ready, Mia was on her break. She was sitting up at the bar, eating what she normally did for dinner: a burger bun, the insides slick with tomato sauce and nothing else.
“Order up,” Jean called.
Mia shrugged at Rose, her mouth full. “I donf fink he fanfies me.”
Rose looked around, trying to think of a way to avoid a second encounter with the stranger. Maybe she could ask Jean to do it? But she knew then they’d want to know why and telling them would be even worse.
Grabbing the plate, fingers below and thumb on top, she strode toward him. Looking down at it, she saw that he seemed to have ordered a burger without the meat, just limp lettuce, pale tomatoes and cheese on the white bun. He was leaning back in his chair, reading a book, but she couldn’t see the title. As she stepped in front of his light, he looked up at her.
“Here you go,” she said.
He leaned forward. “Thanks.” He paused. “I wanted to ask...are you all right? Before I—”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She looked him right in the eye then, daring him to mention what he’d seen. He didn’t.
“Just checking,” he said and half smiled, creating little crinkles around his dark eyes.
* * *
At closing time, when all the stools were on the tables and the floor was mopped and drying, Springsteen was singing about dreams and secrets and darkness on the edge of town, and Mia and Rose sat on the bar, drinking beers. Their aching feet feeling blissful now that they weren’t on the hard concrete. Jean stood behind them, counting the money in the register.
“How long is our guest staying?” Rose asked, trying to sound casual.
“He’s booked in for a week,” Jean muttered, writing down figures on an order pad.
“You keen?” Mia asked.
“Nah, the opposite. He seemed like a dickhead. Really patronizing.”
The sound of something banging on the window interrupted them. It was Frank, rapping his knuckles on the glass. He waved good-night, his brown eyes so hopeful that he looked more like a small scruffy street mutt begging for a scrap than a policeman in his thirties. They waved back.
“That man needs to take it down a notch,” Jean said, slight disapproval in her voice.
Rose didn’t respond.
“He’s a nice guy,” Mia said, pushing it.
“It’s not about that,” Rose said. “There’s just no point. This won’t be where I end up.” She took a swig. Mia watched her, carefully.
“You heard back from Sage, didn’t you?”
Rose didn’t look at her; she couldn’t.
“I was so sure you had this one,” Mia said.
Rose felt warmth on her hand and looked down. Jean had placed her weathered palm on top of Rose’s fingers.
“You’re a fighter—it’ll happen for you. It might take a while, but it will happen.”
For the first time that night, the tightness in Rose’s throat loosened.
Jean withdrew her hand and placed two envelopes between them on the bar.
“Patronizing or not, our guest tips well.”
* * *
The air felt cooler as Mia and Rose stepped off the porch outside. The cicadas were trilling loudly. Despite everything, Rose felt a sense of victory. She’d done it. She’d got through the shift, and now she could go home to grieve, while she still had a home. She looked back at the tavern as they walked toward Mia’s car, wondering again about the guest, Will. He must be a relative of someone, down for some family occasion. She couldn’t think of any other reason someone would want to stay in this town for a whole week.
“Oh.” Mia paused next to her.
“What?”
Mia ran to her beat-up old Auster and pulled a parking ticket from the windscreen. She looked at her watch.
“I was only three minutes late!”
“They must have been waiting for it to tick over.”
They looked around. The street was empty. Getting in the car, Mia held the ticket up to the interior light.
“It’s more than I even made on my shift.”
Rose took her envelope from her bag and put it on the dashboard.
“You don’t have to,” Mia said, but Rose could already hear the relief in her voice.
“I know.”
They didn’t talk as Mia drove. The radio played some terrible new pop song that Rose had heard one too many times, but she knew better than to mess with the stereo in Mia’s car. She stared out the window, looking forward to the oblivion of sleep. She slid her heels out of her shoes. Tomorrow, she decided, she wouldn’t wear shoes at all. The tavern was closed on Tuesdays, so maybe she wouldn’t even get out of bed.
The car went past the fossickers. At first it was just a few tents set up in and around a gutted old cottage that had been there for forever. Now it was a real community. People lived in cars; structures were set up. Some people just slept under the stars. It was warm enough. They kept to themselves, so the cops didn’t seem to bother them, even though they all sported missing teeth and raging meth addictions. Rose hadn’t known why they were called the fossickers at first, but then found a couple of years back that they fossicked for opals and sold them on the black market. That was how they got by. Her stomach clenched with fear and she looked down at her hands. She would never end up there.
“So, I heard some great gossip today.” Mia couldn’t stand to sit in silence for too long. No matter how miserable she was, Mia always seemed to feel better when she was talking. “Maybe you can write your next article about it? Working at a cop bar has got to be good for something.”
Unlike Mia, Rose often craved solitude. She didn’t need to answer anyway. Mia usually seemed perfectly happy to just listen to the sound of her own voice chirping away.
“Apparently someone has been leaving porcelain dolls on doorsteps of houses, and the dolls look like the little girls that live in the house. How freaky is that?”
Rose snapped her head around.
“The cops are worried it might mean something. Like maybe it’s a pedophile marking his victims.”
Rose gaped at her.
“What?” asked Mia.
Rose scrambled through her bag, trying to find her cell phone, the image of Laura in her mind, sleeping cheek to cheek with her tiny porcelain twin.
“Help! Stop it!” the child wailed.
Frank had tried asking nicely. Now he was prying the doll out of the little girl’s hands. When he’d imagined being a cop, he’d never thought fighting kids for their toys would be part of the job.
“She’s mine!” Laura yelled, just as Frank gave the thing a proper tug, released it from the kid’s iron grip.
Laura stared up at him, looking more angry than upset, and kicked him right in the shins.
“Laura!” Rose yelled at the little shit as she ran out of the room and slammed her bedroom door.
Frank rubbed his shin. She’d got him right on the bone. Truth was, it was throbbing.
“Sorry,” said Rose, looking him up and down. He stopped rubbing his leg and grinned.