A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [103]
The old woman’s voice cackled in his ear. “I knew something was wrong. I could tell just by the way she was running. Like a bat out of hell, right down your back steps over into McGinty’s. I should’ve called the police, but she’s been over there before. You’ve even let her in your house! So I didn’t know, I thought, What’s he doing, just turning the place over to her any time she wants.”
She was still talking as he handed the phone to Delores. He found the broom and began pushing glass-splintered pickles and glittering chunks of meat loaf into the dustpan.
Delores was telling the old woman she was sure it hadn’t been Jada; her running through the yard was probably just a coincidence. He knew it wasn’t. Of course it had been Jada. She was paying him back for the other night.
Chocolate syrup and tomato juice sloshed underfoot. Delores had cleared enough of a space to open the back door. The soft chirp of crickets through the twilight was obliterated with each glass-rattling sweep of the broom.
“We’re getting there,” she said.
He looked at her.
“Gordon. It wasn’t Jada. She adores you. In a million years she wouldn’t do something like this,” she said, shoveling two hundred paper napkins into a sodden mound. “If she wanted something, she’d ask you.” She leaned the broom against the table. “Oh, Gordon!” She threw her arms around him. “I feel so bad for you. Here you are just getting started, then something like this has to happen.”
CHAPTER 15
Mosquitoes kept buzzing at her ears. If there were any crickets, the other night sounds drowned them out—a far-off burglar alarm, sonic bursts of music from car radios, the intermittent cries of a woman for “Melio! Melio!”—all to the beat of a dribbled basketball, the gritty scrape of running sneakers, then with every clung of the rim a scuffle of male voices. “Get that shit outta my house!” one laughed now.
“Yeah. Get that shit outta my house,” Jada whispered in echo, the dull incantation steadying her in the darkness of the bandstand steps. Her uneasy eyes scanned the street. The Navigator was parked by the Liberty Rooming House. It looked empty, but Polie said he’d be watching. The bites on the back of her neck stung as she scratched them with the rough edge of the beeper. Knees to her chin, she tugged her shirt over her knees and ankles to keep the bugs away. She hadn’t been to school in a couple weeks. Not since her mother had been back. Vacation must have started, though. They’d probably keep her back again. If they did, she’d just quit and get a job. She’d be fourteen pretty soon. July 24, which shouldn’t be too far off from whatever the hell day or month this was. Like her mother would even remember. Like anyone would. “So fuck it,” she said aloud, then laughed, said it again.
She’d seen Gordon from a distance, going back and forth to work, or mowing his grass, or bringing groceries to Mrs. Jukas. Last night Delores’s car had been out there until midnight and Jada felt really jealous, then confused because she didn’t know who she hated more, Delores for being with Gordon, or Gordon for being with Delores, or both of them for not being with her. She gnawed the side of her thumbnail until she tasted blood. She sat on her hands and waited.
A low red car slowed down. She stood up. She couldn’t see if it was the Toyota Spider or not. No beep from Polie. The car passed, so she sat down. Her hand closed over the bulge on her belly, the bag of rocks in her shorts. This deal was huge. She was supposed to count it first, twenty hundreds, before she passed the bag. Beep, Polie had said, then head straight back. Any trouble, just keep on going right by the Navigator. Stuff the money down her underpants and run like hell.
Polie and Feaster had bought her a Big Mac and a large Chicken McNuggets on the way here, but her stomach was rumbling again. She was hungry all the time now. Eating only made it worse. Maybe Polie would get her a Coke or something. Water, even. She jogged along the path up the rise to the SUV.
“Jesus Christ! That’s them!” Polie shouted as a red sports car