Chapter 5
Deion was gone. The pickup was gone, and more importantly, Caribbean Soul had gone with him.
Stunned, Felice slumped down to the pavement in the motel parking lot, clutching her face in her hands, softly moaning and cursing, first in English, then French, then Creole.
Thirty minutes she’d been gone. That’s all. Just thirty minutes. She’d walked to the Shop and Go to buy coffee and sweet rolls, and by the time she returned, De had vanished.
At first, she’d had a fleeting thought. Maybe some redneck cop had run him off. No telling what her hotheaded fool of a boyfriend would say or do if challenged by a cop. He had a gun. A little pistol he hid rolled up in a pair of socks that he didn’t think she knew about. She tried calling De’s phone, but he wasn’t picking up.
But she knew; yeah, she knew. His stuff was gone from their room. All his clothes, his stash, and yeah, his kicks, ten fucking pairs of designer sneakers. Thousands of dollars’ worth of shoes. He wore them in rotation, and after every wearing, would sit down and lovingly clean them off with baby wipes.
Felice sleep-walked into the motel office, where a chubby white girl with stringy black hair, bad skin, and a worse attitude sat behind the desk.
Felice’s voice shook with a combination of anger and fear. “Our food truck? Have you seen it?”
The girl was watching something on her laptop computer. She didn’t even look up.
“You mean that fugly trailer with the pineapples and palm trees and shit painted all over it? I seen that dude light outta here earlier. Good thing, too. My daddy was gonna tell y’all to get that thing outta our parking lot. Y’all can’t be running some shady shit outta here.”
“Shady shit? Caribbean Soul is a food truck. Perfectly legal. We have a permit from the Health Department…”
The girl shrugged. “Well, looks like your man has moved on. Maybe you oughta think about doing the same thing. You’re only paid up through today.”
Felice reached for her pocketbook. Thank God she’d taken it with her to the store. She pulled out her billfold and thumbed through the thinning stack of currency. Her Visa card? She scrabbled around in her purse, sifting through the contents: lip gloss, pens, her notebook—the red spiral-bound one with all her recipes.
Then it struck her. Two days ago, she’d handed the Visa to Deion so he could gas up the truck. And now De was gone. With her Visa card, and her future.
“I, uh, I think my card has been stolen. I’ll call Visa and get a new one issued. In the meantime…” Felice took four twenty-dollar bills from her billfold and pushed them across the counter to the girl.
The girl smirked, enjoying her misery, and shoved the bills back, watching as they fluttered to the filthy carpet. “Sorry. No vacancy. Checkout time is ten, by the way.”
Felice traveled light. Out of necessity. Out of habit. She reached into the bottom of the duffel and for reassurance, touched her one treasure. Her knives. Deion had his shoes. Well, Felice had her knives. They were snug in their felt-lined pockets inside the leather roll that was tied up with grosgrain ribbon.
The knives had been a graduation present from the kitchen crew at Shanahan’s, the steakhouse she’d worked at in Hialeah. All six of them had gone in on the gift; no telling how much they’d saved out of their own shares of the crappy tips that came their way.
She slid her fingertips over the smooth steel of the knife handles as she called Visa to report that her card had been stolen. Already, the fraud squad told her, someone had used the card at a Walmart, spending just over three hundred dollars. There was a charge at a Starbucks, twelve dollars, and thirty-two at a McDonald’s.
Who spends thirty-two bucks at McDonald’s? Solo?De must have ordered one of everything on the menu. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so freaking infuriating.
Thank God, Felice told herself, she’d never shared her PIN with him. She didn’t have much in her checking account, less than three hundred dollars, but that was two hundred more than she’d had when she left home eight years ago at seventeen.
Stranded again,she thought, rolling up her panties, some shorts, three T-shirts, and her spare pair of jeans, stuffing them into the bag. She went into the bathroom—puke-green tile, one of those plastic shower stalls that never looked clean—and swept the thimble-sized containers of shampoo, conditioner, soap, and hand lotion into her toiletry bag.
She zipped the duffel, slid the strap over her shoulder, and headed for the door, tossing the plastic key card onto the dresser. Catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she stopped, then dug in her wallet and placed two one-dollar bills beside the key. One thing she’d learned early on, working in the business jokingly called hospitality. Never stiff the help.