I go and heat up another can of soup and then go sit beside Bitsy.
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, so you’re going to have to help me out.” I grab her tablet and start typing stuff in. Since I can’t spell for shit, it’s a good thing the words are magically correcting themselves. At least, I assume that’s what’s going on. I manage to read some of the stuff on the internet. After I conclude that all the diagnoses lead to death, I toss the tablet aside. “Mary didn’t think much of our place, Bitsy. Think we should move? I’m making good money. These jobs I’ve been doing for Beefer pay real well. Besides the rent here, we’re not spending much.” I nudge her lightly. “You don’t eat more than a bird. And you never ask for sh—stuff.”
I lace my fingers behind my head. “I could get you a real bed. Like a princess thing. Would you like that? It’d be white with flowers. Or hell, we could get you a race car bed. I saw one of those once. I was boosting a car out in the burbs—I did that for a while before Beefer found me—and when I was driving it away, I saw a set of headlights coming out of a bedroom window. Inside, the bed was a fucking car. Like it had real tires on the sides and a chrome bumper. This thing was tricked out.” I lapse into silence, remembering how long I watched and how I almost got caught by the cops, drooling like a dumbass over some burb kid’s furniture. “We should buy you a bed like that. A car or a castle or whatever. You’re never gonna be the girl who’s on the outside looking in. Not while I’m around.”
She shifts on the bed. I reach over and touch her forehead. Is it still hot? I can’t tell. I grab the thermometer and study it a bit. There’s a blob in the middle. That must be what tells me how hot her mouth is. Seems like a stupid-ass way to tell if someone’s sick, but it’s a helluva lot better than using the back of my hand. I stick the glass rod in her mouth and hold her jaw shut. She moves a little, like a normal person would in response to something weird being shoved in between their lips while they’re sleeping.
While I wait, I keep talking. “I don’t think I wanna be on the outside looking in, either. If I’m going to be doing this shit for Beefer then I might as well live right. Not that I think we should have steaks every night, but we don’t need to sleep on the floor, eh?”
She doesn’t answer. I pull out the thermometer and squint. These things are hard as hell to read. I tap the camera flashlight app and hold it over the instrument. It reads a hundred and two. That seems good. Temp’s going down. I get up and check the medicine box again and am disappointed to see I’m not supposed to give her any more meds for a couple more hours.
My knowledge of little kids is so shallow it wouldn’t fit the medicine cup. I shouldn’t keep her. I know this, but she’s mine now and I can’t seem to give her up. I’m going to keep her for as long as I can.
I stretch out on the floor and reach up to tuck her hand in mine. She likes holding my hand, and maybe I imagine it, but it seems like her fingers curl up inside my palm, like she knows I’m with her.
13
Leka
Two days later, I’m back to work. Bit’s fever broke after the first day, but I couldn’t leave her. We watched videos, lots and lots of videos about Dora and the puff girls and bunnies. Bitsy really likes bunnies.
After the videos were done, she asked me to read her a story. I looked up a couple on the internet, but I had the same problem with the words as I always did. They were jumbled around and I couldn’t make sense of the letters. I felt embarrassed that I couldn’t do the one thing she asked of me, but in the end, Bitsy was thrilled that she got to read to me. I actually fell asleep, listening to her soft, sing-song voice tell me about the friendship of a frog and a toad.
“Mary says you live in a shithole,” Beefer mentions. He rests his shoulder against the delivery van door, a toothpick hanging out of the corner of his mouth, watching me do an inventory of a gun shipment we’re shepherding through the territory.
“Mary’s got a big mouth,” I say. There’s enough ammunition here to blow up a city block. I don’t know who’s buying this shit or why, but, then, it’s not my place to ask.