Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
By Monday, the cash is gone. The room bill posts for the next week to my card and declines. A knock on the door—“Ma’am?”—and a note slid under the threshold: Please settle your account by 5 PM to avoid interruption of your stay. It’s a polite way to say we will lock you out and take your stuff if you don’t pay or move out by check out in the morning.
I take stock like a responsible adult in a life skills class. What do I have?
A car with a half tank.
A phone I can sell for quick cash.
A ring-shaped dent on my finger because I gave it back to the only man who ever told me the truth about myself.
A body that still remembers men’s hands like a blueprint.
A brain that hates me.
I sit on the bed and run my thumbnail over the old scar under my collarbone, the one the caller said he hated. It prickles like a map leading to a place I never wanted to find again.
“I can figure this out,” I lie to the ceiling.
By afternoon, I’ve sold the phone to a guy in a parking lot who calls me “honey” and “good girl” and counts the twenties slow like he enjoys it. The cash is a pitiful pile. It’ll cover one more night and one more bag, maybe both if I’m stingy and the front desk clerk doesn’t look at the register too closely.
I’m not stingy. I never was.
Day four is a smear. The room is dark and the AC rattles and the mirror is a mouth I tape shut with a towel. I stop caring if I eat. I care if I breathe, but the care comes in spikes I smooth with another dose.
Day five, I’m out again. The man in the alley doesn’t smile this time. He just lifts his chin like I’m right on schedule. “Credit?”
“I’ve got cash.” My pride is stupid.
“Careful,” he says again, bored.
“You said that last time.”
“Still true.”
He passes a bag that feels lighter than it looks. The sun is too bright. The world is too sharp. I think of Tommy’s hands on my face in the shower the night I told him I couldn’t get them off me. I think of the long slow way he claimed me back from the worst parts. The picture hurts, so I look away.
By the end of the week I’ve paid for two more nights and I’ve got nothing. The register at the front desk dings, “Thank you, ma’am,” clipped and false. I nod like I deserve politeness.
In the room, I turn my purse out like a pocket caught on a nail. One quarter. A receipt from the diner. A paper clip. A ChapStick that smells like cherry and the past.
My stomach is a hole. The craving is a roar. The logic arrives quiet and reasonable and devastating:
There is one more way to get money for a thing I’m already treating like oxygen.
I sit all the way down on the floor because my knees decide to stop. The carpet is rough through my jeans. The AC kicks and rattles. The idea sits down too, cross-legged, a mean friend: You know this road. You know every step. It’s almost comforting how you always end up here.
“No,” I tell it. “I’m not— I can’t—”
The voice that talks back isn’t the one from the beach or the alley. It’s mine. It’s factual. It’s tired. You’ve done worse to survive. You had to once. You don’t have to now. But you want the feeling more than you want the alternative. Call it by its right name.
Shame blooms hot from my throat to my ears. I push up, pace the little square of the room, arms crossed, hands gripping my biceps like I can keep myself inside. I talk to the lamp, the AC, the towel over the mirror. “Just once. Just to get some money to get by. To stop the spin. Just to get through the night.”
The lies are very sweet when you haven’t eaten.
I shower. I scrub my skin with hotel soap until it squeaks. I put on the least-shabby dress in my bag, the one that used to make me feel like sunshine because it is yellow. I look in the mirror despite myself. My eyes are wrong. Too bright. Too flat. Both.
“Trash stays trash,” the woman on the beach said. “Not today,” I tell my reflection. “Today I’m surviving. Trash or not, I know how to get by.”
It’s a terrible, thin rebrand. I swallow it anyway.
The strip is a row of bars and broken nouns. LIQUO, TAT OO, a neon cross that blinks like it’s tired of trying because no matter what there are always letters that fail. The parking lot lights buzz and draw moths that throw themselves against hot glass. A woman in shoes too high leans against a wall like she’s holding it up. A man in a hat asks her a question with his eyebrows. They leave together like they’re late for something polite.