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"Take the sixteen-forty," I say. "Mark it paid, hand me the note, we're square, and you never think about me again. Easiest sixteen hundred you'll close all year."

Sal shakes his head and reaches for his pen.

"Thirty years I've been doing this," he says, marking the paper. "Every so often, one of you walks in a different person than the one who walked in last time. Never can guess which ones." He slides the note across, PAID IN FULL, his signature, and today’s date. "I like you, Agnes. Would you like to have dinner sometime?”

“No, Sal, I would not.”

I count out sixteen hundred and forty dollars onto his desk. A thousand of it mine, scraped together a dollar at a time. Six hundred and forty of it my sister's, handed to me the night before.

Then I stuff the receipt into my bag, next to the lipstick, and I walk out through the beaded curtain for the last time in my life.

Birdie is exactly where I left her, holding Gerald, both of them watching the door.

"Well?" she says.

I don't have a speech either. I just hold up the note.

She reads it. PAID IN FULL. And my sister, who has cost me more money and headaches over the years than I will ever get back, bursts into tears on a public sidewalk, sets Gerald down on the concrete, grabs me, and holds on.

The debt is gone. Every dollar of it. We don't owe anybody a thing.

No loan with my name on my sister's dream. No rented hour, no three men holding the other end of anything.

Just me and my sister and a plant named Gerald on a cracked sidewalk in a crappy neighborhood in front of a PI’s office.

I am free and clear and let myself think about three men in a parking lot, whom I told to wait.

"Okay," I say, and wipe my sister's face with my thumb, and pick Gerald up myself. "One more thing to take care of."

19

AGGIE

I text them my address.

I send it to all three at once, one message, no explanation, because I've thought about it for two days and decided that if we're doing this, we're doing it my way, and my way starts with me being the one who says when and where.

This is where I live. Tomorrow, four o'clock. All three of you. Or none of you.

That's the whole message. For weeks, Diablo made these men come to her, from behind a webcam and a fake name and a camera cropped so they never saw more of her face than her mouth. Tomorrow, they come to my actual door, in daylight, to the smallest and realest room I've got, and they see all of it. Agnes and Diablo and the mattress on the floor and the plant named Gerald, together, all at the same time.

If that doesn’t send them running, I figure nothing will.

Then I put the phone face-down and don't look at it, because three blinking message dots from even one of them will chase away what little nerve I’ve got.

They all say yes inside a minute. Of course they do.

Four o'clock comes. I cleaned the studio, which took two minutes, because most of what I own is still in boxes. I put the red lipstick on. I move Gerald to the windowsill where the afternoon light is good. And I keep the milk crate nightstand by the mattress, because I know what I’ve got stored in there, and I've decided that's tonight's business.

The knock comes at four on the dot. Elias. It has to be. Only Elias would stand in a stairwell and wait for the exact minute.

I open the door, and there they are, all three, filling up my little hallway. Beck’s already grinning. Theo’s got his hands jammed in his pockets. Elias is not saying a word, just looking at me.

"You found it," I say.

"You gave us an address and a threat," Beck says. "We were very motivated."

I step back and let them in, and it is one of the strangest sights of my life. Three masters of the universe folding themselves into a room the size of a parking space, too big for it, too rich for it, too everything for it.