Dear Wife(29)

She leans on the hostess stand with an elbow, and I catch a slight roll of her eyes. “That’s him. And I heard you the first time.”

I wind my way through the tables to “Jorge,” four hundred pounds of a milky-white man eating a burrito the size of his forearm. I hover at the edge of his table, waiting for him to stop shoveling food long enough to notice me. This Jorge guy may not be Latino, but he’s no stranger to churros.

He looks up, and his eyes are thin slits, part genetics, part his cheeks squeezing them shut. It looks like he’s glaring at me—and maybe that’s exactly what he’s doing. Martina said he was in a perpetually bad mood. He picks up a hard-shelled taco loaded with meat and cheese, and dunks it in salsa.

“Martina gave me your name,” I say finally. I lean closer, across what looks to be a bucket of refried beans smothered with cheese. “She said you could help me get an ID.”

“What kind?” His accent sounds Asian.

“A driver’s license. For Georgia preferably. And maybe a social security card if you’re able.”

He gives me a look, and I don’t know if it’s to say he does or doesn’t have one. “Four hundred dollar.” He shoves the taco—the whole entire thing—into his mouth.

“For both?”

“Yup,” he says around a mouthful of meat.

“But Martina told me three.”

The slits all but disappear. I give him time to swallow some of the food bulging in his already-swollen cheeks. “Three hundred for license only. Four hundred for both.”

Barter, you say in my head. For you haggling is a sport, a competition. You will hold up the grocery store line to bicker about the price for dented cans and boxes torn at the edges. Say it like you mean it, you tell me now. There’s always wiggle room in a price. Always.

“Three hundred and fifty,” I say.

“Three hundred seventy-five.” A shard of ground beef flies from Jorge’s mouth and ricochets off my leg. I make a face, edge backward until I am out of range. I will never eat Mexican again.

I nod. “Deal.”

Jorge tells me to meet him in an hour, at a strip mall a few miles from here. He slides the beans closer, reaching for his spoon, and rattles off an address I commit to memory. That’s it. Meeting over. I beat a semistraight path to the door before he changes his mind.

For the next forty-five minutes, I sit in my car in the restaurant’s parking lot, listening to the radio and killing time. People come and go in a constant stream, construction workers and folks in business attire, moms with hair like mine emerging from a minivan full of kids. It’s the weirdest combination of diners I’ve ever seen, and I think of Jorge, the way he shoveled in those tacos faster than he could chew. The food here must really be something.

My gaze sticks to a figure at the far edge of the lot. She’s everything a woman in a neighborhood like this one is not supposed to be: alone, half-hidden behind a holly bush, completely oblivious to her surroundings. Her head is down, her thumbs flying across her phone, and even from all the way across the lot I can tell she’s a perfect mark. Designer bag slung over her shoulder, a honker of a diamond on her finger. The stone winks in the afternoon sunlight, along with matching ones in each ear.

A car slows alongside her, and one by one, the hairs on the back of my neck soldier to a stand.

“Look up, lady. Look up look up look up,” I say into my empty car. No way she can hear me, but still. I say it loud and with authority, like anyone who’s ever taken a self-defense class would know to do. Straight punch to the throat, knee-kick to the groin, elbow in the nose. Basic moves, simple techniques every woman should have in her arsenal, both potent and effective.

But this woman doesn’t look up, doesn’t even glance at the car. Las Tortas Locas is apparently a hotbed for criminal activity, and she might as well have hung a sign over her head, advertising herself as easy prey.

“Shit, lady. Come on.”

The car is completely stopped now, and I spot two shadowed figures behind the opaque windows who are not here for the taco special. I know it with everything inside me—my queasy stomach, my itchy skin, a cell-deep awareness that something is about to happen.

Something bad.

My fingers wander to my steering wheel, the heel of my hand hovering over the horn, while my brain shuffles through the scenarios. Leaning on the horn might scare off the bad guys and save the woman’s jewels, but it might also get me noticed. It would mean her asking my name, noting my license plate, looking at me as a hero or worse: a witness. Beth Murphy’s life would be over before it even began. This lady needs saving, but dammit, so do I.

The passenger’s door swings open, and a man steps out. Pale skin, slouchy jeans, faded and ripped gray sweatshirt. No, not a man, a kid, tall and lanky, all shiny face and silly-putty limbs, probably no more than fourteen. He leaves the door open, and if that’s not a getaway move, I don’t know what is.

He stalks straight at her, and I scream into my car, “Put down the stupid phone!”

But as hard as I try, I can’t make my hand press on the horn.

And so I sit, watching from fifty feet away while the kid whips out a gun and mugs her in broad daylight. Purse, phone, diamonds, watch, bracelets—she hands over everything with frantic, shaking hands. He forces her to the ground, his body language commanding her to hurry. She sputters and sobs but she obeys, lying flat with both hands shielding the back of her head. Behind him, the car’s tires squeal and smoke, and the kid lunges with his loot through the still-open door. The entire episode takes all of sixty seconds.