Submit (Songs of Submission #3)(20)

Lil pulled in behind the bondsman place and let me out as if I were a celebrity arriving at a red carpet event. “Mister Drazen said if you needed anything, I should let you know he’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks.”

“You should let him help you.” She gave me a meaningful look that said she knew I had reservations about taking help from Jonathan.

I nodded to her and walked through the back door.

The space had no aesthetic pretentions whatsoever. The grey industrial carpet was worn in the high-traffic areas. The fluorescent lights buzzed behind the dropped ceiling, yellowing the piles of papers lying on every surface, every metal shelving unit, veneer desk, and unoccupied black chairs. The occupied chairs, three of them, held people of varying ages and ethnicities, all talking on phones or tapping into aged beige computers. Out the front windows, downtown Los Angeles hummed by.

A middle-aged woman in big dark glasses shuffled past in slippers and a multicolored shift. Her coffee cup was one third full of sludge.

“Hi,” I whispered. “I’m looking for Kaylee?”

“Cat got your tongue?”

“Laryngitis.” It was the only answer I could come up with that would make any sense. Telling her a part of me thought using my voice would shatter the world might have seemed a little crazy.

“You putting up a bond?”

“Yes. I don’t know how.”

“You got cash?”

“Some.”

“Go on and sit by the desk at the front.”

I did, slipping into the cushioned office chair placed in front of it. The bronze plaque that was really made of plastic had the name KAYLEE RECONAIRE cut into it. I had about two hundred dollars on me, which was more than usual because I’d never emptied my bag from my last shift at the Stock.

The lady with the sludge coffee placed herself on her chair with a sigh. “Do you have the forms?” She held out her hand.

I handed over the stack. She had exactly enough clear space on her desk to look at them, spreading them into three neat piles. The pink stub, the stapled and clipped form, all had a place.

“Any relation?” she asked.

“No.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No.”

“So?” She leaned her elbows on the desk. “We have to assess if he’s a flight risk. It’s our money you’re talking about, so there will be personal questions. Like, does this gentleman care if you’re responsible for him? This is not just assault.” She indicated the papers. “It’s battery with a deadly weapon, honey.” She raised an eyebrow as if I were some girlfriend battered into bailing out her own personal douchebag.

I leaned in so she could hear me. “We broke up a long time ago. He’s like a brother to me. He’s not some ex I can’t stop f**king because I’m insecure.”

Kaylee looked at me for a second before laughing. “You nuts, girl. You got a job?”

“I’m a waitress at the Stock downtown.” I swung my thumb behind me since it was about five blocks north.

“How much cash you got?”

“I have two hundred on me.”

“You’re short three.”

“I can go to the ATM,” I said.

“You can only get two hundred from the machine.” She blinked. I blinked. Then she said, “I ain’t letting you off the hundred. I’m running a business here.”

“You take collateral?”

She gave a knowing, snorty kind of laugh. “Whatever collateral you got I gotta hold in my hand, and it’s gotta be worth ten times what I need. I don’t see any jewelry on you I’d take.”

I stood and picked up my shirt, showing her the Harry Winston navel ring. I was stepping in a pile of shit, and I knew it. Using my current boyfriend’s gift to bail my past boyfriend out of jail was the stuff Jerry Springer shows were made of.

Kaylee leaned forward, dropping her glasses low on her nose. “That real?”

“Yes.”

She held out her hand, her face a mask of disbelief. I took out the diamond and handed it to her. She snapped open the top drawer of her desk, pulled out a jeweler’s glass, and used it to inspect the diamond, which to me, looked like the hugest, most sparkly thing ever dug from the earth. I sat back down as she made little humming noises, turning the rock around under the glass.

She slid it back to me. “I can get in big trouble, young lady. I don’t think you understand I’m running a business here. I don’t take stolen merchandise.”

I gasped. How could she? Was she insane? I was absolutely stunned wordless by the implication.

A lone, male voice cut through my distress. “Whose Bentley’s in my spot?” A man with a crutch and a leg of his jeans rolled up over a missing calf wobbled in.

I raised my hand, whispering, “Sorry.”

He sat at a desk. “Well, have that driver move it.”

I looked back down at Kaylee. She was already slipping my diamond navel bar into a baggie. “You come back with the rest soon, you hear? Or for the love of three hundred dollars, your new man’s gonna be pissed.”

CHAPTER 14

I hadn’t realized how big the Bentley was until Darren sat on the other side of the backseat as if he wanted nothing to do with me. It had taken me hours to get him out. Money had to be wired, forms shot over the internet, phone calls made, signatures garnered, and he had to be driven from a holding area two blocks away.