Page 22 of Angel’s Doll

She laughs, short and real, and bends back over her mother’s handwriting.

I leave her door open and stand in the hallway a second, counting what the hour of church bought.

It’s the smarter plan and I’ll ride it all the way to the meet, Bishop’s rules the whole road. If the Irish brothers blessed Brightmoor with their eyes open, then proof was only ever the polite first move, and I’ll make the second one personally, with the club at my back.

There’s one door out of the plan, and she’s it. If anyone gets through that fence and reaches for her, the plan is already dead, and I won’t wait on a vote to bury it. No gavel in that. Church can hear about it after.

12

DOLL

Nobody gives me a job, and it takes me most of Tuesday morning to work out that this is the problem.

The clubhouse has changed since yesterday. Two prospects on the roof instead of one at the door. A pickup parked sideways behind the gate where no truck sat before. Men cross the lot in pairs with their phones out. Angel gave it to me straight out of church, standing in my doorway. Glitch gets a day. The fence gets taller. So I can see the machine working. I can’t find the part of it that needs me.

Victor never left me without instructions. That was the leash, I understand that now, but ten years of leash taught me to reach for it. Since Angel left my doorway, I’ve made my bed and come down looking for something to do. In the kitchen I start scrubbing a pan that was clean when I picked it up.

“That pan’s been through enough.” Phoenix takes it out of my hands and hangs it on the rack. “Sit. Lunch is happening whether you help or not.”

“I can help.”

“I know you can. That’s not the question anybody’s asking.” She points at the long table with her chin. “Sit.”

I sit. My hand goes to my chest, flat over my shirt, and finds the ring through the cotton.

The women arrive all at once and from three directions. Nobody called them that I heard.

Birdie comes in through the side door with a casserole dish and no free hands, so she opens the door with her hip, practiced. Behind her comes a girl about my age with a yellow highlighter shoved behind one ear, and I know her face before I place it. Victor’s gala, three weeks ago. She came in on the arm of the man who wouldn’t shake Victor’s hand, and I stood at Victor’s elbow with a tablet, biting my cheek to keep from smiling. That man was Cash.

A third girl deals a stack of mismatched plates out like cards and puts a fork in my hand mid-sentence, no eye contact, still talking to Birdie about a truck battery. Like arming me.

At the center of the table, Phoenix sets down a pot that could feed an army, then another one. There is too much food and more keeps coming. Every time the door bangs shut it opens again on another cut.

At Halcyon, every table had a seating order and the seating order was the org chart. I once spent a full dinner on whether I ranked above or below the man who did Victor’s title searches. Here I can’t find the chart at all. It looks like Phoenix outranks everyone and yet she serves everyone. Birdie teases Sweetheart, Sweetheart teases back harder, and Birdie fills my water without asking. None of it would have happened in Victor’s dining room.

The door opens once more and a woman comes in slow, her white hair pinned neat, and the women shift around her without anyone standing up. Chairs scoot. A plate appears at the empty spot before she reaches it.

“Darling Wick,” she says to me, and sits. “My mother did that to me. The club thinks they gave me a road name. Since they’re still proud of it. I let them.”

“Sloane.”

“Nah. I know exactly who you are, and it’s Doll now.”

Of course she knows. Everyone at this table knows exactly where I come from, and not one of them has asked me a single question about it.

That’s what I can’t get over. Nobody asks. Nobody leans in with soft eyes and says how you holding up. The whole table already runs on the answer, and they’ve decided my rent here is not my story. My rent is passing the potatoes.

I pass the potatoes.

Sweetheart points her knife at me, friendly. “Charcoal suit. Tablet. You stood at Victor’s elbow at that gala and almost smiled when Cash left his hand hanging.”

“I bit my cheek.”

“I saw.” She loads her fork. “Twenty-four hours before that party I was crawling under a chain-link fence in the rain with twenty-two dollars, a protein bar, and my driver’s license.”

“You were way ahead of me. I only had the license when Angel pulled me out of the dumpster.”

“He did what?”