I keep my head down, look people over fast, and turn my head away faster.
I become a fan of the $4.99 Jiffy Taco lunch special. You can divide it in half and save the cheese enchilada for dinner. I leave money with Luna in quarters and one-dollar bills. The delivery guy never sees me.
I’m hoarding money, for obvious reasons.
Because when I’m not scrubbing up messes and pulling strips of paper that say SPARKLING FRESH across the bowls of newly cleaned toilets, I’m watching crime show reruns about how even if the US Marshals relocate you and give you a new identity, bad guys find you. How even if you’ve been on the lam as a respectable housewife for forty years after blowing up an ROTC building in 1969, the FBI still finds you.
Every TV show I watch bangs into my head what I already know. Short of locating an armed cult and hiding out in their bunker until the End of Days, I’m toast.
Luna keeps saying, “Bean, sugar, can you please send for your birth certificate and get yourself a new ID? Mrs. Bluebonnet”—that’s what she calls the motel’s owner, who lives in South Carolina and shows up for surprise inspections—“is all, ‘Hire Amurrican, y’all,’ and I have to show her something.”
Where do I get an ID that says my name’s Sabina Magyar? (I told Luna “Sabina” because it was the only girl name I could think of with the sound Bean in it. Then she said, “Where’s that from?” And I said, “Hungary,” because why not? Magyar means Hungarian in Hungarian. I don’t even know how I knew that.)
Where do I get any ID?
If I don’t figure it out fast, I’m a lot closer to doom.
I don’t feel that doomed when I’m busy scraping fossilized nachos out of the hallway carpet. But when I need something I can’t get in the lost and found, when my supply of left-behind pink plastic razors runs out, or when I need more quick-change hair dye or tampons or cheap sunglasses that hide half my face, I obsess about whether it’s better to go out after dark (when they can’t see you coming) or in the light (when you can see them coming).
I keep finding South Texas emergency numbers taped up in the utility closet. The number for the battered women’s shelter is circled in red.
Bean says, “I’m not a battered woman. It was just that once, when I was trying to leave. It’s just, if he finds me, I’m dead.”
Luna’s completely into it. “He shows up at the Bluebonnet, he’s gonna hear one or two things from me!”
“Luna, no! Say you don’t know me!”
I feel like an idiot for telling her one tiny fragment of the truth.
“I’ll do you one better. He shows up, I’ll text you the second he turns around.”
About getting texts. I’m not sure how you get a cell phone, but I’m pretty sure you need a credit card and money and a lot of other things I don’t have.
I tell her, “Unless Apple’s handing out free phones—”
“You don’t need a fancy phone does tricks,” Luna says. “The market down by Mickey D’s has burners. And they’re cheap, girl.”
Cheap burner phones.
If I had it in me to walk three blocks without a phalanx of bodyguards, I could call Olivia on a totally anonymous, prepaid burner phone.
This is both reassuring and terrifying.
12
Jack
The homeowners’ insurance guy gets one whiff of the burnt laundry room and offers to put us up in a hotel until he gets us “sorted out.” I want to stay on the Strip because of the security. Vegas is twenty minutes away, but my mom isn’t going anywhere. She hands me a can of room freshener—which is like trying to subdue a rhino with a toothpick—and says, “Spray.”
The only way to get this sorted out is if I work something with Don. I have to tell him yes, and he has to get the fire-starter to stop. But you can’t drop in on a guy in prison when it’s not visiting day unless you’re his lawyer. Showing up twice on one visiting day was pushing it.
I’m left praying, white-knuckled, that Don doesn’t screw up and lose his Thursday phone call privilege. I’m banking that whoever expects me to do this thing is smart enough to let the acrid smell of melted plastic bring me to my knees. I don’t need Yeager’s minions showing up in Summerlin with flamethrowers before I have the chance to tell Don I capitulate.
All I can think to do in the meantime is cyber-stalk Nicolette.
I wasn’t the guy who could hack into INTERPOL during recess in third grade, but in five minutes online, I can tell that Nicolette leaped off the grid the exact moment Don says Connie got stabbed. The next day, Nicolette was gone.
Her friends’ posts read like a collective panic attack. There’s a week of Nicky! Where are you????? followed by a bunch of cheerleaders praying for her speedy recovery. From what, her homicidal tendencies?
Her private messages from her friend Olivia are more promising, as in: