THE DEBT BOX SET, page 59
“That sounds nice.”
“Does it, Rosa? Does it sound nice?”
I laughed. “What does any of that have to do with me? Or are you just complaining about having to go to Napa?” Which I could understand, a little. I could not imagine Dom hanging out in non-grease-stained clothes talking about wine with rich white people from Chicago.
“No. I’m telling you because I need an assistant manager.”
“Okay,” I said. “That would probably make your wife happy.”
Dom slowly grinned at me. “Honest to god, kid, you kill me. I am asking you if you’d like to be my assistant manager.”
One hundred percent—that did not compute. “What?”
“You. Assistant manager.”
“I’ve only been here six months, Dom. Cindy’s been here a year. Gladys—”
“Cindy keeps giving away food to every sad story that walks in the doors and Gladys is a mean old snake and everyone knows it. But you are young. You’re smart. Way too smart to be working here, and you’re honest.”
“You know I was in jail for stealing a car,” I joked, but it wasn’t all that funny.
“I know you made a mistake when you were young,” he said. “And I know that where you grew up, with the father you had, staying out of jail would have been a miracle. I don’t blame you for the circumstances of your childhood.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll think about it.”
Think about it? I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
“Dom. No one’s ever…” The sentence trailed off. Marco’s parents had been good to me and they would have helped me however they could. But that was because of Marco and the baby. No one ever did this kind of thing just for me.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m a real sweetheart.” He looked down at his watch and belched. “Head on out. I need an answer by Friday.”
“Okay,” I said, still lingering at the door like I didn’t know how my feet worked. “That’s… thanks, Dom.”
“Don’t cry, or I’ll take it back.”
“Please,” I scoffed, relieved that he was gruff. That he was giving me a hard time. That he was taking the emotion right out of this situation. Emotion gave me hives. “Like you’ll ever see me cry.”
When I turned, though, I couldn’t keep myself from smiling.
As a kid I’d wanted to be a nurse. My mom had been a nurse and some of my earliest memories were of her loving her job. It was hard and she saw bad things, but she loved helping people. And she loved the other nurses she worked with. And I thought being a nurse might help me keep some of her memory alive.
That was part of the dream I dreamed with Marco.
But that was going to be impossible to achieve now. Ex-con nurses? I’d never heard of such a thing. To say nothing of school. Every penny I used here I put toward rent and a little nest egg I had going for Ariella. It wasn’t much, and it was probably laughable compared to what Marco’s family had put together. But it was mine and I was making it for her.
Assistant manager would help me put even more of it away.
But somehow…somehow it felt all wrong. Like I was stepping into a life I wasn’t supposed to be living. That by saying yes, I was bit by bit turning my back on the life I’d been hoping for. Dreaming of. Letting that go was hard.
But really, that life with Marco and Ariella, that life wasn’t mine anymore. It never really had been.
“Yeah,” I told him after the lunch rush. “I’ll take the job.”
Night fell and outside the windows the city was lit in gold and indigo. The crowd in the diner changed as the sun set. A couple of local families coming in for dinner, nurses and techs from the hospital getting a bite to eat after their shifts.
We hustled for a little while. There were two drunks we had to get rid of. Dom came and handled it when they got handsy with Cindy and called me a bitch.
“Your friend is here,” Penny said to me at the cash when things had settled down.
For a second my heart stopped and I looked around for Marco. He was my only friend. Besides Cindy. But there was no one in the room who looked like him, even from the back.
“What friend?” I laughed. And then wondered if it wasn’t my brother, trying a different tactic. But there were no skinheads in the building.
“Corner booth. The guy in the suit?” She pointed to a far corner of the diner where I could just see the back of a man in a suit. He was facing the door, which was kind of weird from that angle. But anyone saying he was a friend of mine was already weird.
“I don’t know him.”
“He just said he was your friend.” Penny shrugged and took her change over to one of the regulars at the counter.
I made sure I had a pen in my apron and plenty of little creamers and milks and headed over to see about my “friend.”
“Hi,” I said, coming up on his shoulder. “What can I get you?”
“Hello Rosa,” he said in a low voice that gave only the slightest impression of warmth. His hands were flat on the table, like he was holding it down. Or showing me he had nothing in them.
I narrowed my eyes at him, and all the shifty senses developed in my father’s house went on full alert. He was a handsome man. Like he’d stepped right out of the pages of some slick magazine. He was tall and blond and he filled out that fancy suit pretty well. His eyes were a very eerie gray. And they were so cold I actually felt a chill.
He was beautiful, yeah. But something about him was really, really wrong.
I took a careful step back.
“I don’t know you,” I said.
“No,” he said with a smile. Or what appeared to be a smile. On another person it might have been a smile; on him it was just a showing of teeth. “We’ve never met. But I’m well acquainted with some of your friends.”
“I don’t have friends.”
“Carissa, Tommy, Beth, and Simon might not agree with you.”
The names literally sent me reeling. Tumbling back in time to a night and a place I’d buried.
“How…?” How did you find me? How do you know them? How are you here?
It was like all the questions got caught in my throat and so none of them came out.
“I helped your friends that night. But you got arrested before we could find you.”
That night.
I’d heard rumors of what happened that night. But nothing concrete. I heard Beth had been killed. I heard everyone ran away except Carissa. I heard the Pastor had a heart attack and died while trying to rape Beth. I heard everyone got caught trying to run away and got sent to juvie. I heard The Pastor and The Wife got caught and shut down and were in prison somewhere. The best rumour though: The Wife killed The Pastor. But I found that impossible to believe.
“Are they…okay?”
“Simon, Tommy, Beth and Carissa?”
I nodded.
“In various forms. Yes.”
“What does that mean?”
He smiled at me and for some reason, shock, maybe…I smiled back. “For some people happiness is easier than others. But you know that, don’t you?”
The words rang me like a bell and I stiffened. I flipped my order pad to blank page and then looked at him with a blank face. “Do you know what you’d like,” I said. “We have a cheeseburger special—”
“You saved them,” Bates said, quietly. “You risked everything to save them. And I’m here to help you.”
“Help me? Like… a weird fairy godfather?”
He smiled, his cold cold smile. “Without the wings. Sure.”
“Why?”
“The outcome of that night suited my purposes. And I’m in your debt. So…” he shrugged. “I’m here to help.”
Help me? How? Turn back time? Erase my prison sentence? Change my bloodline? Maybe go remove my father’s name from the birth certificate so I’d never be sent to him?
No. There was no helping me.
I shook my head, rejecting this strange kindness and recognition after so many years. And from a stranger, no less.
“I don’t need any help.”
“Everyone needs help.”
“Would you believe I’m the exception to the rule?”
“I would believe you’re stubborn.”
I smiled, laughed even.
“Do you like working here?” he asked.
“I do.”
“I could buy it for you.”
I gaped at him, shook my head.
He shrugged.
“I think you’re full of shit,” I said.
“Try me.”
“No,” I said. “Thanks for the super bizarre offer. But I’m good. I’m…just fine. You owe me nothing.”
“Rosa-“
“You have the wrong person.”
“You’re Rosa Burns from Oakland. Twenty-one years old, released six months ago from Valley State where you served four years and change for a whole host of things but mostly stealing a car—”
“You need to leave,” I said, and I looked around for Dom. This wasn’t funny any more. Or weirdly charming. It was invasive and scary.
“You have a child. A little girl you had in jail. Ariella. You got to hold her for one day—”
“Dom!” I yelled and walked back toward the counter. Ran, actually, like the devil was behind me.
“Yeah?” he asked, stepping out of the dark hallway that led to the office. “What’s wrong? Your jackass brother—”
“Some asshole is giving me a hard time,” I said, and I could feel the tears in the corners of my eyes. Hot and ready to fall, and he must have seen them too, because he took one look at my face and asked, “Who?”
I pointed to the man in the back booth and Dom stomped back there. Tell you what, there was nothing like the security of a three-hundred-pound man who believed his waitresses over patrons all day, every day.
“You okay?” Cindy asked as I went behind the counter, my back to the restaurant. I didn’t need to see Dom get rid of that guy; I needed to get my act together.
You have a child. A little girl you had in jail. Ariella. You got to hold her for one day.
Those were words no one ever said to me, and they were attached to memories so dark and awful they could pull me down to a place I’d never get out of.
“I’m fine,” I lied. Ruthlessly I pushed the memories back, creating distance between me and them so it felt like they didn’t even happen to me. They were stories I’d heard from someone else. Tragic, sure.
But not my tragic.
“Who was that guy?” Cindy asked.
“Just an asshole.”
An asshole who knew way too much about me.
That information wasn’t under lock and key, but why would anyone go after it? Why would that stranger go digging in my past? And then throw it in my face like that! It didn’t make any sense. I didn’t know that guy.
Carissa, Tommy, Beth, and Simon.
I hadn’t thought of them in years. Even if Cindy reminded me a little of Beth with the curly hair and the sweetness despite everything she’d seen. And there was a guy at my BART stop who I always caught out of the corner of my eye, and my heart stopped because I was sure it was Simon.
It had been years. A lifetime.
“Rosa!” Dom said as he charged past me. “In the back!”
I turned and saw the blond man heading for the door. He didn’t look back but something sour in the pit of my stomach said he wasn’t done with me.
“Now!” Dom yelled.
“I got your tables,” Cindy said, and I practically ran to the office. Dom with his girth and his shaggy black hair and his temper filled the space. I hung out in the doorway. A total repeat of earlier today, but nothing felt the same.
“What’s happ—”
“You’re fired,” Dom said. He looked at me, shaking his head like he’d never been so disappointed. I felt like I’d been blown back through the wall.
“What?”
“Fired. Effective immediately.”
“Dom…” I could not lose this job. It was all I had. And he was going to make me assistant manager. That happened. Just this morning. And now he was firing me?
He put his hands through his hair, sending it all up on end. “What in the world are you doing with Bates?”
“Bates? That’s his name? I don’t know him, I swear to god, Dom—”
“Well, he sure as shit knows you. And I can’t have him here, Rosa. He’s the man in charge of half the crime in San Francisco.”
I gaped like a fish. Mouth open. Mouth closed.
Fairy Godfather my ass. Just plain godfather.
“But I don’t know him. I’ve never met him.”
“Does he know your brother? Your father?”
Speechless, I didn’t have an answer. God, how could they still be fucking up my life? But even that didn’t make sense. My father and brother were small-time. Their little army of assholes couldn’t even dream of someone like Bates who wore that kind of suit and ran that kind of crime circle. And Bates—if what Dom said was true—wouldn’t even know who my brother and dad were.
“No,” I said. “I think…he knew some kids I was in a foster home with.”
“Jesus Christ, Rosa! You think?”
“I don’t know. Dom. I swear.” I breathed. “I need this job.”
“I know, Rosa,” he said. “But so do Cindy and Penny and Jordan and every other person here who is trying to clean up their life. And Bates…” Dom shook his head. “Bates is bad, Rosa. He’s real fucking bad. For all of us.”
I scrambled to find a solution. “I can find out what he wants from me and handle it. I can handle it.”
Handling things was kind of my superpower. Having a baby in restraints without painkillers was a walk in the park compared to some of the shit I’d done.
“If your parole officer found out you were looking for Bates? Talking to Bates? Rosa…” He didn’t have to finish that sentence. There was no way to finish it that was good for me. That Dom looked like he felt bad did nothing to change what was happening.
“Look,” he said. “I can pay you for the week and if you need cash—”
“I don’t need your pity, Dom. I need a job. You were going to make me assistant manager!”
He shook his head and I felt this little island of stability I’d managed to create dissolve under my feet.
“What…what do I do?”
“Whatever you need to, Rosa, to get rid of that guy.”
Changing back into my street clothes, I was caught somewhere between despair and rage. I would have to tell my parole office that I’d lost the job, and my life would get infinitely more difficult.
I stopped for a second, my head against the locker where I’d kept my stuff for the last six months.
“Hey, Rosa?” It was Cindy, standing in the doorway behind me, and her sympathy and friendship were almost too much for a second. It was easier, somehow, when I was alone. When I didn’t have to talk about the things that hurt.
“You okay?” Cindy asked.
“Fine.”
“You don’t sound fine. What happened?”
I took a deep breath and settled my anger around me like a suit of armor. “I got canned, Cindy.”
“For real?”
“For real.”
I slammed the locker shut and turned to her. She moved as if to hug me but I put up my hand. “If you hug me I will lose it,” I said.
“What are you going to do?’
“I have no clue.” Try to find this Bates guy? Try to find Carissa, Beth, Tommy, or Simon? I didn’t even know where to begin. It would be easier to find another job—and that would be nearly impossible.
“Look,” Cindy said, glancing around to make sure we were alone. “I work at a club at night.” She handed me a card she dug out of the back pocket of her jeans.
“You never told me that.”
“It’s why I always want you to work my Friday night shifts.”
“What kind of club?”
“The kind that Dom wouldn’t like me working at.”
The card was for The Diamond Club. A high-end strip club out by the airport. I drove by billboards for it all the time.
“Cindy,” I said, lifting my hands out to my sides. “I’m not a stripper.”
“Neither am I,” Cindy said. “I serve drinks and bartend.”
“In clothes?”
“Not a lot of them.” She shrugged. “I’m just saying, the money is good. Security is, too. It’s a safe place. And you got a nice little body. You’d do all right.”
I laughed from the bottom of my soul where there was absolutely no humor. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.”
“Honey, you got to get out more,” she said. “And I know it’s not your thing. But it’s cash under the table and I think it could really work out for you.”
I slipped the card into my back pocket.
But I think we both knew that I had no intention of using it.
“I’m gonna slip out the back,” I said. “I’m not up for goodbyes.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
I wanted to tell her not to. I wanted to rage and fight and break everything around me. But I was grown up now and that would only make my life harder.
Walking out by the dumpster seemed like a fitting end to the day. Half of me expected Bates to be waiting for me, but it occurred to me that Bates in his fine suit wouldn’t be the one who waited. Some thick-necked goon would be doing the waiting. But I walked from the restaurant down the street all the way to the BART station without anyone or anything following me.
Except the memories of what happened that night.
I thought I’d buried them deep, deep, deep under everything that happened after. But just hearing those names unearthed all the dead bodies.
9
NOW
Rosa
I lived in a shit apartment complex in South San Francisco. My one-bedroom was on the second floor of Shady Oaks with a view of an empty pool littered with cigarette butts and beer bottle caps. The rent was the cheapest I could find that was still close to transit into the city. But basically, it was just a place where I could put my head.
