Opal didn't ask what I was running from. She handed me an apron like I belonged in it.
Opal: Cash only. No paperwork, no bullshit, no crying behind my bar.
Dahlia: I don't cry.
Opal: Sure you don't. Fryers are back there. Don't burn my kitchen down.
She counted a week's pay into my hand like it was nothing. My eyes stung and I hated that.
I peeled off forty and slid it back across the table.
Dahlia: For the room.
Opal: That's the dumbest circle I ever seen.
The storeroom above the laundry had a cot, a sink and a window over the lot.
It smelled like bleach and old cigarettes. The door locked from the inside.
First thing in a week that was mine. If that's not a fucked-up thing to be proud of, I don't know what is.
I walked out of town before sunup and found my car where I left it, gray with a busted taillight.
I drove it behind the laundromat and threw a tarp over it.
Hide the thing he'd come looking for. Hide it like I used to hide money in my shoe.
Wind fought me for the tarp. I felt him before I saw him.
A man by a black truck, arms crossed, watching like watching was his job and he was real good at it.
Riggs: Need a hand with that?
Dahlia: I got it.
Riggs: Riggs.
Dahlia: Dana.
He looked at me a second too long, like he was tasting the name and it didn't sit right.
Riggs: Uh huh.
Opal: This is Dana. She's on shifts now. She's mine, so keep your hands and your mouth to yourself.
Greta: Hi again.
Riggs: She gonna last?
Opal: Longer than the last one you scared off.
Riggs: That one was stealing.
Opal: Then be a bastard about stealing. Not about her.
He didn't argue. He went back to his table and his coffee and his stare.
Greta showed me where the coffee lived and how to work the register.
Greta: You sleep at all?
Dahlia: Enough.
Greta: You can ask for help here. It's free. Weird town, I know.
A trucker at the end of the bar looked me over slow and said something about new meat behind the counter.
Greta: She's got ears, dumbass.
He laughed. Then Riggs looked at him, and the laugh died in his throat.
When I glanced at him, he wasn't watching the trucker anymore.
He was watching me. Not the way Vince watched.
Not like I was a thing he owned.
He had a scar through one eyebrow and the face of a man who won most of his fights.
My stomach did something about that, and I told it to quit.
I scrubbed the fryer till my knuckles split and the grease got under my nails.
My hands shook. They did that now.
I felt Vince's boot under my chin and swallowed it down. Crying behind the bar wasn't on the menu.
I wrote Dana on forty tickets that day.
By closing, my hand knew it without thinking. That scared me more than the lying did.
Opal: You work like somebody's chasing you.
Dahlia: Maybe I'm just fast.
Opal: Hm. Whatever you're in, don't bring it through my door. I like this town quiet.
Dahlia: Yes ma'am.
He was out there when I climbed the stairs, leaning on the rail like he had nowhere else to be.
Riggs: That door lock from the inside?
Dahlia: It does now.
Riggs: Good.
I locked it twice. Through the glass I could see the street, the black truck, and him not leaving.
Somebody was watching out for me or watching me. I couldn't tell which.
Either way, it made my skin crawl, and I slept with the light on.