My Golden Moon
The clerk, a heavyset man in a stained undershirt, looked her up and down and went back to his television.
"Room," Celeste rasped.
"Sixty a night. Cash."
"I don't have cash." She reached up with a trembling hand, unhooked one of the earrings she had worn to bed the night before, a teardrop diamond the size of a thumbnail, and set it on the counter. "This is worth two hundred times that."
The clerk finally looked at it.
He picked it up, squinted, bit down on it, and then squinted again. "Where'd you get this?"