Grab (Letty Dobesh #3)

1

Letty
Dobesh reached to freshen up a trucker's coffee from behind the counter. His name was Dale or Dan or Dave—something that started with a D. He was a regular. A creepy regular. Came into the diner several times a week. Tall, lanky, never-tipping guy who always wore a red down vest and a John Deere mesh hat.

As Letty
filled his mug, he grinned, said, "Know what would look good on you?"

T
his should be good.

"
No, what's that?" she asked without risking eye contact.

"Me."

Now she did meet his eyes. They were small and brown and contained a volatile energy that she recognized—he was a hitter.

"
That's beautiful," she said. "You should write Hallmark cards."

The man laughed like he wasn't sure if he'd been insulted.

Her manager called her name from the grill.

"Be there in a sec!"
she said.

"No
, Letisha. Not in a sec. Now."

She set the pot of coffee back on the warmer and wiped her hands off on her apro
n. An image blindsided her: Letty at seventy, hobbling around the diner on arthritic feet, hands like claws from a lifetime of this.

The manager
was a short, sweaty, unpleasant man. He wore black jeans, black sneakers, and a white Oxford shirt with a hideous Scooby-Doo tie. Same outfit always. As she approached, she saw that he held a wire brush in his right hand.

"Good morning, Lloyd."

"Bathrooms. They're disgusting. You were supposed to clean them yesterday."

"Lloyd, I
haven't had a chance—"

He shoved the wire brush into her hand. "With a smile."

"I'm smiling on the inside."

# # #

Letty scrubbed furiously at a beard of dried shit affixed to the inside of the toilet.

The noise of the jukebox was indistinct through the concrete walls, but a new refrain had taken up residence in her head.

This is my life.

This is my life.

This is my beautiful life.

When
the toilet bowl was pristine, she stood looking out of the small window behind the sink. The view was down Ocean Boulevard. Vacation cottages and high rises all oriented east toward the sea.

There were bars over this small window, and Letty somehow found it fitting.
She'd been out of prison now almost ten months, had been clean for half a year, but she hardly felt free.

She was thirty-six years old and she
had just worked herself into a sweat cleaning a toilet in a diner.

B
ad as prison was, the walls that had kept her in her cell and in the yard had never screamed hopelessness as loud as the barred window in this tiny bathroom. In prison, there was always something to look forward to. The promise of release, and beyond, the possibility of a Life Different.

She felt a sudden, irresistible urge to get high.

You don't do that anymore.

Why?

For Jacob.

S
he needed to distract herself. If she was back at the halfway house across the sound, she'd either jump in the shower or go for a run. Do something to break that death spiral thought pattern. Here at work, she could just plug herself into serving the customers. Her therapist, Christian, would tell her to challenge the thought to use. To stop, take a moment, and analyze the error in it.

Where is the error? I feel
bad. Getting high will make me feel good. Doesn't get much simpler than that.

But i
t's not that simple, Letty. Because you won't use once. If you start, you will use until you're broke or dead or back in prison.

A layer of tears
fluttered over the surface of her eyes.

There was a knock at the door.

"Just a minute!"

She wiped them away. Smoothed her blue and white dress. Pulled herself together.

Lifting the cleaning supplies, she opened the door.

The trucker
in the John Deere hat stood in the alcove that accessed the men's and women's restrooms.

"
All yours," she said.

H
e crowded into the doorway.

"Letisha, right?"

"That's right."

"Wan
na earn your tip? How's about we go back in there for a spell?"

Letty
pushed up against his scrawny, fetid frame. Reaching down, she grabbed his groin and pulled him toward her.

He said, "Oh
hell yeah."

Bulge in the vest
. Left side. Wallet.

With their lips an inch apart, Letty smiled. She released his manhood and drove her knee straight up into his balls at the same instant
her right hand slid inside his vest, fingers diving into the pocket. She snatched the wallet as he keeled over onto the floor. Would've hit him again but Lloyd had appeared at the end of the hallway that opened into the diner, his face twisted up with rage.

"You junkie whore. I didn't have to give a convicted felon a job
."

"He was trying to—"

"I don't care. You're fired. Get out."

Letty ripped off her apron and dropped it on the floor beside the moaning trucker
who'd gone fetal in the corner.

# # #

She rode the bus into Charleston. Sat in the back going through the trucker's wallet. His name wasn't Dale, Dan, or Dave. It was Donald, and for a cheapskate, he carried around fat stacks—$420 in cash and three credit cards.

She
whipped out her jailbroken iPhone which she'd retrofitted with a wireless card-reader. Started scanning Donald's Visa, Mastercard, and Amex, dumping sub-$100 deposits into shell accounts.

2

Letty
put her hands behind her head and interlaced her fingers. She liked this couch. The leather was always warm. She liked the afternoon view through the open window in the back wall where the two blues met—sky and ocean. The air breezing through was tinged with salt and suntan lotion and the sweet rot of seaweed.

"
You got fired?" Christian said. He was seated at his desk several feet away.

"
This morning. I'm leaving town tonight. I've already cleared out my room at the halfway house. Won't miss that place."

"I thought we
agreed it would be a good idea for you to hold down that job at least through Christmas."

"I'm done with this place."

"Where will you go?"

"Oregon."

"To see your son?"

"That's the plan."

"Do you feel you're ready for that? Ready to reenter Jacob's life on a permanent, reliable basis?"

"It's the only thing I'm living for,
Christian."

"
That means this is our last session."

"
You've been great. The best part of my time here."

"
Are you anxious?"

"About
leaving?"

"It's a big deal."

"I know it is."

"
How do you feel about it?"

"Ready."

"That's all?"

She
stared at the
Thriller
-era Michael Jackson bobblehead on her substance abuse counselor's desk and said, "Christian, will it make you feel better if I say I'm scared?"

"Only if it's the truth.
"

"Of course I
'm scared."

"
Afraid you'll use again?"

"Sure
."

"
But you know how to fight it now. You're empowered. You know your triggers—external and internal. You know your three steps to ensure sobriety."

"Recognize. Avoid. Cope."

"There you go. And what's your main trigger?"

"
Breathing."

"Come on."

"Remembering what a complete failure I am."

"That's not true."

"Convicted felon."

"Letty."

"Meth addict."

"Stop."

"Junkie whore."

"This is counter
—"

"And let's not forget—
you got mother of the year sitting on your couch. Christian, I got triggers everywhere I look."

Christian
leaned back in his chair and sighed the way he always did when Letty turned the knife on herself. He was old-school Hollywood handsome. Cary Grant. Gregory Peck. With his short-sleeved button-down and clip-on tie, he looked like a car salesman. But his eyes implied trust. Kind and wise and sad.

How could they be anything but?
Talking all day to losers like me.

"You know if you don't make some kind of peace with yourself, Letty, none of this
stuff works."

On the wall be
side Christian's desk, she let her eyes fall upon a painting between two framed diplomas. She inevitably found herself staring at it during some point of each weekly session. It was a print of a Romantic masterpiece—a man standing in a dark frockcoat on the edge of a cliff. His back is to the viewer, and he's gazing out over a barren, fog-swept waste. The landscape looks so hostile and unforgiving it could be another planet.

Christian
turned in his swivel chair and glanced up at the wall.

"You like that painting."

"What's it called?"

"
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog
."

"Nice."

"What do you like about it?"

"I like the man's fear."

"Why do you say he's afraid? You can't even see his face. I think he's exhilarated."

"
No, he's afraid. We all are, and this painting says that. It says we're not alone."

"You're not alone, Letty.
If you'd take my advice and join a group, you'd see that."

"
NA isn't for me."

"Sobriety is a group effort."

"Christian, the only time I never used was when I was working. When I had a job."

"
You mean stealing."

"Yeah."

"You still messing around with that?"

She smiled. "You know what they say. You can take the girl out of prison..."

"That's just another form of addiction, Letty."

"I get that."

"So what are you saying?"

"I want to stay clean.
For me. For my son. But I don't see the world like you do."

"What do you see?"

Her lips curled up into something that could almost be called a smile. She pointed at the painting.

3

Letty left town that evening with her entire life, such as it was, in a suitcase.

Clothes.

A framed photograph of Jacob at four years old smiling from the top of a slide.