Pieces of Me (19 page)

I stepped into the middle of the cards on purpose so they'd have to stop. “Jeez, Maddie, what are you doing?” Q said.

“I'm trying to put the food away,” I said. “You could help.”

Leo reached for one of the bags, but I handed it to Q instead. “You should go get cleaned up and brush your teeth,” I said to Leo. I saw him look at Q, who gave a slight nod.

Leo went into the bathroom and shut the door. When I heard the water running, I hit Q on the head with a loaf of French bread. (It was in a plastic bag.)

“Ow!” he said, looking at me wide-eyed.

I bent to put the bags of ice in the cooler. “Oh c'mon, that was bread. There's no way it hurt,” I said over my shoulder.

He rubbed his hair just above his left ear. “What did you hit me for? What did I do?”

I glanced at the bathroom door. “Leo's a kid,” I whispered. “You really think he should be playing cards?”

Q reached out to touch me, but I was pissed, so I took a step backward. “He's not playing cards, Maddie. I'm playing cards. All Leo's doing is teaching me how to figure the odds so I know when to bet and when not to.” He put his free hand flat on his chest. “The only one playing is me, I swear.” He waited a minute, and then he wiggled his eyebrows all spazzy at me.

I stared over his shoulder and tried to keep the scowl on my face. “That's not working.”

“Are you sure? Because I think I just saw your lips try to smile.” He took a step toward me.

“The inside of my cheek was itchy,” I said.

He took another couple of steps toward me so there was maybe just a hand-width of space between us. “I don't think that was an itch,” he said. “I think that was a smile.”

“Wasn't,” I mumbled. I was still staring at a spot on the wall over his shoulder, so I didn't see the kiss coming. His mouth was warm on mine. One hand was in my hair, and the other slid down my back.

“I'm lucky, Maddie,” he whispered, his breath soft on my skin. “I've been lucky since the day I met you. Once I figure out when to bet and when to fold, there's nothing to stop us. We're gonna get out of here.”

I looked up at his face. It seemed like there was something in his eyes, an intensity that for a moment reminded me of the minister at the Holy Rollers shelter the night Q and I met. Then it was gone. It had to be some trick of the streetlight coming through the window, because that preacher and Q were nothing alike.

Every night for the next week, Leo and Q worked with the cards and the book. Each day Q seemed a tiny bit more frustrated. I wasn't sure if Leo could see it, but I could. Q was always yanking his hand back through his hair, and the muscles in his jaw and neck looked like tight knots under his skin.

Sunday we went to the soup line for lunch. We were low on food. We'd been to the bag-lunch line both days at St. Paul's, and I'd used the last of the quarters to buy milk for Leo and Dylan.

We had granola, apples and carrots for supper. I pretended that I wasn't very hungry so there'd be enough of the cereal for Dylan and Leo to have for breakfast.

Q pulled me out into the hallway after we ate. “Do you have any money?” he asked.

“If I had money, do you think we would have been eating wrinkled apples and rubber carrots for supper?” I said.

There was a long pause. “You always keep something hidden in case there's an emergency,” he said finally.

I didn't know he knew that.

“What's the emergency?”

His eyes slid off my face. “There's a game tonight.”

“No,” I said. I turned around to go back inside.

Q grabbed my wrist. “Maddie, I need to practice.”

I wrenched my arm free. “So practice with Leo.”

“It's not the same as being in a game.”

I had to jam my hands into my pockets because I was suddenly afraid that if I didn't, I would punch him. “So practice with those dip wads you work with. I don't have any money, and if I did, it would be for an emergency, and poker is not an emergency.”

I went back inside, and after a minute Q came in too. I thought he'd be more pissed, but he wasn't. I was glad because the thing was, I'd lied. I did have money—twenty dollars, underneath the sole in my left boot. The part I didn't lie about was that it was for an emergency, and Q playing poker wasn't an emergency.

He smiled at me and started building a castle with Dylan and Leo—or maybe it was a condo for Fred. After I'd cleaned up a little, I kicked off my boots and lay on my stomach on the floor, watching them. I would have listened to the iPod, but it needed to be charged and I didn't have a charger. I hadn't understood the words, but I'd liked the French music.

When it was time for a bath, Dylan didn't want to go, even though I'd seen him yawn more than once.

“Now,” I told him after he'd whined and stalled. “There isn't going to be any hot water if you don't move it. You'll be in the bathtub with icicles hanging from your ears.”

I was pretty sure John Goddard had done something to the water heater. The water wasn't as hot as it had been, and lots of nights there was none at all. We'd started having baths every second day because nobody wanted to get in a tub of cold water.

When I came out of the bathroom, Leo was sitting on his air mattress reading a book about airplanes. The blocks had been put back in the bag.

“Where's Q?” I said.

Leo looked up. “He said he had to go somewhere.”

He said something else. I know that because I saw his lips move, but I couldn't hear the words over the rushing sound—like waves hitting the beach—in my ears. My left boot was lying on its side by the end of my mattress. I bent and picked it up with shaking hands. Q hadn't even tried to put the insole back in properly. I felt for the twenty dollars, knowing that I wouldn't find it. And I didn't.

The boot fell to the floor, and I pressed a hand over my mouth because I thought I was going to puke up apples and carrots all over the floor.

“Maddie, are you all right?” Leo asked, touching my arm. I hadn't even heard him get up.

What should I say to him? That I was angry? That I was scared? I closed my eyes for just a second.
Suck it up
, I told myself.

I swallowed the sour taste at the back of my throat and looked at Leo. “I'm all right, I'm all right,” I said.

He looked scared, his face pale.

“It's okay, I swear.” I put my hand over his for a second and forced a smile I didn't feel. “Help me pick things up,” I said.

He looked at me for a long moment and then pulled his hand away and picked up Dylan's blankets. I took all my fury, all my fear and stuffed it in a big mental box for now. When Q came home, I was going to hurt him. I was going to hurt him bad.

I sat outside in the hallway to wait for Q, leaving the door open a crack, in case Leo or Dylan woke up. I think I fell asleep with my head against the wall, but I woke up when Q started up the stairs.

He'd been drinking—big surprise. He smelled like beer, cigarettes and dirty bodies. I got to my feet as he got to the top step. He swallowed a couple of times, swaying a little, like a small tree in the wind.

I slapped him. Hard. I opened the box in my head where I'd stuffed all my rage at finding the money gone and let it out.

He sucked in a breath, but he didn't move. He didn't say anything. He just looked sad. Very, very sad.

“I'm sorry,” he finally whispered.

“You should be!” I hissed. “You had no right to touch my stuff or take that money! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands. “I thought I'd win,” he said.

I was right in his face. “I don't care!” I spat. Then the words sank in. My legs went rubbery, and I felt behind me with one hand for the wall to steady myself. “You lost, didn't you?” I said.

He couldn't look at me. He stared at the dirty tile floor instead and slowly nodded.

My stomach was churning. “How much?”

He swallowed again. “The twenty dollars.”

“And?”

“The rent…money.”

I lifted my hand to hit him again. I wanted to pound him until he was nothing but a lump on the tile. Then I let my arm fall. What good would that do?

I took a step toward the door and then I turned back to Q. “I don't care where you sleep tonight,” I said. “But you're not sleeping here.”

I went inside, pushed the door shut with my body, and locked it. I slid slowly down to the floor, covered my head with my arms and cried.

By morning, I was all cried out. The rage had turned to something cold and hard inside me.

“Where's Q?” Dylan asked when he woke up.

“He had to go to work really early,” I said. Leo gave me a look I couldn't read. I met his gaze, hoping I looked like I had it all together even though I didn't.

We had the last of the cereal and the last carrot for breakfast. “Get your stuff on,” I said after we finished eating. “We're going out to hunt for bottles.”

I'd seen flyers stuck up around town about an outdoor concert on the riverbank behind the hotel last night. I was hoping if we got over there early we could get a lot of the bottles before the hotel staff started cleaning up. We could go to the Community Kitchen for lunch, but I had no food and no money for supper.

We filled three and a half garbage bags with returnable bottles—mostly wine coolers—before a tall, gray-haired man came out of the hotel and chased us off. He would have taken the bags, but I stared him down. I don't know, but maybe he could see in my face that it wouldn't be good for anyone if he made a big deal about them.

We got less than ten dollars—a forgotten pizza and milk, if we were really, really lucky.

I caught Leo watching me more than once, his face troubled. I didn't know what he'd guessed or might have heard. I didn't even know if Q was coming back. I didn't like the idea of leaving Leo alone with Dylan, but I had to get out with Lucy or there would be no breakfast. I'd pretty much decided to take them both with me when Q came in. He looked like crap, albeit sober and fairly clean crap.

“Hi,” he said. There were dark circles under his eyes and stubble all over his face.

“Hi,” I said. I could feel Leo's eyes on us. I wanted to act normal, but I couldn't remember what that looked and sounded like.

Q cleared his throat. “How…how was your day?” he asked.

It was hard to look him in the face. “Okay,” I said. “How, uh, was yours?”

“All right.” He looked at the bags I was stuffing into my backpack. “You leaving soon?” he asked.

I nodded, doing up the zipper on the back. “You're not going anywhere, right?” I said.

“No,” he said quietly. We stood there awkwardly for a minute, not quite looking at each other. “I'll get Dylan in the tub,” he said finally.

I gestured at the door. “I'd better go wait for Lucy.”

It wasn't exactly a smile he gave me. He turned and scooped up Dylan, swinging him upside down, teasing that he was going to wash Dylan's hair in the toilet, while Dylan laughed and squealed.

Leo was still watching me. He was doing better about being touched, at least by Dylan and me. A couple of times he'd even let me hug him. It seemed like it was a good time for that now.

“I gotta go,” I said. I put one arm around his shoulder and gave him a squeeze, messing his hair with my hand.

He hugged me back, awkwardly with one hand, but he hugged me back.

All of a sudden there was a lump in my throat. I smiled at him, a real smile. “I'll be back soon,” I said.

It was a good night scavenging, thank God, because I probably would have sat on the sidewalk and cried if it hadn't been. Q was waiting for me, sitting on his air mattress with just the light coming in through the window from the street. He set the ice in the cooler, and we put things away without saying a word.

“Can we talk, Maddie?” he asked as I put the jars of peanut butter in the window.

“Okay,” I said. Leo and Dylan were both curled up sleeping.

We went out into the hall, leaving the door open a crack. He sat on the floor, legs bent, back against the wall. After a second's hesitation, I sat beside him, leaving a little space between us. He rested both wrists on his knees and stared down into his lap.

“Maddie, I am so, so, so sorry for what I did,” he began. “I'm sorry I took your money. I'm sorry I lost everything. And most of all I'm sorry I wrecked your trust in me.”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “I'm trying to fix it. I asked everybody today about extra work.”

“Will Goddard give us an extra couple of days to get the money for rent?” I asked.

“I'll find a way to get the money,” Q said in a flat, emotionless voice.

“That means no, doesn't it,” I said.

“He's a prick,” Q said. “And so am I.”

I looked at him then. “You're nothing like John Goddard. You're an asshole, but you're nothing like him.”

That actually got me a tiny smile. He put his hand on the floor between us. It took me a minute, but I put mine on top of his. “I am so goddamn sorry, Maddie,” he whispered. “I thought I could do it. There's a game, Thursday night, on campus, big stakes. I figured I could, I could win enough to get us out of here, to give us a start.” He pulled his fingers back through his unruly hair. “I'm just not Leo. My brain doesn't work that way. I can't do the calculations the way he does in his head. I can't figure out the odds. I'm lucky, but that's not enough. I can't do it.”

“I can.”

Leo was standing in the doorway. He looked from Q to me. “I can do it. I can win.”

I got to my feet. “Go back to bed, Leo,” I said. I wondered how much he'd heard. Too much, that was for sure.

“Let me go to the game. I can get us the money,” he said.