I have one real phone, for which only two places have the number, the prison and the Food Bank. They never call me, but I keep the phone handy just in case, and since I spend a lot of time on the couch, it spends a lot of time in the cushions. I fish it out, check the call display—unsurprisingly, no one has called—and toss it aside before navigating to the Fantasy Friends website. Two minutes later, I close the laptop with an aggrieved sigh. I can’t think. I can’t concentrate. I can’t do anything.
I stand and head for the roof.
RODNEY AND I SIT ACROSS from each other, not speaking. The Food Bank break room is stocked with cheap patio furniture we drag outside in the warmer months. In the fall and winter, it’s squeezed into this cramped room, the buzzing neon lights doing nothing to mimic the warmth of summer.
The nylon straps of my seat squeak as I shift, blowing on a forkful of the microwave ravioli I brought for lunch. A can of orange soda sits unopened next to the cardboard container, and the only time Rodney’s not staring at his phone is when he’s eyeballing my drink. He’s been playing some sort of space-shooter game for the past fifteen minutes, a blue binder sitting unopened on the table near his arm. He ate a cold burrito with one hand while he blew things up with the other.
“Well.”
Lyla enters, leaning against the wall and exhaling heavily. Today the red braids are twisted into an intricate bun, and her kitten heels are zebra print. That’s the only thing that’s normal about her, however. She’s been trying to deny it, but the flu that’s wiped out half the staff has not chosen to spare her, and she’s sweating visibly, the hand clutching her ever-present clipboard trembling slightly.
“You okay, Ly?” Rodney asks, stuffing the phone in his pocket and opening the binder as though she’s deaf and blind as well as sick.
“I’d be better if you would knock it off with that game and read this thing,” she says, covering the short distance to the table and tapping the binder. “How are you going to get into the program if you don’t get your numbers up?”
“I don’t want to be a chef.”
“You don’t know what you want. Read the book.”
“I will.”
“Now.”
“I will.”
Lyla gives him a warning glare, then grabs a plastic bag of baby carrots from the fridge. She’s constantly on a diet but never loses weight. I’ve given up counting how many apple slices and grapes I’ve seen scattered around the parking lot “for the birds.”
We’re quiet until she leaves, and Rodney checks out my soda again.
“You can have it,” I tell him, pushing it across the table. “I have water.” My voice is rusty, cracking on the words. I haven’t spoken to another person since I left Chris last Sunday.
Rodney stares at me for a second. “All right.”
He takes the can, pops it open, and drinks.
“What goes around comes around,” he says finally.
“What are you talking about?”
He covers his mouth with his fist when he burps. “Lyla,” he says, nodding at the empty doorway. “Getting sick like that.”
“That’s not what that means.”
“What what means?”
“What goes around comes around. That phrase is about karma. The flu’s just going around. It has nothing to do with karma.”
“Say what?”
“Never mind.”
He finishes the drink, crushes the can between his palms, and tosses it across the room toward the recycling bin. It bounces off the rim and skips across the floor. He considers it, then relaxes into his seat.
I nod at the table. “What’s in the binder?”
“Math lessons. I’m supposed to get my grades up so I qualify for this program Lyla’s got set up.”
“With a restaurant?”
“With a school. Culinary school. Did you know that was a thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I didn’t. And I don’t want to spend my days baking pies. What are those guys going to say?” He glances toward the door, as though his friends are already outside laughing. Then he asks, “What about you? You got a job?”
I think back to the day I’d returned to Carlisle Gale Investors to clean out my desk. The FBI had already been through; there wasn’t so much as a stapler left. Not that I had a particular penchant for stapling, but they’d taken everything when I’d been naïve enough to believe there was nothing left to take. I’d gone in with an empty box and left without even that.