Hayley tightened her arms around her chest. As cool as her leather jacket was, it had no warmth at all. The zipper had split last year, and she had no idea if it could be replaced or how much that would cost. Besides, it was vintage, and you didn’t mess with vintage.
She hadn’t thought to bring her winter jacket, which was sitting in a closet back home. She’d ask Kalini if it was okay if her parents sent her stuff there. They still thought she was living with her and Jason, and she didn’t want them to know otherwise. Not until she got a better place.
The leaves were just starting to turn those brilliant shades of fall. She took a deep breath. This was her favourite time of year—after the heat waves but before the snow fell. You could be comfortable during the day, although at night it was chilly. Tomorrow she’d bring an extra sweater to layer up until she got a warmer jacket.
As she rounded the corner, she spotted a cop car parked up on the curb in front of the Palace Arms. Hayley skirted around it. Nobody was inside, but the lights were still twirling, sending red and blue blotches dancing on the pink building. As sad as it was to say, seeing a cruiser parked next to the building was a regular occurrence. After the third day in a row coming home and seeing the red and blues, she’d lost all her anxiety.
The F-word floated down from upstairs as Hayley opened the door. That would be Dunne. She could tell his gravelly voice anywhere. A few years ago he’d gotten punched in the throat by one of the other guests and hadn’t talked normally since. He was her closest neighbour, and as far as she could tell, he was a giant teddy bear. A barely functioning alcoholic, but always a friendly drunk.
Right now he was yelling at someone for going through someone’s personal stuff. He stopped speaking as someone talking much lower responded to him. She climbed the last flight to see a group of people standing outside her door.
She stopped.
A tall female officer, Ed, and Dunne were standing in a semicircle around her open door. Light was streaming out, and both Dunne and the lady cop were speaking to someone inside. Her heart started pounding. Why were the cops in her room? Had someone called them saying she had drugs? She didn’t, but what if someone had left some behind?
Dunne saw her first, and he looked so relieved she thought he might faint. He was in his nighttime uniform of a dingy-brown terrycloth housecoat and Mr. Rogers-type house slippers. His hands were jammed into his pockets, stretching the fabric at his shoulders, revealing a tear in the seam.
“Oh, thank fuck. Hayley, get over here. They’re messing with your stuff.” He rubbed the top of his head. He was bald except for a ring of curly salt-and-pepper hair around the nape of his neck.
“What’s going on?”
The female cop stepped farther into the hall. “Are you the occupant of this room?” she asked.
Hayley nodded. She peered in to see a male officer on his hands and knees with half his arm down the air vent. “What’s going on?” Hayley almost didn’t want to ask. This all looked so bad.
The policewoman guided Hayley to the right, positioning herself so Hayley had her back to her room. “I’m Officer Ragasa. We were called in on a noise complaint an hour ago. You’re Hayley Cavello?”
Hayley turned to look back in her room. Her mattress was overturned and slashed up, and most of the fabric had been torn off, exposing the springs underneath.
“Don’t worry about that right now.”
How could she not worry about that? Her money had been under that mattress. What had they done with her money?
Dunne walked up beside her and took a flask out of his housecoat pocket. He unscrewed the top and offered Hayley a sip. She shook her head. Dunne shrugged and took a nip.
“Sir?” the officer Ragasa asked. “Can you please put the alcohol away?”
“Why? This is my place of residence. I’ve retired for the evening. Or I would’ve.” He waved in the vague direction of Hayley’s room. “If that shithead hadn’t ruined my peaceful evening.”
“What’s going on, Dunne? What happened to my room?”
“Alan happened to your room.”
“The guy below me?”
Dunne nodded. “He came home mad about something and kept banging on people’s doors. Your door must have popped open. I found him in there going nuts with your stuff.”
“Where’s he now?”
“He took off when Ed called the cops. Who knows where he is now? Probably coming down from his high.”
“Got it,” the cop yelled from inside Hayley’s room. He came into the hall holding a serrated hunting knife.
“That’s not mine,” said Hayley. The thing looked like it could kill just by being near it.
“It’s Alan’s,” said Dunne. “I saw him drop it down there before he took off. He was screaming something about blue mice in the vents.”
Hayley took a step toward her room, then stopped and looked back at Ragasa. “Can I go in?”
Ragasa motioned her forward. “Please. Take a look around and see if anything’s missing.”
The only thing Hayley cared about was her money. She stepped inside and froze. The place had been torn apart. Not that there was a lot of furniture—just a bed, her dresser, and a chair she’d used as a holding place for worn clothes. All the drawers in her dresser had been pulled and thrown upside down on the floor, scattering her clothes. The chair wasn’t even in the room anymore, and her mattress was on its side ripped to shreds.
The first thing she did was kneel under the bed and check for her money. She’d kept it in an envelope between the mattress and box spring. Not the best place for it, but she’d meant to put it in the bank. She’d just never gotten around to it. She’d almost had enough for rent this week. Two more days of tips and she would’ve been fine for another week.
She reached her hand underneath the bed and felt around. There was no envelope. Only dust.
The next thing she checked was her laptop bag. Her computer was still there, zipped tight.
“Is anything missing?”
Hayley turned. Ragasa was blocking the doorway while the other cop spoke with Ed.
“Yes. I had a hundred and thirty dollars in an envelope.”
The woman pursed her lips and made a note in her pad. Hayley was thankful she refrained from telling her it was a stupid place to keep her money. “Anything else missing?”
“Not that I can tell right now.”
“Okay. We’ll most likely pick up Alan sometime within the next twenty-four hours. He still has a room in the building, and it’s likely he’ll come back.” She held up her hand to stop Hayley from speaking. “However, it’s unlikely we’ll recover your money. I don’t want to get your hopes up, but he’s probably spent it. And if we do find money, it will be a long time before you’ll be able to claim it.”
“But why?”
“It’ll be very hard to prove that’s your money. Alan could say it’s his, and since no one saw him take it, it’s your word against his.”
“And you’ll take his word over mine?” Hayley was on the verge of tears. All of this was so unfair.
Ragasa’s shoulders dropped and she entered the room. “I know it’s frustrating. Can I offer some advice?”
“Don’t keep my money under a dusty mattress in a shitty hotel?”
Ragasa sighed and offered a sad smile. “Also? Find a better place to stay soon.”
“It was this or the streets.”
Ragasa bit her lip. Hayley got the impression Ragasa saw too much of this in her job. What a shitty job to have to deal with the worst in people all day. She handed Hayley a business card with her name, badge, and phone number on it. “If you notice anything else is missing, give me a call. I’ll touch base in a few days to update you on what’s happening. But…”
“But I’m basically up Schitt’s Creek, right?”
“’Fraid so.”
“Great.” Hayley stared at the remains of her room. She tried so hard not to, but all she could think about was how things couldn’t get any worse. She didn’t want to make it a coherent thought because that’s when things would get so much worse.
* * *
“Come on, Ed. Please.”
Ed was in his signature Hawaiian shirt, a coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She’d found him out back hiding the next morning, no doubt trying to avoid this very conversation.
“I have people I have to answer to. This isn’t just me sitting behind a desk making my own decisions.”
“I was robbed. Alan has your rent.”
“No, nope.” He stabbed his cigarette in Hayley’s direction. “It’s not my rent until you give it to me. Right now, it’s Alan’s money, and as long as he pays his money at the end of the week, I don’t care where it comes from.”
“Are you serious? How can you be such a jerk to my face? You know he stole it from me.”
Ed shook his head back and forth several times. “I told you this was not a place for girls.”
“I am not a girl. I am a woman. Do people continuously go around calling you a boy?” Hayley was starting to build up steam. She pulled herself up to her full five feet six inches and jabbed a finger right in the centre of one of Ed’s pineapples. “No. You get to be a man. All guys get to be men. Why can’t I have the same fucking courtesy? I am a fucking woman.”
Ed held a hand up in surrender. “Okay, okay. Jesus Christ. I’ll float you a week.” He dropped his cigarette at his feet and stubbed it out with his toe. “But you owe three hundred at the end of next week.”
“Thanks,” Hayley mumbled as she stalked off toward the diner.
“Goddamned feminists,” Ed cursed quietly, but Hayley still heard. She decided she didn’t have it in her for round two.
* * *
Hayley was in a foul mood the rest of the day. She’d just found out she wasn’t going to get paid until the end of the month because she’d started after the last pay period, which meant she wouldn’t have the three hundred dollars to give Ed next week. She still had another week after that, and who knew how big her paycheque would actually be?
Ramiro pulled his jacket off its hook. “Shrug it off, Pollyanna. Tomorrow will be better.”
“That’s what they say.”
“And ‘they’ is usually right.”
She hadn’t told anyone at work about getting robbed last night. She didn’t want them knowing she lived at the Palace Arms. It was bad enough that she was on the verge of being kicked out of the low-rent hotel in the first place, but to prove everyone who’d said she didn’t belong there right? Well, that was too much.
“If you ever need to talk about anything, you can tell us. We’re like a family here. We take care of our own.”
Hayley nodded. She was tempted to say something. Ramiro and everyone at the diner had been nothing but welcoming, which she appreciated because she’d needed that more than even she knew. But this situation felt too personal a thing to share with someone she’d known only a little over a week.
Ramiro shrugged into his jacket, grabbed his crutches, and shoved off from the counter. “Well, I’m off. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See you.”
“Bye, sweetums.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Hayley smiled. She loved listening to Lauren and Ramiro banter. They were like an old married couple, and she found that thought comforting for some reason. Imagining that they were the mom and pop of the diner, and the rest of them were the kids, really did make it feel like a family.
Hayley went back to closing up for the day. She scrapped the griddle, turned it off, and began wiping down the counters. A loud crash from below stopped her.
“What the hell was that?” Hayley grabbed the broom leaning against the sink and stepped out into the dining area.
Lauren placed the debit receipts on the counter, her eyes wide. Another crash. They both stood there for a moment, and then Lauren exhaled in disgust. “Damn…damn, damn.” She collected the receipts and placed them in a bag, along with the cash and credit receipts.
“What’s going on?” Hayley asked as Lauren stood and grabbed the broom from her. She followed Lauren down into the basement on stairs that reminded Hayley of every horror film she’d ever been forced to watch. They were warped from decades of use and announced each foot with a loud groan.
“The window in the basement doesn’t latch properly. I’ve been asking Aaron for months to get someone in to check it out, but he keeps putting me off because the windows are so small not many people could squeeze through them.”
Hayley followed close behind Lauren, her apprehension mounting with each step. Lauren, for her part, had taken on a kind of badassery that was sort of hot. Okay, more than a little hot. It almost made up for the fact that a homicidal clown with a fetish for diner food was going to murder them.
“But, unfortunately,” Lauren said as they reached the bottom of the stairs, “sometimes the racoons find a way in.” Lauren flicked on the light. Several sets of eyes froze. A family of four—a mom, dad, and two babies—had cracked open a bag of potatoes and were feasting on them raw. In the process they’d managed to knock over a tower of boxes containing napkins, paper take-out containers, and a box of mugs, which had shattered on the cement floor.
Lauren smacked the broom on the ground and then waved it toward them. One of the racoons, presumably the mother, hissed at her.
“Block the stairs so they can’t get up into the restaurant.” Lauren walked over to the window and propped it open with a paint stir-stick. “I’m going to try to shoo them back out the window.” She took up the broom again, wielding it like a hockey stick.
“Don’t racoons have rabies?”
Lauren shrugged like this was the least of their problems. “Some. Just don’t let them bite you.” Lauren took a step forward, and the mama racoon hissed again.
“No big deal.” But Hayley felt like it was a very big deal. She grabbed a toilet-bowl brush—the only thing she could find—and took up position blocking the stairs. Lauren worked her way toward the furry, hissing bandits. She’d tied her hair up in a messy bun earlier, and Hayley thought she looked like those women warriors from myths who strode into battle without fear of the consequences. Okay, maybe that was going a bit far. No one here was going to die, unless they got rabies, and even then, Hayley wasn’t sure if you could die from rabies. But Lauren was doing all sorts of things for Hayley right now.
Hayley mentally slapped herself. Lauren was her boss. Lauren was straight. And Hayley didn’t lust after straight women. She’d been down that road, and it was littered with broken hearts, booby traps, and land mines.
Hayley inched back, ready to act as the cheerleading section when needed. And she hoped that’s all she’d be needed for. Unfortunately, the racoons had different ideas. One of the babies fell off the boxes and panicked, running toward Hayley. She shrieked in a way she was sure would’ve gotten her kicked out of the strong-ass-women club and threw the toilet brush at it. The racoon, which couldn’t have been bigger than a teapot, squealed and ran in the opposite direction back toward its family.
Lauren pushed the broom toward it to corral it into the corner, where she was trying to coax them up a pipe next to the basement window.
“Should we call animal control?” Hayley’s sole experience with racoons was when her dad had accidentally hit one while driving home from one of her school plays late at night. It had been a quick thud, but the next day she’d seen the crumpled remains on the side of the road. It looked like someone had dropped their teddy bear and forgotten it.
Lauren slammed the door to the storage closet shut to keep them from escaping into the enclosed space. “It would take forever for them to get here. This is easier.”
“I take it this isn’t your first experience with racoons.”
Lauren laughed. “I grew up here. You name it, I’ve dealt with it. They’re intelligent, tenacious, and a pain in the butt.”
Evidently deciding they’d had enough, one of the parents lifted the closest baby onto her back and began to scale the pipe. Seeing this move, the other adult racoon followed suit, and soon the basement was quiet. A mess, but quiet.
“Well, fuck. That was new.” Hayley bent to pick up the toilet brush and place it back in the washroom.
Lauren only nodded, busy assessing the damage. She looked lost and tired and completely drained.
“Since you already have a broom, I’ll go get the dustpan.”
Lauren waved her off. “It’s okay. You don’t have to stay and help clean up. I’ll take care of this.”
“By yourself? That’s hardly fair.”
“Seeing as how Aaron would kill me if I let you go into overtime…I don’t have much choice.”
“Are you saying I’m off the clock?” Hayley grabbed the broom from Lauren.
Lauren checked her watch. “Your shift ended about five minutes ago.”
“And I’m sure yours ended around the same time.” Hayley knew Lauren had been there since the morning shift, and she doubted Aaron okayed her overtime. Even if she was paid more, it still wasn’t fair to make her clean up the mess by herself. “Seeing as how I’ve got nothing else to do tonight, why don’t you just say, ‘Thank you, Hayley. I would love the help.’”
Lauren’s smile was tired but brilliant all the same. “Thank you, Hayley. I would love the help.”