“Oh,” said Jack. His stomach lurched. Was she offering him food? “Um, no, that’s fine. Totally understandable. I’ve been living on gas station hot dogs and free coffee from the hotel lobby. I’d eat out of the garbage at this point.”
Carla frowned. “You want some vegetables or something? I can see if there’s a tomato in here that we can slice up. Maybe some lettuce. I’m not really sure.”
“No, don’t worry about it,” said Jack hurriedly. He hadn’t meant to guilt-trip her. Was thrilled someone eventhoughtto offer him food.
But Carla was already digging through the fridge, her eyes narrowing as she examined the selection. Jack spotted at least three different flavors of juice, a jug of milk, several cartons of eggs, a bag of grapes, and some tiny sausages floating in brine.
All of it looked delectable. Jack wasn’t kidding—he really would’ve been happy to eat out of the garbage. In a place like this, even trash was gourmet.
“I’m gonna worry about it,” said Carla, plucking a tomato from the depths of the refrigerator. “I know how bad it is. The selection is the same, day after day.”
“Ever go to the grocery store?”
A laugh. “All the time,” said Carla. She set the tomato on top of a cutting board, grabbed a knife from the magnetic strip on the wall. “The grocery stores here are shit.”
Seeds and juice shot across the counter as she lowered the blade. The steel caught sunlight, glinted red.
“I lost my wallet on the way here,” explained Jack hastily, before she could judge him. “I’ve been living off a dollar-fifty a day.”
A spray of tomato juice landed on Carla’s cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. Maybe she didn’t even notice. “That’s completely ridiculous.”
Jack shrugged. “I’ve managed.”
“Still sucks,” said Carla. She passed him a plate. “Here, help yourself. We have more food if you want it.”
“I’m pretty sure the tomato is enough to ward off scurvy,” Jack joked, pulling two slices of thick bread free from the bag. He didn’t recognize the brand.
“That’s from Ronnie’s bakery,” said Carla. She finished chopping the tomato and threw the knife in the sink. Juice ooze from the edge of the cutting board and pooled onto the counter. “He always lets it go stale,” she added, frowning out the window.
Jack didn’t really know what to say to that. Should he admit that he usually froze his bread in a desperate bid to make it last longer? Or was that more than Carla needed to know?
They ate at a tiny kitchen table. Carla prattled on about anything that crossed her mind, while Jack tried to respond as politely and vaguely as possible.
When he was almost done eating, Carla turned to scowl at him. “Do I have to get you drunk to get you to talk to me?”
“No,” said Jack, startled. “I, uh, I just… Don’t really know what to say, I guess.”
“Are you gonna be afraid of me every time we meet up?”
“What? No, of course not. I’m not afraid of you, I’m just… kind of intimidated?” Jack stared down at the crust in his hand, started to tear it into tiny pieces.
“Intimidated? By what?” Carla demanded, dark eyes sweeping over him.
“This is the nicest house I’ve ever set foot in,” said Jack. Crumbs dusted his plate. “I don’t really belong here.”
Gaze softening, Carla said, “Want to know a secret? Neither do I. Just pretend like you fit in. You’ll be fine. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. And if you break something, it doesn’t fucking matter because it’ll just reappear tomorrow, anyway.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’ve noticed that, too?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Carla, stretching her long legs. The toe of her shoe bumped Jack’s shin. He very carefully did not react.
It was probably an accident. There was no change in her expression. No indication that she meant to touch him. Besides, even if she had, he didn’t want to complicate things any further by reciprocating. He was here to gather information like Buck and Nora, not flirt with a mobster’s girlfriend.
“I broke every vase in the house,” Carla continued. “Then I crashed the car. Woke up the next day and nothing was different. Absolutely nothing.”
“You crashed the car?” Jack exclaimed, dropping the crust onto his plate. “Were you OK? Was it a bad wreck?”
Carla grinned crookedly. “Itwasbad,” she said. “I wrapped thewholecar around a tree. Glass everywhere, twisted metal, smoking engine—the works. Crawled out of the wreckage and just laid in the road, bleeding like a stuck pig.”
