The lady’s room door opened a few seconds later and Eilish came out, looking a little better than Cassidy in terms of how put together she was. She yawned right in my face as she held the door for me, and I went in as she said, “Might want to not sit down.” I looked at her blankly, and she elaborated: “Trust me.”
When I got inside, I found she wasn’t wrong. Someone did not care to do janitorial work in this particular bathroom, so I held my nose and got finished quickly, never daring to touch the seat. When I finished, I washed my hands and avoided looking in the mirror, continuing a habit I’d been embracing since Scotland. I caught a flash of my dyed-blond hair and sunken cheeks, and that was all I needed to see. Onward.
I popped out into the store to find Eilish with her arms full of junk food. “And you,” she said, grabbing a bag of Cheetos off the shelf to add to the pile she was already carrying like a chipmunk readying herself for winter. Even though winter was getting close to done, at least in this part of the country. She passed the candy display. “Ooh,” she said, snatching up a Snickers bar. “And you …”
I wandered over to the beer cooler and away from her junk food mission. I didn’t need any of that. I paused next to a display advertising a forty-ounce malt liquor that sounded intriguing, even though I had to kind of squint to see it with the cooler lights off. I doubted it had the flavor of a good scotch, but it was just before 5 AM, and I wasn’t feeling picky, so I grabbed a six pack and headed toward the counter.
There was an older, heavyset woman standing back there with her arms folded, just watching us. She shifted her attention to me as I came up and put the malt liquor on the counter.
“Oh, honey,” she said, coming up to the counter. Her nametag said she was “Joan.” “I can’t sell you this.”
I was feeling pretty good until that happened, when suddenly I got a little cross. “Why the hell not?”
She blinked a little at my reaction. “It’s Sunday, doll.”
My eye twitched when she called me “doll.” “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
Joan took a step back. “Now … you just settle on down now. It’s Sunday. You can’t buy alcoholic beverages here on Sunday. At least not until after noon.”
I blinked. I paused. I took a breath. “Why the f—” I took another breath.
“It’s against the law,” she said, looking at me over half-moon specs.
The door bell jangled, and someone cleared their throat behind me. I turned and looked.
It was Harry, and he was looking not so subtly at me.
I sighed. Apparently I’d been about to cause the sort of scene he’d explicitly warned me against in the car.
I pressed my lips together, my mouth all dry, and said, “Fair enough,” grabbed the malt liquor, and headed back toward the cooler. I put it inside gently, trying to keep from tossing it so hard it sprang a leak, and then beelined for the door. Eilish was at the counter, a mountain of junk food in front of her, as Joan stared down at all the crap she was about to buy with a jaded eye, like she’d seen a hell of a lot worse than this gluttonous rampage. “And … maybe some of these,” Eilish said, ransacking a plastic case filled with beef sticks on the counter.
“Nice recovery,” Harry said once we were outside, under the fluorescent glow of the overhead lights.
“This is bullshit,” I said, stalking back toward the car. “I bet I could buy cigarettes today, no problem. Or lotto tickets. Damn you, Sunday.”
“Well, you should probably moderate your vices,” Harry said amiably. “You want some lotto tickets? Or some cigs? I mean, they’re hell on humans, but all they’ll do to you is make you stink like flaming dog crap.”
I turned and gave him a withering glare. “No, I do not want to smell like flaming dog crap, thank you very much.” He wasn’t wrong; the smell of cigarettes held an extra aroma of stink to the finely tuned meta senses. I couldn’t stand to be around a smoker for very long without wanting to kill them and toss their body off the nearest bridge just to be rid of the smell.
That … might have been the alcohol craving talking. Or maybe not.
The door to the station swung open and out came Cassidy, looking much more alert and awake. “Come on, come on,” she said, gesturing to us. “We should get going.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “We’re not going anywhere until Eilish gets done paying for her stuff.” I nodded at Eilish, who I could see through the window talking to Joan, who was watching her with one eye cocked curiously while ringing up the plethora of junk foods. She picked up a pack of Twinkies and rang them, nodding at something Eilish was saying.
“Does she have any money?” Harry asked.
“Uh …” I tried to think about it. It wasn’t like Eilish worked, and I didn’t know if Reed had given her any money before leaving. “Uhm …”
“Rhetorical question, Sienna,” Harry said. “You might want to go take care of that before she causes a scene by shoplifting. Because she will get caught. That Joan is no spring daffodil. She’s seen some shit in her time.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, grumbling and heading back into the store.
“Have fun,” Cassidy said, a little too singsongy for my taste. I gave her a look as I went inside.
“That’ll be … two hundred eighty five dollars and ninety three cents,” Joan said as I let the door swing closed behind me.
Eilish’s mouth dropped open, but I’d known her long enough to know that it was all an act. She was faking outrage, and I got a bad feeling as to why. “That’s outrageous! I won’t p—”
“I’ll pay,” I said, brandishing my credit card.
Eilish started to say something to me, then shrugged. “She’ll pay,” she said to Joan, a little smile of self-satisfaction spreading across her face.
I stepped up to the counter and slipped my card into the card reader. “You were just about to cause a scene,” I muttered, meta-low.
“What? No,” Eilish said. “I was going to grab a little something for the road and leave this bird scratching her head and restocking shelves for a bit, that’s all.”
“Harry says there was about to be trouble,” I said, still talking uber low. Joan was looking around, the bag in her hand half-filled with Eilish’s absurd number of junk food purchases. “You were going to get caught.
“Y’all hear that buzzing sound?” Joan stared at the ceiling. “I think one of these fluorescent lights is about to go bad.”
“Better call maintenance,” I said, grabbing the receipt as it printed before Joan could. I signed it, completely illegibly, and handed it back.
Joan gave me a half-assed scowl, more disappointed than bemused. “I am maintenance, doll. Night shift, you do anything you have to.”
“Maybe it’ll fix itself,” I said, trying to be cool as I grabbed the first bag of junk food. It was not light. “Could just be a power surge.”