“It’s the rules, I’m sorry, I wish I could.”
The old familiar thought popped up, like a voice in the back of my mind: just kill her, and you can stay here all night. Kill her and the cook, then lock the door, eat your fill, sleep in the back, and get out before the next shift showed up for work. It was stupid, in addition to being evil, and I pushed the thought away without dwelling on it. And then, as I stood there, it struck me that I should be dwelling on it—that it should bother me, or disgust me, or at least worry me to have thought something like that. And yet it hadn’t. The urge to kill whoever stood in our way was so common now, so second nature, I almost didn’t even notice anymore.
I needed to be better. If that meant I needed to feel more pain, or more guilt, then that’s what I needed to do. I had feelings now, right? What good were they if I didn’t use them?
I found a solution to our problem and a penance for my coldness in one simple gesture. I pulled a stack of neatly folded ten dollar bills from my sock—we’d been mugged before, so I’d taken to hiding our money in small quantities all over my body—and held it up. “I have thirty dollars,” I said, fanning the bills. “Let me give it to you now, in advance, and then you just take what we owe you and give the rest back.” It was expensive, but Marci needed to sit, and we both needed to eat.
Delilah stared at us a moment, then sighed and took the money. “I guess if y’all have money you ain’t no beggars. Your dog has to wait outside, though.”
“That’s fine,” I said. Most restaurants had the same policy, so I kept a leash in my backpack for times just like this. I took Boy Dog outside and tied him to a square metal pole that marked the handicapped parking spaces. I gave him the rest of the beef jerky, and then Delilah led us to a booth in the back of the restaurant, where we wouldn’t be visible from the street or the front door. It’s the table I would have chosen anyway.
Marci sank into the benches with an exhausted sigh. “I can’t remember the last time I sat on a cushion.”
“Get something healthy,” I said, picking up a menu. “Cheap, obviously, but something that’s going to put some meat on your bones. Or her bones.” I bought the cheapest meal on the menu, four bucks for some eggs and hash browns and a couple of sausages, which I took outside to Boy Dog; I was a vegetarian, but eggs didn’t count. Marci ordered an omelet with plenty of vegetables, and an orange juice that we ended up splitting. Sixteen dollars and forty-five cents, plus a dollar thirty-six in tax and four dollars for the tip—a little more than twenty percent, but I wanted to keep Delilah happy so we could stay as long as possible. We ate quietly, though there was no one else in the restaurant. Delilah left our plates, playing into the pretense that we weren’t quite finished yet, and after a while she came and leaned against the corner of the booth.
“Where are y’all from?”
“It’s a town called Stillson,” said Marci. “Don’t worry, nobody else has heard of it, either.”
“What brings you to Dallas?”
“Just traveling,” I said. There was no sense trying to pass us off as itinerant college students at this point; we were obviously homeless drifters, and she knew it.
“Where’d you get that money?” asked Delilah. “You work?”
That was a red flag—did she think we’d stolen it? “It’s the last of my savings,” I said, looking down at my plate.
“We sold our phones,” said Marci. “Didn’t want to, but we gotta eat, right?”
“It’s none of my business,” said Delilah, holding up her hands as if to ward off the implication that she was prying. She showed no sign of stopping her prying, though, and phrased the next question as a subtle accusation: “Not a lot of homeless people with phones, though.” In other words, did you steal them?
I started to answer, hoping to spin some story that would get her off our back, but Marci got there first. “We’re not exactly homeless,” she said. “Just on our way to a new one. Our uncle lives south of here.”
I wished she hadn’t said south—that’s where Rain supposedly lived, and if whoever was following us managed to find this waitress and question her, she’d give the right direction.
“What happened to your old home?” asked Delilah, and I could see by the look on Brooke’s face that Marci had an answer ready to go. She was getting into this.
“Our mother died when we were little,” she said. “And dad … well I guess he drank before that, but I don’t remember. He drinks a lot now, though, and it’s only getting worse. And the beatings are getting worse.”
“That’s terrible!” said Delilah.
“Uncle Zach is Mom’s brother, not his, so we’ll be safe there.”