Dark Rooms

“Has your dad?”

A sullen shrug. “You’d have to ask him. We don’t really talk about her. I’m sure she’s fine, though.”

“I’m sure she is.”

Shep and I stand silent for a while, long enough for my guilt to reawaken. Why do I keep directing my anger at him? He hasn’t done anything wrong, is just trying to help. I take a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Anyway,” I say, once more attempting a smile, “what you said before isn’t true. I won’t be the only Baker on staff at Chandler this year. My dad’s bartending at the downtown Holiday Inn nights, but he’s SAT tutoring here in the afternoons.”

“Speaking of afternoons, what are you going to be doing with yours? The A/V room closes before three. You want me to put my feelers out, see if any of the coaches are looking for an assistant? I’m sure you could use the extra cash.”

“I appreciate the offer. I really do. I think I’m all right, though.”

“Okay,” he says, but I see the look of worry in his eyes.

“Honestly, I am.”

“You know best, Grace, obviously. I just feel like it might not be good for you to have too much free time on your hands, time to brood, think about things.”

“No, I mean, all right as in I’ve got a lead on a second job. Like you said, I could use the extra cash.”

That ear-to-ear smile again. “Well done, you! Jobs are tough to come by these days. Especially in Hartford.”

“I don’t have the job yet. I’m heading over there this afternoon for an interview. In fact”—I twist my neck to read the face of his watch—“if I don’t get going, I’ll be late.”

“Then I guess you better get going.”

I nod, grateful to have a legitimate, non-trumped-up excuse to end the conversation.

“Good luck,” he says, as I start off down the hall. He says something else, too, but it doesn’t make it across the growing gap between us.

I throw a wave over my shoulder. Then, pushing the bar on the door, I step outside.

Chapter Seven (#ulink_094ed759-9870-51d7-bc21-5a4df0b713cf)

Fargas Bonds is located in Blue Hills, the worst neighborhood in a town full of bad ones. The building it’s housed in, which also contains a liquor store and a Check N’ Go, looks like the kind that’s only standing because it’s too much trouble to tear down—moldy blue-green paint peeling from the cracked concrete, bars on all the windows, fast-food wrappers trapped in the knobby branches of the bushes out front. Above the door is a neon sign that says OPEN 24 HOURS, next to it a handwritten one that says HELP WANTED.

I get out of the car. On my way to the curb, I step over a shattered pint bottle and a used condom, floating bloated and corpse-like in a puddle of drain run-off. I start to wonder if maybe this isn’t such a hot idea. The inside of the office, though, immediately puts my mind at ease. It’s nothing like the sleazy outside. In fact, it’s sort of homey, like walking into someone’s living room. Behind the receptionist’s desk is a shelf lined with knickknacks: a box of dominoes, a shot glass filled with toothpicks that are also Puerto Rican flags, a photo of a grinning kid in a Little League uniform. In the far corner is a minifridge, a Mr. Coffee machine, a potted fern not doing too badly.

I think that I’m alone, that the receptionist must have ducked out, gone to the bathroom or something, but then I hear, coming from behind a closed door, the faint, stutter-step sound of hunt-and-peck typing. “Hello?” I say. “Mr. Fargas?”

“In here!” a voice calls out.

I don’t know what I’m expecting to see when I open the door, what image of a bail bondsman I’m carrying around in my head, but whatever it is, the person sitting at the desk doesn’t match it. He’s a neat, quiet-looking Latin guy in his late forties or early fifties. Clean-shaven, dark suit, no tie, reading glasses. A little heavy in the gut, maybe, but heavy in the shoulders, too. He’s poking at the keyboard of a computer with two index fingers.

“I’m just finishing filling out a Power of Attorney form,” he says, eyes on the keyboard. “Have a seat. I’ll be right with you.”

I lower myself into a chair. Eyes still on the keyboard, the man nudges a bowl of Hershey’s Miniatures toward me. I take a couple to be polite, slip them in my bag. Slip, too, one of the business cards stacked on a metal tray at the desk’s edge. BONDS, FARGAS BONDS, it says, followed by a phone number and an e-mail address.

Finally, the man hits the Return button, looks up. “Thanks for waiting,” he says. “Let me tell you how we work. We accept collateral in the form of—”

“Actually, Mr. Fargas—”

“Max.”

“Max,” I say, “I’m here about a job. I saw your advertisement.”

“You mean, on the door?”

“No, on Craigslist. I called yesterday, talked to a woman, she said to come by at three. Actually, she said to come by any time after three.”

“That must have been my assistant, Renee. So, I have an advertisement on Craigslist?”

I nod.

“Huh,” he says, his voice taking on a thoughtful tone. “What does it say?”

“Not much. Just that you need someone from three P.M. on. And that a driver’s license is necessary, but experience isn’t.”

“Oh.” He takes off his reading glasses, folds them, tucks them in his breast pocket. “Are you available after three?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a driver’s license?”

“Yes.”

“Then congratulations. The job’s yours.” When I ignore the hand he’s holding out to me, “What, you don’t want it?”

“It’s not that I don’t want it. It’s just, I still don’t know what it is.”

“And I’d pay you a dollar over minimum wage, under the table.”

“Pay me for doing what, though, exactly?”

“Nothing for me. What you’d be doing, you’d be doing for my nephew.”

“Okay.”

“My nephew works for me, as a runner mostly. Usually he’s a smart guy, very responsible. But a couple months back, he got tanked, decided it would be a good idea to go for a spin. He smashed up his car, smashed up his leg, lost his license for six months. Renee’s been taking him around all summer, but starting next week she’s got to pick up her kid after school, so she can only take him around till three.”

“So, what,” I say, “I’d be like his afternoon chauffer?”

“And sometimes evening.”

“When would you want me to start?”

“Today. Now.”

This time when he holds out his hand, I shake it. As I do, a sound comes from the front room: a door opening, and two voices talking—one male, one female.