Finding Tessa by Jaime Hendricks (best ereader for comics .TXT) 📗

the rooms and closes the door behind her, wriggling her skirt down as she leaves and then lights a cigarette. Marijuana is in the air as dollar bills trade hands in the form of a handshake.

I roll my eyes at how cliché the whole scene is. My guess is the cops don’t even bother patrolling the area.

I’m not happy about needing to stay here for the night, but I need to be within walking distance to places where I’ll be able to get my shady shit done. I don’t drive and I’m not made of money so I can’t cab it around all over the place until I find a job. I have to blend correctly in case I’m spotted. God knows the Asshole could have a tail on me. Controlling piece of shit.

This is all part of the bigger plan. I just have to survive the night. I’ve survived worse. I can do one night in the slum standing on my head.

“Hey, lady,” Hobart says, then retrieves a card from the pocket over his heart on his T-shirt. He hands it to me with a grandfatherly look on his face. “If you ever need to go somewhere, you know, fast, call me. I’m usually around town. I can get here. Fast.” He looks back at the grimy scene. “I don’t want you standin’ outside waitin’ for no stranger. Not here.”

“Thank you,” I say, and I mean it. I slip his card into the front opening of my purse. “It was nice meeting you Hobart. Have a good day.”

He shakes his head at me, still disapproving of my choice in sleeping arrangements, but gets back into the cab and drives off.

The wheels on my bag crunch over the paved lot and when I open the door to register, there is no relief from the outside heat. Yet another place with no working air conditioner. I hope the rooms are fitted at least with window units; I’ll need the AC tickling my skin until the heat wave passes through and returns the weather to normal conditions. It should definitely be cooler this time of year than it currently is.

The man behind the bulletproof glass, Miguel according to his tag, is sweating profusely, making his dark hair stick to his head. He has a toothpick sticking out of his mouth, something another ex used to do. I hated it and still do. He scans my body up and down and curls his lip like a predator as I make my way toward him. I know his type—someone who sees a tiny, pretty little lady and thinks he can have his way with her. I’ve broken three noses in the last fifteen years and have no problem adding a fourth. My older brother Kenny taught me to push the bottom of my palm up from the nostrils to do the most damage. The instant blood, pain, and tears from the assailant give you ample time to run.

Confidently, I stride toward the glass and tap on it. Miguel doesn’t take his eyes off me. My insides bounce around and I feel like a teenager running away from Jason Voorhees at camp. “Hi. I need a room for the night.” Never let them see you sweat.

The scene out front has left me shaking. If I wasn’t so terrified of guns, I’d have one in my purse right now. I force myself not to look down and gaze with as much confidence as I can gather to meet Miguel’s eye. Thank God the heat hides the real reason for my sweat.

Miguel slides a piece of paper into a drawer and pushes it my way, and it comes to the other side of the bulletproof glass. It wants all the regular information. Name, address, all of that. I pull the name Gloria Goldberg, address 250 Main Street, Apt. 12B, Phoenix, Arizona out of thin air. He won’t ask for ID to prove it.

This is the type of place where cash is king, and I don’t need a credit card on file for incidentals—it’s not like I’m getting a steak with a 2005 Penfolds Shiraz delivered to my room from the kitchen. The “kitchen,” from what I can see, is a dive bar across the lot with broken neon lights that probably only serves beer from a dirty tap. I don’t even try to bargain the thirty-nine dollars a night even though I’m sure I can, and I take my key, an actual metal key on a yellowed plastic keychain, and go to my temporary Shangri-la on the second-floor corner.

Inside, the room looks like a casino and a garbage dump birthed a bedspread. It bothers me that it’s so ugly because I’ve pretended to be an interior designer for years, when all I ever really did was look at Pinterest and shop the looks that I liked at Home Goods. None of which encompassed the mismatched mess in front of me. It was exhausting always telling the Assholes that I’d just moved to town and I was trying to build a client base. Like I went to college or something.

The bathroom smells of mildew but looks surprisingly fresh—looks can be deceiving—and has a small sink and stall shower. I have the sudden urge to scrub the place sparkling clean. Immediately, I remove the bedspread and swear that my next stop is Target or Walmart for a new, cheap pair of sheets and some rubber gloves and bleach. Even though I’ll only be in this place for a night, I can’t live in complete squalor. That was left behind with Foster Home Number Three, when I was fourteen and everything got bad. That was when I heard the twins took off from a different foster home, Kenny knocked someone up for the first time and left me, and Christopher did his premiere stint in juvie, which I know was just practice for the real thing.

All of them still had it better than I did there.

First things first: Time to