How long had it been since she’d thought about that trip, or anything else from that awful year?
You’re just wasted, girl’o, that’s all.
Too much Keith and too much Stiff Kitten, the better part of the night spent pretending that she wasn’t pissed beyond words, pretending that what Theo had said wasn’t the truth. Too much of that weary-ass Little Miss Martyr routine. And any way you sliced it, definitely way too much Bunky Tolbert.
Christ, you haven’t even eaten anything tonight, have you? Just cigarettes and coffee and great big greasy dollops of denial.
The smoke curling up from the fingertips of her right hand made a gauzy question mark in front of her face. And her hands were still shaking, dry wino jitters; the sense of dislocation had faded to the dullest gray unease.
And is that all it is, Dar? Malnutrition and caffeine, nerves and nicotine? Are you absolutely sure that’s all it is?
Daria finished the cigarette while Johnny Cash sang about Folsom Prison, while the three behind her began to talk about the time, how late it’d gotten and how early they each had to be up in the morning. Slowly, the shakiness passed, and she promised herself she’d grab one of the muffins or poppy seed bagels in the pastry case before she went back to work.
Five minutes later when the Asian girl in the ratty army jacket walked through the door, she was still sitting there.
CHAPTER TWO
1.
O ne forty-five a.m. by the ghost-green dashboard clock, and Niki Ky’s black Vega drifted across I-20 and rolled off the blacktop into the narrow breakdown lane. The car had been driving badly since she’d left Georgia, crossed the state line into Alabama, and a mile or so before the lights of Birmingham had come into view, the temp gauge had begun to creep steadily, ominously, into the red.