The One I Love

I sit to see if anything comes to mind. I look down after a few minutes and see I’ve written her name and the line she is so much more than her sixteen-year-old self. Is that even a line? Clearly, I need to get my head screwed on straight.

I call my dad. He answers on the third ring, like always.

“Never let anyone think you’re waiting for them to call and be eager to answer the phone. You want it to seem like you had to stop doing something important to answer.” Those were his words of wisdom when teaching me the business, as he liked to call it.

“Charles W. Maxwell, how can I help you?”

“Dad it’s me, you know it’s me.”

“I didn’t know it was you, Charlie. I don’t look at the caller id thing, I’m too busy.”

Glad he can’t see me, I roll my eyes.

“What did you do to the guys at the factory?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about son. Yes, you can put that over there, thanks.”

My father is always doing twenty things at once.

“I had a group of guys basically attack me at the bar. They said you laid them off for no reason and they were going to make an example of me.”

“Ha, let them try. You know this is all about that ringleader they got. The men I fired they have someone who calls the shots, Henry Springfield. He’s just a troublemaker. It will all die down when he loses his steam.”

“What, that can’t be true.” I thought Ada’s dad had quit the factory a long time before. I remembered a conversation we’d had when we saw each other briefly in high school. Somehow seeing her again had brought everything back.

“Yeah, he’s been working for me for years and now all of a sudden I’m the bad guy.”

“Why’d you get rid of the factory workers dad?”

He doesn’t answer me right away which means it’s going to be bad news.

“That department was unneeded, son. Sometimes you have to let people go. It’s just the way it is. If I’m hemorrhaging money with an unneeded department then downsizing is necessary. Listen, I have to go but I’ll call you later.”

He hangs up without waiting for me to respond. Typical dad, always in a hurry. I know that he isn’t giving me the full story. The only thing I can do is go talk to the people that work for my dad. And I know exactly who I’m going to talk to first.

There’s a security guard outside the building named Paulie. He’s a big, wonderful man who gave me popsicles out of his little fridge in the security shack every time I came to see my dad when mom was still around. He will tell me whatever I need to know and I have a bit of time before practice with the kids so no time like the present.

I go into my kitchen not expecting much to be there for lunch and piece together a sandwich with one piece of ham, some turkey, and pickles I find in the refrigerator. For someone with a lot of money, I don’t shop enough. I also live alone, it doesn’t help me keep food in the house because I’m the only one ever eating.

Once I finish my food I decide to drive for a change. Lately, I’ve taken the easy way out and called Uber no matter where I needed to go. I climb into my jeep and tune the satellite radio to something I’ve not heard in a while and hope it will get my creativity going. I need to dig deeper to write my lyrics according to

Ada so I’m going to try.

I drive the short distance to my dad’s building and park in the lower deck so I can walk straight across to where the security building is.

“Paulie, my main man,” I walk up to my father’s building knowing he’ll never know I was there. The most self-absorbed person in the world has people to look at the cameras and watch his parking lot for him. He’d never suspect his son was coming in looking for entail.

The office is the hub for the shipping company. My dad sells space for a living, space inside shipping containers. The factory makes the containers.

“What do you want Charlie?”

Paulie looks up at me from the chair he’s started sitting in. I think he’s probably nearing retirement age. He’s been the security guard at my dad’s company for as long as I can remember.

“I want popsicles, Paulie, what else?”

I see he has pictures of his grandkids in the windows of the little shack. He stands from the chair with a grunt and walks inside producing a choice. He holds out a red and green Popsicle and I grab the red one eagerly. No matter how old I get, there’s nothing like a Popsicle of a hot spring afternoon.

He takes the green one and sits back down in his chair. He’s still eying me with one brow raised as he takes a bite.