and hypothesizing about mine and never find the truth.
Liar. Thief. Murderer. Whore.
It’s in there somewhere.
I get to my feet and cross the spacious, sterile room. In the kitchen I find a pair of scissors and deftly cut the room key into twenty tiny pieces, watching them slip through my fingers into the trash.
Denise was not a success.
Maybe Elle will have more luck. She’s an economist who likes Elton John and extreme sports.
ON SATURDAYS I VOLUNTEER at the Holden City Food Bank. I applied here at the same time I started my alphabet dating system and thought I’d last a week. Now I’m on my second pass through the alphabet and my eighteenth month volunteering.
I park in the pothole-riddled lot alongside half a dozen cars boasting more rust than metal. I drive a black Mercedes. Before the scandal I drove the pink Maserati my father had given me for my sixteenth birthday, but that was repossessed and sold at auction to someone who professed to be in my fan club.
At that point I’d been earning my own income for years and had a sizable inheritance from my mother, so the scandal didn’t leave me personally bankrupt. I considered buying something less expensive, but a cheap car would attract attention in downtown Holden, where I need to blend. It makes me stand out at the Food Bank, but I told them I inherited it and they’re willing to believe me. Or at least Lyla, the manager, is willing to pretend she does, since they’re always desperate for people. “I’ve got no time for your drama,” she’d warned when I showed up in sunglasses for my interview and provided only my initials on the application. She didn’t recognize me, and I’m convinced she would not have cared if she had. But someone would have. Someone would have asked why I was volunteering at the Food Bank instead of donating. Why I wasn’t rotting in prison with my father. Why I was driving a fucking Mercedes instead of taking the train.
The answers are: paperwork, lack of evidence, and because I don’t want to.
Lyla was as surprised as I was when I kept showing up for shifts, but we soon found a rhythm. I arrive, scribble my initials on the time sheet, and go to work in my quiet, lonely aisle, where I organize non-perishable donations by myself for six hours. Thirty minute break for lunch, then back to work. With the exception of Lyla, no one talks to me, and I don’t want them to.
Voices carry in the warehouse, and I can hear their conversations. There are two groups of people who work here: Older white ladies who have retired and want to give back, and young black men whose mothers know Lyla and wrangled them jobs. I know this because when you talk as little as I do, you get good at listening. One of the white ladies thinks one of the black guys would be perfect for her daughter, but her friends think that’s asking for trouble. He was, after all, once arrested for drug possession. It was pot, but still.
I awkwardly and unwillingly straddle both groups. I’m white, which puts me with the women. I’m twenty-eight, which puts me with the guys. I’m not paid to work here, which puts me back with the women. I think Janet stole Suzanne’s roast beef sandwich and just put the balled up plastic wrap back in the fridge—I’m with everybody on that one. And yet despite all our shared interests, I’m an outcast. I prefer it that way.
Growing up, my father insisted we volunteer. I’d done the requisite rounds of reading to seniors and helping to build a couple of homes, not because community service was important to me, but because it would look good on college applications. At my interviews, I’d smiled and nodded and enthusiastically ruminated on all the wonderful things I’d learned while helping those less fortunate, and because I’m not a dimwit—and my father was a billionaire—I was accepted to every Ivy League school in the country. I got my degree from Yale.
“R.C.,” Lyla says.
“Uh huh?” I don’t turn around, too busy squinting at expiration dates on canned corn. You can hear Lyla coming from the other side of the warehouse. She’s a big lady with bright red braids twisted up on the sides and spilling halfway down her back. She wears wire-rimmed glasses, at least one item of animal-print clothing, and kitten heels every day. You can track her