by Meg Jackson
“When are you going to get Cristov to finish this?” she asked, the question more of a mindless musing than anything else.
“Well, I want to - have to go to Providence before I go back home,” Damon mused, dragging the tips of his fingers up and down her back. “From here, that could take…oh, a week, or more. And then…”
“…then a few days back to Kingdom,” Tricia said, trying to keep the sigh from her voice – and failing. Damon peered down at her. She was looking over his chest, at the far wall.
“Or not,” he said, now making spiraling circles on her back. She put an arm on his chest, used it to prop up her head to look at him straight-on.
“You’ve got somewhere else in mind?”
“I’ve got anywhere else in mind,” he said, speaking slowly and judging her reaction. He saw the way the corners of her lips lifted. “The perk of being your own boss, you know, is that you can put someone else in charge whenever you want. Or, hell, shut down until you get back.”
“That’s not…that’s not good business strategy,” Tricia said, looking away from him so that he couldn’t see the way her smile was trying to come out.
“I guess you’re right about that,” Damon said. “Some would even say it’s…crazy.”
“Yup,” Tricia said, hoping he couldn’t feel her jaw move as her smile widened.
“Romani are very frugal, did you know that?” Damon went on drawing his circles and pretending he didn’t know about her smile. “Very good at saving. And pretty thrifty.”
“Is that so?” Tricia mused, nudging herself closer to his hard, warm body.
“It is,” he said. “But – I guess you’re right. It’s crazy to just not go back to your job. You have a job to go back to, right? Oh, wait…”
“Hmm,” Tricia hummed.
“But you need to find a job soon,” Damon continued playing along. “Because you’re running out of all that money you won in the…oh, wait…”
“Okay,” Tricia finally said, lifting herself up on her elbows and looking him in the eye. “Enough of this. Are you serious?”
He opened his arms wide, palms out, as though to show that he had nothing up his sleeves; easy enough, since he was naked, but the gesture was symbolic.
“I’ve got nowhere I need to be anytime soon,” he said. “And it’s a big country. And you sure seem excited about the idea. I like my woman when she’s a little excited.”
He winked at that and surprised her, rolling over and taking her with him, until she was on her back with his weight, sturdy and strong, above her. His green eyes didn’t look so shadowed anymore. Her fingers found his biceps, played gently on his muscles, running up and down.
“Are you gonna say yes?” he growled teasingly. “Or am I gonna have to beg you?”
“I like the way that last option sounds…” she purred, eyes half-lidded.
“Tricia Garland, will you help me do what a gypsy does best?”
“That depends, what does a gypsy do best?”
“Go where he wants, when he wants, how he wants…all while loving the shit out of his woman?”
Tricia leaned up, met his lips with her own, pulling him down with her as her head hit the pillow once more.
“Is that a yes?” he asked, whispering in her ear. She wrapped her arms around him, feeling the steady pulse of his heart against hers.
“Can I DJ?”
Epilogue
Tricia turned over on the air mattress. She was freezing. And it was Damon’s fault. She knew it would be too cold for camping, even deep in the desert. Not that he hadn’t done his best to keep her warm…while he was awake. She still felt the byproduct of his (and her) favorite way to keep warm between her legs.
Tomorrow night, we get a room, she thought, backing up until she felt his warm body against hers.
For six months, they’d been crisscrossing the states, going wherever their fancy called them. Damon had hired someone to take his place at the store, and Tricia had been living off her savings; camping was cheap, splitting gas was cheaper, and they only splurged for nice dinners once or twice a week. And it didn’t matter to Tricia whether they ate at Michelin-starred restaurants or McDonalds; as long as she was sitting across from Damon, it was alright with her.
They’d seen Wall Drug, Mount Rushmore, Big Sur; breezed through the Big Easy and the Windy City and the Twin Cities; spent nights under the lights of Las Vegas and days under endlessly blue skies in Utah; caught in desert rainstorms, mountain mists, and oceanside heatwaves; bought cowboy boots in Nashville and went clamming in Nantucket.
Tricia had never been happier, and Damon seemed like he was a different man altogether. He was less dire, less dark. Those shadows in his eyes had slowly given way to a lightness.
Tricia had never believed in soulmates before, but she couldn’t explain the way she felt about Damon any other way. Most relationships took a while, moving from like to love over the course of months. With Damon, it had taken days; and even more, even stranger, it had lasted. They fought, as all couples do, but they made up sweetly, softly, easily. Neither were too proud to apologize.
They were happy. They would have been happy regardless of what came from Miami. But what came from Miami happened to make happiness easier.
Damon had been mostly right; his witness statement was too little too late, the confession he’d conned out of Curly not admissible evidence. But Ricky had gotten in touch with the detective who’d worked the case twenty years earlier, and he’d pulled some strings in the department. They could point to Damon’s statement if and when anyone questioned why they’d re-opened a twenty-year-old case, and why they specifically sought Curly Gottlieb’s profile from the DNA database of the state of New Jersey, where he’d been arrested on felony assault charges in 2005.
And when they examined his DNA in comparison to the pubic hairs and semen collected from the crime in Providence, there was sufficient evidence for an arrest – and, subsequently, a conviction. He was not given leniency based on his age at the time, or the fact that it was so many years ago.
If anything, the fact that he’d been able to walk free for so many years worked against him.
Damon never heard from the woman Curly attacked, the woman he’d failed to save. Curly took a plea deal from the DA, so it never went to trial, never required him to return to Providence and bear witness. But it didn’t matter. He had redeemed himself as best he could, and made peace with the ways in which he would never feel wholly absolved.
Which made life all the easier for Tricia as she took up her role of co-pilot, DJ, food critic, audience, entertainer, and – most importantly – lover.
Except for that night, when Tricia could only focus on how damn cold she was. Her nose felt like Rudolph’s. She considered waking Damon up and telling him they needed to sleep in the car, or drive back into town and get a room. But as she was weighing the possibility of sleep coming eventually versus a cranky, just-woken Damon, she heard a telltale buzzing from her knapsack.
Going to get her phone would mean separating herself from Damon’s warmth, something that seemed unbearable for even a few moments. But if someone was calling at 3 in the morning…
She groaned, rolled over, and darted a hand out, searching for her phone with her head under the blanket. She found it. Kim’s smiling face spread across the screen. Tricia’s heart doubled. She’d been waiting for this call.
Six hours, two flights, and a rental car later, Damon and Tricia were running through the halls of Mercy Hospital, just outside of Kingdom. They already knew they’d missed the main event – but not by much. As they counted down the room numbers, slowing their pace, catching their breaths, they both felt a giddy sort of nervousness. They hadn’t seen anyone – Kennick, Cristov, Mina, Kim, or Ricky – since Miami, except over video chats. They talked regularly, but this would be the first time seeing their families, both blood and extended, in over half a year.
They found the room where Ricky was recovering; they didn’
t need to look at the number on the door. There was a window looking in, and they paused before it. No one noticed them as they peeked in.
Damon wrapped his arm around her, kissed her temple. Through the window, she saw Ricky and Kim on the hospital bed, tears rolling down their faces. Cristov had the baby in his arms, was looking down with a smile that Tricia had never seen on him before. Kennick stood behind his brother, beaming over his shoulder at his new nephew. Mina held Ricky’s hand with one of her own, her other hand on Cristov’s shoulder.
“Ready to go in?” Damon said, feeling her torn soul. She wanted to be with them. She wanted to feel a part of their family. And she knew there was a place for her there. She knew there would always be a place for her with Ricky and Kim, just like there would always be a place for Damon with his brothers and sister.
No matter what had happened…no matter what things had forced Tricia and Damon to feel separate, to feel unwelcome, to feel out of place…
“I’m ready,” Tricia said, but held tight to Damon’s hand when he started to lead her to the door. He looked back at her, a question in his eyes. “I don’t just mean that I’m ready to go in. I mean…I’m ready for us to come home.”
Damon smiled, one hand on the doorknob. He nodded.
“Me too,” he said, yanking until she stumbled into his arms. They entered the room together, a chorus of happy voices welcoming them back, welcoming them to stay.
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Part I
1
Oh great, a used condom.
Oh, wow, super, a bloodstain.
What is this even, yogurt?
Who does this to a pillow?
Was it very necessary, whoever you are, to completely cover the walls with shit?
What is this…oh please…don’t even…no…yup, it’s piss.
Jesus Christ, is it that hard to put your used needles in the damn trash can?
Oh…a dollar tip, how nice, considering they left an entire week’s worth of rotting fast food and half-empty beers all over the floor.
How did they manage to get cum on the ceiling?! That’s actually impressive, I can’t even be mad…
All in a day’s work for me. I pushed my cart from room to room, arms sore from scrubbing at mysterious stains, clothes splotched with bleach, mind numb to what wonders might await me behind the next door.
People are animals, I tell ya. No one knows that as much as a cleaning lady at a hotel. And, no, before you start dreaming up my identity for me, I’m not an “illegal alien”. I am half-Latina, but I’m a full-blooded American citizen, born and raised, and I speak perfect English, thank you very much.
What is it about staying at a hotel that can turn even a mild-mannered person into an untamed beast with no problem pissing all over the floor or dumping an ashtray onto their sheets before checking out? Is it because it’s not their home, so they don’t care what happens to it? Is it because they don’t realize someone like me has to come and clean it up? Or – and perhaps this is the scariest possibility – is it possible that they’re actually like that at home, too, and you just never see it?
Not everyone who came through the doors of the Gateway were like that, of course, but way too many were. We had our fair share of families, businesspeople, truckers. But for every guest who left the room in a decent state, there were two prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, alcoholics, or other such devils who took it upon themselves to make my job as hard as humanely possible.
And I never held anything against those people for what they did. If you’re a lady and you need money and you don’t mind letting someone give you the old in-out to get some, go on with your bad self. Got a drinking problem and can’t drive home? By all means, keep everyone safe and stay at the hotel. Need to “figure stuff out” through a drug-fueled weekend? Not my place to judge.
But, goddam, a little decorum would be nice to see once in a while.
“Gabriella, Rosa is taking her break now, can you make sure 215 is ready? Early check-in,” my walkie-talkie crackled on my hip.
“Already checked it, boss, all good,” I said, pushing down the ‘talk’ button and hoping that my manager would actually hear me for once instead of badgering me about why I “didn’t respond”. The woman was a sweetheart, but she was deaf as hell and the flask of vodka she sipped on all day didn’t help her comprehension skills.
As I heaved my cart down the hall, legs already aching from all the bending over and crouching down my job demanded, I tried not to think about what would happen at the end of my shift. To be honest, as much as I hated playing nursemaid to the lost souls of the world, tidying up after them, wondering whether that puddle was vomit or melted ice cream, there wasn’t a whole lot to look forward to once I was done for the day, either.
It was late June, when it’s really only just beginning to warm up in the high Rockies.
Maybe it’s a good night for a barbeque, I thought idly, until I opened up the door to the next room and my list and remembered that it was raining lightly. No use stopping at the store on my way home for hamburgers and potato chips.
Maybe I’ll make lasagna, I thought. Lasagna is good for a rainy day. Jeremy loves my lasagna.
Lasagna was a safe bet. Anything that I already knew Jeremy loved was a safe bet. Anything I wasn’t sure about was a gamble. And if I made anything that he’d told me once, even if he’d said it years ago in a conversation that I had no reason to remember, I was treading on ice so thin it might as well be paper.
Yeah, lasagna, I thought, thankful that this room, at least, wasn’t as bad as some of the others I’d seen that day. As I pulled up the covers, balling them up with the sheets, ready to throw them in the hamper, I made a quick mental inventory of the room. I was looking for chargers, cell phones, socks, shoes, a ski goggle, anything that a rushed guest might have left behind on their way out the door.
You’d be surprised what people leave behind in hotel rooms. Usually it’s just crap, but sometimes you find interesting things: photographs, mysterious pills, strange powders in baggies, gold jewelry. Some of the girls I worked with, I knew, were prone to taking such finds home with them instead of bringing them to the front desk, like we were supposed to. I didn’t hold it against them, but I always brought anything I found straight to the clerks to hold onto or dispose of as they saw fit.
It wasn’t worth the risk of getting caught, for me. And besides, I didn’t do drugs, and I didn’t need jewelry. Jeremy, though he had many flaws, was an excellent provider. Or, I should say, the police force he worked for was an excellent provider. We didn’t want for money. The fact I had this job at all was due to one of his whims.
After we’d married, three years before the shit hit the fan, he didn’t like the idea of me “sitting around at home” all day. Unfortunately, he also didn’t like the idea of me getting a job that would be “too mentally taxing” or take up “too much time”. Really, he just wanted me to get a job where I’d come home too dog-tired to do anything but put up with his shit, and working for housekeeping at the hotel was the perfect mix of physical labor and mind-numbing repetition.
“But what did I get a degree for, if I can’t do anything with it?” I’d said, still so naïve.
“Well, I don’t know what you got a degree for, I sure as hell didn’t tell you to get it. I mean, what can you even do with a degree in philosophy? You’d have to go to grad school if you want to make anything of yourself, and we can’t afford that right now. Besides, if you went back to school, you’d have your nose in a book all the time again, no time for me. I waited two years to have you all to myself, I don’t want to wait another four,” he’d replied, appealing to that sappy part of me that loved him beyond reason.
“I guess you’re right,” I’d resigned, not wanting to have the same arg
ument again for the third time that week. After our honeymoon, that had been our first major issue. The first of many, I’d like to add.
So I’d started looking for a job. With almost no work experience, it was tough. I could flip burgers, but that seemed beneath me, and with a degree I was way overqualified, anyway. I wanted to take a position as a secretary at a law firm, but Jeremy had thought that would be too stressful for me, with crazy hours and demanding lawyers to cater to. He was the only man I should be catering to, in his opinion.
So, I’d taken the gig as housekeeper at the Gateway. I’m pretty sure I was only hired because I looked like I could speak Spanish. Which I can’t, by the way. Well, I can, but only curse words. Plus, my name, Gabriella, is only one “l” away from the traditional Hispanic spelling of the same name, blurring the line even further. Being half Puerto Rican and half Italian, I’m what they call “ethnically ambiguous”, which is a nice way of saying “no one knows what the hell you are right from looking at you.”
With large, almond-shaped, dark chocolate eyes, a deep tan complexion, and crazy, kinky, black hair that does whatever it wants at all times, I’ve been mistaken for a Jew, a Mexican, a Filipino, and even, on one occasion, a Hawaiian. My body, though, is pure Latina. I blessedly missed out on the dark body hair and stick-thin frame of my Italian mother, and got my paternal grandmother’s luscious hips, large, C-cup breasts, and wide, womanly thighs.
Not that I always appreciated that, mind you. In fact, when I was with Jeremy all those years, I hated it. He was as Irish as they get, pale as the moon and thin as a rail. He always made me feel like I was fat.
He’d buy clothes for me, intentionally buying sizes too large, because he knew that it made me think I belonged in the “plus” size section. He’d make little backhanded compliments about my roly-poly tummy, which never seemed to shrink no matter how much I tried to diet or exercise.
