Juno needed to pee. She needed to pee, she needed to pee, she needed to pee... She put another cracker on her tongue and pressed it to the roof of her mouth.
Nigel was quiet as he shrugged into his coat. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll talk to the foreman again. See where they are with the portable.”
“Thank you,” Winnie said stiffly. The cracker crumbled and dissolved against Juno’s tongue.
She heard the sound of a kiss—a quick, perfunctory one—and then the front door opened. No alarm. She waited as long as she could stand it, though probably not long enough, and then crawled toward the closet door. She was reaching for the knob when the front door abruptly swung open again. Shoes pounding on the hardwood: Nigel’s. What if he was looking for something in here? She backed slowly into her corner, lowering herself beneath the coats. For the first time in days, Juno was scared. She’d been lured into sleepy comfort and had forgotten the danger she was in. Danger of being discovered, of being cast out like a rat. How long had she lived outside, scouring around for change to buy dollar bags of chips, feeling so cold she was sure she was dying?
Footfalls echoed above her head; they were picking up speed and becoming more urgent. She held her breath, heart throbbing like she was having a heart attack or running a marathon. Juno pressed the hem of a Halloween costume to her face, a full-body foam hot dog. She held a portion of the bun over her eyes, trying to block out what she was 100 percent certain was going to happen. Nigel would come in looking for whatever he was looking for, his shoe would nudge some part of her body—a hip, or a thigh—and then he’d bend down to see what was shoved beneath the snowsuits and the hot dog Halloween costume.
She developed a crude plan to play dead: then, when he’d go to call for help, she’d hightail it out of there as fast as her old ass would carry her. Which probably wasn’t very fast. Her finger reached for the spot behind her ear. The footsteps returned to the first floor, heading straight for Juno. The doorknob rattled, and that’s when her bladder made one final squeeze before it lost its will. She felt the warmth spread beneath her, not unpleasantly, but she knew it would be soon. God, she was as old as she was pathetic. She’d never hated herself more than she did in that moment; not in prison, and not on the street. This was so much worse because she’d already come through those things and nothing was better; there was no reward if you behaved; there was no reward if you got clean. Society would continue to see you the same way they always had...and then, eventually, you would, too. The rattling had stopped, she realized, and the front door slammed once again. Nigel had most likely brushed against the knob on his way out.
She waited longer this time before coming out. It was just as awful as she anticipated; she could smell the sour tang of urine—urine filtered through failing kidneys. She crawled most of the way, not wanting to feel her wet clothes clinging to parts of her skin. When she reached the wood floor of the entryway, she did something bold, even for her—she stripped off her clothes until she was standing naked two feet from the front door. If someone were to open it, they’d get a great big surprise.
Juno opened the other closet, the one she knew less about, and hauled out the bag of donation clothes. She found a pajama top that had a series of zzzz’s on the front of it, along with a sizable red stain she presumed was wine, and she slipped that over her head. Down lower, toward the bottom of the bag and underneath the filthy clothes Juno had arrived in, she found a pair of men’s jeans and an old T-shirt. She didn’t put those on; she tucked them underneath her arm and put everything back the way she found it.
Carrying her wet clothes to the laundry room, she shoved them into the washer, tossed a fancy little square of liquid soap into the machine, and hit start. Too scared to risk a shower, she quickly washed herself using the hand soap and a hand towel. As she dripped onto the rug, she used the towel to