Billy didn’t have to knock her to the ground. She went down on her own, curling and covering everything important. Her legs took the kicks. She tried to keep quiet so the neighbors on the other side of the duplex wouldn’t know. Didn’t matter. Same story there, too.
Billy lost interest and went to the kitchen for a Coors. Anna stuffed contents back in her spilled purse and ran out the door.
But how to get to work? She’d be late again for sure, and she’d been warned. She looked at Billy’s metallic green Trans Am in the driveway. She had spare keys in her purse. It was the wrong decision, but there wasn’t a right one.
Ten minutes later, Anna raced into the parking lot of the Sunny Side Up Café. The sign had a fried egg with a smiling yolk.
“You’re late again!” yelled the owner, doubling as short-order cook after firing someone.
“Sorry…” Anna ran to the back of the restaurant and the employee rest room, actually a mop closet. She stuck toilet paper up her nose to draw blood. Checked her eyes in the mirror. Starting to puff.
Anna grabbed an order pad and rushed back out under the owner’s glare. The customers momentarily forgot their selections when Anna rushed up to the table looking like she’d just rolled down a hill. Clothes out of line, droplet of blood peeking from a nostril.
A taxi arrived. Billy. He could have just taken the Trans Am in the parking lot and driven away, but you had to know Billy. He ran in the restaurant and started shouting at Anna again like they were still alone in their living room. Billy so wanted to club her, but then saw the much-larger owner coming over. He left quickly.
Customers started getting up. Tires screeched in the parking lot and Billy took off. Across the street, a white Mercedes with tinted windows pulled away from the curb and headed in the same direction.
Anna was sitting and crying at an empty table. The owner walked over.
She wiped her eyes. “I’m so sorry….”
“So am I.”
She looked up. The owner was shaking his head. “This isn’t working.”
“I need this job.”
“I need this restaurant.”
He called for Val, one of the other waitresses, to give Anna a ride. There wasn’t any business now anyway.
They went to Val’s apartment. A relative was there, watching her kid.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” said Anna.
Val leaned against the kitchen counter and lit a cigarette. “I’d call the police.”
“I can’t.” Anna turned quickly. “And you don’t say anything either. Billy’s on probation. He’d go back to jail.”
“Good.”
“Then we really won’t have any money.”
Anna couldn’t believe how different Billy had been in the beginning.
“They always are,” said Val, looking over at her own child in the living room.
But Billy wasn’t like the others. And besides, he was in business with her brother, Rick. Anna adored Rick. He was married to her best friend, Janet, and Anna thought Janet was the luckiest woman in the world. If only she could find someone half as nice as her brother. And if Billy was good enough to be Rick’s business partner, that was plenty recommendation.
The two waitresses didn’t have answers. It got to be midnight.
“I need to go home,” said Anna.
“You should stay here.”
“Just take me home.”
They drove across town and turned the corner at the end of Anna’s street. Val leaned over the steering wheel. “Holy shit.”
Anna’s clothes and everything were all over the front lawn, the front dirt, that is. The Trans Am was in the driveway.
Val kept going past the house and drove to a nearby convenience store. They bought plastic trash bags and returned to the duplex. No sign of Billy. The blinds were drawn and all the lights off except one still burning in the back bathroom. They quietly stuffed belongings in the bags and tossed them in the backseat.
Val ran around to the driver’s door. Anna stood beside the car, looking at the house.
“What are you waiting for?”
“There’s more stuff.”
“Forget your stuff!”
“I need it.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of going back in there?”
“He’s probably sleeping. I’ll just be a minute.”
10
A ’71 BUICK RIVIERA sat in the parking lot of the Winn-Dixie shopping center on Big Pine Key. The windows were down. Serge peered across the lot with a pair of camouflaged hunter’s binoculars. He raised a tiny digital recorder to his mouth. “Surveillance file zero-zero-zero-zero-one. Subject: white female approximately thirty-five to forty years old, driving beige, late-model Pathfinder. Established contact outside dry cleaners, several dresses and a jacket. No visible scars or tattoos, full set of teeth, brunette hair, nicely groomed but not overly so in a manner indicating bullshit personality…. Subject now exiting vehicle for supermarket. Will resume report once inside and target reacquired.”
Serge and Coleman pushed empty shopping carts side by side up the cleanser aisle. Serge had argued they should use only one cart for mobility, but Coleman didn’t want people to think they were gay. Serge lectured him about bigotry, and Coleman said he needed his own cart anyway for self-esteem…. Where’d the woman go?
