“What I want to know about is that truck,” Brenda Malloy said, calling out from the other side of the room. “Where did people like that get a truck like that? Do you know what something like that costs? You might as well buy a Mercedes.”
“It’s probably got orders of repossession out on it right now,” Margie said. “Or maybe it isn’t their truck. Maybe it’s the murderer’s truck. Maybe they were murdered over a drug deal, and the truck belonged to their connection. Drug dealers make enough money to buy a truck.”
“Some drug dealers do,” Brenda said, “but some drug dealers use up their product, and they’re just as broke as everybody else. Besides, who would do that? You don’t mess up a vehicle like that? It must have been their truck. You know what people like that are like. They buy everything on credit and then they can’t pay for it. The finance company is going to be livid. If the seats had cloth covers they’re never going to get the blood out, and if they had leather covers they’re going to be shot full of bullet holes. God, can you imagine?”
“Excuse me,” Darvelle said.
She got up and walked to the back, past the other women at the other computer, into the little hall. She went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She lifted the toilet seat cover and then the toilet seat. She stared down into the water and thought about the truck. Her head was full of helium. Every pore of her body was pumping out sweat.
She leaned over the toilet bowl and threw up.
3
It took her most of the morning to admit it, but Penny London found this whole thing—the motel room of her own; the open account to get anything she wanted from the restaurant—to be really something wonderful. It had been months since she’d been able to settle into an indoor space for more than a single night, and months since she could take as many showers and baths as she wanted just because she wanted to. That was how she spent her time between talking to the boys and noon. She took a shower. She took a bath that lasted an hour and a half. She took another shower. Then she went down to the restaurant and had another of those enormous meals. For some reason, she had to have fried food and butter and a big gooey dessert. Had she been starving herself, all this time living in the car? She didn’t think so. She hadn’t been absolutely destitute. Money had been automatically deposited to her bank account every other week in term time, and outside of term time there was always at least a little left, and there was tutoring. Still, she was hungry. She couldn’t believe how hungry she was. And she wasn’t eating like herself. She didn’t seem to be able to look a vegetable in the face.
She had told George or Graham or both of them—she couldn’t remember—that she had to teach, but she didn’t really, not until this evening. After lunch, she went back up to the room and sat on the bed and tried to think. Then she tried to read. Then she tried to watch television. She was too restless. The stories about Althy Michaelman and her man friend—“Slaughter at the Stephenson Dam!” was how Channel 8 put it—came and went. Penny couldn’t seem to make them make sense.
She had a book of crossword puzzles. She tried that, but that didn’t work, either. That was when it occurred to her that she could get something done. She could do laundry, if nothing else. The laundromat would be open. She could sit there and wait for her clothes to finish going around and around in the dryer.
She got to the laundromat just in time for the noon rush. The washers and dryers all seemed to be in use, except for the two in the back, which were not open to the public. Penny looked around. There was a sign on the wall. The laundromat staff would do your laundry for you, at the price of one dollar a pound, with a minimum of ten pounds. Penny looked at the bag of laundry in her hands. It was really a black plastic garbage bag. That sign had been up there as long as she could remember. She had read it every time she had come into the place. She had read it, but she hadn’t taken it in. She complained that her students didn’t understand how to read, that they read things and just didn’t take them in, and here she was.
She went to the back and looked in at the door where the administrator stayed during the day. Maybe the word shouldn’t have been “administrator.” Maybe it should have been something like “attendant.” There was something she’d never thought of before.
The attendant was a small girl with hair pulled back in a ponytail. She had bright red pimples along the edge of her jaw. She was chewing gum. Penny cleared her throat.
“Could I ask you what the policy is for getting laundry done?” she asked. “I mean, would I have to bring it in in the morning, or—”