Save Me, Sinners

I’m in my office ignoring the discomfort that now hovers in my stomach. Who knew being pregnant was so much like having chronic acid reflux? Not me, that’s who. Checking and rechecking the ledgers, there’s five hundred dollars missing and I desperately hope that Gloria is stealing from me, because that would be the only good icing on my towering shit cake. It doesn’t look like it, though, dammit—I missed an order last week because I handed it off to Chester.

He told me, and I even made a note about it in my phone. So why didn’t I enter it? Because I’m currently losing my goddamn mind, that’s why. On the up side, I have the most perfect skin I’ve had in my entire life.

My eyes wander across the desk for a moment, taking a break from the computer screen, and settle on the test results from the hospital. “You’re going to have one hell of a story, kid,” I mutter. “Maybe I’ll make up something. Somehow I think the truth would just piss you off. It would piss me off. Hell, it’s already pissing me off.”

The baby is the size of a raisin or something; she, or he, can’t hear me. But I’ve been doing that lately. I’m determined that this is going to be the snarkiest baby ever to walk the world, and right now I have sarcasm and nihilism in spades.

There’s a knock at the door to the office that makes me nearly jump out of my skin.

It’s Gloria. She looks like she just spotted the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, and she isn’t looking at me. “Oh, my…”

Clearing my throat, I stand up and snatch the test results off the desk, stuffing the papers into my purse. “I’ve got to go out,” I tell her. “Chester’s in charge, you need to—”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Gloria says, more gleefully manic than I’ve seen her basically ever. “This is too good. You don’t get to just brush this one off, Janie. Holy shit. You’re fucking pregnant?”

Hearing it from someone else’s lips shocks me, even though it isn’t exactly news. Hearing it from Gloria’s lips is potentially enough to make me miscarry. Can unbridled rage cause a woman to lose a baby? I suspect I’ll find out if I spend enough time around this woman.

“I don’t have time for this, Gloria,” I tell her. “We’ve got the last sauce debuting tonight and I need the place spotless, so you—”

“Uh, no.” Gloria folds her arms over her chest, looking smugly sinister. “We absolutely need to talk. Who’s is it? Let me guess: Jake Ferry. Funny I haven’t seen anything on Facebook about it… oooh.” Her eyes widen even more, if that’s possible. “Nobody knows.”

Much as I try to keep a straight, flat face with no affect or emotion at all, Gloria has this freakish instinct for gossip. Her hand goes to her mouth. “Jackpot,” she breathes. “He doesn’t know. Holy. Fuck. Janie!”

Threats are on my lips, clawing to get out. But that will only set her off, and being defensive will just confirm everything she’s thinking.

“If I had just slightly fewer scruples,” she says to my silence, “I would totally cash in on this. Wonder what Reginald Ferry would pay me for a tidbit like this? Probably a lot. What’s a few hundred thousand for him? I bet he’s got that in his couch cushions. Have you thought about that? I bet you could make a killing.”

“I don’t care about Ferry money,” I tell her. “I don’t need to ‘cash in.’ I’ve got my own money that I worked for and earned on my own merits instead of spending my life hunting down someone who could give it to me. Get out of my way.”

Gloria’s eyes narrow, her lips parted slightly with the offense she’s taken from my not-so-subtle comment. I have to stifle a groan. Just the thing I didn’t want to do. Set her off.

Her jaw twitches, and she steps out of the way.

As I walk past her, though, she has a final word. “We’ll talk later. Count on it.”

Seriously, they probably wouldn’t even look for the body.

Mama gives me a strange look when I visit to drop off her meds—sure enough, George texted me about picking them up because he was “busy”—and I find myself attempting to make a hasty exit.

“I had a strange dream the other night,” she says before I can escape.

“Oh?” I wonder. The look in her eyes tells me everything I need to know about what she’s thinking, but I feign ignorance anyway. “What about?”

“I was on the beach,” she says, her eyes going distant. “The beach where your father and I… anyway, there was a storm way out over the ocean, but there was no wind. And out of nowhere, these fish start leaping out of the ocean and onto the beach around me. Isn’t that funny?”

“That’s… funny all right. I’ve got to go, Mama.” I kiss her on the forehead.

“Did I ever tell you that before I even knew I was pregnant with you, I had a dream a lot like that? They say dreaming of fish is a signal of a pregnancy close to you…” She looks like she’s a combination of worried and near-ecstatic. And then her eyes drop to my belly.

“Uh… well, you know I don’t believe in that sort of thing, Mama.” It’s all I can think to say to throw her off my scent. But the truth is, Mama’s had some accurate dreams before. Who knows what actually causes them—I refuse to believe it’s some supernatural gift of prophecy—but once she’s got her mind set on something because of them they usually self-fulfill.

In this case, though? I’d rather not think about it.

“You can talk to me, Janie,” she says quietly. “You know that, right?”

“What? Mama,” I sigh, and take her hand. “Of course I know that. But I have to go. Lots to do. Are… you and George coming to the lounge for the launch party?”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” she assures me. “You know George doesn’t really like to go out, but I’ll be there, I promise.”