a harried looking white guy named Carl Macias. His brown hair kept falling out of his comb-over. He pushed a lock of it off of his pasty, wrinkled forehead as he read through her paperwork.
“Hundred grams, huh?” he said, then grinned humorlessly. “Pretty good for a first offense.”
Riel wrinkled her nose. He didn’t know the half of it. “Yeah,” she muttered, staring at her lap. She heard Carl flipping through the papers.
“But you say here you’ve never done drugs.”
“No.” It wasn’t exactly the truth—she’d smoked pot a couple of times with Evan and even tried coke once, but she hadn’t liked any of it, and it would just complicate things if she mentioned it.
“Eighteen years old, delivering coke, and you didn’t even have any sort of habit to feed,” he said. “Why did you do it?”
“For…for the money.”
Carl’s eyes dropped back to the paperwork. “Your parents are dead?”
“Yeah.”
“How did that happen?”
Riel winced. “Crossing the desert. They were deported and were trying to get back to me and my sister, but they ran out of water or something I guess.” She swallowed hard.
“You’re a citizen, though. Born in Seattle.”
“Yeah.”
“How old were you when they died?”
“Ten.”
Carl gazed at her for a moment, but she couldn’t read his look. “I’m not going to order you to go to drug treatment right now,” he said. “You’ll have random testing, and as long as you come up clean and keep a job, you keep me happy, okay?”
She tried to smile. “Thanks.”
***
She texted Isaias as she left the office, and about five minutes later he pulled up to the curb. She jumped back to keep from being splashed with muddy water from the gutter, but some still got on her shoes, soaking them through. She cursed Isaias under her breath.
She climbed into the passenger seat, pulling her hands out of the sleeves of her sweater and holding them in front of the heater vent. Her hair laid in a damp mass down her back, and her toes were freezing inside her wet sneakers. She wondered where her raincoat had gone. She hadn’t found it in her closet. Maybe Isaias threw it away, just to make my life more miserable.
“You ready to go to work, little girl?” Isaias asked.
She shrugged, dislodging a drop of moisture that ran down her spine.
“That’s the spirit,” he said, rolling his eyes.
The club hadn’t opened yet. The only person there was a young, muscular guy behind the bar counting money. He smiled at them as they came in, his friendly eyes lingering on Riel. “Hey, Isaias!” he said.
“Hey, Robert.” Isaias put his hand on Riel’s shoulder, and she stiffened. “This is my sister-in-law, Riel, who I told you about.”
Robert trotted out from behind the bar to shake her hand, his biceps straining against the cuff of his t-shirt. “Hey, nice to meet you, Riel.”
She smiled at him, and he ended up shaking her hand for a long time, until Isaias cleared his throat.
Robert dropped her hand and ran his palm over his short-cropped brown hair, looking sheepish. “You starting today?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Isaias said, answering for her. “When’s Laina going to be here?”
“She usually gets here in about fifteen minutes,” he said.
“All right, thanks, Robert. When she gets in, tell her I want to talk to her.” He glanced sideways at Riel. “Come to the back with me, let’s go over some things.”
Riel followed him through to the back. The club was a large, long building with a big stage right in front, two small stages on either side, and there was an octagonal bar in the very center of the room. It smelled like ancient spilled booze and Pine Sol, but she figured it could smell much worse.
They went down a hallway behind one of the small stages. Isaias flipped a light on, illuminating black-painted walls lined with old-fashioned pinup posters. He unlocked a door and led her into a large, neat office.
He shut the door and stretched out in a leather chair behind his glass-topped desk, folding his hands behind his head. Riel stood, twisting her fingers together in front of her.
“Sit down,” he said. “Jesus, Riel, you look like I’m going to bite you.”
She eased herself into an armchair facing him.
“That’s better,” he said. “What kind of bug do you got up your butt? It’s not poisonous, is it? Do I need to take you to the doctor?”
She just rolled her eyes and looked at him expectantly.
He rolled his eyes in response and leaned forward. “Okay. This is what’s