The Sound of Broken Ribs(41)
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be damned. Ever been to Ohio?”
Belinda froze. She tried to smile but couldn’t manage it. Her sudden terror was obvious. She knew it was written all over her face and posture, but she couldn’t help it. “Why?”
“That’s where Duncan lives—the author. I’ve always wondered what living in Ohio would be like. I take it from your expression that you’ve never been?” The woman’s voice rose at the end, making a question of her statement.
“No. Never.”
“Maybe you’ll get the chance someday.”
Belinda snatched the receipt from the printer, yanked her pen from her uniform’s vest pocket, circled the lady’s Von’s Club savings, and shoved the receipt in her direction.
The lady took it with a smile. “Thanks, Belinda. Have a safe drive home.”
“You too.”
Jesus Christ, what just happened? Belinda thought as she watched the black woman sashay through the sliding doors and out into California sunshine. Belinda continued to watch as the woman got into a black BMW and drove away. When she finally looked away from the front of the store, there was an elderly white lady staring at her.
“Are you going to ring me up?”
“Yeah. Right. Sorry.”
As Belinda scanned the old woman’s items she wondered if she’d read too far into the conversation with the black lady. And did it even matter at this point? Belinda could barely afford her weekly rent at the hotel where she lived with Carl much less have the money to run, should the lady prove to be a threat.
Belinda tried to tell herself that something like this was bound to happen. Hadn’t it been the one worry populating her mind for almost two-and-a-half years? Yes. Yes it had. It was all she thought about. The murder of Sheriff Jenna Wales and the death of her brother Tony didn’t pop into her mind much these days. But Lei Duncan? She lived in Belinda’s head morning, noon, and night. Her mangled body was an image burned forever into her mind. Why hadn’t the bitch had the good courtesy to die?
“I think that’s supposed to be on sale,” said the octogenarian. “It’s one of this week’s BOGOs. I should get one free.”
“It’ll come off at the end.” Belinda sounded robotic. She didn’t much care, either.
When her shift was over, she took the bus home. Carl was gone, likely off somewhere buying more makeup they couldn’t afford or using one of the last remaining pay phones in the area to call Frank collect. Frank hadn’t been able to follow Carl out here to the west coast, but he’d wished them both luck, knowing that Bay’s End couldn’t contain his boyfriend’s hopes of stardom.
So far, those hopes seemed more like dreams that would never come true. Twice Carl had been denied a spot on RuPaul’s Drag Race, a show Belinda had never been able to sit through. Not a single episode. But, she had to admit, some of those boys (girls?) looked better than half the woman Belinda saw walking the streets of southern California. Hell, most of them looked more natural too.
In comparison to small-town Ohio, California was a distant planet, not even in the same galaxy as her hometown. But change was good. Broadening one’s horizons was just what the doctor ordered in Belinda’s case. Or so she had thought.
Truth was, moving across the country had done absolutely nothing regarding leaving her past behind her. And now there was this black woman asking strange questions. Belinda still didn’t know what to think about that. A part of her wanted to believe that someone with the FBI or any other government agency would have simply arrested her. They most definitely wouldn’t have been so goddamn obvious. So maybe the woman was a private investigator looking to get a rise out of Belinda. Perhaps the woman had been trying to get Belinda to reveal something.
Whatever the case, Belinda’s blood pressure wasn’t likely to be within safe limits for the next few hours. She’d be looking over her shoulder for the next week, at the very least.
The Imperial Hotel on Valley Boulevard was an L-shaped single story hotel that let rooms by the day or week. It was all Belinda and Carl could afford, and neither one of them could afford it on their own. Some weeks were easier than others. Sometimes, Carl would come home with a roll of bills and a story about how he’d scored a gig on a commercial or some such. Belinda knew this was bullshit, and she knew Carl knew she knew. But neither one of them wanted to discuss how many dicks Carl had to suck to get their rent and food money for the next seven days.
Belinda had thought about tricking, too, but, in the end, hadn’t been able to quell her fear long enough to even step foot inside the trucker-frequented gas station by Interstate 10, where young and old women alike lined up in hopes of bedding a horny guy on a long haul.
Sometimes, though, Belinda’s paycheck was enough for the three-hundred-fifty-dollar rent, and all Carl had to come up with was food money. There were weeks when breakfast, lunch, and dinner was Mickey D’s dollar menu items, and some whole days when there was no breakfast or lunch. Only dinner. Once or twice in the past few weeks, there hadn’t even been dinner. Numerous times, Belinda considered turning herself in to local authorities in the hopes of scoring three hots and a cot, but always talked herself out of it. This didn’t have much to do with her fear of imprisonment and had everything to do with jurisdiction. She didn’t think California would extradite her all the way back to Ohio and figured that turning herself in this far from home would be useless. Or at least she told herself.