As she became more desperate, she occasionally suppressed her nature and found a way to say thank you to the men who gave her rides, provided they were willing to throw a few bucks her way. You did what you had to do.
In Tampa, she found work making up rooms at a motel called the Coconut Shade, a place where customers often rented by the hour. No references, no ID, no previous work experience required. She said her name was Adele Farmer. Octavio Famosa, the manager, of Cuban descent and in his midforties, offered her not a place to sleep in his truck, but a rollaway bed in a storage room.
Allison figured he’d be looking for something in return, like most of the men she’d encountered, but she was wrong. Octavio was a kind, decent man. His wife, Samira, had died the year before from liver disease. He was raising their seven-year-old daughter, but he did not like to bring her to his place of work because it was not a proper environment. A place where people came, almost exclusively, to have sex. So his sister looked after his daughter when he had to work.
“People have needs,” he said, and shrugged. “And yours is for a safe place to stay. I have been where you are.”
Some days, he’d share his lunch with her. Every once in a while, on the night shift, he’d give her ten dollars from the till and send her to the nearby Burger King for something they could split. They would talk. Octavio’s parents were still in Cuba, and he hoped someday to bring them to Florida. “Before they are too old to come,” he said. “I want them to see their granddaughter. What about you?”
“There’s just my mom,” she said. “My dad died a few years ago, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”
“Where is your mother?” Octavio asked.
“Seattle,” she lied. “I haven’t talked to her for a while.”
“I bet she misses you,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” she said. “Not much I can do about that.”
“You remind me of my daughter,” he said.
“How is that possible? She’s just a little girl.”
“I know, but you both need your mothers. You are both very sad.”
This entire experience, from the moment she’d fled her apartment to living now in Tampa, had given Allison Fitch time to do a lot of soul searching.
She was not, she concluded, a very good person.
She had lived off others and offered nothing in return, starting with her parents. She’d always thought of herself first. Her wants, her needs. What kind of person, she’d started asking herself, lies to her mother so she’ll send money? What kind of person uses that money to book a vacation when she owes rent to her roommate? What kind of person turns a sexual relationship into an opportunity for a huge financial payoff? What kind of person resorts to blackmail?
A bad person.
A very bad person.
A total shit.
That’s what she was. Maybe, she kept telling herself, she had it coming. She’d brought this on herself. That much was clear. She wouldn’t be here, after months on the run, changing stained sheets in a one-star hotel in a bad part of Tampa, sharing Whoppers with Octavio, if she hadn’t always thought of herself first.
Karma was some bitch.
One night, talking to Octavio, she said, “Do you believe that if you do bad things, eventually you get punished?”
“In this world?” he asked.
“Yeah, I guess.”
He shook his head regretfully. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I have known people who, their entire lives, deserved to be punished for the things they had done, but never were. All one can hope for is that they get what’s coming to them after.”
“If you get what you deserve while you’re still alive, do you think, when you die, that things are already settled?”
“I don’t believe you are a bad person,” Octavio told her. “I believe you are a good person.”
She cried. She cried for a very long time. She cried so long that she exhausted herself. Octavio tucked her into her rollaway bed in the storage room. He sat on the edge of the bed and patted her shoulder until she went to sleep.
He wanted to help her. He believed that whatever Adele Farmer had done, her mother would forgive her.
When he was sure Adele was sleeping soundly, he took her purse from beneath her bed. In it, he found identification that showed she was not Adele Farmer at all. She was Allison Fitch.
And her mother was not in Seattle, as Allison had said. There was a tattered letter in the purse, a letter from her mother dated more than a year ago, in which she told her daughter that she loved her very much, and hoped that she was happy in New York, but that she was always welcome to move back to Dayton.
Dayton?
Octavio checked the return address sticker on the back of the envelope, wrote down some information, then returned the letter and the ID to the purse and slid it back under the rollaway bed. He went online and found a phone number for Doris Fitch. It was late to be calling—it was past midnight—but Octavio was sure the woman would want to know where her daughter was, regardless of the hour.