He moved around the counter but left an acre of furniture between them. “It was great.” He was making eye contact now, but the way you would with a wayward employee, chin down, brows up.
“For me it sure was.”
“I enjoyed myself.”
As if he’d had a laugh at a joke. “You could enjoy yourself a lot more.”
“I’m only human and you’re attractive, and I’m attracted to you, but it’s not practical, whatever this is.”
“Not practical.”
“There’s the—”
“Power differential. Shit, Tom.” Cold—that was ice-pick-to-the-ego chilling.
“You’re leaving anyway and it makes no sense to get involved.”
“Involved.” Said like it was a disease state. “I don’t want to get involved. I wanted to get off, but that’s so incredibly complicated for you, so you’re right, it’s not practical.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, shifted on his feet. She didn’t need to make this less awkward for him.
“Thanks for dinner and the orgasm.” She left him standing there, closed her bedroom door as quietly as possible and muffled her scream of frustration in a pillow.
The apartment was empty in the morning and she looked at it for the first time and didn’t see it as the elegant designer space of her first impression. It was beige and bland, too conservative to have a personality.
Like its owner.
She got out of there before the idea of messing it up took hold.
Today might as well be the day to visit home. Ride one confusing wave of disappointment straight into another and get all the unpleasantness over with.
She headed out to Gage Park. It would’ve been smarter to call first, find out who was going to be around, but advance notice gave everyone a chance to organize, so on the whole, surprise was a better tactic. It also suited her mood. Take no prisoners. She hoped Tom hiked a hole in his feet.
The fact she had to chill on the front stoop when no one was home was poetic justice. Nothing in the neighborhood had improved since she’d moved out. The same clunkers parked on the curb, the same falling-down front fences and missing roof tiles, lawns made of weed or gone to soil facing the street. It wasn’t that people didn’t want better, it was that they didn’t have time, the money, to make it happen. The priorities were different, the crime more prevalent, the choices more limited.
Everyone here lived too close to somewhere worse, and the risk of losing what you had was greater than the risk of trying to change. You held on, you defended your place. You made sure outsiders knew they were outsiders.
The people who got out got dead or got lucky.
Flick scrolled through her social feeds and tried not to call attention to herself, an outsider who got lucky, a daughter who abandoned her
family, a sister who owed.
It was Mom who came home first. She got out of a friend’s car and froze in the drive when she saw Flick. She wore her Murphy’s Freight shirt. She’d come from an extra shift in the trucking company’s office. “Why are you here?”
“I brought clothes.” You didn’t come without bringing something. She had a bag of sweaters and shirts, pants that would suit Elsie and a pair of boots that would fit Mom.
Mom looked left and right, up and down the street. “Who knows you’re here?”
“No one.” Unless you counted a couple of teens who looked at her rental as if they were considering boosting it.
“Hope you’ve eaten. There’s no food in the house till I go shopping. Did you rent a car? You could take me.”
They got in the rental, and Flick drove to Walmart and pushed the cart while Mom did the weekly shopping. “Who’s living at home now?”
Mom stacked bread, hotdog buns and pound cake into the cart. “Elsie and the girls. Like at Christmas. Where do you think they’re going to go?” Elsie could force her sack-of-shit husband into helping with rent and child support, or maybe reconcile with him for the fourth time and move back to her own place.
“Is everyone well?”