Double Pop

by Jamie Bennett

  When we got tired of singing, we talked about the kids in my second grade class, because Nola was always very interested in them. “Remember Angus?” I asked her. “Well, today instead of doing his math assessment, I caught him playing a game on the school tablet.” She gasped in horror. “Also, we had to have a special meeting on the rug after lunch recess to remind everyone to be kind to each other.”

  “We have to be kind,” Nola agreed seriously. “Today, Horatio wasn’t kind. He pulled my hair.”

  “What happened?” I asked, swerving slightly as some dickweed in a fancy little Italian car, a Scemo, accelerated like a maniac and cut me off as we got on the Golden Gate Bridge. “Tell me the story.”

  Nola loved, loved, to tell stories. “I was on the monkey bars but I couldn’t go. Mama, I want to go to the other side! But my hands hurt…” She talked for a while about monkey bar issues before returning to what had happened with Horatio, her classmate. “Horatio got mad at me because he wanted to go. He said, ‘Hurry your butt up.’”

  “Nola…”

  “He said it! I didn’t say ‘butt.’”

  “Then what happened?”

  She sniffed a little, sad. “I got scared because Miss Kelley wasn’t there to catch me but Horatio pulled on my legs until I fell.”

  “What! Were you ok?”

  I looked in the rearview mirror, and she was nodding. “I only cried for a little with my baby doll.”

  I was already furious. “What did Miss Kelley and Mrs. Lopez say?”

  “Nothing.”

  My anger ratcheted up. “They didn’t care that you were crying and hugging your doll, all alone?” This was why I shouldn’t have had her at school for so long each day! My little girl had been crying, with no one to love her…

  Nola concluded her story. “Horatio pulled my hair and said, ‘Don’t tell, Nola!’ So I didn’t.”

  I was a teacher, so I knew there were three sides to every kid conflict: Kid A’s story, Kid B’s story, and the truth. But as a mom, I wanted to drive to this Horatio’s house and kill him. And write an angry, bitching email to the teachers about why they hadn’t been paying attention to my little girl and how she could have been seriously injured. “Are you ok, Noles? Are you hurt?”

  She considered, looking out the window as we went through the old toll booths. “My butt hurts.”

  “Nola.”

  “My bottom hurts,” she amended.

  “Tomorrow morning, you and I will go and talk to the teachers about this. Horatio shouldn’t have pulled you off the bars, or pulled your hair, or told you not to tell. The teachers need to know so we’ll tell them.” I checked the mirror again and she was nodding.

  I fumed the rest of the way over to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and we sat in the car after I found a parking space near Golden Gate Park. It was really raining hard now, and before I dragged Nola out into the weather, I called Ty again. To my surprise, he picked up.

  “Hi,” I told him. “We’re here. Are you coming?”

  He paused and then said, “Yeah. Yeah, where, again?” And I gave him the name of the restaurant he had previously sent to me. I rushed Nola out of the car, carrying her under my umbrella because, of course, I had forgotten her boots. Screw our hair looking good, if we arrived not looking like drowned rats, I was going to count it as a win. I was panting and steaming with heat from the humid air and the exertion by the time we got to the restaurant. Ok, yes, I really was going to go on that run with Chad. Clearly, I needed the workout.

  Ty arrived only a moment after Nola and I got a table, a record in punctuality for him. I had spent most of our years together giving him fake start times of events so that he wouldn’t get to things late (mostly he did, anyway). Rather than coming over to our table, though, he stood at the front of the restaurant and gestured impatiently to me, and I got up and walked over.

  “Hi. Long time, no see,” I greeted him. Despite everything, I noticed that he still had that young Marlon Brando thing going for him. Damn it, I didn’t want to notice that.

  Ty fidgeted. “It has been a while.”

  I glanced back at Nola as she colored on her kids’ menu. “Did you need me to escort you to the table?”

  “I can’t stay.” He looked at Nola too. “That’s her?”

  “Yes, that’s our daughter!” I told him, angrily. “Why can’t you stay? We just drove all the way here to see you!” Fucking typical Ty!

  “I have things to do.” His eyes shifted to the door. “I’m in a rush. Listen, JoJo, I wanted to take my time to tell you something, but I can’t.”

  He meant, he had been planning to butter me up about something, with his usual spiel of compliments and smiles. And sadly, it might have worked, because just seeing him when he walked in had made my heart thump a little.

  “What do you want?” I asked him, now even angrier, but at myself and my total Ty weakness.

  “I need a little money.”

  “How much?” I demanded.

  “Like, a few K.”

  My jaw dropped. “Are you kidding? I don’t have thousands of dollars lying around! And if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you!”

  “JoJo, it’s serious.”

  I looked into his face. It hadn’t been all that long since I’d seen him, not quite two years, but he looked older and he’d put on some weight. Unconsciously, I sucked in my stomach. He also looked very, very serious right now.

  “I’m in pretty deep with some guys. I have to give them something, now. Tonight.”

  “That’s why you can’t stay for dinner? Ty…”

  “I’m scared.”

  Well, fuck. I’d never heard him admit to fear before. He’d never let on that he was even the least bit perturbed, even when I myself had been scared out of my mind. Like the time when we had gotten stuck at the top of this really high chair-drop ride at our county fair, and he had decided to ditch me and climb down, rather than waiting for it to get fixed. He had laughed his head off the whole way while I screamed off mine. And now he was scared? It made me get nervous, too.

  “How serious is this?” I asked. “What will they do if you don’t pay them?”

  “It’s bad,” he told me, his eyes shifting around, and he didn’t answer the second question.

  I considered, biting my lower lip. “I have some money on me. You can have that.” I had brought more cash than I usually carried, because I had assumed I would have to pay for dinner, and my credit card was absolutely done.

  “How much?”

  I walked back to get my purse and checked on Nola, who was already yawning. Her days were just way too long. I counted out ninety-eight dollars but I held it tightly, not putting it into Ty’s open palm.

  “If you take this money, you’re taking it from your own daughter,” I said in a low voice so that she couldn’t hear. “Maybe Nola won’t have something that she needs because of it.”

  He pulled the bills from my hand. “I know, but I have to have it.”

  He said he knew, but he didn’t know shit. Ty would never understand about putting someone else first.

  He counted the money also, and frowned. “This is all you can do?”

  “That’s it,” I told him flatly.

  Ty stuffed it in his pocket and looked up briefly at Nola again. “She looks just like you, JoJo.”

  I looked too at her sweet face, wishing I had even a smidge of her angelic beauty. He brushed a kiss across my cheek and took off into the rainy night, and I sat down heavily at our table, my heart hammering. My blood boiling.

  “Was that your friend?” Nola asked.

  “He’s a friend, yes. He was, anyway, a long time ago.” Jesus, I did not want to get into this. “Hey, would you like a hamburger for dinner?” Her eyes gleamed. We didn’t eat a lot of meat.

  “No cheese,” she told me. Of course not, because that would have been some added nutrition. I decided we should split an entrée, since I had just given away a shitload of cash. God damn him!

&
nbsp; A few thousand dollars. What in the hell had he been thinking? Ty had always liked to bet on small potatoes stuff, like hands of cards, the ponies, football…who was I kidding? He had action on anything, from high school basketball up to the pro-level finals. He had always kept it basically under control, and by that I meant, he had always lost more than he’d won, but the losses were manageable. But who knew what he was doing now, without me there to keep the clamp on his behavior?

  “Mama? Want to color with me?”

  I tried to smile at her and took an orange crayon. “Tell me a story. About Pinky the bear,” I requested, because that would give me time to think about the Ty situation.

  Nola considered for a minute. “Pinky went to the beach one day,” she told me, and was off on a tale that could have lasted through our dinner and well beyond. I listened with half my mind and with the other half, I thought about what would happen to Ty if he welched, and how stupid I was to give him my $98 to bail him out, again. Again! I was just as dumb as ever when it came to him. My head throbbed. I was just an idiot.

  Nola ate at least half of the burger after picking off the tomato and lettuce to make sure that she didn’t get any vitamins. I gobbled down the rest and was still starving, but we had an old jar of pickles at home that I could munch my way through. “You full?” I asked her, finishing her tomato slice. Nola nodded and yawned again, leaning against me as I paid. I pried out the $20 I kept in the emergency pocket in my wallet.

  We walked out of the restaurant holding hands, the story still going on about Pinky at the beach. “Then she found a pretty shell and it was blue…” Nola broke off with a huge yawn. I would have picked her up, but my ankle was throbbing after the run with her in my arms to the restaurant. Also, I was exhausted after having spent a good part of the night before involved in a Humphrey Bogart marathon. Totally irresponsible parent behavior.

  It had stopped raining, mostly, but it was really dark where I had parked. The streetlight blinked feebly above my car, dying. But it was enough light that I could see the flat tire. “Mother…Hubbard!” I yelled. This day was turning into a major sucker.

  “Why is the car funny?” Nola asked me.

  “The tire is broken. It’s ok, I can fix it. You get in back and stretch out on the seats,” I told her, because she was small enough to fit very comfortably there. I locked her in and then went to the trunk to get out the jack and spare, holding up my phone for light. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and stood up fast. The man was at my side, way too close, before I could do anything.

  “Car trouble?” he asked me. I stepped away, but I couldn’t leave Nola.

  “Nope.” I reached in the trunk for the jack so I could have a weapon but I couldn’t feel it—all that was under my grasping hand was the stupid art project made out of toilet paper tubes. He stepped even closer and I shut the trunk and went around the side of the car. I put my keys in between my fingers so if I had to hit him, it would hurt.

  “Looks like you have a flat,” he commented. “Need help? I love to help pretty girls.”

  I bet he did. “I just called my boyfriend to come get me,” I said. “He’s SFPD. He’ll be here soon. Or a bunch of his buddies. His police buddies.”

  The man moved away a little but he didn’t leave, so I got back into the car with Nola, who was already asleep, and I locked the doors. If I had to, I could drive off on the flat tire, or if I got really desperate, I could call the real police and not my fake cop boyfriend. I held the phone in my hand, irresolute.

  The man knocked on the window and Nola stirred in the back seat. “You can come wait in my place,” he said through the glass. I followed his eyes as they looked at my boobs in the low-cut top, the one I’d put on to impress Ty. I yanked closed the cardigan I’d worn over it for teaching.

  I held the phone to my ear like I was on a call. “You’ll be here really soon? Thanks, honey. Yeah, put on the lights and sirens because some guy is bothering me.” Then I turned away from the window so he couldn’t see, and looked in my phone for real to check if there was anyone in my contacts who lived in this neighborhood, and who also wouldn’t mind helping me out. But I hadn’t grown up in the Bay Area area, and I had never even lived in the city, so I didn’t know that many people here in general.

  “Hey.” The weirdo knocked again. “Come on out of there. Let’s talk, you and me.”

  I scrolled more, feeling desperate. Oh…Luca. He was close, right in Cole Valley, and he was nice. I remembered reading in the alumni bulletins about the volunteer work he had done to help the needy. If anyone was needy at the moment, it was me. I called him.

  “Luca?”

  “Hi, Jolie,” he answered, sounding happy to hear from me. Well, he didn’t know yet why I was calling.

  Since time was limited by the scary man still standing a foot away from my car, I broke the news fast. “I’m in the Haight with my daughter and I got a flat tire and it’s really dark to change it and there’s a man bothering me.”

  “Where are you exactly?” he asked, and when I told him, he said he was on his way and hung up without another word, like he was pretty angry.

  Well, I would have been pissed, too, if I was settled down in my PJs for the night and some near-stranger called me to help with her car problems. But it was only a few minutes later that a shiny, black car glided up next to mine and double-parked with the hazard lights flashing. Luca got out.

  “What the hell do you want?” I heard him ask the lurker guy, who was still darting around my useless car. “Get out of here, now.”

  “I don’t want any trouble with the cops,” the guy answered, finally believing my make-believe police story, and he scrammed.

  I got out of the car and closed the door quietly behind myself, because Nola had slept through the entire incident. “Sorry,” I greeted Luca. “Hi. Sorry.”

  “You shouldn’t be near the Park at night,” he answered. He did sound pretty pissed.

  “I know. Sorry.” I had done a lot of stupid stuff that night.

  If he had been Ty, he would have continued to harangue me about bothering him, rousting him out when he was busy watching some game or depleting all our grocery supplies or doing something else equally important. He would have asked me why couldn’t I have taken care of myself. But Luca said, “Are you all right? Did that guy scare you?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. No, not scared. Yes,” I admitted. “I was scared.”

  Luca put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Then I’m glad you called me. Let’s change your tire.” I looked at him as he walked back to his car to park it, a little shocked. He was glad I called him? No, he was just being nice—damn, he was really nice! I got my jack in a bit of a daze.

  Changing the tire was no easy feat, not with the car parked as close to the curb as I had left it, and in the dark, and with everything was wet and dirty and gross from all the rain and being in the city. And with my jack not working right, then Luca had to get his. He opened my trunk to take out the spare and came upon Nola’s art project.

  “I’m not driving around a trunkful of trash,” I quickly explained. “My daughter made it.”

  He nodded and carefully moved it out of the way, and then picked up my spare tire. His eyebrows drew down. “No. You can’t drive on this. I’ve never seen a tire in worse shape.” He turned it over in his hands in the weak light and sighed. “You wouldn’t make it to the end of the block and I can’t let you try.” He glanced over at his own trunk, considering. “My spare won’t fit on this car.” He put the tire back and turned to me.

  I tried to brush some wet and dirty crap off his nice jacket with hands that were just as grimy. “Ok, thank you so much for trying. I’ll figure something out. You can go home and get back to whatever you were doing.” He had probably been reading sonnets or designing new ways to provide water to remote villages, something smart like that. “Again, I’m really sorry I bothered you.”

  He looked at me incredulously. “You think I’m going to
leave you and your daughter here in a broken-down car? Let’s go clean up at my house, then we’ll think about what to do next. I can drive you guys back home tonight, in any case.”

  We. He had said “we,” and he wasn’t going to leave us on the sidewalk and take off. I nodded, in another shocked state, and opened up the car to get Nola. She grumpily came into my arms. Somehow Luca dislodged the child seat and, as cereal and crackers flew out of it, got it attached to the smooth leather seat of his lovely car. I buckled her in, half-asleep, still, and we drove in silence to his house—a real house, not an apartment, a loft, or something like that. He had a whole house of his own, with a driveway and a garage, a porch and two stories. It sat on a quiet street with no one lurking around to accost women who just wanted to change a flat tire.

  Luca let us in and it was as nice inside as his car was, clean and roomy and lovely. “Come on,” he whispered. “You can put her down in here.” We walked through the big, open spaces, which were mostly empty but had a few random, modern pieces of furniture. I woke Nola up enough to sit her on the toilet, because I really, really didn’t want an accident in Luca’s guest bedroom, and she had drunk a huge glass of milk at dinner.

  “Where are we?” she asked me drowsily.

  “A friend’s house. Are you done?”

  She nodded and I carried her out into the bedroom where Luca was waiting. “She can wear this, if you want to change her so she’s more comfortable.” He held out a t-shirt, and bent down to look at the sleepy Nola. “She looks so much like you.” Nola squinted at him, rosy-cheeked and confused.

  “Hi,” she said, then closed her eyes.

  “Thank you,” I told him, taking the shirt with the logo of the college I had read about him attending. I helped Nola slip into it, laid her down on the bed, and covered her up, giving her my cardigan to cuddle with instead of her usual pink bear. In her haze, she didn’t seem to notice the difference. I ran my fingers over her soft cheek and then turned back to the doorway, where Luca was waiting.

  So now we were at Luca’s house, and he and I would be alone. For some annoying reason, that made my breath come faster, and made me not fix the top that had ridden back down a little low over my cleavage. That was ridiculous, because Luca and I had talked about it already, and we were going to be friends.