“Is everything all right?” I said, offering another squeeze when she refused to let me go.
“It’s good to see you.”
I had momentarily blanked out the fact that she had a kid with her. When Diane finally loosened her grip, I tightened the belt of my robe, conscious of little eyes staring up from our feet.
“Diane, it’s great to see you. I wish I had known you were coming. I would have waited up or at least put some clothes on.”
“Oh, Dylan.”
She smiled, reminding me of the reason that we’d gotten together in the first place. Everything about Diane had always seemed bright to me.
I looked down for the kid, but she had carefully hidden behind her mother. A second later, the little girl poked her head out. She seemed tired, but she still had the energy to muster a look of discernment either that, or she had to use the bathroom.
“Hi?” I said.
Diane knelt down to the girl. “This is Spring.”
I nearly followed Diane’s crouch, then remembered my robe.
“And Spring, this is Mr. Dylan.”
“Hi, Spring.”
Spring was dressed in a yellow raincoat and red boots. She had the same wavy black hair and gray eyes as Diane. She didn’t say anything, but she seemed fascinated with my bare feet.
Diane stood back up. “Is this a bad time…?”
“No, no. Come in. Let me help you with your bag.”
Spring shook her head.
Though Diane’s arrival time was just a tiny bit strange, it was as good a time as any especially since Laurel had already pulled a Houdini. I picked up Diane’s single piece of luggage; a brown relic, featuring ancient travel stickers that had to be at least 30 years old. Spring toted a red backpack over her raincoat. The backpack had a duck wearing boots stitched on it. “Is it raining outside?”
Again, Spring shook her head.
“Good,” I said. Who said I couldn’t make small talk with a kid?
She raised an eyebrow in my direction and I followed her inside.
“What brings you to New York at this hour?”
Diane stood there, with her suitcase at her feet. My eyes began to focus on the situation around me: the whole Laurel thing seemed like day-old bread and today’s menu featured an Indian recipe I couldn’t pronounce.
“This is a bad time,” Diane said. “We should leave.”
“No, no, not at all… really. I get people dropping in at this hour all the time. Would you like some wine? A cup of coffee? I have Kona.”
“We landed a few hours ago in Newark. It took a while to get our act together. Then we got in a cab, and now we’re here.”
For whatever reason, Spring hid between some cabinets in the kitchen and then poked her head out from the side. When she saw me, she disappeared again. I wasn’t sure if she was playing, or if I frightened her.
I tried to run the numbers, while appearing to pay attention to Diane. When was Spring born?
Diane continued. “Newark is so far away.”
I was in Chicago in June or July, maybe five years ago…
“And a $60 cab ride? Is that normal?”
“Sounds right,” I said, absently. It’s September now. How old is the kid? I eyed the girl again but had no idea how to estimate that kind of thing.
“Good thing you live at the same address. People move around so much. You could be living in Chicago. Well, you couldn’t be, but you get my point. We could’ve been driving around in that taxi all night, I guess.”
Depending on her age, the math would be close…
“Dylan, I finally did what you suggested,” Diane said brightly enough to gain my attention.
“You did?” What the hell had I said this time?
“I’m moving to Manhattan!”
“Hey, good for you.” I didn’t have any memory of ever suggesting that.
“And…” She stopped. “Where’s Spring?”
“She was just…” I pointed to the other side of the kitchen. The little head had disappeared again. “I don’t…”
Spring popped up like a jack-in-the-box. I recoiled.
“Spring, you little nut,” Diane said, laughing. “Don’t run off now, okay?”
Spring nodded.
“Spring, can you at least say hi to Mr. Dylan?”
She looked at me. If she were my daughter, she didn’t look at all like me. She definitely looked more like her mother.
“Quack.”
I looked to Diane for a translation. “I didn’t catch that.”
“She said ‘quack.”
“She speaks duck?”
“She does.”
Spring pointed to the duck on the backpack and then walked away, obviously feeling that we’d communicated enough for the time being.
“When you and I were together in Chicago, you suggested that I come to New York. You said you thought I’d do great here.”
The memory returned. We were having sex at the time. “Oh, yeah. I remember. So, you’ve decided to try it now? You took a while to think things over.”
“Well, a few things came up.” She gestured confidentially toward Spring. “Now was the first good time.”
At that moment, I spotted Laurel’s bra dangling over the back of the couch. Retrieving it at this point could be considered bad form, but the more Diane talked, the less I could focus on what she was saying. With a kid in the kitchen and lingerie on my couch, I was starting to feel dizzy. All the tequila had evaporated from my body and, standing in my robe, I felt like I was at the doctor’s office wearing one of those cover-ups that don’t cover much of what you want them to.
“This is a bad time,” she said again, obviously noticing how distracted I was. “I should have called.”
“No, really, it’s fine.” I walked over to the couch, wrapped the bra into a ball and spotted my pants in front of the TV. “The place is a mess. I was working late. Can’t manage to keep things picked up… or straightened.” Bending to grab the pants, I remembered that I wasn’t wearing anything else. The bend turned into more of a curtsy. “I don’t know how I manage.”
“You know, some coffee would be nice,” she said. “Do you still drink decaf hazelnut at night?”
I turned to her. “How did you remember that?”
She smiled. “You left an impression.”
“What about the duck?” I said, pointing to the kid. “Would she like something?”
Spring frowned.
With her suitcase tucked under the table, Diane sat in one of my kitchen chairs and looked a little more at ease than when she had arrived. She certainly looked a hell of a lot more at ease than I felt.
“Does she talk? When do kids talk? Three or five or something?”
“Oh, she talks, all right. Plenty. Too much sometimes, don’t you?” She smiled at her little girl who had now decided to waddle over and sit on the floor. I started the coffee.
“So, you were saying about the move?”
“Yes. The last time you were in Chicago…”
I had been to Chicago exactly once in five years.
“… you suggested I take a shot here. I just kept thinking about it and fantasizing…that sort of thing. Finally, I sold everything, quit my job and made the plunge. Other than a couple of boxes I shipped, all I have left is what you see.”
Spring pointed again to her backpack with the duck.
“You sold everything?”
“Apartment, car, stuff even my pots and pans. They were old, anyway. I figured the lighter I could travel, the better. I grabbed the things that meant the most, and bought two tickets to New York and a pair of boots for Spring. She had to have red like the duck on her backpack.”
If her luggage was any indicator of income, she hadn’t had much to sell.
“You had a good job, right?” I said. Still watching the kid, I tried to recall Chicago.
“A great job. I loved my job. The coolest. What a hoot.”
“A hoot?” I hadn’t heard
that since…Chicago.
“Oh, yeah. A killer job.”
“And you quit to move here?”
“I figure if I had a killer job in Chicago, I could get a kick-ass job in New York.” She looked to Spring. “Spring, ‘kick-ass’ is one of those things you can’t repeat until you can drive.”
Spring seemed nonplussed by this information.
Diane turned back to me. “The right things happen when something is meant to be.” She might as well have been speaking Swahili for all the sense that kind of thinking made to me. “I’m just so glad I caught you. You’re the only person I know here. I was kinda hoping we could stay the night…unless it’s too much trouble. We can leave any time you want, if it is.”
I don’t know why I knew I was going to say yes, other than it seemed like the right thing to do. It could have been the worn-out suitcase, or the little girl who looked like a toy duck. What was a night or two? I could always go to the office, if I needed to get away. If I met someone and you never knew I could always go to her place. It might even be worth seeing if Diane and I had any sparks left. Hell, she could stay longer if she needed to as long it wasn’t forever.
“Stay the weekend, or more, even. Whatever you need.”
“Oh, that would be great.”
She got up and hugged me, kissing my cheek. I could feel her breasts pressing into me for the second time in 20 minutes.
“Spring, Mr. Dylan says we can stay here.”
This information left Spring unimpressed.
Diane put a hand on my chest. “It won’ t be long just long enough to find a place…”
A place? In Manhattan? That could take forever.
“Oh, I’m so excited! Where are the coffee cups?”
Even showing her where the cups were made me antsy. I could never consider having someone move in even on a trial basis. The only fair thing would be to do what the airlines do and ask all guests to keep articles confined to the overhead bin or the space beneath the seat in front of them.
Diane grabbed two coffee mugs and a plastic Yankees beer cup for Spring. Fortunately, I had some OJ left over from the previous weekend s screwdrivers.
“Spring…. that’s a unique name. How did you come up with that?”
Diane handed me the coffee. For a moment, our fingers touched.
She grinned at her daughter. “You almost had a different name, didn’t you?”
Spring nodded.
“I considered calling her Destiny.”
Destiny? For some reason, the word suggested that my own was about the change and my heart began to beat faster. Destiny? If I’m the father, then fine. I’ll do my part. I don’t walk away from stuff.
“We talked about it, though, and she preferred Spring.”
“She did?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure she talks?”
Spring smirked.
She was an attractive kid, as far as kids were concerned. I had no idea what having a kid would really be like. The closest thing I could compare it to was having a dog. And at least when you got a dog, you could choose the breed you’ve always wanted like a sheepdog or a rare Macedonian Furry Chihuahua. You could select the coat and color to match your décor and the size of the dog based on your square footage.
I watched the kid, as she stared at me from behind her orange juice.
“It’s still so hard to believe that you sold everything to move here.”
“Why?”
“You do realize that most people would consider this to be a tiny bit impetuous, don’t you?”
“People who lack imagination, yes. My parents are both dead now and I don’t have any other family. There was no reason not to come.”
“What about…” I nodded at the kid.
Diane looked at me, confused.
“Spring? Her uh, d-a-d?”
“Oh, him.” She took a sip of her coffee and then watched her daughter negotiate the oversized beer cup. “He s gone.”
I waited for more but nothing came. After a colossal build at least in my own mind that was all she said. As much as I really didn’t want to press, I had to continue. “He walked out on you?”
“Who did what to whom isn’t really the issue. He was B.S.”
“… Bullshit?” I whispered.
“No.” She chuckled. “Before Spring.”
“How long before Spring?”
“Well, obviously there’s a limit to how far before he could be, right?” She sipped her coffee. “I met a guy I thought was the perfect man, Dylan, and thought I fell in love. Then he left. When he did, I didn’t know I was pregnant. Not like that would have made a difference. I wanted the baby, as soon as I found out.” Diane followed the steam wisp from her mug. “You know, it took two months to figure out it wasn’t some viral thing making me throw up?”
“More coffee?” I said. Coming to the realization that Diane’s visit wasn’t about foisting paternity on me was a much bigger kick than if we’d made the Kona instead of the hazelnut.
“Yes, please.”
I took her cup, and our fingers touched again. Her glance felt warm, soothing.
“Now it’s Spring every day!” She said. She looked at her daughter, who was sitting in the corner and beginning to drift off to sleep.
“She must be exhausted,” I said. “I have a second bedroom in the back, if you’d like her to lay her down. And tomorrow, I know these headhunters who…”
“Not tomorrow. Tomorrow, I promised Spring that we would go to the park and see the ducks.”
“Quack, quack, quack…” Spring barely managed to open her eyes.
Diane smiled at her daughter with the kind of smile no one ever saw at the office or a bar. Then, she glanced back in my direction. “You’re welcome to come with us, if you’d like.”
Feeling as though I’d dodged the fatherhood bullet, going to the park seemed like a nice way to mix things up. “What the hell,” I said and then looked at the kid. “Can I say that?”
After Diane and Spring went to sleep in the back bedroom, I picked up the place, checked for any more surprises like panties on the ceiling fan or lip prints on the mirrors, then went to bed. As tired as I felt, I couldn’t sleep and must have stared at the ceiling for at least another hour. It wasn’t the decaf and it wasn’t the scare I had about having a daughter. The thing that really rattled me was that in the bedroom next to me were two people who had abandoned everything to start over. Sure, I could appreciate this in theory, but I couldn’t possibly imagine chucking a successful career for the sake of a fresh beginning. Wasn’t the point to get past the beginning like the salad part of the meal and move on to the grossly overpriced entree?
I don’t know how long I thought about this before falling asleep, but I awoke still wondering the same things. I couldn’t have been more baffled by this than if Diane had told me that she’d just beamed back from Alpha Centauri.
“Quack.”
I opened my eyes. The kid stood next to my bed.
“When are we going to see the ducks?” she said.
“You do talk.”
“Quack.”
“And you quack. Where’s your mom?” I leaned backwards to look at the clock. 9:13. “Oh, shit.”
“Shit.”
“I mean…quack.”
“Quack.”
Hearing noises in the kitchen, Spring darted from my bedroom, while I reached for my robe. Having been caught off guard last night, I had decided to wear a T-shirt and sweatpants just in case.
In the kitchen, Diane removed bagels from a bag that hadn’t been there yesterday. “Coffee? We just got back. Last night, I noticed a great-looking little coffee place just down the street so, voila: two hazelnut lattes and bagels. We were kinda getting hungry. I got up at 6:00 and Spring’s been up since 7:30.”
“6:00? We didn’t go to sleep until 3:00.”
“Oh well, that’s just me. Still on Central Time.”
“They’re an hour earlier.”
> Diane just smiled.
Spring tugged on her mom’s sleeve. “When will we see ducks?”
“We’ll wait for Dylan.”
I was feeling more pressure than I usually felt in this apartment. “As soon as I drink my coffee and have my bagel, we can go.”
Spring didn’t seem satisfied with this answer.
I tilted my head toward her. “Will half a bagel work for you?”
Spring rolled her eyes and walked away. Her approach to life was fascinating. Running the demographic charts in my head, I knew what kind of cereal they ate, what kind of tennis shoes they wore, what they thought about the Internet, and why they preferred dogs over cats two to one. I couldn’t recall anything regarding temperament.
Diane took a sip of her coffee. “You really don’t have to go today, if you don’t want to.”
“No, it could be fun. I haven’t been to see the ducks in a really long time.”
“Spring loves the ducks. Last year, she even said she wanted to be a duck when she grew up.”
“Huh. I think I wanted to be a media tycoon when I was her age.”
Ten minutes later, I’d eaten half a bagel and changed. As we exited the apartment, Jim stepped off the elevator. He watched Diane walk from my place toward him and held the doors. “D-Man, what’s up?” he said in greeting. After Diane passed and could no longer see him, he raised his eyebrows a couple times.
I was still at the apartment door, waiting for Spring to retrieve her backpack. “Hey, Jimbo. How are the boys?”
“Fine…”
Spring trotted into the elevator and stood next to her mother. Jim’s eyebrows nearly flipped over his forehead.
“Jim, this is Diane and Spring. This is Jim, my neighbor and a good friend of mine except when we’re in a karaoke bar. I pretend I don’t know him then.”
Jim kneeled next to Spring. “I used to have three boys your age. Unfortunately, they aren’t anymore.”
“Nice to meet you Jim,” Diane said. “Dylan talked about you last night. You make the monkey sounds, right?”
“That’s me, Mr. First Impression.” He slapped me on the back. “Thanks, buddy.”
We said goodbye to Jim and the elevator doors closed. I’d been so distracted by Jim that I didn’t notice that we’d gotten on the elevator while it was heading up. When I looked over to the panel, I noticed all the buttons were lit and that Spring was hiding behind her mother. She poked her head around long enough to catch my expression, then returned to hiding.
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