Feeling a little better, I sat up. “What happens next?”
“It’s probably going to swell up a bit more.”
“I meant with your evening routine.”
“Oh, that. Spring goes to bed and we read to her. Did you find any books?”
“Spring, do you like Dr, Seuss?” My face felt heavy.
“Yeah!”
“Maybe you can read it to her,” Diane said.
“Me?”
I shrugged. I’d once entertained my colleagues with a dramatic reading of Fox in Socks. I could probably keep a kid amused, as well. Holding the ice to my face, I followed the two of them into their room.
“Every night before bed,” Diane said, “we read two books, and sing a song, and…”
“… water!”
“And we drink a small glass,” Diane eyed the Yankees 32-ounce guzzle cup I’d brought in, “of water and then we do animal impressions. Spring, is it okay if Dylan reads to you instead of Mommy tonight?”
She nodded, and Diane handed me the book.
In spite of the pain in my nose, I thought it would be fun to read the book to Spring. I’d always had a thing for Dr. Seuss. I pulled the chair close to the bed and began Green Eggs and Ham.
“I am Sam. Sam I am.”
“No!”
“What?” Six words in and I had already made a mistake. At least no one was bleeding, or required more ice.
Diane touched my arm. “You’re supposed to do the voices,” she suggested.
“You want voices?”
“Yeah!”
Once a year or so, this could be a lot of fun. “Voices. Okay, here goes.” I cleared my throat, which sent a shot of pain to my injured face. I ignored it.
“Tonight,” I began, trying to imitate Alistair Cooke from my Masterpiece Theatre DVDs, “we will discover a tale of intrigue and woe, as Sam pursues this fuzzy dude, I pointed to his picture, “in a hat to get him to taste the delectable flavors of green eggs and ham.”
Spring seemed pleased and hugged her pillow.
By the time we reached, “I do so like green eggs and ham,” her eyes had started closing even though I could see she was trying to keep them open. She hadn’t had much sleep since flying in from Chicago two nights before, and I assumed Spring was history for the night. Then I learned something important about children: having a routine can mean a lot more to them than their need for sleep. As I closed the book, a cry drifted up from the burrows of Spring’s blanket. “Next…”
Unless she could navigate through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, we were out of stories for the evening.
I shrugged to indicate that I didn’t have anything else in the apartment that was appropriate. Diane rolled her eyes and then pulled a Winnie the Pooh book called Friendship Day out of Spring’s backpack. I don’t know if Diane was giving me a break, or if she was suggesting that my previous performance lacked the proper nuance, but she read this one herself. By the end, Spring seemed to be approaching the off-ramp to Dreamland again.
Yet, her voice still rang out from her pillow. “Song…? ”
Diane looked at me.
“What?” I said.
“Mom, you do it,” Spring said.
I gestured toward Diane. “She wants you to sing.”
Still looking at me, Diane said, “Spring, wouldn’t you love for Dylan to sing to you tonight?” She was delighting in making me feel uncomfortable. The interesting thing was that I was enjoying her doing it.
Spring shook her head. “He doesn’t know how. ”
I mustered up as much of an indignant expression as I could pull off with the ice still pressed to my nose. “Don’t know how? Clearly, you missed the New York Times review of my last shower.” I removed the compress, stretched my neck, then belted out:
New York.
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of....
Spring buried her face in her pillow and I stopped.
Diane laughed. “How about something a little less edgy. Maybe John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt?”
Spring turned back toward us. “Yeah!”
“I don’t really remember the words.”
“Just follow along.”
Diane began to sing:
John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt,
his name is my name, too.
Whenever I go out,
the people always shout,
“There goes John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.”
Daa daa daa daa daa daa daa…
With Spring tooting along, I remembered the daa daa daa part and we repeated the tune more confidently in the second and third go-around. Spring giggled through every refrain, then called for another song, as her routine required two. Diane looked at me and I raised my eyebrows to suggest that I wasn’t about to venture forth on my own here.
“How about The Itsy-Bitsy Spider?”Diane said.
“The Band of Horses version or…”
She chuckled. “Just sing along. ”
As Diane began to sing, the song came back like I was in preschool again. When I remembered some of the hand motions, I abandoned my compress. At the end, my spider did a little break-dancing thing. Before the end of third time through, all of our spiders were showing their stuff. Spring delighted in the songs. At first, I thought it was because we were entertaining her and keeping her up late. Every kid wants to stay up past bedtime that, I remembered. But with each verse of the song and every spider dance move, I could tell that she was pleased with my participation.
“Water, please,” she said, sticking her hand out.
After drinking a few sips there was probably enough water in there to last until her fourth birthday she adjusted her pillow for the next part of the show.
“There’s more?” I said, looking at Diane. It seemed to me that this routine was designed to last until the morning.
“This is the really fun part,” Diane said, winking. “We do animal impressions. I’m guessing you’ll be really good at this.”
“Is there a video camera somewhere? Did my friend Hank put you up to this?”
“Oh, come on, Dylan. You were made for his role.”
I shook my head to deny the fact that I was actually enjoying this. You don’t get too many inner child opportunities when you’re out conquering the world.
“Let me get ready,” I said. I turned around and did some flexes to loosen up and draw out the suspense. Spring giggled. I liked hearing her laugh. Besides, she was young and everything was new, so she was a great audience. I could steal every joke, every impression good or bad and it would work for her because she hadn’t seen it before. “Ready?”
“Yeah!”
I winked at Diane, and then turned around. In my best English accent, which sounds just like my worst English accent, I began.
“Velcome. I am ze famous English actor Georgio Von Heffen-hoof…”
“You don’t sound English.” Diane interrupted. “That’s more like German, right, Spring?”
“German.”
“Before I vaz so rrrudely interrupted… Zis is da famous German actor Hans Van Heffen hoff-er-stein. I vill now do my eem-prrression of the very rare, and almost extinct, Manhattan apartment lee-zard.”
I turned my head to the side and stuck out my tongue, then to the other side. Although it was new to Spring, she looked like she had seen better. She gave me a courtesy laugh anyway.
“Okay, smarty,” I said to her, “your turn.”
I expected a duck waddle. Instead, Spring fell back into her pillow, arms extended to the ceiling, with her tongue hanging out. Staring at the quiet child, I whispered for her to hear, “Let’s leave while her eyes are closed…”
Even with her tongue hanging out, she could holler. “Don’t!”
“Guess what she is?” Diane said.
“I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
“Sleeping polar bear.”
“Nooooooooo,” Spring said.
I gave it another shot. “A hy
pnotized Komodo Dragon.”
She opened her eyes long enough to look at her mother.
“No, honey, you aren’t that, either.”
“I give up.”
“A possum!”
Diane smiled as I thumped my forehead. “Silly me. What was I thinking? Of course, a possum. You do very good animals, Spring.”
“Thank you.” She fell back into her pillow.
It was getting late for a little girl and I felt it best to save my impression of a herd of cows for another night.
Another night? How have I gotten so comfortable with this so quickly? This was Spring and Diane’s third night in my apartment, and somehow I had completely fallen under their influence. What had seemed like an innocent little girl on Friday night had somehow managed to make me go way out of my comfort zone. Singing? Doing funny voices? Impersonating a Manhattan apartment lee-zard? Maybe it was the head injury in the bathroom.
I imagined Hank putting this performance on You-Tube or Billie, or Laurel. Had she really danced with me in the living room only a couple of nights ago?
“You go to sleep, now,” Diane said, kissing Spring on the cheek. “We have a lot to do tomorrow. Good night. I love you.”
“Night. Love you.”
“Good night, Spring,” I said, as I turned toward the door.
“Wait!”
“What’d I do?”
Spring pointed to her cheek.
“She wants you to give her a kiss good night.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why?” Diane said.
I didn’t know why. It felt weird. It was too personal. It made me uncomfortable.
Spring continued to direct me to her cheek.
It was like a dare or one of those things your girlfriend makes you do that you later regret.
Looking at Diane, then the pointing girl, I realized that I couldn’t stand there all night. What’s the big deal? I leaned over and kissed her. Her face seemed so small and her skin almost supernaturally soft.
“Night,” she said.
“Good night,” I whispered.
Chapter 4
Some Weird Consistency
That Monday, I arrived at the office earlier than every other day of every job I’ve ever had. It wasn’t on purpose, I was just up, ate breakfast, saw Diane and Spring getting ready to start their search, and decided to head off to work.
I hadn’t slept well the night before. It had nothing to do with noise or indigestion from squirt cheese. It was the kiss. After Diane had gone to bed, I was still thinking about kissing Spring’s cheek. I had never kissed a child and had never thought about kissing a child. In my mind, kissing children was a parental task. The odd thing was that I had always associated feelings of tenderness with weakness. But after kissing Spring on the cheek, I didn’t feel weak at all. It made me feel strong, as though I was helping her feel safe. With thoughts about this running through my head, I stared at the ceiling unable to sleep. It was as though I had just had the first sip of hot chocolate on a winter morning.
In the park, we’d run into one of those guys who would take a Polaroid for five bucks. I thought it might be nice for Diane to have a picture of the two of them, but Spring insisted that Mr. Jimmy, her new friend who sold hot dogs, join them. And then they decided that the picture was for me. The photo sat on my desk, as I sipped the day’s first cup of office coffee.
After visiting the ducks, we needed to dry off and walked down to the zoo where Spring took a liking to the penguins. When we got home, I showed her how to watch the same penguins using the Internet. She loved zooming the camera in and out. As I watched her delight in this new toy, I got a glimpse at what parents must feel on a regular basis by showing the world to their kids.
“Dylan? What are you doing here so early?” Mr. Mason said, stepping into my office with a file. “You’re hours ahead of the rest of the rats.”
“Morning, Mr. Mason. I just wanted to get an early start today. I have a lot going on.”
“Yes, you do, don’t you. He sat. “After what you did to Waverly last week? I bet his boxers are still in a wad after you stole Crystal Creek piss water. Waverly is a good man… a little pretentious at times, but a good man. And I love kicking his ass. It’ll be good to have Crystal Creek on board. That’s some serious billing. Anyway, I was just going to leave this file on your assistant’s desk. It’s a new account I want you to take a look at. See what you can come up with.” He looked at me and started. “What the hell?”
“What?”
“What happened to your face?”
“Oh. I uh, had a little accident with a cabinet door.”
“You can come up with a better story than that. Keep practicing.”
“Thanks. And I didn’t steal the account. We just have to focus on the market. If Waverly continues to deliver the same product he’s always delivered, his clients will continue to receive the same old crap they’re used to. They need to look at the expanding demographics of twelve to seventeen year-old males. If we can train them early, there’s a whole market there that we can invigorate.”
“We made the sale already, Dylan.” He leaned forward in the chair and pointed to my coffee cup. “Might want to think about switching to decaf.” He looked down and saw the picture on my desk.
“Who’s this?”
“Oh, they’re some friends of mine. This is Diane and the one with the silly grin is her daughter.”
He took the picture from my hands. “Diane is quite attractive and her daughter looks just like her.” He pointed to Mr. Jimmy. “Is this man her… husband?”
“He’s the hot dog vendor. It’s complicated.”
Mr. Mason put the photograph down and looked around my desk, no doubt noticing that there were no other pictures on it unless you counted the Crystal Creek ad or the headshot of the spokesmodel for the gym account I’d just taken on.
“Before my wife died, I loved to take pictures,” Mason said. “I don’t take so many any more just some of the grandkids. Wherever we’d go, I’d have my camera and Tiki her name was Patrice, I always called her Tiki would make fun of me. That was fine. I just wanted more pictures. Heaven only knows why. I have more goddamn pictures, most of them in a box under the steps.” He pulled out his wallet and thumbed through some of the old pictures covered in a bent piece of plastic. “I can’t even remove the cover without damaging this old thing. Look here. This is Tiki and, of course that’s a young me, and that’s our boy, Denny, not long after he was born.”
He held an old black-and-white picture that had to have been taken 40 years ago. In the photo, both he and his wife seemed to say, “Look everybody! It’s a boy!” A young Mason and Tiki held the baby with an uneasy grip, but you could tell that the kid wasn’t going to fall… ever.
“Dylan, these are the things I hope to never forget. No matter what happens, I want to remember Tiki this way.” He held the picture in both hands. “Of course, after she got sick, she wouldn’t let me take any more pictures. And these were all I had. After years of taking pictures, it turned out that I didn’t have nearly enough.”
He put his wallet away. “Dylan, I have some memories that are more important to me than anything I could ever hope to do now. That’s what I’m scared of as I grow older… losing my memory. Inside…” He touched his chest by his heart. “I’ll never lose my Tiki. I hope someday, you can feel the same.”
He paused and shook his head, as though he was uncertain of what had caused his little bit of rhapsodizing. Then, he stood to leave, tapping on the file with a finger. “Dylan, you know that you are appreciated here at Mason Brand, don’t you?”
I started to think that he somehow knew about my dinner on Saturday. This was such an incestuous business. “Yes, sir. Of course I do.”
“And you know that your aggressiveness and ambition are things that I prize, don’t you?”
“You’ve made that very clear, Mr. Mason.”
“Good. I just like to check in every now
and then.” He gestured with the file. “See what you can do for this account.”
I couldn’t recall Mason ever “checking in” before. I was sure it had something to do with Saturday. Had he somehow seen me with the Waverlys in the restaurant, or talking on the street afterward? I prized my discretion, but I was obviously going to have to be more careful. Regardless of the fact that Mason knew I was ultimately going to leave, it wouldn’t do to have him find out before I was ready.
I looked inside the file. The new account was The Magenta Martini, of all places.
“Hey.”
I looked up to find Laurel standing in my doorway. She was wearing a rose-colored skirt and, if I used my imagination, I could almost see through her shirt. Had Mason ever issued an office dress code, this would have been on the “unapproved” side. I liked it. “Hey.”
“Sorry I disappeared on you the other night. I needed to go because that’s what mysterious women do. Besides, you were kinda unconscious.”
“Sorry. It had been an intense week. Come on in. You wore me out and it took me an hour to clean up. I kept pulling underwear out of surprising places.”
Laurel glanced back to the cracked door and then moved closer, standing only inches away from my crotch. I set Mason’s file over the Polaroid.
“Does it upset you that I left my bra and panties at your place?”
Panties? Where are they?“Not at all. You smell wonderful, by the way.” I closed my eyes and my head tipped back. Panties?
“Thanks. Maybe we can do it again?”
“I loved that trick you did against the wall with your leg over your head…”
“I’d love to show it to you again sometime…” Laurel leaned forward, letting her blonde hair fall in my face. It was just my imagination, but I could have sworn that she still smelled like sex; the same smell from Friday night.
“I have to get back to work because,” she whispered, “that’s what mysterious women do at work. I had a grrrrrreat time.”
My breathing had accelerated to teenage proportion. I was still getting my heart rate down when Billie stuck her head in.
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