Dear Wife(20)

“Living room, TV room and study, all in one,” Miss Sally says. “Those books there are loaners, meaning don’t go leaving them all over town or selling them off to Goodwill. There’s cards, darts and board games in the cupboard. The Wi-Fi is free, but the vending machines aren’t. Parking is out back.”

“Looks great,” I say, but I’m talking to air. Miss Sally is already halfway down a long, narrow hallway. I hustle to catch up, peeking into the bedrooms as we pass. Tiny but neat—a single bed, a dresser and not much else.

“So, Beth,” she says, stopping, turning on the hallway runner to face me. “Did you just get to town?”

“Yes. Today, in fact.”

“How are you liking Atlanta so far?”

“It’s okay. There’s a lot of traffic.”

She laughs, though it’s not even remotely funny. “It’s also jungle-hot, sprawled halfway to Tennessee and has entirely too many Republicans. But it’s not all that bad, you’ll see. You on your own?”

“Very.”

“Where from?”

“Out west.”

She twitches a brow that says she wants more.

You’re a great liar. For years I’ve watched you tell the truth whenever possible, and not embellish with too much detail you’ll only forget later. Lies multiply, contradict, proliferate. Sticking to something close to the truth is the only way for you to keep track of all your lies, to keep them from piling up and you from stumbling over the simplest answers.

I follow your example now. “I’m not really from anywhere. Not anymore, anyway. I move around a lot.”

It’s enough for Miss Sally. She turns on her heels, raps on a door with a knuckle. “We’ve got three bathrooms,” she says, shoving the door open, “one for every four bedrooms, and they pretty much all look like this one.”

She steps aside so I can see. Two pedestal sinks, a toilet and at the far end, a glass-enclosed shower, utilitarian and blinding white. The room smells clean, like Old Spice and bleach.

“Shower time is three minutes. Seems short, I know, but you can get everything you need to get done in that time if you’re efficient, and if you’re not...well, we know what you’re doing in there. And you do not want to be going over. People start pounding on the door at two minutes, fifty-nine seconds, and they won’t be polite about it, either. Bitches who hog the hot water aren’t so popular around here, I can promise you that.”

“It’s very neat.” No toothbrushes, no sticky tubes of cream or paste, no forgotten towels on the floor. The place is spotless.

Miss Sally gives me a nod that says she’s pleased I noticed. “That’s because anything you leave behind gets confiscated, if not by me, then by whoever goes in after you. Don’t leave your shit lying around—that’s one of the house rules.”

“What are the others?”

She ticks them off on Jolly Green Giant fingers. “No smoking, no drugs, no sleepovers, and if you’re not in the door by midnight you’ll be sleeping on the lawn. Other than that, just don’t be an asshole and you’ll do fine.”

“Does that mean I’m in?”

In lieu of an answer, she turns and moves farther down the hall. “Kitchen’s down there, and the laundry room is in the basement. A buck a load, drop it in the lockbox on the wall. We live by the honor code here, and don’t even think of stiffing me. I’m not saying I have cameras everywhere, but it’s best to assume I have cameras everywhere.”

I start at the word cameras, and my gaze wanders to the ceiling, searching out the corners.

Miss Sally laughs, a big sound that fills the hallway like a cello chorus. “Well, I’m not going to be that obvious about it, now, am I?”

I can’t tell if she’s fucking with me or not.

“And the price?”

“Single rooms are twenty-four dollars a night. Rent is due in cash on Sundays at noon. No exceptions. Come to me either short or late, and you’re out.”

A few bucks more than Wylie Street, but also a million times nicer. I nod.

She looks down her nose at me, and the silence that fills the hallway tightens the skin of my stomach. She’s waiting for something, and so am I—for her to pose the question I’ve been dreading since I walked through the door: Can you prove you are who you say you are?

She opens her mouth, and my heart gives a sudden kick. “Who is this friend you mentioned earlier?”

I shake my head, confused. “I’m sorry, what?”

“When you knocked on my door, you said a friend gave you the address. Who? Tell me his or her name.”

I think about how Beth should answer, if she’s the type of person to lie easily and effortlessly, like you. The opposite of Old Me, who’s never been a natural liar, though I’ve certainly sharpened my skills some. Don’t change your voice. Don’t fidget or become too still. Hold a steady, confident gaze, and whatever you do, don’t look up and to the left.

But now I’ve waited too long to answer—the dreaded, too-telling pause. It’s too late to blurt out a name and hope for the best, and my gut tells me this is some kind of test. That Miss Sally, with her third-degree tone and squinty eyes, would see straight through me.

“So maybe ‘friend’ was too big a word,” I say, lifting an apologetic shoulder. “Maybe it was more like some random person I met at Best Buy.”