10. Cat
— ? —
Cat
Four Months Since I Left
The Copper Penny smells like stale beer and broken dreams, which makes it perfect.
I’ve been working here for three months, closing shifts, cash under the table, no questions asked. The owner is a weathered woman named Dotty who hired me the day I walked in with black hair and shoes too expensive for this town.
The books earn enough to keep me comfortably alive.
The problem is reaching the money. The royalty account bears the married name I’m hiding, and I don’t know who can see its transactions.
My editor knows Lena, not the family behind her.
I won’t turn her into someone they can question.
Cash work buys me time without asking anyone else to risk theirs.
“Maria! Frank’s glass is empty and he’s giving me the death stare.”
“On it.” I grab the whiskey bottle and head for his corner booth.
Frank looks up as I approach, his face arranged in its usual expression of general disappointment with the universe. “Took you long enough.”
“It’s been forty-five seconds since your last sip. I timed it.”
“Felt longer.”
“Everything feels longer in here. It’s the fluorescent lighting. Scientifically proven to slow time.”
“That’s not science.”
“It’s bar science. Different field entirely.” I pour his refill. “You eating tonight, or just drinking your feelings?”
“My feelings are none of your business.”
“They are when you’re on your fourth whiskey and haven’t touched food since lunch.”
“How do you know I haven’t eaten?” he grumbles.
“Because you always eat at Mabel’s diner before you come here, and Mabel told me you skipped today. Said you looked, and I quote, ‘more miserable than a wet cat at a dog show.’”
“Mabel talks too much.”
“Mabel cares about you. So do I, apparently, against my better judgment.” I slide a menu toward him. “The wings are decent. Not good, but decent. Edible, at minimum.”
“Glowing recommendation.”
“I work here. I’m contractually obligated to upsell, not to lie.”
One corner of his mouth gives up the fight. “Fine. Wings. But only because you’re annoying.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all week.”
I put in his order and move on to the Patterson brothers, who are in the middle of their nightly argument about something that happened in 1987.
“I’m telling you, Danny, the ball was fair. I was standing right there.”
“You were standing three beers deep, is what you were standing. Your judgment was impaired.”
“My judgment is never impaired.”
I pull another round for the regulars, half-listening, grateful for the ordinary stupidity of it.
“Your judgment thought mullets were a good idea for fifteen years.”
“Mullets were fashionable.”
“Mullets were a crime against humanity.”
“Gentlemen,” I interrupt, collecting their empties. “Same again, or are we switching it up tonight?”
“Same,” they say in unison, then glare at each other for agreeing on something.
“Coming right up. Try not to kill each other before I get back.”
“No promises,” Danny mutters.
The bar is half-full tonight, which passes for busy in a dying steel town where the mill closed five years ago.
I move between tables with an apron deliberately oversized, hiding the swell of my belly that’s getting harder to ignore.
About twenty-one weeks along now, by the dates I keep checking.
Every week brings new challenges in the art of strategic layering.
“Maria.” Dotty’s voice cuts across the room. “When you’ve got a minute.”
I finish the Pattersons’ order and head to the bar, where Dotty is polishing glasses with the focus of someone performing surgery.
“What’s up?”
“You’ve been here three months.”
“Has it been that long?”
“Don’t play dumb. You’re terrible at it.” She sets down the glass and fixes me with a look. “I’ve been patient. Haven’t asked questions.”
“I’ve noticed. And appreciated.”
“But three months is a long time to work for someone and not know if trouble’s going to walk through that door looking for them.”
“You think I’m in trouble?”
“I think people don’t dye their hair and take cash jobs in towns nobody’s heard of because their life is going great.”
Fair point. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know if whoever you’re hiding from is going to show up here with a gun.”
“Honestly? I don’t know.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m being as careful as I can, but I can’t promise anything.”
She studies me for a long moment. “I had a husband once. Mean drunk, meaner sober. I spent three years thinking love meant taking whatever he dished out.”
“What happened?”
“I got smart. Or desperate. Sometimes those are the same thing.” She touches the thin scar along her jawline. “Point is, I know what running looks like. I know what scared looks like. And I know that sometimes the safest thing to do is keep your head down and pray nobody notices you.”
“Is that advice?”
“It’s observation. Do with it what you want.” She picks up another glass. “You’re a good worker, Maria. Whatever your real name is. I’d hate to lose you.”
“I’m not planning on going anywhere.”
“Plans change. That’s the thing about being on the run: eventually you have to stop somewhere. Make sure it’s worth stopping for.”
The bar closes at 2 a.m., but cleanup takes another hour.
“You want company walking back?” Jake asks, pulling on his jacket. “It’s late.”
“I’m fine. The motel’s two blocks away.”
“Still. It’s dark. This town’s not exactly well-lit.”
“Jake, I appreciate the chivalry, but I’ve been walking home alone for three months. I think I can handle two more blocks.”
“I’m just saying-”
“And I’m just saying goodnight. Go home. Get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He hesitates, then shrugs. “Fine. But if you get murdered, I’m going to be really annoyed.”
“Noted. I’ll try to avoid murder out of respect for your feelings.”
“That’s all I ask.”
He leaves, and I finish the last of the closing tasks. Dotty left an hour ago, her arthritis flares up worse at night, though she’d die before admitting it. I count the register, lock it up, and head out the back.
The night air is cold, sharp with the smell of rust and old industry. This whole town smells like something dying slowly.
I fit right in.
3:47 a.m.
I write.
That’s what I do now, in the hours between closing and dawn when the motel room feels too small and the silence presses in. I sit at the wobbly desk with my laptop and pour everything I can’t say out loud into a story about a woman who isn’t me.
Except she is. She’s exactly me.
My editor has been sending increasingly desperate emails to the Lena Amara account.
Whatever you’re working on, I need to see it. The readers are dying.
If she only knew.
The chapters arrive at her office postmarked from random towns, never the same post office twice. Paranoid? Maybe. But paranoia is keeping me alive.
I check her messages on the library computers, never from the motel. It isn’t perfect. None of this is. But I keep the pages and the payments separate from the name on my room.
I’m mid-sentence when the memory hits.
Tea appearing at my elbow. Earl Grey with honey, exactly how I like it.
“How did you know I was sick?”
“You sneezed four times during chess and called it allergies.”
I push back from the desk so hard the chair almost tips. The room blurs with tears I didn’t authorize.
I miss him.
That’s the ugly truth I only admit at 3 a.m., wrapped in his flannel like the pathetic creature I apparently am. I miss the man I thought he was, the one who reset the board after every loss and asked how my mind worked.
None of it was real. The note proves it.
But my stupid heart doesn’t care about proof.
The flannel still smells like him. Or maybe it doesn’t, and I just remember what it used to smell like. I can’t tell anymore.
I hate that I kept it.
I wear it every night anyway.
The Next Evening
Something’s wrong.
I feel it the moment I walk into the bar, that prickle at the back of my neck, instinct honed through a year in enemy territory.
Everything looks normal. Frank in his corner, the Pattersons at the pool table, Dotty behind the bar.
But there’s a man by the window I don’t recognize. Dark hair, dark coat, watching the room with eyes that miss nothing.
“New customer?” I ask Dotty quietly, tying on my apron.
“Came in an hour ago. Ordered a beer, hasn’t touched it.”
“That’s weird.”
“Gets weirder. He asked about you.”
My blood goes cold. “What?”
“Asked if we had a girl working here. Dark hair, pretty, keeps to herself.” Dotty’s voice is carefully flat. “I told him we have lots of girls. Couldn’t think of anyone matching that description.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. He’s been sitting there ever since, and he doesn’t look like someone who gives up easy.”
I force myself not to look directly at him. Instead I move through my opening routine, checking stock, wiping tables, being Maria the forgettable bartender.
But I can feel his eyes tracking me.
“Hey.” Frank’s gruff voice makes me jump. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
“You’re always tired. It’s concerning.”
“Since when do you concern yourself with my well-being?”
“Since you started looking like a spooked deer every time the door opens.” He nods toward the window. “That guy bothering you?”
“What guy?”
“Don’t play dumb. The one who’s been staring at you like you owe him money. Or something worse than money.”
“He’s just a customer.”
“He’s not touching his beer. That’s not a customer, that’s someone waiting for something.” Frank’s eyes narrow. “You need me to have a conversation with him?”
“Frank, you’re seventy-two years old.”
“Seventy-four. And I didn’t ask if I could take him in a fight. I asked if you need me to have a conversation.”
“I appreciate it. Really. But I can handle myself.”
“Can you?”
“I’ve been handling myself for a long time.”
“You look like you could use someone in your corner.” He finishes his whiskey. “Just remember, this bar’s full of people who’d notice if you disappeared. That counts for something.”
“Does it?”
“In a town like this? It counts for everything.”
The shift passes in a haze of tension. I pour drinks and make small talk and pretend I’m not tracking the man’s every movement.
He doesn’t approach. Doesn’t try to talk to me.
Just watches.
Around seven, Jake arrives and immediately notices something’s off.
“You look terrible.”
“Thanks. Really appreciate the feedback.”
“I’m serious. You’re pale. And you keep looking at that guy by the window like he’s about to pull a knife.”
“I’m fine.”
I wipe down the same stretch of bar I’ve already cleaned twice, keeping my hands busy so they won’t show me shaking.
“You say that a lot.”
“Because it’s usually true.”
“And when it’s not?”
“Then I lie convincingly. It’s a skill.”
The man by the window stands up.
Everything in me goes still.
He walks to the bar, sets a twenty next to his untouched beer.
“Keep the change,” he tells Dotty. Then, without looking at me: “Nice town. Quiet.”
He walks out.
I don’t breathe until the door closes.
“Maria.” Dotty’s voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. “That the trouble you were worried about?”
“I don’t know.”
“You need to figure it out fast. Because whatever that was, it’s not over.”
The gray sedan is parked across the street when I leave.
I’ve seen it twice this week, once outside the motel, once at the grocery store. Same car, same tinted windows.
Tonight it’s right there, engine idling.
I keep walking. Don’t look directly at it. Just a tired bartender heading home.
But every alarm I have is screaming.
They found me. After all these months of being careful, they found me.
The headlights flick on.
I don’t run. Running confirms everything. Instead I turn down the alley I mapped for exactly this moment, the one that winds through the delivery area and comes out on a different street.
Behind me, I hear a car door open.
Then footsteps.
Following.