unit in the place, and it’s tiny, but there’s nothing magical in there. Just a bunch of old broken lounge chairs and faded bedspreads and random junk I’ve been meaning to get rid of.…”
“As long as there’s a bed and a bathroom, I’m fine with small. I’m used to small,” Letty said, thinking of all the roach motel rooms she’d rented back in New York. She sounded desperate, but that was because she really was desperate.
“And who’s gonna haul away all that crap in there?” Joe demanded.
“I will,” Letty said.
“In that piece-of-shit Kia?”
Letty really, really wanted to kick him in the nuts. “I saw a dumpster in your parking lot.”
“That’s true,” Ava said. She glanced at her son, and then down at Maya, with her bedraggled stuffed toy elephant.
“Tell you what. If you want to clear it out, and drag all that stuff to the dumpster, you got a deal. I know there’s a bed in there, but I can’t vouch for what kind of shape the mattress is in. The bathroom is nasty, but the last I knew it worked. And there’s a sort of kitchenette. You probably don’t need more than that.”
“I don’t,” Letty said. “That’s enough for us.”
“I can’t spare a housekeeper to help you,” Ava warned.
Letty nodded and thought about the wad of cash she’d stuffed under the front seat of the Kia. She could already feel it shrinking. “If I empty it out and clean it up, what would the weekly rate be?”
“No housekeeping?” Ava asked.
“No, ma’am,” Letty said, laying it on thick. “My little girl and I just need a place to stay, at the beach. I’m used to working hard, and cleaning up after myself.”
“For how long?” Joe asked.
“Not sure,” Letty said. “Can we figure it out as we go along?”
Ava looked at her son, who just shrugged and looked away.
“Fine with me,” Ava decided. “How’s three hundred a week?”
“If I paid in cash instead of a credit card, could you do a little better?”
Ava shrugged. “I guess I could knock off ten bucks. One thing, though. You can’t tell any of my regulars what you’re paying. I don’t need a riot up in here.”
“You got a deal,” Letty said, sticking out her hand. “I’m Letty, by the way. And I promise, you won’t regret this.”
Ava grasped Letty’s hand in both of hers and shook. “I’ll get the key. You can use the wheelbarrow that’s back behind the pool pump house.”
“I want to go on the record here and say I’m against this,” Joe said, shaking his head in disgust.
“Okay, noted,” Ava said. She held out her arms to Maya, who normally didn’t take to strangers, but immediately allowed herself to be picked up. “Precious baby,” Ava cooed, running her fingers through Maya’s curls. “I can’t remember when was the last time we had a little one around here.”
“Wait until the Feldmans find out you’ve got a kid staying here,” Joe said. “They’ll shit a brick.”
Ava stared at her son. “Doesn’t your shift start soon?”
2
THE EFFICIENCY UNIT WAS LOCATED at the north end of the row of pastel-painted concrete-block cottages. It was tiny and painted bubble-gum pink, to her niece’s delight. “It’s the Barbie house,” Maya giggled.
The glass of the unit’s jalousie windows was thick with salt spray and grime, and the paint on the door was a peeling, unattractive shade of pea green.
“Here we are,” Ava announced, unlocking the door and shoving it open. “Like I said, it’s not much.”
“Oh my,” Letty said, surveying her new home. It smelled of mildew and old socks.
As advertised, the unit was small. And it was packed, within an inch or two of the ceiling, with decades of motel discards. Letty spotted a stack of aluminum-frame lounge chairs with rotted plastic webbing, seven televisions of various vintages, plastic bins stuffed with faded bedspreads and yellowing towels, and stacks of hideous framed mass-produced paintings. Three rusted window air-conditioning units teetered totem-pole style in one corner of the room. Sagging mattresses covered the windows, and shoved in among everything else were a washing machine and three toilets.
Ava sighed and kicked at the edge of a laminate-topped dresser that had seen better days. “Guess I kind of forgot how much stuff was in here.” She scowled. “That’s what I get for carrying on with the damned handyman. By the time I figured out the only thing he was really handy at was drinking beer and losing money at the Seminole Indian bingo over in Tampa, he’d already wrecked my