"I'm going somewhere where the air's lighter," she said to William, when she heard his footsteps on the sand beside her.
" Where you planning on going?"
"I'm going to Alaska," she said. "Or as close to Alaska as I can get before my car breaks down."
"When?" "Soon. Maybe tomorrow or the next day." "Then I might not see you again," William said.
At n i n e forty-five Sasha was at the diner, reflexively checking the booths and tables for Daniel or Gavin as she walked to the staff room. Neither was there.
"Sweetheart," Bianca said, "you look like hell."
"I had insomnia." Sasha moved past her and locked the staff bathroom door behind her. She looked worse than she would have guessed. Her eyes were bloodshot and glassy, her stare unblinking. Her lipstick was gone. There was a shine of sweat on her skin, smudges of mascara at the corners of her eyes. She washed her face, stripped out of her uniform and gave herself a cold sponge bath with paper towels. She tried not to look at herself in the mirror. She dressed and smoothed out the wrinkles with a damp paper towel as best she could, combed her hair and pinned it up behind her head, carefully reapplied her makeup. When she was done she thought she looked presentable, except for the eyes.
"You'd tell me, wouldn't you, if something were wrong," Bianca said.
"No," Sasha said, "I think I've been enough of a burden."
The dinner rush was nearly over, a few stray customers here and there in the booths. Her apron and her bra were full of money, hundred-dollar bills warm against her skin. She stood by the cash register, listening to the muffled clatter of Freddy and Luis washing up from the dinner rush in the kitchen. She picked up dirty dishes and dropped off dessert menus, carried a towering slice of New York cheesecake that seemed to float before her across the room. Sasha admired the gleam of lights in melting ice cream as she set a banana split on a table. Her exhaustion was taking on the force of gravity. She drank cup after cup of coffee and it helped but her heart was racing, spots in front of her eyes when she turned her head too quickly. She was trying not to look out the windows, because it was possible that beneath the surface of the reflections she might see the man's face looking up at her from outside like a corpse in deep water. The idea of swimming. She went to the restroom to splash cold water on her hands. All this money pressed close against her body but the idea of going out on her own was terrifying.
" Where are your parents?" Bianca asked. They were standing together by the cash register, a momentary lull. The question was unexpected. It took Sasha a moment to compose her thoughts.
"I don't know anymore," Sasha said. "Why?"
"It would've been my mother's birthday today," Bianca said. "I've been thinking about parents, I suppose."
"What was your mother like?"
"She was kind. She worked hard. She raised five kids. Liked soap operas and calla lilies. Yours?"
"My mother isn't any good. I haven't spoken to her since high school."
"What do you mean, she isn't any good?"
"She just never was."
"Where's your father?"
"He doesn't talk to me," Sasha said. "I stole his car and sold it for gambling money."
"But you're better now, aren't you?"
"I don't know," Sasha said. "I'm trying to be better."
It occurred to her around midnight that this might be her last night here. The idea of departure cast the diner in a vivid light, a picture coming into focus. She felt suddenly awake, the fog lifted. The brilliant red banquettes and the gleam of chrome under the lights, pebbled Formica tabletops and all the sounds she barely heard anymore, the clatter from the kitchen and the voices of other diners and the passage of cars on Route 77. She looked around, blinking, she caught Bianca's eye and smiled.
"I just want you to know," she said, "I've always enjoyed working with you."
"Well, thank you, sweetheart." Bianca didn't smile back. "You sound like you're saying your good-byes."
"I don't know," Sasha said. "Maybe."
She moved like a ghost through the caffeinated hours.
Twenty-Eight
A brief history of the money:
A h u n d r e d and twenty-one thousand dollars in a gym bag in a basement in Salt Lake City, destined to be taken to a sympathetic investment banker the following morning. Cameras in the basement caught the image clearly: Anna descends the stairs—"She looks kind of wild-eyed," Daniel said nervously, watching the footage with Paul in the hours after the theft was discovered, afraid for his life— and she unzips the bag at the bottom of the stairs, grabs it, and slips like a shadow back up to the first floor. The theft takes less than a minute. Careless to leave the money unsecured and Paul never did it again. He was still new in those days. He'd been in his profession less than a year.
A f e w hours earlier Anna had been lying on top of the sofa bed in the storage room at Paul's house, watching the movement of the fan on the ceiling above. A charitable organization at the hospital had given Anna an infant car seat, a package of diapers, a bottle and formula, some brochures. She threw out the brochure about adoption and read the others over and over again, trying to memorize everything. Paul's house wasn't home but she didn't know where else she could go, marooned as she was that night in the Kingdom of Deseret. She was alone in the storage room with her baby and she'd been putting Chloe to sleep in the car seat at night, because she was afraid of rolling over on her in the bed. Daniel was living in an upstairs room, not speaking to her. Sasha had wired her two hundred dollars. Anna took expensive taxis to the pharmacy for diapers and infant formula. She didn't know what she would do when the money ran out, if it would be possible to ask Daniel for more. Whenever she saw him in passing in the house he looked at her with such fury that words froze in her throat. She tried to avoid him.
How well did she know Daniel? Not well, when she considered the question, but who else did she have? There was Sasha far away in Florida, struggling. There was Gavin, but the thought of Gavin filled her with guilt and approaching him seemed unthinkable after what she'd done; she had ideas about honor and knew she'd transgressed. She wasn't sure what would become of her, or what Daniel would do. Every part of her ached with exhaustion. Days slipped into a week and then two and even music didn't soothe her. Chloe slept and woke, cried and made small noises, gurgled and kicked her feet. Anna had never imagined such an intensity of love.
On the night she took the money she was restless and ill at ease. When Chloe finally fell asleep Anna lay on her back on the sofa bed, fully dressed. Shadows passed over the ceiling from a branch blowing in front of the backyard light, and a cold wind came into the room. She stood to close the window, and this was when she heard them. Paul and Daniel were in the backyard, far back in the shadows by the picnic bench under the tree. A woman's voice, Paul's girlfriend, a too-thin woman with blond hair whom Anna had seen only in passing. The faint smell of cigarettes. She didn't hear what Paul said— she caught her name and the word responsibility, nothing else— but Daniel's reply carried clearly on the breeze.