Linwood Barclay - Trust Your Eyes

She turned, abruptly, into a coffee shop. She had no idea what street she was on. As she flew past the counter she shouted, “Latte, medium,” so no one would give her a hard time about using the bathroom, looked desperately for a sign that would tell her where it was, and instinctively descended a set of narrow brick steps to the basement. Found it, tried the door. It was locked.

“Just a minute,” someone called from inside.

Allison stood there at the bottom of the stairs, watching, waiting for that woman to come down after her.

A man emerged from the bathroom. She slipped into the tiny room with its one toilet and sink, dropped the lid, and sat down. She got out her phone as she struggled to get her breath.

Thought about who to call.

When your brilliant plan to blackmail the wife of an attorney general goes south, and people at the highest levels send someone to kill you, who do you call?

Good question.

Looking at the phone, she suddenly realized it might be used to track her. She powered it down, lifted the lid off the toilet tank, and dropped it in.

Think, think.

Okay, going to the police was too risky. And it was a safe bet they’d be watching her mother’s place. She couldn’t call any of her friends. She’d burned most of them, anyway, like Courtney. Borrowed money she’d never paid back. Taken tips meant for others. Slept with friends’ boyfriends.

There wasn’t a bridge she hadn’t burned.

You are one stupid bitch, she thought.

She had a few hundred dollars in her purse. Enough to buy a bus ticket out of New York. Once she was out of the city, and felt reasonably safe, she’d have to figure out her next step.

Someone banged on the bathroom door. Allison’s heart skipped a beat.

“Hey! You eatin’ a pizza in there or what?”

SHE settled first in Pittsburgh, if one defined “settled” as a place you stay for more than one night. Her bus ticket took her as far as Philadelphia. From there she hitchhiked. Figured she’d just head west, but not in a direction that took her too close to Dayton. Slept in a park in Harrisburg her first night, then in the morning went into a McDonald’s restroom and tried to make herself look like a human being with what she had in her purse, which amounted to little more than a comb, lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara. She needed work, no question about it. A shower, to start.

Allison didn’t see that she had much choice but to find a homeless shelter. She was given something to eat and had a shower. She brought her purse in with her, hanging it just out of reach of the spray, so it wouldn’t be stolen.

Her credit cards were useless to her. Most were maxed out, anyway, but she knew the moment she used one, they’d have her. She snapped all of them in two and tossed them in the trash.

One of the conditions of staying at the shelter was that she would have to help out. She opted for the kitchen detail. It was the closest thing they had to the work she’d normally done. She stuck it out there for the better part of a week, until one day when a pair of city cops came in asking questions. Not about her-they were looking for witnesses to the beating death of a homeless man three nights earlier-but they spoke face-to-face with Allison. She worried that if her face was on a missing persons file anywhere, and these two cops happened to see it, they’d remember where they’d run into her.

Time to put more distance between herself and New York.

Her plan had been to keep heading west, but that would take her right past Cincinnati, and that was a little too close for comfort to Dayton. What if someone she knew, who knew her mother, recognized her? She didn’t want to take the chance, so she tacked in a southerly direction, hitching several rides that landed her in Charlottesville, a beautiful college town. She didn’t find herself working in the halls of academia, however. She got another kitchen job, in a diner that had a “Help Wanted” sign in the window.

By this time, she’d spent all her cash, and the diner job wasn’t enough to allow her to find a place to stay. Lester, who owned the diner, said she could sleep in his truck, a Ford pickup with a bench seat, and use the restaurant bathroom to clean up.

She lived that way for five weeks before moving on. Lester was starting to expect certain favors in return for the fine accommodation he was providing her. Allison wasn’t interested, on any level, but it took a raw egg down the front of his pants to persuade Lester.

Time to hit the road, again.

She hitched to Raleigh. Then Athens. A couple of hungry weeks in Charleston. Then, farther south, to Jacksonville. It was a good plan, getting to Florida as winter started to settle in. She didn’t have a coat or winter clothes, and had no money to buy any.

As she became more desperate, she occasionally suppressed her nature and found a way to say thank you to the men who gave her rides, provided they were willing to throw a few bucks her way. You did what you had to do.

In Tampa, she found work making up rooms at a motel called the Coconut Shade, a place where customers often rented by the hour. No references, no ID, no previous work experience required. She said her name was Adele Farmer. Octavio Famosa, the manager, of Cuban descent and in his midforties, offered her not a place to sleep in his truck, but a rollaway bed in a storage room.

Allison figured he’d be looking for something in return, like most of the men she’d encountered, but she was wrong. Octavio was a kind, decent man. His wife, Samira, had died the year before from liver disease. He was raising their seven-year-old daughter, but he did not like to bring her to his place of work because it was not a proper environment. A place where people came, almost exclusively, to have sex. So his sister looked after his daughter when he had to work.

“People have needs,” he said, and shrugged. “And yours is for a safe place to stay. I have been where you are.”

Some days, he’d share his lunch with her. Every once in a while, on the night shift, he’d give her ten dollars from the till and send her to the nearby Burger King for something they could split. They would talk. Octavio’s parents were still in Cuba, and he hoped someday to bring them to Florida. “Before they are too old to come,” he said. “I want them to see their granddaughter. What about you?”

“There’s just my mom,” she said. “My dad died a few years ago, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

“Where is your mother?” Octavio asked.

“Seattle,” she lied. “I haven’t talked to her for a while.”

“I bet she misses you,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” she said. “Not much I can do about that.”

“You remind me of my daughter,” he said.

“How is that possible? She’s just a little girl.”

“I know, but you both need your mothers. You are both very sad.”

This entire experience, from the moment she’d fled her apartment to living now in Tampa, had given Allison Fitch time to do a lot of soul searching.

She was not, she concluded, a very good person.

She had lived off others and offered nothing in return, starting with her parents. She’d always thought of herself first. Her wants, her needs. What kind of person, she’d started asking herself, lies to her mother so she’ll send money? What kind of person uses that money to book a vacation when she owes rent to her roommate? What kind of person turns a sexual relationship into an opportunity for a huge financial payoff? What kind of person resorts to blackmail?

A bad person.

A very bad person.

A total shit.

That’s what she was. Maybe, she kept telling herself, she had it coming. She’d brought this on herself. That much was clear. She wouldn’t be here, after months on the run, changing stained sheets in a one-star hotel in a bad part of Tampa, sharing Whoppers with Octavio, if she hadn’t always thought of herself first.