The Highway Kind(20)

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.

“Really? What do you do now?”

“I’m in sales.”

“That doesn’t seem to have much to do with chemistry.”

He shrugged. “I never really had the patience for lab work. I just liked mixing things together so they went boom. And the degree got me my first job in pharma.” He looked down at his half-eaten sandwich, the fries cooling in a puddle of ketchup. “Which led to the glamorous life you see before you.”

“There’s nothing you can tell me about glamour,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “I work here.”

Grinning, he said, “Well, it’s quiet.”

Quiet it certainly was. Turkey Club was her first and last customer of the night. Freddy, her boss, came in as she was closing up, looked at the posted schedule, and shook his head. “There’s no good way to say this,” he said, and then he told her that after this week, they were closing the restaurant for dinner. They’d be doing room service instead, splitting those shifts between the two bartenders and whatever hotel staff was available. “If you wanted to, you could work breakfasts,” he said. “We’re always busy at breakfast.”

So was Caro. In English class. For the nine millionth time she wondered if it would be easier to quit school, but as always, something in her balked at the thought. Margot had quit school. Margot thought there were evil elves in the wall monitoring her and Caro’s movements through every metal thing or printed word in the house. “I need this job, Freddy,” she said.

“And you’ve got it. For one more shift.”

“How generous of you,” she said.

He had the decency to look sad. “Just so you know, I hate firing people. And it’s not that I don’t like you. You’re a great kid. You’re good with the customers. If there were more of them, this wouldn’t even be a question.”

She trudged home in the cold. When she passed the car, she didn’t even let herself look at it. There was no way. Absolutely no way.

The next night she worked at Eat’n Park. She left at the same time as a girl named Cathy who was in her math class and who had her own car. Cathy didn’t offer her a ride home. Caro hadn’t expected her to. Even the girls who didn’t have a specific reason to hate her stayed away, and she understood why. In high school, being a pariah was like having a communicable disease. And maybe Cathy had a boyfriend too. Caro didn’t set out to steal. She just took opportunities as they arose. She couldn’t afford not to, and it was nice not to feel alone, and all of those girls had loving mommies and doting daddies and there would be other boys for them, other futures.

She thought about blowing off her last shift at the hotel but she couldn’t justify it—and besides, what was she going to do instead? Sit at home with Margot and watch her meds not work? So, two days later, she was back in her black shirt and pants, standing behind the bar doing homework. Algebra this time. She’d failed it the year before.