Mitch had never wanted kids of his own. He felt too damaged by his own upbringing for that. When his niece, Sophie, was born, something in him changed—a small piece of that resistance broke, and he doted on her and did all the things that the man who’d donated half her DNA never did. At the end of the day, though, he would go home to his apartment, and resume his solitary life. Every few weekends, he’d take the girl for a couple of days while his sister, Violette, went to listen to her new hippie jam band drummer boyfriend lose the tempo. And then one weekend, she declared she was going on the road, and left him with the girl and a power of attorney. He’d never wanted kids of his own, but now that he had one, he was dead set not to screw it up.
He smiled. “And I’m happy to see Sophie.” He looked the girl in the face and asked, “Did you have a good day today?” She nodded and replied with an “Uh-huh.”
The woman who’d greeted him finished fastening the other child’s diaper, stood him up on the changing table and pulled his pants up. “Sophie always has a good day,” she said over her shoulder. “She is a perfect child.”
“I don’t believe it!” he said. “Are you sure you’re my Sophie? You’re a changeling, aren’t you!”
“Nooooooo! I’m Sophie,” the girl insisted. She giggled at the suggestion she wasn’t the same child he’d dropped off that morning.
He sidled over to the day care operator, Khadija, and pulled a check from his shirt pocket. “I’m sorry it’s late. Thanks for being so patient.”
She smiled. Mitch always wanted to mention how much she looked like the supermodel Iman, but he figured the compliment wouldn’t be appropriate. Her hijab and modest but practical clothes told him that he should keep his thoughts on her appearance to himself—even if he merely wanted to be complimentary. Sophie’s grandmother would have been scandalized to know that Mitch had placed her in a residential day care run by a Somali Muslim woman, but he knew there wasn’t anywhere better. Khadija was amazing with the kids—it was obvious she honestly loved them—and her own children were the politest, best behaved kids he’d ever met. He could do a hell of a lot worse for much more money than she charged.
“Thank you, Michel,” she said. “I know you’re always good for it.” She squeezed his hand and turned to write a receipt for him. He didn’t need one, but she did it every time anyway.
Her assistant helped the child she’d been getting cleaned up off the table and turned to Mitch. She grinned at him and grabbed a piece of paper from the table. A bit of glitter fell off as she held it out to Sophie. “Do you want to show your uncle what you drew today?” Sophie pushed and scrambled to get out of Mitch’s arms so suddenly he almost dropped her. She landed like a gymnast and bounded over to grab her picture. She spun around with it and held it up, more glitter casting off in the air like faerie dust.
“It’s a castle!” she said.
“A princess castle?”
“No, silly. Bampire!”
Mitch straightened up, the top of his head brushing the ceiling. Khadija and Samira smiled at him knowingly. “The Count. On Sesame Street. He’s a vampire. I don’t let her watch—”
Khadija handed him his receipt and laughed. “She’s a very special child, Michel. Whatever you are doing, keep doing it.” He grinned and mutely accepted her compliment. Whatever he was doing, he was barely hanging on. He suspected at least half, or more, of her happiness and well adjustment was due to Khadija. He thanked her, and asked Sophie if she was ready to go.
“No. Wanna stay and play.”
“But we’ve got to get home.” He pulled the shopping bag around and opened it up. “We’ve got to get this pineapple in the fridge.”
“Can I have some now?” she shouted.
“At home. Can you say, ‘see you Monday’?”
She turned and waved at the women. “See you Monday!” She ran over and gave each of them a hug. Mitch said his goodbyes and led her upstairs. They slipped into their shoes and out the door. Outside, he wished he had a car with air conditioning. The walk home was going to be long with her little legs. She was already sweating, and her badly cut bangs were plastered to her forehead.
“Carry me,” she said, raising her arms.
“We’re not even out of the driveway.”
“Carry me. Pleeeeeease!” He couldn’t say no to her. Although he could barely breathe in the humidity and he smelled like B.O. and spilt espresso, he hefted her up and started toward home. She lay her head on his shoulder and traced the company logo on his shirt with a tiny finger while they walked. As hot and sticky and stinky as it was, he loved these moments, and “accidentally” took a wrong turn so the walk took just a little longer.
Not once along the way home did he think about Liana or the future. That exact moment was all that mattered.
3
At the end of her shift, Liana went to the employee locker room to change out of her smock and company T-shirt. Although she took her uniform home with her every night, she didn’t like to go out looking like she was coming from work. She pulled a snug Les Discrets shirt over her head and shut her locker. A coworker stuck her head into the room and said, “Hey, Li. Mike wants to see you before you go.” Liana spun the dial on her locker and asked if he said what it was about. The girl from the customer service desk shrugged and grunted a “Huh uh.” Liana slung her bag over her shoulder and made her way to the manager’s office.
Inside, Mike sat at his micro-desk, piled high with papers and odds and ends from around the store. He looked up from what he was doing and waved her in. “Have a seat.” He gestured toward a metal folding chair opposite him, also stacked with papers. Liana smirked and stood. It was a running joke that he invited everyone to sit in a chair that no one had actually sat upon for years. It was rumored, the first person to actually have the guts to move the papers and take a seat would be the Once and Future King of Wholesome Market. To date, no one had ever heard the strains of “Carmina Burana” coming from the vicinity of Mr. Niles’ office.
“What’s up, boss?” Liana said.
He leaned back and raised an eyebrow. “I had a very irate customer come in today to complain about you. He said you were rude and didn’t seem interested in doing your job as much as flirting with boys.”
“He said that? ‘Flirting with boys’?”
Mike nodded his head. “Indeed he did. He was very concerned with the level of attention you devoted to ‘recreation,’ while ‘manning the till,’ as he also put it. He was very tightly wound. Said you didn’t seem up to the responsibility of handling people’s money and that he didn’t feel comfortable letting you ring him through. This last observation he based on your appearance, incidentally, not your social interests. He was concerned you might frighten...” He waved a hand in the air dismissively. “I don’t know. I stopped listening at that point. I assured him that I would speak with you about your performance just so he’d fuck off out of my office. He smelled like bologna.”
“Okaaaay.”
“So, was he cute?”
“What do you mean, ‘cute’? If he came in here to complain, you saw him.”
“No, no. The guy you were flirting with.”
Liana chuckled and nodded. “Oh, him. Yuuup. You know I don’t give my number to lamers.”
Mike closed a file on his desk and stood. “Glad to hear it. Now, do you know what you did wrong here today?”
“I didn’t ask the cute guy if he had a cute brother for you?”
Mike pointed a finger at her and said, “Exactly! Next time, think of me. I sit in this little box all day and barely get to meet anybody, except douchebags like that guy. You’re not the only gal around here who has needs.” He wagged a finger at her in mock scorn. “Well, I guess that’s that then. We’ve spoken; you are officially admonish-ed. See you tomorrow.”
Liana tilted her head to the side. She knew she could count on Mike to have her back. When the aging hippies who shopped in their store got upset that she wasn’t dressed in a paisley crepe
dress and stinking of patchouli, he always defended her. More than that though, Mike had been her guardian angel ever since rescuing her from a pair of popped collar and beach muscle bros who thought they saw Satan walking down the street and felt it was time to do the Lord’s work. Or what they thought was the Lord’s work, anyway. Mike came across her lying in the street after the pair had worked her over with an ax handle and work boots. He helped her into his car and took her to the emergency room. Her attackers had done a number on her face and ribs, and broken one of her arms. She said she hadn’t had the chance to even put up a fight. They hit her from behind with a bottle. She had no health insurance. Mike worked some kind of magic, hiring her at the grocery store while she was still in the hospital and backdating her paperwork. He might not have saved her from the beating, but she felt in every way she could imagine that he had saved her life. And he was still defending her, if for no other reason than that he knew when to send the elevator back down to help other people who were where he had once been.
“Ciao, boss!” Liana waggled her fingers and blew him a kiss. She wandered out of the store into the sun.
• • •
Feeling blissed out on take-out tikka masala and red wine, she reclined on the sofa reading the new barrio noir by Gabino Iglesias while King Woman’s singer howled from her record player speakers like the lovechild of Glenn Danzig and P.J. Harvey. In the middle of her near-Zen chill, she almost missed the sound of her cell phone ringing on the kitchen counter. She considered letting it go to voicemail until she recalled the cute, funny guy she’d given her number to that afternoon. He’d been coming to her store for weeks just to talk to her. She could tell by the odd assortment of things he always bought—no one needed that much chutney salsa and lime mango shave butter—and she’d been waiting nearly as long for him to ask for her number. She stumbled off the sofa toward the kitchen counter to answer the call before the robot woman who lived in her phone answered and got to him first. “Keep away from him, you bitch!”
She snatched the phone off the counter and almost swiped the screen in the wrong direction, sending him right into the clutches of her virtual competition. She answered and said, “Hello?” trying to control her sudden breathless excitement.
“Uh, hi. This is Mitch LeRoux... We talked today at—”
“Hey, Michel. What took you so long to call?” Liana glanced up at the clock on her microwave. It had been almost nine hours since she gave him her number. He was right in the zone between not wanting to seem desperate and unable to wait. That made her heart flutter a little. She’d almost phoned him twice since getting home, but chose instead to give it a full day to see if he called first. She was relieved he had; it allowed her to maintain her mystery for a little while longer.
“I actually thought I’d get your voicemail. I figured... I don’t know.”
“That I wouldn’t be a lame-o homebody?”
“That’s not what I meant!”
She laughed. “It’s okay. That’s pretty much what I am, despite appearances. I hope that’s not a disappointment.”
“Not at all. It’s pretty much who I am too.”
“We’re two boring peas in a pod. Perfect couple!” She held her breath waiting for him to reply, feeling certain she’d taken the banter a step too far and entered the realm of overly attached crazy-person in record time. She might as well have told him she downloaded his picture off the store’s security cam so she could make it her new phone wallpaper. He’s totally not going to think you’ll murder him in his sleep so he can be yours forever!
“Ha! Should we pick a wedding date, or go on a first date?”
She let out the breath she was holding and laughed. “Let’s start slow. Maybe we can just go to a few open houses.”
“Perfect. You want to get dinner first?”
The heroic quantity of lamb she’d already eaten made a dinner invitation sound less appealing than running off to a justice of the peace with a complete stranger, but she understood that eventually, yes, she would feel hunger again. Best to plan ahead for such occasions. “Sounds good to me.”
“You want to meet in Kendall? There’s a couple of new places that have opened there with tremendous beer menus.”
She hesitated, wanting to make a joke about being swept off her feet on a white horse. But then it occurred to her, that in all the times she’d watched Michel leave her store, she’d never once seen him walk out to the parking lot to get in a car. He always headed over the overpass in front of her store toward what she realized now was the bus stop. Normally, Liana didn’t care whether her humor, appearance, or opinions were off putting. It was how she survived in the liminal space between the different cultures she straddled. But once in a while, she met someone she didn’t want to have to make scale her walls to prove himself. On occasion, she wanted to be approachable and easy to like.
“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll pick you up day after tomorrow at seven. I got a couple of advance tickets to a sneak preview of that new witch movie. Sound good?”
“Sounds great,” he said. Although he sounded enthusiastic about the date and the movie, when he gave her his address it was halting, and he seemed guarded. Liana didn’t wonder why she went on a lot of first dates, but not as many second or third. She liked being in the driver’s seat. Had as long as she’d been able to reach the pedals both figuratively and literally. A lot of guys were put off by that. It was something she was used to. But this guy seemed different. She hoped Mitch could handle someone who liked to stand beside, not behind. She really liked him so far.
She hung up the phone and proceeded to stare at the same paragraph in her book for forty minutes because she was day dreaming about the night after next.
4
Mitch peeked out the window at the car that had pulled up in front of his place. He had no sense of cars. To him, they were all the same, except for the ones that were built to stand out, and even then, he only knew them by appearance, not performance or spec. He couldn’t tell what the difference under the hood was between something that had a V8 versus a Hemi—he wasn’t even sure what a Hemi was, although he knew the word referred somehow to engines—but when Liana parked hers, somehow the car seemed appropriate. It looked like an extension of her personal style more than just a thing to get from point A to point B. He couldn’t place it other than to say it was mid-sized and classic looking, if a little road weary, like she’d driven it out of a black and white movie set in the desert. Then she stepped out, and he lost his breath. She wore a tight black scoop neck shirt, matching jeans, and tall black boots. If she’d had lighter skin and a Betty Page hairdo instead of her bouncy afro, she’d be a dead ringer for Tura Satana. She looked like she didn’t just own the car she’d pulled up in, but the whole street, and maybe every other god damn thing on it too. She strode up the walk, and he disappeared from the window to answer the door before she could ring the bell. If it seemed anxious, too bad. To hell with posturing. He hadn’t felt this excited and anxious since the parole board said “Yes.”
His heart beat fast and his guts were in a clench. His pulse was racing because of the girl at the door, but his nerves were driven by the one playing behind him on the floor. Although she went to day care, he hadn’t ever left Sophie alone with a sitter at night. Khadija wasn’t available to watch her, so he’d asked the girl next door, Meghan. She wasn’t ideal, but her mother, Faye, kept telling him that she was available to sit, explaining that she did it all the time for other kids, and offering him references. He’d never taken her up on it because he was actually a homebody, like he’d joked on the phone with Liana. Not being networked into a mommy’s group or the public schools yet, he had no idea how to go about finding another sitter. Sophie would be fine, he told himself. For Christ’s sake, Meg lives next door. She’s not a stranger. She was only fifteen and he’d seen her more than once behaving irresponsibly with her friends, but that was what fifteen-year-old girls did, right? He tried to dial his anxiety down as h
e opened the door. Chances were fifty-fifty that once Liana saw Sophie, and he explained that he was more or less a single parent, their date would end right there on the doorstep. There is no “more or less.” You are a single parent, he told himself. Mitch didn’t intend to be dishonest about his obligations, but he wanted to start on his best foot before laying out all the obstacles to his being in a relationship. Maybe once he told her he was an ex-con, she’d forget all about him being responsible for a kid.
He opened the door. She said, “Sorry, I’m early,” before he was able to invite her in.
“It’s all good. I just need to get my shoes on. Come on in.” He stepped aside, revealing the four-year-old on the floor surrounded by her off-brand interlocking blocks. She wanted Legos, but they were too expensive, so he gave her what he could and hoped she’d be happy with second best. Of course, she was. At this point in her life, close was good enough.
“Who’s this?” Liana asked.
“Liana, meet Sophie. She’s my niece.” My world.
“Your niece? Did I just screw up? Is this the right night?”
“No, no. You didn’t mess anything up. We have a date tonight. Sophie is my niece, but... she lives with me. The babysitter’s in the kitchen getting dinner ready. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. If you want to go to the movie without me—”
Liana put a hand on his chest and shoved gently. Instead of taking the escape hatch he’d opened, she closed the door behind her and got down on her knees on the ratty carpet next to the girl and cooed to her about her hair.
Come to Dust Page 2
