Over Your Dead Body (14 page)

“I’d rather have a bed than a booth in a taco place.” She pointed across the street. “I don’t suppose it’s a good idea to ask one of those guys about the nearest shelter?”

“I prefer not to,” I said. “Most of them are okay, but the bad ones are pretty bad, and you never know what you’re going to get.”

We ended up walking four blocks to a burger joint, just closing up for the night, and they let Marci in to use the restroom once she explained the situation to the girl at the drive thru. Boy Dog and I waited outside, and I asked the other worker about homeless shelters. He gave me some vague directions, but didn’t know much. Marci came back out after a few minutes.

“We’re going to need some more pads,” she said. “She only has a couple, probably just an emergency stash to tide her over until she gets to a drug store.”

“Can you make it through the night?”

“Probably.”

We wandered over what felt like half the downtown area before finally finding a shelter called Second Chance. They stopped taking new residents at 7
PM
, which seemed ridiculous to me, but pointed us toward a sobriety shelter that was open all night. We walked another mile to reach that only to find they required ID and an extensive registration form. I wanted to stay off the grid, and we didn’t carry ID anyway, so we left and kept wandering. Eventually we broke down and went to a restaurant, one of these twenty-four-hour breakfast places, so Brooke’s body could get some good food, if nothing else.

“I can’t let y’all in,” said the woman at the front desk. Her name tag said Delilah. “The manager says we can’t take no beggars.”

“We have money,” I said, but she shook her head.

“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.”

I hated using the runaway story because it usually prompted adults to call in the authorities, but as I watched Delilah’s face I suspected that Marci had read her right—she wasn’t the kind to turn us in if she thought we’d get sent back to an abusive home.

Marci put the finishing touch on the sob story by grabbing her backpack and scooting out of the booth. “Time to, uh, visit the ladies room.” She shot Delilah a quick glance. “You don’t happen to have any ibuprofen, do you? I grabbed some pads when we left, but I forgot the painkillers.”

“Oh for heaven’s sakes,” said Delilah, straightening up. “All that with your father, and it’s shark week, too? You go along, I’ll see what I have in my purse.” She bustled away, and Marci winked at me.

“She’ll let us stay here all night, now.”

“Shark week?”

“You have no idea of the nicknames this has.”

Marci went to the restroom, and after a moment Delilah came back with a couple of pills and a piece of chocolate cake.

“Always helps me,” she said. “No charge.” When Marci came back she swallowed the pills and ate the cake gratefully, offering me a few bites. I turned them down and let her have it all.

“Sleep now while you can,” I said. “We’re going to get thrown out sooner or later.” She curled up in the corner and nodded off quickly; I tried to stay awake but eventually fell asleep as well at around four in the morning. I was awakened by an angry shout when the manager came in at 6
AM
and threw us out. We gathered our things while he grumbled and snapped at how slow we were, and when we left the building he yelled at Delilah so loudly we could hear it from the parking lot.

“We should help her,” said Marci.

“The best thing we can do for her is disappear.”

Seventy-two dollars and eight cents left.
Let’s hope Potash’s supply drop has more cash.

We stopped at a pharmacy on our way to the storage unit, leaving Boy Dog outside again. Eight dollars and eleven cents for pads, plus six eighteen for ibuprofen. Marci changed her pad again in their restroom while I pretended to browse the aisles out front. I saw a black SUV in the parking lot that I didn’t remember seeing when we’d arrived a few minutes earlier, which seemed odd because no one else had come in the store. Why would the driver just sit in the parking lot? I watched it out of the corner of my eye, thumbing through some discount DVDs by the window. Eventually a woman came in, trying to return a bottle of shampoo, but I couldn’t be certain she had come from the SUV.

Were we being followed? How had they found us?

“Ready,” said Marci, walking up behind me.

“Look at that SUV,” I said, still pretending to browse the DVD bargain bin. “Don’t be obvious about it.”

“Ah.” She bent over as if to look at a movie and cast a perfectly subtle glance at the parking lot. “Think we’re being followed?”

“I think you might be right about Potash’s depots being watched,” I said. “They may have seen us last night and tailed us here. We should go somewhere random and see if that SUV shows up again.”

She nodded and we walked out, collecting Boy Dog and passing the SUV as if we hadn’t even noticed it. There was a man in the driver’s seat, but maybe he was just waiting for the woman in the store? I took a quick glance at the license plate—it was out of state, from Iowa of all places, but it didn’t have government tags; 187 RCR, Mills County.

We walked for several blocks, staying on major roads, not acting conspicuous, but simply easy to follow. Dallas seemed to have a lot of parks, and we stopped in one and let Boy Dog drink from a fountain. It looked like it was going to be another scorching day, and the glass and concrete in the city would only make it worse. Brooke and I were already deeply tanned from our months of hitchhiking, and as I watched Marci play with Boy Dog I noticed how weathered Brooke’s face had become, chapped cheeks and sun-bleached streaks in her already bright blond hair. I liked it short, the more I looked at it. Or maybe I just liked it when she smiled. Did Brooke smile this much, or was that all from Marci?

No black SUVs appeared, so we moved on, crossing the street and looking for something narrow we could duck into—a shopping district would be ideal, but even an alley would do. It was time to make ourselves harder to spot, and hopefully draw out anyone who might have to make a desperate move to keep up with us. We found a hotel and angled toward it.

“They’re not going to like having Boy Dog in there,” said Marci.

“They’re not going to like us running, either,” I said. “But at least we won’t be there for long.” Entering a building was tricky, because there were only a handful of exits we could use to get back out—they didn’t have to follow us in, just wait by the doors and pick up the trail again when we emerged. But if we ran through it, getting to the exit before they did, we might bypass them completely and force a slip-up. We walked leisurely through the lobby, eyes alert for employees, and at the first corner I picked up Boy Dog and we sprinted through the halls, still mostly empty at this time of the morning, racing for the nearest door.

“You can’t run in here!” shouted a maid, holding out her hand to stop us, but we darted past her without slowing.

“We’re leaving anyway,” I called back, and when we rounded the next corner we saw another glass door. We ran outside just in time to catch a bus. I paid the minimum fare (Fifty-two dollars and fifty-one cents left) and we crouched in the back, keeping our heads below the windows. If they hadn’t seen us get on, they wouldn’t have any idea where we were. After a couple of blocks I sat up and scanned the street for any sign of pursuit. There were plenty of black vehicles on the road, including a handful of SUVs, but none of them seemed to be following us—though the bus didn’t have a rear window, so we couldn’t see directly behind us.

“Two more blocks,” said Marci, “then let’s get off and transfer to another bus. It’ll expose us again, just for a minute, and it’ll give us a chance to see what else is out there.”

“That’s smart,” I said. I walked to the front of the mostly empty bus and grabbed the pole nearest to the driver. “Where’s the next major transfer stop?”

“Which line do you need?”

“Just a busy stop,” I said. He glanced over his shoulder, saw my unwashed face and clothes, and looked ahead again with a low grumble.

“This one,” he said. The bus rolled gently from side to side as we pulled into the curb, and the brakes hissed when we stopped. “Those passes you bought are good for two hours only.”

“Thanks,” I said, and I gestured for Marci and Boy Dog. We got off and a handful of commuters got on, and we waited. The stop only had signs for three bus lines; the driver had probably just wanted us off his bus. We watched the cars go by on the street, but there were no black SUVs.

“What if it’s someone else following us?” I whispered. “What if we spend all this time looking for a black SUV, and really it’s a … green Honda or something.”

“A suspicious SUV is the only reason you think we’re being followed in the first place,” said Marci. “If it’s not them, it’s no one.”

“I know I’m being paranoid,” I said, never taking my eyes of the street. “Paranoia is what’s keeping us alive.”

Most of the traffic was trucks and minivans, almost all in the spectrum of white, silver, gray, and black. Actual colors were rare—a handful of red pickup trucks—so anyone trying to blend in would avoid those. Waiting at the light were two extended-cab pickups in dark silver; a white SUV; two long, black sedans; a gray minivan; a two-door sports car, probably a Mustang or a Camaro—I could never tell those two apart, though my old friend Max had been a Camaro enthusiast. I honestly didn’t know the make or model of most of the cars I was looking at. The light changed, and the cars moved on, replaced by another batch stopped at the adjoining street: more pickup trucks; more minivans; another sedan, this one cream color; a bright yellow sports car with so modern it looked almost alien. “City cars have gotten weird while we’ve been out in the boonies,” I said.