***

After I worked five days in Amarillo, Beth’s father fired Sam Johnson and Loretta, one of the housekeepers, because she knew the vacuum was broken yet still ran it anyway. He replaced them with junior college kids on the cheap, and told me since I did such a fine job making Amarillo more cost effective, he wanted me to head over to his other locations to see what I could do there. I told him I couldn’t, but he told me he’d keep paying if I went.

He fired sixteen more people from six different motels, including Javier at San Angelo. Javier was letting his wife and four kids come in each morning for the free continental breakfast. Not on his dime, Beth’s father said. Two weeks after I got home, he called again.

“Timothy!” he said, after Beth handed me the phone. It was the free day at the zoo, and we were walking around the snake expedition, trying to get my mind off the headache I’d had since coming home. Beth let go of my hand to get a closer look at the python as it worked to swallow whatever watermelon-sized rodent it just ate. Its body was bloated and swollen.

“Yes sir,” I said.

“I’m sitting here with Mr. Amos, of Wichita Falls Amos Chevrolet.”

“And Nissan,” Mr. Amos said in the background.

“And Nissan,” Beth’s father said. “Anyway, Mr. Amos here was so impressed by the work I told him you done for me, he was curious if you might come up to Wichita Falls and work your magic at his Chevy dealership.”

“And Nissan,” Mr. Amos said.

“And Nissan,” Beth’s father said. “So what say you?”

I wanted to say I couldn’t. I wanted to say that since I got back I was getting temp calls left and right. That I hadn’t the effort to bullshit managers anymore that everything was great!, and instead wrote things went okay, and Jeff in accounting distracted me with stories of his weekend. A few jobs more came my way, and the bigger my paycheck, the easier it was to write what Jenna said about the manager, or how Jeff streamed porn on the clock, or how Alex chugged beer before making client calls. How Caitlin from HR was going to let Brandon from IT fingerbang her in Records.

“I’ll pay you double,” Mr. Amos said.

Beth came up and took my hand to lead me away from the cobra exhibit I had wandered into.

“When do you want me there?” I asked.

***

After Wichita Falls, Mr. Amos recommended me to his friend who owned a tractor dealership in Denton, who recommended me to his friend who owned a pet store in Texarkana, who recommended me to her friend in Oklahoma City, who recommended me to Dubuque.

For every recommendation, I would get five more and for every five more I would get ten more until I told Lone Star that I wouldn’t be returning. Until Beth quit folding sweaters. Until I moved her and the baby just born into a part of town where everyone lived in homes without helicopters spotlighting their backyards. Where their cars didn’t have bullet holes in them.

Dubuque recommended me to Lincoln, which recommended me to Breckenridge.

I would stay at a different motel in a different city and spend three-to-five days doing my thing until I wrote my report and either went home or went to the next motel in the next city.

It’s incredible how much crap people will tell you after just meeting them. Usually, if I started with when I did meth, or my parole officer says, or the boss sure seems like a real motherfucker, people were quick to open up about how they stole from work. About which employees sold them drugs. About how that married secretary slept with this married tech. About how to give someone diarrhea by poisoning their water if they were going to leave a bad tip.

“What about their friends and families?” Beth asked at our new oak dining table one night I was home. Around the house were boxes of things I had ordered online but hadn’t been home long enough to open. “Do they say anything about them?” she said, and handed me the bottle of aspirin I asked her to pass.

On a side note, I picked meth because I thought it was the funniest of drugs. Who does meth?, I thought when I first said it. Apparently, fifty-one people in eleven states at twenty-seven companies did, and all would be fired for it.

“Who?” I asked, mid-chew of my mutton chop. I tossed a few tabs on my tongue and washed everything down with red wine.

“These people your friending, do they talk about them? Their friends and family?” A piece of asparagus hung from Beth’s fork. I had her initials monogrammed into her set before I ordered it.

“Pretending to be friends with,” I said. “I’m not really friends with these people.”

Our baby Marley giggled from her baby seat.

“Do they know this?” Beth asked, still holding the limp, oil soaked vegetable.

“Know what?”

“That you’re not really friends.”

“You think they’d tell me anything if they did?” Still, her asparagus hung. “Yeah,” I said. “They say things about their family and stuff.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what do they say?”

“How would I know?”

I set down my monogrammed utensils and leaned back in my felt-upholstered chair. I pinched the bridge of my nose, my heartbeat pounding in my temples.

“Don’t you listen?”

“I don’t even know these people, Beth,” I said. “I’m only with them a couple of days.” I picked up my fork and went back to my chop. I took a bite and chewed. Beth ate the asparagus. She chewed too. I swallowed and she swallowed.

“You asked me out an hour after meeting me,” she said. She down set her fork, wiped her mouth with her napkin and excused herself, taking Marley with her.