The People We Keep(27)

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I hum Wild World under my breath while I work the second screw. When I get to the chorus, I whisper the words to myself because they’re the only lyrics I remember. My hands are raw. R.S.’s screwdriver sucks ass. The metal part is bent at a funny angle and the handle is full of splinters.

I get the third screw out, but the plate sticks in place. When I rest the screw on the ground, the plate swings down and splits my knuckles open. My whole hand throbs, but I keep going like it didn’t even happen. I can’t stop now, and I need both hands to get the last screw to turn. By the time I’m done with the front license plate and move to the back one, my fingers are sticky.

I take off a flannel, use it to wrap my hand, and work the screws on the back plate hard to get the job done fast. I’m careful to use my good hand to pull the car cover down as far as it will go, so no one will notice what I’ve done.

When I walk back to the campground with the icy plates stuck under my shirt, I have a lump in my throat that feels like it could kill me. For once, I wish I could cry, but it’s just not happening. The pain in my hand is so far beyond tears.

I do the best I can to clean the wound in the campground bathroom, ripping strips from the boy’s sheets for bandages. Then I get back to work before my fingers can stiffen, swapping the plates on my car. I hide the old ones with the spare tire in the trunk and vow that I’ll put everything right again as soon as I can.





— Chapter 12 —


When I wake up, there’s a note on my windshield. A blue half sheet of paper stuck under the wiper right in front of my face, reminding me that I have to leave tomorrow. It freaks me out to no end that the campground guy came over and put it there while I was sleeping. I didn’t wake up and he didn’t think to knock on the window or announce himself or cough or anything. I wonder if he watched me sleep. I wonder if he got something out of watching me sleep. Like those businessmen Matty told me about who buy dirty underwear, or the agnostic guy on the flyer at Cafe Decadence. I suppose if you have a thing for watching people sleep, working at a campground is a good place to get your rocks off. To each his own, as Margo would say. And I don’t guess anyone ever got hurt from someone just watching them.

I walk to the bathroom, relieved I don’t have to get in that awful shower, but when I catch myself in the mirror, I scare the shit out of me. Blood, streaked down my cheek, wiped along my jaw. I must have slept on my hand. I bled through the sheet strips. I do the best I can to clean my face with freezing sink water and realize that I can’t exactly go serving people at a coffee shop with a horror movie bloody stump.

Back in the car, I wriggle into my cleanest flannel, pull Margo’s hand-me-down leopard-print leggings on under my long skirt for extra warmth, and gather my hair into the most professional ponytail I can manage with one hand. I wrap a new strip of sheet around my knuckles and walk into town, even though it’s only eight a.m. and I don’t have to be at work until ten thirty.

I stop at the pharmacy, buy a bottle of peroxide and a roll of gauze, and take care of my hand in the employee bathroom. Then I go to a funny little shop that sells bulky sweaters and blow eight bucks on fingerless gloves to hide the bandage. They smell like incense even after I’ve left the store. I wonder if anything in Ithaca just smells like normal, or dryer sheets, or nothing.

Even if they pay me today and have hours for me tomorrow, which isn’t likely, there’s no way I’m going to be able to find a place to live by tomorrow night. But I can’t think of other options, so I go to work and hope for an opportunity to present itself.



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There’s a long line at the cafe when I get there. I walk up to the counter and Carly stares at me with narrowed eyes, like she’s considering telling me I need to wait my turn.

“April,” I say. “You hired me.”

“Right, right.” She nods. “Come on back.” She points at a customer, a guy with a brown corduroy cap like old fashioned newspaper boys wore. “You’re up.” She takes his travel mug and starts making his order immediately, leaving me to figure out how to get behind the counter on my own.

There’s a plank door thingy where the counter meets the wall, like at Gary’s bar. You’re supposed to lift it to pass, but this one is piled high with coffee mugs, so I duck under, as low as I can, staying hunched a little longer than I need to because I have visions of sending the mugs flying.

I clear it, stand, and play with a loose thread on my glove while Carly makes the coffee machine hiss and spit.

“You’re short on details,” Carly says, and I can’t tell if she’s talking to the customer.

“Me?” I ask.

She nods. “No address, no phone.”

“I’m new,” I say. “I don’t have everything figured out yet.”

“Let me know when you do.” She gives me a hard stare like my math teacher would when I told her I did my homework, but my dad spilled his beer all over it.

Carly is wearing a blood-red velvet beret, a navy nylon dress like something Mary Tyler Moore would wear, torn fishnets, and combat boots. The points of her blue inked tendrils peek out from the high neckline of her dress. I wonder what they are. Moonbeams? Snakes? Octopus arms?

She shouts, “Half-caff hazelnut cap,” and hands the travel mug back to the newsboy man. “You know how to use a cash register?” she asks. It takes me a sec again to realize she’s asking me and not him.