Hope is waiting at an empty table. She looks smug. Unkind, since I was so solicitous of her copious vomiting.
“Hi,” I say, not meeting her eyes. “Sorry. Let’s go.”
“Maybe next time don’t order something calledfire engine,” she suggests.
“Thanks. That’s so helpful.”
We return to our hotel room to change. I let her go first. She emerges looking fresh and pretty in her ten-dollar sundress. I hate that I notice this.
I duck into the toilet so I don’t have to look at her.
“All right,” I say, when I come out, teeth brushed and body deodorized, in my Conch King shirt. “Let’s go pick up the money.”
Luckily, the shop is only a few blocks away.
The clerk takes Hope’s information and comes back with a thick pile of cash. He then counts it out, hundred by hundred, until he reaches… ten thousand dollars.
I try not to grimace.
“Lucky lady,” the clerk comments to Hope as he puts the small fortune into an envelope with a grin. “Now don’t spend it all in one place.”
She thanks him and hands me the cash. “Does your father think you’ll have to bribe your way out of the country?” she asks.
“Here, take some,” I say, peeling off five hundred dollars.
She immediately hands four hundred back to me. “You only owe me one twenty. Half of the hotel plus your clothes and breakfast.”
“Just take it,” I say. “You might need cash in case we get separated.”
“That, Felix, is what ATMs are for.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
“You should probably stash your filthy lucre back at the hotel,” she says. “It’s too much to carry around.”
“We are not going back to that hotel. I’ll get us rooms at the Marriott.”
“I told you. It’s the only place I can afford. I reserved another night while you were changing.”
“Hope, we are absolutely not sharing that bed again. And I kind of like hot water.”
“Thenyoucan go somewhere else.”
“And leave you without a phone?”
“I can buy one of those prepaid flip phones or something.”
“Not a good idea. I doubt they have international data. You need to be able to access the internet.”
“I’ll go to an internet cafe if I need to.”
“Do those even still exist?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
I am trying to be a good person here, and her refusal of the most basic decency is increasing the considerable degree to which I am already pissed at her.
“We said we were in this together,” I say as patiently as I can. “You bailed me out last night. I’m not abandoning you.”
