After he’s out the door, I unfold the money–two twenties and a one hundred dollar bill. Almost two hundred percent. Not bad!
Chapter Two
The rest of my shift kind of drags, but I can’t even get back into my book. I keep thinking about Corbin and Maeve. Well, mostly Corbin. Maeve is cute and all, but babies aren’t really my thing. I’ve always been the one rolling my eyes when a friend gets obsessed with a guy she can “fix” or “help.” I have enough problems of my own, thanks, I don’t need to take on someone else’s. But there was some kind of sadness in his eyes that touched me. He seemed lost, somehow.
Again, I wonder about Maeve’s mother. Corbin didn’t seem at ease with the baby. And Maeve didn’t seem all that attached to her dad. It was weird. Sure, I don’t know much about babies, but I do see parents and kids all the time. I’m a third grade teacher, lots of my kids’ parents have babies, too. None of those babies would be just as happy with me holding them as their parents.
Walking the two blocks back to my apartment, I watch parents and kids on the street. Yeah, there’s definitely something weird about Mr. Moneybags and The Princess.
As always when I need a voice of reason, I call my Grandma. My parents were killed in a car wreck when I was eight. Both of them were only children and my dad’s parents had died before I was born. So it’s just Gran and me. She’s my only family and my best friend. Well, not my “hey let’s get a drink and a movie” best friend. But she’s my “sees me for who I am and tells it like it is” best friend. You need both.
"Did you watch that Blackfish movie like I told you to?"
“No, Gran, I haven’t had time, and it sounds depressing.”
“Sometimes reality is depressing. Everyone needs to know this stuff. Those whales are being tortured!” Gran loves a cause.
“I believe you and I promise not to go to Sea World or let anyone I know go there, okay?”
“You want to live with your head in the clouds.” This is a common refrain. I don’t think it’s true, but even if it is, where’s the harm in not being angry or depressed all the time? “One of these days life is gonna hit you upside the head and you won’t even see it coming.”
“Probably. Listen, Gran, I have to get ready for my next shift soon and I wanted to see what you thought about a customer I had today.”
“Fine, what is it?” Gran likes to rant, but what she really likes is to figure people out. And to hear my “What the rich people did today” stories.
“So this guy came in today. White guy, probably early 30s, super rich..”
“How do you know, he show you his bank book?”
“Okay, he spends money freely–expensive watch, expensive shoes, big tipper. Anyway. He has a baby with him, not old enough to talk or walk, but not a newborn, either. He says it’s his kid, and she looks like him, I guess, hard to say, babies all kinda look alike.”
“Not you. You were the most beautiful baby ever born. Even prettier than your mama, and that’s saying something.”
“Thanks, Gran. This baby was pretty enough. But she didn’t seem real attached to the daddy. She came to me easily and didn’t cry when I took her away from him.”
“Why’d you take her away?”
“He was trying to take a business call and eat his lunch and she was just being loud and grabby, so I took her for him. I gave her ice cubes, she really liked that.” I’m super proud of the ice cube idea. Came up with that on my own.
“You’re lucky she didn’t swallow one. She’d have been screaming then, for sure.” Oh, right. Babies put everything in their mouths. Even stranger’s hair.
“Well, she didn’t. It kept her quiet.” We won’t mention the spoon, okay? "Anyway, so when he’s done, she goes back to him, but doesn’t seem to care really. He’s not wearing a wedding ring. She seems really young for him to have custody of her. You think maybe the mom went to jail? Think she’s dead? Oh, and they’re from Boston. Just came in today, so he’s travelling–on a private plane–with this baby. For business, far as I can tell."
“Why do you care, exactly?”
“Well, he asked me out. And I didn’t want to flat say ‘Where’s your wife?’ and I had to work anyway, so I said no, but it just has me wondering. What do you think?”
“How’d he ask you out?”
“Uh, the usual–‘Are you free for dinner this evening?’ Why?”
“Hmpf. He was just asking you to come hold his baby while he ate dinner, girl. Man with a private plane is used to having servants. Why he left that baby’s nanny at home, I don’t know, but I guarantee you she has one. That’s who she’s attached to. Or maybe she’s been bounced from one to another so much she doesn’t even care who’s holding her. I saw some of those, bless their little hearts.”
Gran was a nanny way back when my mom was a baby. She got pregnant with my mom at 18 years old, never told us who the father was or if she even knew him. Sometimes I think it was rape, but she is tightlipped about it. All I know is she never dated, not even once my mom had moved out and before she had to raise me. My friend Asia thinks she’s gay, but she doesn’t have any long-time lady companion, either. That I know of. Anyway, pregnant at 18, she had to give up her dream of being a nightclub singer. She started working as a live-in nanny to a series of rich Atlanta white folks. She left my mama with a lady in her building that took in a handful of kids whose single mothers worked as nannies.
When my mom was school age, Gran started cleaning houses instead so she could be home in the afternoons to make sure her little girl got as many of the middle class advantages as she could give her. She paid for ballet lessons by cleaning the studio once a week. She learned to make croissants and gave them to an elderly Canadian in her building in exchange for French lessons. In the end, it paid off, my mom got a full ride to Spellman and she danced with the Atlanta ballet until she got pregnant with me at 32 years old.
Gran looked out for me, too, sending me to a strict Catholic school, getting me lessons. But my ballet teacher told her that I would “never have the grace to be a dancer,” so she pulled me out and got me into tap, salsa, jazz dance. I wanted hiphop lessons in the worst way, but she was having none of that “thug music” in her house. I didn’t follow in Mama’s footsteps to Spellman, either. I wanted to see more of the world and applied everywhere except Atlanta. I ended up at Pomona, in California. “If I’d known you’d make such bad decisions, I never would have raised you to think for yourself,” Gran said when I told her. She was kidding. At least a little.
She’s a good one for bringing me back to earth. Which is what she just did. Of course he wasn’t asking me out! Of course, he just wanted a babysitter. I’m embarrassed, though, and try to save face at least a little.
“He was flirting with me, Gran. I could tell!”
“Good looking rich boys flirt without even knowing they’re doing it. Get your head out of the clouds, like I said.”
“You’re probably right.”
“’Course I am.”
“But what about the wife? No ring.”
Gran makes a long “Hmm” sound before she says, “If she’d died, he’d still wear the ring, seems like. So I’ll wager divorce and she’s making him take his turn and he couldn’t be bothered to take some time off work, so he’s dragging some poor baby across the country with him and is surprised to find out you can’t just plop them down and go on with your life.”
“Yeah, that makes the most sense, I guess. He seemed sad, though.”
“Money can’t buy happiness. But it can buy a babysitter. Think he’ll come back and make you hold that baby while he eats again?”
I laugh, the imagine of Corbin just marching in and thrusting Maeve into my arms is a pretty funny one. And not entirely unappealing… “No, he had that on-the-move feel. I doubt I’ll ever see him again, but something about those two just got me thinking, I guess.”
“You got enough worries of your own, you don’t need to go borrowing others’.”
“True enough, Gran, that’s always been my motto. Thanks. I gotta go, gotta be at the bar in less than an hour and I need to shower.”
“Love you, girl.”
“Love you, Gran.”
She’s right, of course, I’m making something of nothing, worrying about what doesn’t concern me. I’d like to flatter myself, think my motives are all about that sweet baby girl, but I know it was Corbin’s haunted blue eyes that sucked me in.
I’ve just grabbed my book in case it’s an unusual slow night at the bar when I hear a knock at my door. It’s a pretty low-crime area, but I peek through the hole anyway. It’s my landlady. Great.
When I open the door, the patchouli smell nearly knocks me over. She has a shop below the apartments where she sells Grateful Dead shirts and Coexist bumper stickers and stuff made of thin, cheap cotton. She likes to think she’s this aging flower child, but the reality is she’s a mean old woman. Twice, since I’ve lived here, she’s evicted people who were only a month behind on rent. People with little kids! If it wasn’t walking distance to all my jobs, I’d move out, just to leave her hanging.
“Hello, sweetie,” she says with her fake smile. Her grey hair surrounds her like a storm cloud and her jewelry jangles as she raises her hand in a little wave.
“Hi, Carol, what can I do for you, I’m just on my way to work.”
“Well, good, I suppose. I just wanted to tell you in person, you know, that I’m going to have to raise the rent next month. You know I hate to do it, I know you young people are struggling, but the electricity is going up so much and the cost of living…I’m an old woman on a pension, of course, so I have to make do, too.”