How’s the baby?
Good, they say. If she stays off the crack.
I look at him for a minute. He stares at the floor.
Well, sir?
It’s not your fault your wife killed herself.
He doesn’t say anything.
Don’t do shit to make up for something that wasn’t your fault.
I’m not, sir.
I’m not a shrink, but I don’t have to be fucking Freud to guess that much. This isn’t your kid.
I know, sir.
Find a wife and make your own kid.
I don’t know where to start, sir. Vernetta sat next to me on the bus. I didn’t ask for this.
We looked at each other. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. He looked tired.
Keep your fucking hands off her and don’t say a goddamn thing to anyone else.
Yes, sir.
We never had this conversation.
Yes, sir.
I took a homeless gal home once. My first social work gig. A detox center for the homeless. Jean was thirty-seven, ten years older than me. Speed freak. Wore sandals, jeans, and T-shirts and babbled on about people thinking she looked like Janis Joplin. She was prettier than that. A cross between a deadhead and a cowgirl. She made no sense high, but I was drawn to her. I felt butterflies in my stomach when I saw her. A tingly desire. Every now and again she’d stop her speed freak chatter and look at me, and I knew she knew.
Pick me up a block from here by the park when you get off work she said one afternoon.
You have a choice, I thought as I drove my dinged-up ’82 Toyota hatchback toward the park near Seventh and Howard streets. You can keep going, turn around. I didn’t. I stopped. Jean sat on a swing set drawing lines in the sand, using one outstretched leg. I leaned over and opened the passenger door. Jean got in.
Ten minutes later, I parked the car outside my apartment at Masonic and Page.
I have to brush my teeth, she said when we walked into my apartment.
She went into the bathroom and I walked into my room, sat in a chair across from my bed. When she came out I said, In here. She kissed me without a word. I tasted the toothpaste mixed with cigarette breath. She dropped her pants and pulled down her panties. She was ready to do it just like that. She sat on my lap and tugged her T-shirt over her head. I looked at the scars on her stomach and her right side where she said she had burned herself rolling into a campfire.
In the morning, she asked for five dollars. I gave her twenty and a change of clothes: a pair of my jeans—a little big for her—and a plaid shirt I no longer wore. I dropped her at the park then went to work. I saw her in line at the front door waiting for us to open. She was cool. When she saw me, you’d think we’d never met.
Jean said nothing when I told her we were a one-time deal. Someone would find out. I’d lose my job by fucking a client. I suppose she expected it. She’d been around the block a few times, long enough to know there was nothing to us. When I dropped her at the park for the final time she didn’t even ask for money.
I was thinking of Jean when I stopped by Michael’s basement apartment in the Mission unannounced one afternoon.
Vernetta answered my knock. Her pregnancy was at a point where the T-shirt she wore barely covered her belly. But her eyes were clear, voice steady.
Tom?
Yeah. How you doing?
Real good.
What are you doing here? Michael’s not at work?
I’m just checking on the situation. My staff isn’t supposed to be taking in clients. Keep this visit between us, Vernetta. I’m covering Michael’s ass and I want to be sure I’m not being played for a fool. May I come in?
She stepped aside. I looked around. The drawn curtains, closed windows, putrid air. A hot plate on a card table. Two chairs. A back room where the whir of a fan muffled the sounds of traffic. One lamp. Off. Everything in shadow.
Don’t you want any light?
It’s how Michael likes it. If he wants the lights off, they’re off.
Perhaps he wanted to keep out the hot summer sun. My mother used to do that. We didn’t have AC, so she’d close the curtains in the summer to keep the house cool.
I thanked Vernetta. I walked toward Sixteenth Street to catch the Muni back to work, skirting around the speed freaks hanging out in the alleys. I tried to convince myself I was making up for Jean by letting Michael take care of Vernetta. Look how good she was doing. Hell, she had a point. His place. If he wanted the lights off, he could keep them off. To each his own. Still, a part of me couldn’t stop thinking it was weird.
The Hurley stands one block up from Fresh Start. I hadn’t been back since my last day there one year ago. I feel an overwhelming urge now to stop by. The problem with leaving a job is that you leave part of yourself behind. The job becomes your identity. I wasn’t just Tom Murray. I was Tom Murray, director of Fresh Start. Sometimes, I miss that Tom.
It feels good walking through the doors again. A man in a blue suit and tie, a bottle of air freshener by his elbow sits at the front desk.
Please stop.
