Summer of My Amazing Luck

nine

The next day was my appointment with Podborczintski. This time Lish had agreed to look after Dill, which was a big relief. It was almost exciting, like going out. Going out on my own, even to the dole. In the lobby I passed Terrapin hauling a small dead tree through the side door. She was building a shrine out of papier-mâchéand chicken wire. She needed the space in the lobby because her apartment was too tiny. The shrine was supposed to be a tree with a kind of shelf around the bottom. It was her contribution to the Homebirth Network’s march at the legislative grounds. The tree was the tree of life, and the shelf was there for gifts. Her kids were playing cat’s cradle and arguing about something. Terrapin was frowning at them. The chicken wire wasn’t doing what it was supposed to.

“No Dill?” she asked.

“No Dill,” I replied.

When I got to the welfare office, I walked through the doors with ease, no stroller to manoeuvre, and I marched up to the desk of the first officer like an old hand and said, “Case number 5040388920, ten-fifteen appointment with F. Podborczintski, sir.” I clicked my shoe against the other one and brought my hand to my head in a salute.

“Cute.” The woman behind the desk was not amused. “What time did you say your appointment was?”

Without having to worry about Dill squirming in my arms or crawling off on the wrong coloured line I was able to stand perfectly still and stare into this woman’s eyes.

But I felt kind of stupid. I had made what I thought was a bold move, but I didn’t know exactly what to do next. “Ten-fifteen” I said.

The woman looked at her watch and said, “You’re late.”

I glanced at the big caged clock on the wall. “It’s not even 10:20. I’ll have to sit and wait for ages, anyway,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m late,” I added, suddenly feeling like an eight-year-old kid.

“I don’t need attitude from people like you.” The woman’s head quivered while she spoke.

Attitude! Hadn’t I just apologized? “Hey, we’re here to worry about my needs, not yours, hey hey,” I muttered, feeling like a moron, like a failed stand-up comedian. I was only trying to be funny, even friendly, but our senses of humour weren’t gelling right then.

“The yellow line,” she hissed. This time her head bobbed and her jaw clenched and two white spots appeared on her cheeks.

I followed the yellow line, past the bulletproof glass shielding the cashiers, into the holding area. I thought of the white-capped mountains of Colorado and sunshine and the open highway. Sitting in the holding area, I overheard two guys speaking in French. Then their names were called by a man in a suit. I overheard bits of their conversation. They were applying for emergency money.

“… fuckin’ wet here, had to sleep in the truck … broke down in Kenora … had to use our gas money for repairs …”

“Alright. Your names are Jean—”

“We’re trying to get to Vancouver … work there … we’re from New Brunswick.”

The dole worker in the suit told them to come with him. Then he said, “Oh, I’ll take one of you at a time.”

Poor guys.

“Ah merde …” One of the guys said something to the other in French. The dole worker stopped him and said, “No consulting. This way, please.”

If their stories were exactly the same they’d be made to do lumpy labour, maybe lugging dead cows around a slaughterhouse or filling up potholes, maybe something to do with the flood, for a day or two, stay at the Sally Ann until they had enough gas money to get the hell out of Winnipeg.

The woman next to me had on mustard-coloured stretch pants and a tank top that read “Life’s a Bitch and Then You Die.” She jerked her head at the two guys and said, “Bullshitters.”

I didn’t say anything. Nobody wants to be associated with any of the other welfare bums in the building. This is one of the harder parts of the job of being on the dole. It requires complete denial. You must be still and patient.

Eventually Podborczintski called me into his little office. I noticed he had a new piece of art on his wall. It was a crayon drawing of a boat and a box and a tree and looked like it must have been done by his grandchild. He looked old enough to have grandchildren. I’m sure he could positively identify the father of each one, too.

We did our usual dole chat. No, I hadn’t found out who Dill’s father was. No, I hadn’t made any money in any way since my last appointment. No, I hadn’t received any gifts of money from my family. The only shocking thing about the meeting happened at the end. Podborczintski told me he was sorry about my mother dying. He told me he was trying his best to help unfortunate people like me. He had a daughter himself and would be devastated if ever she had to turn to social assistance to support her children. He said he wished he could be the father to all these poor children, to show them love, a future, a male role model that they so desperately need. I didn’t know what to do, so I tried to change the subject.

“That’s a nice picture you got. By the way.”

“What? Oh, that. Yes, yes, isn’t it beautiful? You see, that right there illustrates the potential these children have to turn the ugly reality of their lives into something beautiful. Lucy, I hope you recognize that your child, despite his random arrival in a world of poverty and absent fathers, knows that he is special, that he is loved, and capable of making change, of creating beauty from the mess around him.”

“Oh, yes.” I shifted around in my chair. “Are we done?” I asked him.

“Oh, yes, yes. Wait. I’ll have to schedule a home visit. I’ll be dropping in sometime in the next couple of weeks. Home visits are a necessary component of my job. They are put in place to allow for a more precise assessment of the client’s needs and to ensure that nothing — well … I imagine you know the routine.” Suddenly Podborczintski seemed awfully tired.

He smiled and stared off toward his window. If Podborczintski was planning a home visit I’d have to be home and not traipsing around in Colorado with five children and a crazy woman looking for a fire-eating street performer. It was a problem.

I cleared my throat and asked, “Can’t we make a specific time for the appointment? I’m not always at home, I’m outside a lot. Because I have lung problems and the rain is very good for them. You see.”

“I’m sorry, Lucy, but the nature of home visits is such that they allow for a random, unplanned visit. We need to know that there is no, how shall I say …”

I nodded quickly. Podborczintski was sparing me the details, and I was sparing him the embarrassment of reciting them.

He quickly added, “Also, we need a look at the floor plan of your apartment to verify that you have, indeed, two bedrooms and so on.”

“Right. OK,” I said.

You know that expression gulping air. That’s what I did when I got out of the dole building. Really, I stood on the street and gulped air. God, life could get complicated.

Before I got back to Half-a-Life, it had started to rain. Sing Dylan was outside with a shovel, trying to dig what looked like a sloped ditch away from his basement window. This time Sarah wasn’t helping him. I asked Sing Dylan where she was, and he told me she had gone to apply for a part-time job at the carnival that was coming to town. To prove to her social worker that she was productive and deserved to get her son back, she had to apply for a certain number of jobs per day. He pronounced it carney val, with a rolled r, so at first I didn’t get it.

When I got upstairs to Lish’s apartment I noticed it was really quiet, and Lish’s apartment is rarely quiet, not even at night, especially not at night. I knocked on the door. Nothing. I checked and it was open. It was dark in the hallway, so I groped around for the light switch. The light came on and there they were: Lish, Hope, Maya (home from school for lunch), Alba, Letitia and Dill all dead, slaughtered, with streaks of red food colouring coming from their mouths and their eyeballs bulging grotesquely, unblinking. I found out later that Dill had fallen asleep on the floor, and his habit of sleeping with his eyes half open had inspired the girls to mount this production. Lish had-been forced to go along with it for added effect. Her hair looked great splayed out over the kitchen linoleum. Funny, yeah, but murder has never sat well with me. So my initial gasp was really authentic and the girls were tickled pink.

Anyway, Lish got up and told me we were going to a party that night, come hell or high water. We were stepping out. Teresa had offered to babysit, so “youse guys can get pissed for a change,” and had even offered me a dress to wear for the evening. The party was at the home of a friend of a friend of another friend of one of Lish’s nighttime paramours. Apparently it was some kind of film wrap-up thing and Graham Greene might even show up. Teresa told me that in exchange for babysitting I had to ask someone about the chances of her getting hired as a flagger on any upcoming shoot.

Teresa took Dill and the girls an hour before we were actually leaving because, she told us, the time spent getting ready, preparing, dressing, preening and talking about getting laid is the best part of any party, really. The actual party is usually a bore, and odds are you don’t get laid.

It took me about five minutes to decide not to wear Teresa’s red fake silk dress and to wear instead my super tight jeans and black t-shirt. Hopefully Teresa wouldn’t see me leave. I’d have to crumple the dress up a bit and blow cigarette smoke on it and put some of my blonde hairs and maybe a smudge of lipstick on it. Watching Lish, on the other hand, prepare for this party, was another story. She did take an hour to get ready. First of all, she had to find her black lipstick and that took fifteen minutes. It took her about half an hour to comb through her hair, a concession she only makes when going to parties. Then she changed her mind about a dozen times about what she wanted to wear. First, it was her ripped up underwear look, pantyhose, nightgown, with leopard skin fake fur vest and knee-high red rubber rain boots. Then she thought that was too flip and people like Graham Greene would think she was insane. So she changed into a floor-length shimmery black skin-tight velvet dress with buttons down the front, and added black gloves up to her elbow and put on her square-toed black shoes. This was much more elegant and mysterious-looking, but she looked like an eel or a skindiver or something. Plus, the rolls around her middle stuck out. Finally she settled on a pair of black tights and a huge green loosely-knit sweater and her red rubber boots, because we’d probably have to walk back after the buses had stopped running. She slapped her spider hat on, of course, and splashed patchouli and rose water all over her neck. I have a feeling she put some on her crotch when she went to the can, but who knows. I would have if I had been her, but I wasn’t her and I didn’t think any guy would even notice me, let alone get close enough to my crotch to smell it. I had the impression this Graham Greene guy was more refined. She also managed to find all fifteen bracelets for her arms. Even though she could have been one bright green and red smelly, jangly mess with crows’ feet and belly flab, she wasn’t. She was beautiful. Then, she started to cry out of the blue, and I thought, Oh god, why is she crying now? But before I could say anything, Lish said, “Luce, don’t worry, I just like the way I look right after I cry and I usually feel more in control, funnier and more, you know, reckless. Crying releases some kind of bravado inside me. Plus my lips go puffy and my eyes sort of shine.”

“Oh. Kay, cry your head off then. But we should go soon.”

“Yeah, yeah, I have to cry for at least a good ten minutes for the right effect. And it has to be serious open-mouthed pathetic crying. So, okay, here goes.”

While Lish cried I stared at myself in the mirror. I looked like a wide-eyed kid going to her first mixed-sex party. I was hanging around with some kooky older mother who had to cry before we could leave. I had left my child, my child, with a woman whose last name I didn’t even know. Some hot shot actor guy was going to be at the party but I knew he would not talk to me or notice me. Tight jeans looked bad on me. Loose fit would have been better. That’s it. I looked like a reject from the ’seventies.

“’Kay, Luce, I’m done. Are you ready?” Lish definitely looked puffier and her eyes shone. For a moment I imagined her and Graham Greene as my parents: giving me a big pile of crackers and then dashing upstairs for the nearest bedroom, the house pet rubbing against my leg and whining for my crackers. I’d kick him.

“Yeah. I’m ready.”

I drank way too much at the party. Lish shone like a star, charming everyone, being smart and funny. She knew how to talk to men so that they talked back. The guys at this party were not like Joe or Sing Dylan or Rodger or any of the guys she brought back to her apartment. They wore sweaters that were pastel-coloured and drank beer from glasses. They felt good laughing and talking with a wacky single welfare mother. I didn’t think any of them would ever marry women like us, or even date us, but a little drunken flirtation — maybe even sex — away from their real lives was okay. For them, stretch marks were like jock straps or Jack Daniels or facial hair, or ejaculation: a little benchmark on their way to becoming real men. “Oh yeah,” they’d say, “I’ve had sex with a woman who’s had kids. I’ve fucked a mother!” I wondered what they thought might happen; that their penis might get lost inside like a surgeon’s rubber glove accidentally left behind in the patient’s body?

Pillar told me that Joe woke up one morning and his penis had swollen up like a turnip — like an S-shaped turnip with bubbles. He freaked. He screamed at her, “What did you do to me? This is my dick!!!! This is my life, my future, this is grotesque!!!” Pillar made the mistake of laughing all day about it. Even before they found out it was only a wasp bite, actually three of them, and not some terrible disease. Apparently he’d been drinking red wine all night before going to bed and getting stung and that’s why he hadn’t woken up. Before he got to the doctor he had said, repeatedly, I am very concerned about this, you know, very concerned about this. And that would set Pillar off all over again. She told us she actually wet her pants laughing, but she felt it was worth it.

Like I said, I drank way too much. I remember hearing Lish telling some guy we were hitting the road in search of a man she once knew, and who was the father of her twins. I remember him saying, “My goodness,” and asking her to excuse him, he needed another beer. I had the feeling we were becoming cartoon characters in that place: Lish was trying to make her life seem funny and reckless, charming and dangerous. Sexy. Maybe it was, I don’t know. Graham Greene didn’t talk to us at all. But a lawyer did. Well, he talked to me. I think Lish terrifed him.

“But you look too young to have a kid,” he said to me in some kind of backhanded compliment.

“I am.”

“Oh, ha ha, you are, good one. I’m sure you’re capable of raising a child, but …”

I had the feeling his only idea of a mother was his own and the mother of his own children, a woman who was probably right now administering Tempra or something, chasing out monsters, maybe getting sloshed in front of the tube wondering why her husband had to work so much and thinking of her lost youth. I didn’t know if he had a wife or kids, but I was sure he’d had a mother. Mothers you can be sure of, fathers, well … they’re the kind of people whose heads always get chopped off in pictures.

I found out that this man’s name was Hartley Weinstein of Weinstein, Weinstein and Vrsnick. I wish that he could have come right out and said, “I want to fuck you,” because that is obviously what he did want. He didn’t talk to the other people there his age, other professionals, film people, people he knew from work, people who knew him, people who wouldn’t fuck him.

At first I felt sorry for his wife, I just knew he had to have one, and then I felt mean. I thought, well, she could be all those women who stare at me and Lish in the rain, with our Safeway bags and our secondhand clothes and our many children and our inferior strollers and our lack of men and cars. I stopped feeling sorry for her and decided to fuck her husband just for revenge. Then I felt sad with a really big feeling of wanting a boyfriend, some guy my age in jeans and runners, all wiry and muscular, with his arm around me, giving other guys the evil eye, carrying a picture of me, and Dill, I guess, in his wallet, and throwing me over his shoulder, throwing me onto a bed and making love to me in a bed. Making Love to me in a Bed and then sleeping with his muscular arm lying across my stomach, and his hair in my face.

This was my thought as I got into Hart’s Ford Aerostar. He chucked the kid’s car seat in the back, thinking I was too drunk to notice, I guess. Stupidly he held my hand as he drove and then all I could think about was my dad holding my hand on the way to The Waffle Shop. My dad had big brown hairy hands with chewed nails. Hart had narrow white bony hands that didn’t seem much bigger than mine. His nails looked crisp and even. He had tassel shoes and the heel of one kind of slipped off his foot when he had it on the gas pedal. He mentioned something about the farmers getting enough rain this summer. The thing was this guy Weinstein wasn’t really that much older than me. Really, he told me, he was only twenty-four, which made him only six years older than me. He told me that he didn’t think he approved of welfare. I had no idea where we were going. He seemed interested in coming to my place. More slumming I guess. Too cheap to get a room. Wife at home. Why not. Fuck the Rich Than Eat them.

By the time we got to Half-a-Life, I had gained a more positive perspective on the whole thing. In fact, I couldn’t stop laughing. Hart looked nervous about me laughing. He tried to chuckle in the spirit of things, but he sounded nervous. He said, “You’re crazy, aren’t you?” in a voice mixed with disbelief and appreciation and a tinge of hostility. He sounded like an actor doing a first reading. I realized he wanted me to be crazy, nutty; making up for poverty with joie de vivre and skid row toughness. And tenderness, you know the type. Wise beyond my years. Street-smart, but still yearning for love in all the wrong places. Hollywood. We managed to sneak past Teresa’s place. I couldn’t exactly be crazy and tough and tender and generally fucked up and not caring, just enjoying the desperate edge of poverty, and not needing anyone — or so I tried to tell myself — with a ten-month-old baby on my hip. Besides, Dill was probably fast asleep on Teresa’s living room floor anyway and why wake him up? This was going to be the first time I’d had sex in a bed. Then I started laughing all over again.

Hart took off his shoes at the door and promptly stepped on a hard block and then another. Then he stepped on another and said, “What the heck?” What I wanted to do right then was sit down at the kitchen table with Lish and have a good laugh. At that point Hart might have welcomed it as well. But Lish was still stranded at the party, she’d have to make her own way home, and somehow I knew she’d do it with a lot more class. Hart and I stood smiling at each other. Then he walked down the hall to the bathroom and I ran to my bedroom and chucked the diapers, clothes, toys and books off my bed and onto my floor.

I heard the toilet running. I yelled, “Jiggle the handle!” but I don’t think he heard me. If it kept running it would eventually run all over the floor and Sing Dylan would have to fix it. I went into the hall to yell it again and I saw him in the light of the bathroom for a brief moment before he switched it off and headed my way in the half-darkness of the hallway. He wore a gleaming white t-shirt and black socks pulled up mid-calf. He had removed his glasses and put water in his hair to slick it back. My heart sank. He’d looked better at the party. Then again, I probably had too. He grinned and rubbed his hands together and said, “Ready or not.” Then for a brief second I envied his wife sitting at home on the couch alone, or lying down with the baby. She’d be relieved he was getting his rocks off with me, and not with her, and the joke was on me! I smiled sweetly at Hart, overcome with sadness really, and led him by his little hand to my messy bedroom. Then I lay there stating at the ceiling and thinking about Dill.

And my toilet, which was still running. Hart rubbed his black sock against my bare foot and then ran his big toe up my shin to about my knee. Unfortunately he spoke. “You hot little tomato you.” I smiled sweetly again. I closed my eyes and thought about my non-existent nineteen-year-old boyfriend with the muscular arms and the jeans and the picture in his wallet poking out of a hole in the back pocket of his jeans. Hart started rubbing my belly like I was a kid with a stomachache (which come to think of it I was, getting there, anyway) and then moved his hand down to my pubic hair, hesitated for one brief dramatic moment and plunged one of his skinny white fingers into my vagina. Sigh. That area taken care of for the time being, he proceeded to move up to my breasts. Like switching on a car. Ignition, wipers, radio, okay we’re ready to go!

I could see him with a long pointer pointing to a pie on the blackboard. Attend to bottom half of woman, then, moving the marker, from there proceed to top half, maintaining pressure on bottom, until all lights on dash are on. Contact! Proceed to drive. He started to kiss his way up from my belly-button to my right breast, stopping briefly to lick the hard flat area in between my breasts. I wondered if Dill had had trouble going to sleep over at Teresa’s. Hart pulled my hand and steered it in the general direction of his dick and then demonstrated how he wanted me to move my hand. Standard. See chart. Back to the breast. His tongue wrapped itself around my nipple and one of his hands moved up to squeeze the wide base of my breast.

“HOLY SHIT!!!!! WHAT THE HEEEELLL!!!” Suddenly Hart was hollering.

By the dim light of the street lamp shining into my bedroom window I saw Hart’s face, lifted up off my breast, white, dripping, covered in milk. Dill’s milk. He looked like a kitten stopping for a breath while drinking from a big bowl of cream. Warm milk dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. A little geyser shot out from my nipple for a few seconds and then petered out to a few drops. They sat poised, shimmering and white, pure, on the very tip of my pink nipple, with no place to go. Hart’s hot tomato had sprung a leak.

“For Christ’s sake,” Hart spluttered. He got up and stumbled to the bathroom. I rolled over and buried my face in my pillow and laughed and laughed and shook, trying to muffle my laughter. From the bathroom Hart yelled, “Jesus, thanks a lot, I can’t believe you’re laughing!”

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine!” I yelled back and then laughed really hard. After a minute or two I got up and got dressed. I noticed the sun coming up. The sun! I could hear Hart struggling with the toilet handle. I asked, “Doncha have to get back home, Hart?” I assumed our night of passion was over and our lives would resume their opposite courses. Hart came out of the bathroom, fully dressed and looking pale and frightened without his glasses and without the blurriness that he once had, when the booze had had a firmer grip. He looked about fourteen. He forced a smile and looked at me as if I was his captor and he needed to pee.

He asked, “What was that? Was it milk?”

“Yeah. What did you think?” I couldn’t believe it. He was still under the impression that I had spontaneously shot out some mysterious white fluid from my breasts.

“Do you have a baby!!!”

“Yeah. I have a baby. I breast-feed him. I told you I had a baby, at the party.”

“Oh, my god.”

“It’s a pretty normal thing to do, Hart.”

“Really? I mean still?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh geez. You must think I’m an idiot.”

“Look, Hart, don’t you have to get back?”

“No. My mom’s in Florida.”

“Excuse me?”

“She won’t know when I get in.”

“You live with your mother?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” I said. “What about the baby seat in the mini-van?” “What? Oh right. Oh geez, it’s my brother’s mini-van.” Hart looked like he was going to cry. Every single person who entered my life in any way seemed to be on the verge of tears. That can make a person feel insecure.

“Look,” he said, “would you like to see me?”

“I can see you, Hart. You’re standing right in front of me.”

“No. Like, another time. Or whatever.”

Then I realized that Hart might be interested in seeing me again, in dating, in becoming my boyfriend, in becoming Dill’s step-father, maybe adopting him, after marriage of course, building a home for us in Linden Woods, having more kids together, a cottage at Victoria Beach, and matching shorts, side by side burial plots, oh my god. Not that I didn’t want some of that. I just didn’t know if I wanted it with Hart.

“No,” I said. “Well, maybe …”

“Oh.”

I could hear the building coming to life. Out of my kitchen window I saw Mercy leaving for work on her bike with Zara in the seat behind her. Off to deal with the flood disasters. Sing Dylan was at the wall with his hose and soap, scrubbing at the letters. I realized I had to get Dill. Teresa would probably be pissed off at me for leaving him with her all night.

Hart headed for the door.

“Would you like some coffee or something?” I asked.

“Nah, I should get going. I’ve got to work in the morning.”

“I didn’t mean to be so abrupt, you know, I just was under the impression that this was a basic one-night stand and so I wasn’t really thinking about … you know.”

“Yeah. It doesn’t matter.” Hart looked around, considering my offer, and then, deciding I wasn’t a total bitch, added, “What the heck, okay, I’ll have a cup of coffee, if you’re having some.”

“I am.”

“Okay.”

It turned out that Hart had never wanted to be a lawyer. He had wanted to be a jazz saxophonist. I told him he could be both and he said, naah, he didn’t think so. I said look at Woody Allen, or you know Bill Clinton, they still find time to play their horns. Hart grinned. He told me he had had a girlfriend who had gone insane or something, and his mother was starting a new relationship with some American. His dad was living in Toronto. His brother sold junk bonds and was trying to get a divorce from his wife. The mini-van belonged to his brother. But Hart said he wouldn’t miss it. He preferred his Miata.

By now Teresa had called and said Dill was playing happily and I could go down and pick him up whenever I felt like it (she told me she had seen the mini-van so she understood) but before noon because she had to go to a job interview, something Mercy had told her about, something like flood inspector for people’s flooded basements.

Apparently they were hiring anybody. I guess a flooded basement would be one good way Teresa could extinguish herself. Ha ha. Hart asked me if I was still involved with Dill’s father. I said no. I showed him pictures of Dill and he said Dill was cute. He said he looked like me. I liked Hart right then. He said he was sorry if he had upset me. I told him I was sorry if I had upset him, and I said, “If there is ever anything I can do for you …”

“Thanks. You too.”

Though what that might have been I wasn’t sure. I was pouring us more coffee when there was a knock at the door. I thought it must be Teresa with Dill or Lish to talk about last night or maybe Sing Dylan wanting to fix the toilet. I peered through the little peephole. It wasn’t any of those people. It was Podborczintski. He had a vinyl briefcase in one hand and a windbreaker zippered right up to his chin. He had brown pants on that had wrapped themselves weirdly around one leg. He was stroking the top of his head in swift jerky motions, trying to get some hair to stay there. “Oh,” I called out to him through the door. “Hang on!” I ran to the kitchen. “Shit, Hart, you have to get out of here. Real fast.”

“Okay. Why?”

“Cause my welfare guy is here and you’re not supposed to be. Hurry. Hurry.”

Hart got his shoes on. I threw his cup in the sink. God, Dill should have been here. Hart shouldn’t have. What would Podborczintski think? How was I going to get rid of Hart? I said to him, “You’re going to have to go down the balcony.”

“What? You’re crazy.” This time he sounded sincere.

“No. No. Come on. Hurry.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the kitchen. “Hang on Mr. Podborczintski, I’m just getting out of the tub,” I yelled. I yanked the sheet off my bed, ran to the balcony and tied one end of it to the balcony railing.

“Forget that, it doesn’t work,” said Hart. “Jesus Christ.” He started laughing. For a split second I was full of admiration, but I said urgently, “Okay then, what are you going to do? Hide? Podborczintski is gonna check the floor plan to make sure I’m getting the right amount of rent money.”

“No, I’ll pretend I’m your, uh, meter man.”

“I don’t have a meter in my apartment.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll be your minister. You need counselling.”

“Then why am I in the bathtub?”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck.”

“Okay, I’m going to jump.”

“You’ll kill yourself.”

“As if.”

I slapped Hart on the back and smiled. “Atta boy,” I said. He was becoming more and more like my fantasy of the perfect boyfriend.

He ran to the balcony. We stood there looking at each other for a moment. I kissed him and he blushed. Then he threw his shoes over the side. Sing Dylan looked up from his job washing the graffiti and stared. Hart crawled over the side and lowered himself down the railing. He was hanging on, dangling there. He grinned up at me.

“You’re crazy,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Bye.”

Then he let go and fell onto the grass below. Thud. He lay there for a second. I threw his glasses down to him and he missed catching them, but they didn’t break. He got up and put on his shoes and ran to the mini-van. I ran to the door. I opened it wide with a big smile on my face and Podborczintski squinted at the sun that now shone in his face. Teresa, holding Dill and followed by her son, was coming down the hall peering at Podborczintski, unsure, I called out, “Hi!!!! You’re back! Great!”

Podborczintski looked at me with a puzzled expression and then saw that I wasn’t talking to him, but to Teresa and Dill, but before he could say anything, I went on, “Thanks for looking after Dill, Teresa, how was he, how were you, Dill, oh c’mon over here, let me give you a great big hug and kiss, there you go, thanks, Teresa, hi Scotty, okay well …”

I was doing a lot of talking because I didn’t know what to say.

When I stopped to catch my breath, Podborczintski said, “Sorry to get you out of the bath.”

“What? Oh yeah, no problem, I was … ready to get out … yup, it was time alright. So … c’mon in. Teresa, thanks again, see ya later.”

Teresa stood there staring. I guess she was wondering if this was the guy I had brought home for the night. Podborczintski? How could she? I put Dill down and Podborczintski made little clucking noises to him. We were still all bunched around the doorway. Dill crawled over to Podborczintski and began to pull himself up one of his brown trouser legs. After a few seconds Podborczintski picked him up, holding him away from his body, and said, “Hello there, little fella.” Dill smiled. Podborczintski said, “Wellwell well, he certainly doesn’t object to strangers picking him up, does he?”

“He gets that from his mother,” said Teresa making a face at me from behind Podborczintski. “Well, gotta go,” she added. “I’ve got my interview. Lucy, you should consider going for an interview for this job, they’re hiring anybody, they’ve got sixteen thousand flooded basements they still haven’t—”

“Teresa, this is Mr. Podborczintski, my case worker from Social Assistance!”

Teresa’s face froze, and she stammered, “Oh … oh.” She made another face meaning oops, major gaffe, behind his back and said she was pleased to meet him, she had to go. I wondered if she thought I had brought Podborczintski home for the night. Obviously I couldn’t do a lot of explaining right then.

Podborczintski did the inspection and got out of my apartment in a hurry. If he noticed the bathroom was as dry as a bone and not steamed up from a bath, he didn’t say anything. He seemed satisfied the dole was giving me the right amount of rent money. As he was leaving, he asked me again, of course, whether or not I had found out who Dill’s father was. Again, I said, “Nope, sorry.” I wondered when he would stop asking me that question. I saw that Hart had left his card on my pillow. John Dillinger would not have left a business card on my pillow. How could I have told Hart, the attorney, that I’m attracted to outlaws, dead notorious ones at that?