station that was closed for the night, Manny suggested they hit the local icehouse to get drunk and spend some of their winnings. Kit knew she should go with him, but she had been exhausted lately, so tired she fell asleep in the car. Manny let her out in front of the motel room, sour, but not so bad that Kit felt she needed to rally.
That night, she dreamed she lay next to Manny in bed and felt a stirring between them, like the surface of a lake being disturbed by a turtle. Then she was attached to a balloon and it lifted her out of the bed and through an open window, setting her down gently in a field of soft grass. She felt relieved and peaceful.
When she woke up to a bright round moon between the parted curtains, she knew that she was pregnant. There had been signs, of course. Her period, which had never been regular, had stopped coming altogether. Strange, but not surprising. And she became more fearful. Instead of picking fights with Manny, she shied away from them. Her appetite was capricious, would rage like a squall then quit with no warning; after a few bites, she found whatever she was eating, no matter how much she had craved it, repulsive.
She swept her hands over her head to gather her hair into a bun when she felt the bristled, patchy surface of her skull. Only days ago, Manny had cut her hair after her picture had been published in a newspaper. He had made it seem like it was a practical measure, but it had felt more like a reprimand. She could have bleached her hair. Or worn a hat. He didn’t have to shear her like a sheep. At least the swelling around her eye had settled, allowing the fading purples of her bruise to blend somewhat with the brown of her skin.
She peed and drank two glasses of water, desperately thirsty, then filled a third for her bedside. Now that she was up, she wouldn’t go back to sleep for hours. Manny rolled over and wrapped the pillow across the back of his head to block out the moon and her noises.
Pregnancy did not seem like something that could happen to her. She knew for girls like her, poor, itinerant, and unfit, the only answer was to abort. But for weeks now, she had felt a sort of contentment, as if, wherever she went, she had been accompanied by a kind and quiet friend. She wanted someone to tell her what to do about it, but she couldn’t tell Manny, not yet. Kit thought of Red, her warmth and how she had a way of talking about things, like she’d never been ashamed. The few times Kit had called Red, it was just to hear her shoot the shit, perhaps to feel less lonely. She could try calling, but it was late, and Red was more than likely working. Tonight she needed to see her in person.
There was plenty of time to get to Harper, the town where Red had been living the last time they saw each other. Manny would sleep late as long as she didn’t wake him. She cranked up the AC and closed the gap in the curtains. She pulled on her jeans, tight now around her middle, and carried her shoes to the car. The Mustang would wake him for sure, so she put it in neutral and pushed it to the road before starting it up.
It took an hour flat to make it to Harper and she still had a couple of hours of darkness by her count. Kit walked the village’s few gridded, empty streets, and it wasn’t long before she found Red, not under a seedy bridge as she had imagined, but in a quaint commercial strip in the center of town. The antique streetlights were on and businesses—an optometrist, a notary public, a hair salon, and a church-run thrift shop—all closed for the night. Red sat on a bench, reading a book, as if waiting for the bus that would take her home. Kit brightened to see her but kept her distance and planned what to say before they met.
A pair of headlights rounded the corner and crawled slowly up the road. A souped-up sedan pulled up next to Kit, some slick Top 40 song thumping and quaking the half-down window.
A redheaded man with freckles on his bald spot craned across the passenger seat and looked Kit up and down.
“Hel-lo, princess,” he said, eyes skipping with interest. “You’re new.”
She took note of a crushed forty of malt liquor in the gutter, a good enough weapon should the guy get out of line.
“Wallace, get your ass over here, you dog,” Red yelled. “She’s not for sale!”
“Well, shit, woman! What’s she doing out here all alone at night?” He hung halfway out the driver’s-side window, a little goofy to see Red. While he turned away, Kit plunged the broken bottle neck into a worn spot on his tire. He hadn’t exactly crossed her, but she just didn’t think guys like this should have an easy time of anything. Wallace was too pleased to see Red to notice the slow sinking of his car.
Red skittered over in her high-heeled boots, big hair bouncing out of time with her breasts. Her arms outstretched, she ran right up to Kit and hugged her hard.
“KEE-uht! I can’t believe it’s you. What are you doing here? Is everything okay? What happened to your hair?!”
“I’m all right, I just wanted to talk,” Kit said, and scrubbed the back of her head with her knuckles. She felt silly for coming here in the dead of night, bothering Red at work.
“Okay, baby, hold tight. You wait right there.” She held up a finger and slipped in the car. Leaning out the front window, she stage-whispered, “This won’t take but a minute.”
Kit turned around and walked the block. The waistband of her jeans chafed her hip bones, so she flicked the button through its hole to make room. In a few minutes, the car door opened and the sedan rolled away, back tire flubbing.
Red reapplied a slick of dark lipstick and fluffed her hair. “If I don’t like a guy I charge him ten bucks a minute, so he tends to wrap up real quick.” She looked around and hooked Kit by the arm. “Well, this is no place for a lady. Come on, my house is just down the road.”
The commercial strip turned into a residential neighborhood of turn-of-the-century bungalows, all apparently built in the same batch, of the same blond brick with open porches and cut-glass details in the front windows. The yards were maintained modestly, dutifully trim but not embellished.