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By Root 536 0

that he had arrived. He accompanied her down two flights, then through a series of unmarked steel doors. The familiar bang! bang! bang! bang! closing hard behind set him oddly at ease. They continued through a long, winding gray corridor. He’d never find his way back alone but it didn’t matter. She was tall and thin, with dark curly hair, a large hooked nose, and a watery trill of a voice. He wondered if she was single, then thought of Delores and felt guilty. “This is such a good place to work,” she was saying. “Everyone’s always so nice. And at Thanksgiving we all get turkeys. And then Christmas there’s a big party downstairs with lobsters and shrimp and every kind of hors d’oeuvre. I think you’re going to like it here a lot.” She paused at the double steel doors at the end of the corridor.

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m just here for the interview.”

“No problem. You’re in.” She opened the door into the bright, cavernous warehouse, where hundreds of green-and-gold cases of Harrington beer rattled along conveyor belts onto pallets, which forklifts moved onto wide ramps into the trailers of waiting trucks. The workers all wore green jumpsuits and weight belts.

“Mr. Loomis!” the barrel-chested supervisor grabbed his hand and shouted through the windowless clamor and stark lights. Gordon grinned. For the first time in weeks a sense of calm, of relief, settled over him.

Jada’s feet stuck to the floor as she tiptoed into the hot, airless bedroom. The old lady’s statues were still on the dresser. She reached out for one and her mother groaned, struggling to sit up. For the last twenty-four hours she had been drifting in and out of awareness. The old lady’s money had bought twenty rocks, and her mother had smoked them all. There was fifteen dollars left. Jada wanted to buy food, but every time she felt under the mattress for the money, her mother would wake up.

Her mother clung to the side of the bed, eyes widening as she swayed back and forth. “Too far down, ’s too deep.” Her voice slurred with fearful wonder before she sagged back against the wall.

Jada slipped the statues into her pocket. She’d sell one to Bruce over on Alston Street, then go buy groceries. He usually took whatever her mother brought in. He wasn’t fussy because he didn’t pay much. Jada had already decided to keep the statue of the girl and the dog. Leonardo used to look up at her like that. Yesterday she’d gone by a yard where a black puppy was tied to the clothesline. He squirmed and squealed trying to get to her until a young guy came out of the house and took him inside.

Out on the street, Inez’s sons were filling their pickup trucks with the last of her furniture. When they went back upstairs, Jada ran outside. Her eyes locked on the square brown house across the street. Her mother had been on the old lady the minute she came through the door, so maybe she didn’t know it was them. Maybe she’d only gotten a few bruises and now she was all right. Probably just too sore to come outside. She could still hear the thud thud thud of the old lady’s head hitting the steps. Maybe she’d just passed out for a while. Or maybe she was dead.

“Jada! Hey, Jada!” Thurman called from behind.

“Asshole,” she muttered, and walked faster. She was sick of him and everyone else in her shitty life. Last night she had called Uncle Bob to tell him about the baby and see if maybe he could talk his sister into rehab. Aunt Sue answered and said he wasn’t there. It felt like there was a wall around her, holding her in, stopping her no matter where she went or what she tried to do. She used to be able to take it. Getting in people’s faces used to be a rush, but not anymore. Everything sucked. The world felt heavy and slow, like a bad dream she couldn’t wake up from.

She’d forgotten what a freak Bruce was. She waited while he finished his call. She stood a head taller than Bruce, whose shiny white skin was like the wet underbelly of a fish. His bright-blue Hawaiian shirt was so much longer than his bicycle shorts that for a moment she’d thought the shirt was all he had on. He paced