“Have you ever read Simone de Beauvoir, Carrie?” Caro shook her head no, and Margot shook her head too. “Shame. I think you’d like her.” Her watery eyes, so like and unlike Caro’s own, blinked, and she made a sad, wistful noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a breath. “I wish they hadn’t gotten to the books. So many good books out there. None of them are safe.”
“Do you want to go to the bathroom before I leave?” Caro said instead of responding to that, and Margot did, so Caro opened the bathroom door and turned on all the lights and the taps. She waited outside in the hallway until Margot was done, then went in and flushed the toilet and turned everything off. She washed her own hands too, because they smelled like peanut butter, and then redid her ponytail. By the time she got back into the kitchen, Margot had returned to her fort and there was the steady sound of eating.
“I’m going now,” Caro said.
“Have a nice day, sweetie,” Margot said. Just like a real mother would.
As always, Caro thought, It’s nighttime, and as always, she didn’t say it.
On the nights she didn’t work at the hotel, she worked her old job at the Eat’n Park, in her green polyester jumper and the ribbon-bow earrings she’d bought from the cheerleading squad’s latest fund-raiser. School colors: blue and gold. Go, Golden Bears. She didn’t know if there was even such a thing as a Golden Bear and she’d never seen a bear of any color in worn-down, suburban Pitlorsville, but there were an awful lot of Golden Bear alums. If she stood there on her aching feet and listened to some fat old dude wax nostalgic about his glory days on the whatever team and smiled as if she cared, it was sometimes worth an extra dollar or two. All of the other waitresses went to school with her and most of them hated her. She had to keep an eye on her order slips or they’d magically migrate to the end of the line, and she had to keep an eye on her bag or it ended up full of ketchup. So, really, the nights at the hotel weren’t so bad. At least she got to wear nice clothes and wasn’t surrounded by people whose boyfriends she might or might not have slept with.
That night she ended up working the counter in the smoking section, which none of the other girls wanted. A guy in a blue work shirt with sewn-on patches ordered bacon and eggs; he said thanks when she brought them and not much else, but he left her a big tip and a note with his number. To the prettiest thing I’ve seen all night. Call me.
She put the note in her pocket and tried to remember the words on the patches. Was he a cop? A paramedic? A paramedic might be able to help her with Margot sometimes. A cop wouldn’t be worth it. A cop would probably call people.
Or maybe the patches had said Security Guard. With her luck, they probably had. Out on the highway, the car still waited.
She worked at the hotel bar a few nights later. Only one customer came in her whole shift; she offered him a table, but he chose to sit at the bar and ordered without looking at the menu. He wore gray slacks and a white button-down shirt. Hair cut recently and conservatively; the watch on his wrist was nice, and the phone he left sitting next to his plate on the bar was glossy and new. He had a friendly face. “You have a turkey club, right?” he said.
“We do,” she said.
“All hotel restaurants have to have a turkey club,” he said and gave her a tired smile. “I think it’s a rule.”
She smiled back, because she had to, and put the order in. The cook was on the phone with his girlfriend, arguing. She wondered if the turkey-club guy was a chatter. She didn’t always mind chatters—sometimes they tipped well—but she had a lab report to write up for chem.
Her books were spread out behind the bar, which technically they weren’t supposed to be, but nobody was going to rat her out tonight. For a while she worked and Turkey Club watched the crawl on CNN and the restaurant was filled with canned music and a companionable non-quiet. The music covered the sound of what’s his name fighting with his girlfriend and meant that Caro had to listen closely for the bell that meant Turkey Club’s turkey club was ready. When the bell finally rang, she brought the man his food, nodded at the TV, and said, “I can turn that up for you if you want. Or change the station.”
He looked around. “Yeah, it doesn’t look like anybody will complain. What are you working on?”
“Lab report for chemistry,” she said.
“Where do you go to school?” he said.
Somehow she understood that he thought she was in college. When she worked at the hotel she wore all black, with dark lipstick and some fake diamond earrings she’d bought at the drugstore. “Community college,” she said. “Nothing fancy.”
He nodded. “That’s smart. Do a few years at community, transfer to a school with a name, save yourself some money.” A dab of mayonnaise stuck to his lip; he wiped it away. “Or just stay at community. There’s nothing wrong with community college.”
There seemed to be something wrong with the Pitlorsville community college. Caro had never known a single person who’d managed to graduate from it. But she probably just knew the wrong people. “That’s my plan. Transferring.” And wouldn’t that be a lovely plan.
“I was a chemistry major myself,” he said.