Page 12 of Alonzo

I just don’t want to know those things. Lonnie and I are having fun. Why complicate it with the truth?

I didn’t even want Belinda to know about him at all. But she got it out of me when I was drunk one night about six months ago.

I really need to stop drinking with Belinda.

“I don’t have any pics.”

“Liar!”

“Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow after work for lunch?”

She waves me off and clicks through the appointment book on the counter. “Same Bat-Time. Same Bat-Channel.”

I slip into my elegant, shawl-collared wrap coat, cinch the belt tight at my waist, and wave my fingers over my shoulder as I push through the door of Sick Boyz and come out into the cold, January afternoon of Fort Collins. Sucking in deeps breaths of frigid air, still trying to process what Belinda just told me.

I did not ask her to ask Clay about what it takes to be a private investigator in Colorado.

Even if I did, I did not.

I’m going with did not.

La-la-la-la. I’m not thinking about this.

La-la-la—ah, fuck it. I look over my shoulder, cross the street, slip into the big City Burrito alley, and lean against the wall as I type in my search.

How to get a private investigator license in Colorado.

Enter.

A handy checklist pops right up.

Fee. OK.

Twenty-one years of age. OK.

Background check.

I suck in another deep breath, the cold stinging my lungs as the air fills them. This… is not really a problem. I have a clean background now. That was part of the deal. Everything about who I was got erased.

Poof. Gone.

So I could—no, I would—pass the background check and the fingerprints.

Then there’s an exam. No problem there. Other legal shit. Social security number, signed affidavit of employment eligibility. And a ten-thousand-dollar surety bond.

All this is doable. I would have to scramble to come up with the bond. Good old Aunt Whoever is OK for covering my rent and some of my expenses, but the monthly stipend doesn’t allow for much extra.

“This is stupid.” I say it out loud to shake myself out of the fantasy that’s now playing in my head, unfolding like a movie on fast-forward. “I cannot think about this.”

But… I can’t not think about this, either.

My old life. My wonderful, exciting, old life in LA, filled with danger and dodgy clients. My stuffy office in that third-floor walk-up sixteen blocks off Sunset. I had a view. It wasn’t a great view, but… it was mine.

I loved my job. So much. I might not remember talking about my childhood career aspirations with Belinda last weekend, but I have always wanted to be a private detective. And the minute I graduated out of the foster system I set out to make it happen. It’s a lot harder in LA. I worked my ass off for three years for practically no pay before I had enough experience to submit my application. You only have to be eighteen in California. So by the time I was twenty-one I had it. I had everything. I had my firearms permit. I had experience. And I had clients.

They were just… the wrong kind of clients.

And now I’m here. Dressing up in my costume every day as I pretend to be a librarian.