He'd applied to Brooks Urban Livings Emergency Housing Assistance Program. Not for housing, they had their apartment, but because there was a medical emergency fund that could help cover costs for families in crisis. He'd seen it in the program literature. He knew what it was supposed to do. The application had been denied.
"Funds exhausted," the letter said. He'd applied for supplemental assistance. Denied again. "Funds exhausted." He'd taken whatever work he could find.
Marta hired him as a mechanic's helper 11 months after he was fired from Brooks. It wasn't what he'd gone to school for, what he'd planned for, what he'd imagined his life would look like at 30. But it was steady and it paid enough to keep them alive. And he was good at fixing things. Always had been.
And so he held on. Renata died 14 months after the diagnosis. Deshawn was 4 years old. Marcus had been back in the diner booth in his his head from the moment he walked out of Loretta's and into the rain, turning it over, trying to make it make sense. Why was she there?
Because she had to know he could recognize her. He wasn't famous or powerful, and the world of corporate Atlanta didn't cross over often into the world of Marta Mechanics, but she'd been everywhere in his world for years. Her face was on the materials that had defined his former career. He knew her face better than he knew most people he'd actually met. But she didn't know his.
Why would she? He was a terminated coordinator, a nobody as far as Brooks Urban Living was concerned. He'd been managed out, legally documented as a conduct problem, and replaced within 30 days. She would have no reason to know his face. So either she genuinely didn't recognize him, or she was testing him.
He sat with that question long enough for the kitchen clock to tick past midnight. Then he got up, turned off the light, and went to bed. She came back three nights later. Marcus was at Loretta's again. It was on his route home from the late shift, and on the nights when Mrs.
Patterson could stay, he stopped there because it was the one hour of the day that was genuinely, unambiguously his. 30 minutes alone with decent food and the particular relief of a diner at 10:30 at night when the dinner rush is over and the place goes quiet and the only people left are the ones who need to be somewhere warm. She walked in at 10:47. She was wearing the same jacket. Different cap, navy blue this time.
Same shoes, still worn down at the heel. She scanned the room with the careful, efficient eyes of someone taking inventory, and when she saw him in the corner booth, she stopped for just a half second. He kept eating. She made her way to the counter, sat on a stool, and spoke to Loretta's niece. He couldn't hear what was being said, but after a moment, the niece glanced toward his booth, back at the woman, and then said something and pointed at the menu board.
The woman looked at the menu board, then down at her hands. Marcus put his fork down. He didn't make a production of it. He just set it down, sat back slightly, and let his voice carry across the mostly empty room. "You want to sit down?"