Good as Gone by Amy Gentry

narrow trail worn in the crabgrass near the greasy roadside before it plunged into runoff ditches padded at the bottom with tangled weeds. She walked past a rambling strip mall: Kroger, Qwik Klean, Jenny’s Gifts, the streaky glass box of a Dairy Queen. The only logical destination of this ragged path was the bus stop. She cast a glance toward the kiosk and saw three women waiting for the bus in service uniforms, each with a rolling cart full of bottles. Cleaning ladies. Her back hurt just looking at them.
    As she passed a McDonald’s, she saw a long blue awning peeking out from the strip center behind it: BOBBY’S POOL HALL , in dingy white block letters. She walked toward it in relief. So there were hiding places here, after all. Although the other stores in the strip center had glass fronts, she noted that Bobby’s windows were covered with weather-beaten plywood and wondered if there was any business in the back. Not that she needed any, she hurriedly told herself; she was going to be here only a few weeks. But it wasn’t a bad idea to find out what was around. Besides, she had money in her wallet, and maybe what she really wanted was to sit for a few hours away from the roadside, drinking away the pain in her gut.
    At this time of the afternoon, there were only a few barflies. They sat close to the entrance, talking with a curly-haired woman behind the bar who laughed loudly as she wedged limes on a cutting board. None of them paid any attention to her until she leaned against the bar. Then the bartender stopped laughing abruptly.
    “What do you want, honey?” She squinted. “Job? You gotta be eighteen.”
    “Corona, please.”
    The woman laughed. “You’re going to have to show me some ID, hon.”
    Julie dug through her new wallet and pulled out one that said she was twenty-four. Even as she handed it over, she felt a moment of panic. It was a California driver’s license, a real one, the kind you can get in a lot of trouble for stealing.
    The bartender gave it a long, hard look, then glanced at her, then back down at the ID. “Mercedes Rodriguez?” she said, drawing out the syllables like it was an impossible name for anyone to have.
    “Mercy,” she said automatically. The last time she’d used Mercy, she’d had short brown hair, but it was dark in Bobby’s Pool Hall, and the wide-cheekboned face and blue eyes looked close enough.
Mercy, Mercy,
she told her face,
look like Mercy.
    It almost worked. She could feel the woman struggling to care. Then someone called “Bev!” from the end of the bar, and the bartender glanced anxiously over her shoulder, and by the time she looked back at Mercy, she was having none of it. “Sorry, señorita,” she said, all the patience draining from her voice. “You don’t look twenty-four, and it’s an out-of-state ID. I gotta be careful in this neighborhood. For all I know, you wandered over from the high school.” Bev threw the ID down on the counter and hustled off.
    This goddamn city.
She wasn’t planning to be here long, but she’d already flashed a fake ID within ten blocks of Tom and Anna’s house and been turned down.
Don’t shit where you eat
meant something different when she was working at the Black Rose, but it applied here too. She grabbed the ID off the counter and shoved it back into her pocket.
    Now the two men at the bar were staring at her. One of them said, “Come on, Bev, have a heart!”
    The other chimed in, “She’s old enough. I can always tell, like rings on a tree.” He guffawed.
    Now she really had to get away. On a sudden instinct, she pulled the phone out and dialed one of the numbers Tom and Anna had made her write down on a scrap of paper and keep in her new wallet.
    “Hello?” The voice had the doubtful tone of someone picking up an unknown number.
    “Hey, Jane,” she said. “It’s Julie.”
    “Where are you? What number is this?”
    She looked out the window and saw a sign across the street. “I’m at the