My downtown apartment was just a ten-minute drive from the arena. I parked in my spot beneath the building and took the elevator up to my floor. When I walked through the front door, my housekeeper Rosalina called out from the kitchen.
“Mr. Lars, how are you?”
Like me, English wasn’t her first language, so we got along great.
“I am good. How are you?” I asked, walking into the kitchen.
“I got stain out of counter,” she said, pointing to the kitchen counter near my sink. “You no more let cat walk on counters.”
On cue, my cat Loki jumped onto the kitchen island and gave Rosalina a look. Then he walked over to me and I ran a hand down his back.
“That was my fault,” I said as I smoothed his gray fur. “I left some V8 juice there.”
“Cat is boss around here!” Rosalina said, throwing her hands up. “He shit on floor in laundry room!”
“He was aiming for his litter box,” I said, shrugging. “Right, Loki?”
Rosalina shook her head and scowled, going back to her work, cutting the homemade granola bars she’d baked me. She was a five-three, fifty-five-year-old mom of three grown children who’d been working for me since I moved to St. Louis. Over the past four years, we’d gotten pretty comfortable around each other.
My cat, on the other hand, she was not comfortable with.
“You go!” she said to Loki, shooing him away with her hand. “You no get hairs in my food!”
I picked Loki up and cradled him in my arms, petting him as I asked, “Rosalina, if someone was taking you on date, where you would want to go?” Catching myself, I spoke again, saying the words in the correct order. “Where would you want to go?”
She looked up from the granola bars, peering at me over the dark rim of her glasses. “Mr. Lars, no date for me. Not since many years.”
“But where would you want to go?”
Rosalina considered her answer. “Nice restaurant. Eat steak.”
“What else? Should we take a walk?” I spoke slowly, wanting to make sure I worked on my English since enlisting the help of a tutor. I’d been in America for years and I planned to stay, so I wanted to speak the language well.
Rosalina shrugged. “Walk is boring. Take boat ride or…flying machine.” She gestured in the air with her hand.
“Helicopter?”
She nodded and smiled. “You have date, Mr. Lars?”
“Yeah, Saturday night.”
“You need haircut.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t look good with short hair.”
Rosalina frowned in disagreement, but said nothing more about my hair.
“Dress nice clothes,” she said firmly. “No holes. No shoe with toe showing.”
“I will.”
She gave me a stern look. “No too much perfume.”
I smiled. “It’s cologne for men, Rosalina.”
“No too much,” she repeated. “You give her…what is it?” She cringed and held her head.
“A headache?”
She nodded. “No too much.”
“Okay.”
She squared her shoulders, looking satisfied that she’d given me enough dating advice.
“Granola bars,” she said, holding up the container she was moving to the island. “No leave lid open or demon cat will get.”
She was fond of calling Loki a demon. I’d only had him a couple months, and she hadn’t gotten used to him yet. My teammate Wes and his wife Hadley were raising our late teammate Ben’s children, and their little girl Annalise and I had become good friends. The cat had been her idea, and I’d been unable to refuse her. We went to a shelter one Saturday morning “just to look” and left with the gray bundle of fur she’d named Loki immediately.
He’d grown on me quickly. And I knew Rosalina would warm to him eventually. She cleaned, cooked, ran errands, and took care of all of Loki’s needs for me. She didn’t live with me, but she spent a lot of time at my apartment, and when I was on the road or at practice, Loki was her only company here.
“Chicken and vegetable,” she said, pointing at the refrigerator. “Supper.”
“Sounds great, thanks.”
She gathered her things and put on her coat, then said, “You pick clothes for date. I see them tomorrow.”
I smiled. “You want to help me pick out something?”
She gave me a look I knew well, her lips set in a tight line. “I tell you if clothes look bad.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll pick something out and show it to you tomorrow.”
Buttoning up her coat, she said, “I go now. Granddaughter has piano show.”
“Okay, see you tomorrow.”
She walked out without another word, as always. She was no nonsense, which was a perfect fit for me. I didn’t have the patience for small talk.
I sat down on my favorite recliner and pushed the footrest out, and Loki jumped into my lap immediately.
“We’ve got research to do,” I told him. “We will find the highest-rated steakhouse in St. Louis and something else to do with Sheridan after.”
He purred in agreement. Once my research was done and I made a reservation, I’d pick out some clothes for my date and catch up on the shows I’d recorded. Then dinner, and after that, bowling night with a few of my teammates and I’d be in bed by ten.