“Is this the only way I’m going to get Friday afternoon off?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” She hesitated then, as if she wanted to say something else, but then clearly thought better of it and left my office.
The second she shut the door, I turned back to my monitors and opened the human resource application on my computer.
As my only current employee, her information popped up on the first screen. I took note of the address and looked it up online. It was midtown Houston, near Travis Street.
She was living in a rent-by-the week, no-tell motel. It was likely her neighbors were drug dealers, drug users, hookers, or all three.
I closed the app and went back to work.
It really wasn’t any of my business.
SIX
ANNA
She didn’t want to be saved.
Motel 17
The knockon my door startled me. It was both loud and simultaneously authoritative. It was the kind of knock I’d heard many times before when I was about to be kicked out of a room for failure to pay rent by a landlord or a cop. Which wasn’t possible, because I’d paid for the month in advance once I’d gotten my first check.
My first serious paycheck.
There were times, I still couldn’t believe it. What they’d called a paycheck at the diner hadn’t counted. Most of the money I’d made there came from tips. And I’d learned very quickly that tips on breakfast and coffee were pretty much shit.
But after my first two weeks at E.G.A Associates…there was a check.
E.G. had been so annoyed because I’d forced him to print a physical check from his HR software when I’d said he couldn’t pay me by direct deposit.
At the time, I didn’t know what that was. I did now.
Because I had a fucking bank account.
A bank account. With a balance. And a debit card. Where I could go to a machine and simply demand it give me cash in twenty-dollar increments.
The banking system was awesome.
Flush with cash and confident in my right to be in this room, I walked over to the door. It could be the cops just canvasing for information. Something had gone down the block over two nights ago and I’m pretty sure I’d heard a gunshot, although I told myself it was just a truck backfiring.
Pushing my face up against the peephole, a distorted image of a man on the other side came into view.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“I heard that,” E.G. announced through the, apparently, paper thin door.
“What are you doing here?” I shouted at him. “This totally crossesmyline.”
“You keep assuming this is some kind of game played with rules we’re both expected to respect. This ismygame. All the rules aremine.I don’t care what lines you think you have.”
“This is such bullshit,” I muttered. I’ve never in my life stomped my foot on the ground but I wanted to do it now.
“Heard that, too,” he said through the door. “Open up.”
“I told you, I don’t want to be saved, E.G. We don’t know each other well, but I promise you I’m not that girl.”
