by Jamie Knight
If he sees the envelope, he’s going to ask what’s in it. If he finds out there’s money, and that much, he’ll be taking the “cream off the top” as he says — stealing what small bills there are off my pile — and pocketing them as his own.
I need to get this money home and stashed in my downstairs chest of drawers before he sees or smells one bit of it, I think angrily. He’s not getting his grubby, lazy sad-sack fingers on one dollar of it. Not one crisp, clean bill.
This is for my date. My first real date with the first really great girl I’ve met since I started working. This money is not for his instant gratification or for his black-hole vices!
These thoughts in mind, I gun it out of the parking lot, and down the streets that will take me home. I’m careful not to floor it too much, though. Cops are out in force on a Friday, and I see a few of them looking at me, giving me those warning glances, as I drive by.
Whether by this game of cat and mouse with the Friday afternoon cops or my share bad luck, by the time I get home and pull into my driveway, I’m not in a Dad Free Zone. I’m in anything but.
He’s right there, right in the driveway, waiting for me to pull in. It’s like he can sense the money on me the way vampire scents a warm, untapped vein.
“Fuck,” I growl this, throwing my head against the headrest. “Fuck. Fuck. Why do you have to be here right now? You’re never home this early on a fucking Friday!”
I take my head off the headrest, grip the steering wheel, and study him.
He’s just smiling at me like I’m the toy in his box of cracker jacks.
“You should be down at the bar, gambling away whatever money other stupid people are generous enough to give you, or ordering drinks you don’t need! Not here! Not now!”
I growl again, wishing that he wasn’t here right now. That something could’ve just kept him in the thrall of his bad habits for this particular afternoon, but that’s not happening. I’m going to have to get out and face him — unless I want to spend all night in my car, which I don’t.
I get out of my car, trying to stuff the envelope of money into my suit jacket before he sees anything. But he’s staring at me, drinking in every damn detail. So, it doesn’t matter how I move or how I try to hide it, he sees the envelope. Dad’s on me as soon as I get out of my car and close the door.
“I saw the envelope. A bank envelope,” he says, sounding obsessed over it. “So, don’t even try to say that there isn’t one, or that I’m seeing things.”
He burps at me. It’s almost a throw-up, but not quite.
I am never bringing my girlfriend home to meet you.
While my heart and mind would like nothing more than to celebrate over the fact that I just called Melissa my girlfriend, I’m not in the space to enjoy that fact now. First, I’ve got to get back into my room with my money.
“I’m not giving you anything out of it,” I tell Dad, pushing past him.
He stops me, plucking the envelope out of my suit jacket like it’s a magician’s hat under his control, even though I’m wearing it.
The envelope is in his hands and open before I can even blink.
He whistles appreciatively at the money. Like my green money is the same as a stripping, cheap whore to him.
“Whoo, look at all this money. You’ve been holding out on me, boy,” he says, staring daggers at me. Again, it’s like it’s his money I’ve been keeping away from him or stealing from him.
“Just for that.”
He reaches into the envelope and takes out a giant wad of my cash, at least a thousand, maybe more — I see rage at this point, so I can’t be sure — and pockets it for himself.
“I didn’t get that money out for you,” I scream. “I got that out for myself!”
Dad raises the calculating eyebrow.
“For what, boy?”
As much as I want to tell him what it’s for, I know I can’t. That will just invite more obnoxious behavior.
“Comic books?” he asks, taking out more money and pocketing it.
I don’t answer. I just start trembling.
“Video games?”
More money comes out of my envelope and goes into his pocket.
“Fat Fuckers Galore: The Magazine?”
This one snaps whatever self-control I have, and I go after him. I grab my envelope from him, but not fast enough to keep him from grabbing one last handful of my money.
“Shut up! I don’t ask you what you spend your money on, jerk!”
In the back of my mind, I find myself wishing for someone like Vanacore. At least, if she were here, she could scare the shit out of my dad. She could intimidate him in a way Dad would take seriously.
Even with me raging at him, Dad just laughs and heads toward his beat-up truck, waving my money at me like a red cape designed to enrage a bull.
He says, “I’m going to have me some fun tonight! Thanks, boy!”
Dad’s off and roaring down the street in his hunk of junk before I can do or say anything. Before I’ve even really started to chase after him and curse him out, he’s already gone. He’s waving my money out the window, though somehow, it’s not blowing out of his hand.
I turn back to the house, roaring in anger. I kick at anything I can reach that’s not nailed down, getting some satisfaction when it clings and flies off whatever handle or nail it was affixed with.
But I’m still so angry, it wouldn’t surprise me if I started bleeding from the mouth.
“You fucker! You fucking asshole! Stealing my money! The money I’ve saved up for years, not knowing what I was going to use it for!”
I bang my way into the house, and through my entryway, though I’m still feeling way too murderous to be left alone.
“That was for my date! My fucking date with Melissa,” I scream. I scream this to the empty house and in the dark stairway down to my room.
I turn on my lights and see what little of my money is left. Only a hundred or maybe two hundred between everything. From five thousand to a little more than maybe two hundred.
“Well, there goes any fucking ability I have to treat Melissa. There goes any chance of having a good date: what this was supposed to be.”
I growl and wander limply to my bed.
“There goes my new wardrobe! There goes any good thing we were trying to go for, thanks to that fucking piece of shit!”
I scream in anger again, thinking for a moment that I should just text Melissa and cancel. I should tell her there was a problem with the money I got out, and that I don’t have any way or reason to go through with the date tomorrow.
But as I take out my phone and prepare to do just that, I can’t. Something in my heart won’t let me crush Melissa’s excitement or her joy at our plans tomorrow.
I’ve just seen the kisses and hearts she sent me with her last text. I stare at them, feeling them warm the edges of my spirit that haven’t been snapped in two.
I have no idea how I’m going to make this date anything like what it was supposed to be, but I can’t let it be ruined like this.
I won’t let it be.
Dad may have ruined my plans, pilfered the money I was going to use, but he doesn’t get to ruin her plans.
If I’m any good at being your boss and your boyfriend, I’ll defend you from that.
I must. It’s the least you deserve after all the kindness you’ve shown me.
Chapter Thirty-Nine - Melissa
I wake up with a smile on my face. I get dressed in my finest, most casual clothes with a lightness and a spring in my step.
Even as I’m having a bit of breakfast, running over my plans for what kind of stores to visit with Tommy, what kind of styles I think would accentuate his build, his size, and the color of his hair and eyes, I’m trembling with excitement. I’m giggling at nothing except the thought of being with him all day.
Also, I want to bring him back here after the end of all of it for some much-nee
ded, long-awaited intimate time — time I’ve also started to plan out in my head.
I’ve decided we’re going to start out on the couch, then move to my bed or maybe even to the patio connected to my bedroom, since it’s not right next to another unit. My condo, unlike a lot of condos in this community, is actually open to Manhattan.
I have views of the cityscape, and the suburbs beyond. It’s a million-dollar view. That’s the price tag they wanted me to pay, but I happened to move in when construction wasn’t at its best, which meant I got this at a steal.
I’d been hoping I would be able to show this view to Dennis, but I’m no longer heartbroken over that loss. It’s all his anyway. Still, I have plans for Tommy and me out here later, after everyone else has gone to bed.
I smile at the naughty thought I’ve just had, and grab my purse, keys, and cell phone, then head out. It’s a quick trip down to my car. Once inside and behind the wheel, I send Tommy a text.
On my way.
After sending this, I look through our old conversations for the one in which he tells me his address. I press the hyperlink for it and let my map application go to work.
About the same time that the map app. pulls up directions to his house — something that seems to be in a neighborhood and a part of town I’ve never visited, even in the ten years I’ve lived in Manhattan — I get a reply from Tommy. It’s simple, short, and to the point.
It simply reads:
K. Will be waiting for you.
Though it doesn’t say anything of the kind in what he writes me, I feel between the lines, “Hurry up and get me. Rescue me. If you don’t come soon, I might just go crazy.”
With that driving me onward, I pull out of the parking lot and start navigating my way to Tommy’s. While it says it should take no more than ten or fifteen minutes in current traffic conditions, I find myself wishing I could just teleport to him and then teleport with him out of there to our little slice of retail paradise, but no.
I’ve got to drive and go through all the motions. I can’t just wish myself. Damn.
On the way to Tommy’s, I turn on the radio. I’ve got a paid-for radio service. A premium access port to a world of music, literally. Something I’ve found to be an absolute necessity here in the states.
It’s the only way I will hear current and popular music from England and the rest of Europe. Also, it has the unique and sexy new age and atmospheric music I like to listen to sometimes. What I’m listening to now, actually.
About ten or fifteen minutes later, just as my navigation program predicted, I’m at Tommy’s. But as I pull up to his house, with the weed-infested front yard, the gnarly looking tree presiding over a baked-to-hell porch and house, I have trouble believing this is where my boyfriend lives.
While I know he hasn’t been the most well-paid employee to work, it surprises me that he’s here in a rundown neighborhood like this.
I remind myself not to judge where he is living, or what surrounds him — I came from a childhood home that most people in England wouldn’t call lavish — that I don’t look like my origins much anymore.
I try my best to grow beyond them, but I’m still taken aback. I’m shocked by how much this place, everything about it, does not match with what I know of Tommy.
Before I have too much more time to myself to muse about how he can live here and still present that aura he carries himself with now — like he’s a man truly beginning to understand his worth — there he is. Tommy. He’s just appeared out of the side door on the house — one that has its own storm door and everything. He sees me and waves.
I hold my hand up in recognition, a smile automatically spreading across my lips. As I watch him practically sneak across his front yard, I notice that he’s in some slightly different clothes today.
He looks super casual, but also nice-looking in a strange way. His outfit consists of baggy black jeans, a T-shirt with an eighties sci-fi movie scrolled across it, matching black tennis shoes, though scuffed.
He’s got his longer, darker hair, swept back. His golden-brown eyes touch on me, and in them, I can see excitement along with desperation. There is also a hint of sorrow as well as if he’s holding on to some secret wound or some secret regret.
The sorrow disappears under a smile he tries on for me as he opens the passenger’s side door. He sits down with a huff and a sigh. The car rocks with his added weight, and he murmurs an apology about it.
I quickly lean over, kiss him on the cheek, and help him find the seatbelt buckle.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, my love, only things to look forward to today. This is the date, not a judgment day.”
When Tommy doesn’t look completely convinced by my words, I give him an extra kiss. This one is closer to his mouth.
“Give me your worries, sir,” I whisper when he stubbornly refuses to give me a smile I know my kisses are forming in him. “Please, sir? It’s what receptionists are for. Listening to problems and solving them.”
Tommy turns to me. He smiles, but it’s weak and trembling.
“Thanks, Melissa. Maybe later.” He looks out of the corner of his eyes toward the house to a part of the shaded windows. “For now, I just want to get out of here and forget everything and everyone around here for a while.”
Though my stomach knots over some of this, I don’t ask about it. I just nod and begin to pull out of the driveway. As I do, I pray that Tommy’s mood improves with the music and with knowing he’s with me now — and knowing that I have a fabulous day planned for us both.
After today, you’ll see yourself as I’ve always seen you: as a man with more promise and worth then the world has ever dared give him.
When I’m done with you, you won’t ever doubt your capability and your strength. And you won’t keep surrounding yourself with things, people, and places below what you deserve. Starting with that house and ending with that horrible father, who I know you’re probably watching the window for.
No. After today, all of that’s going to be a thing of the past. The distant past, if I have anything to say about it.
Chapter Forty - Tommy
The day of our date has arrived. The date I’ve been waiting for, for over a week is finally here.
I know I should be happy.
And I am happy — to see Melissa, to be with her, to be in her car and heading away from my shitty dad and crappy house for a while — but I can’t be as happy as I want to be or as happy as I imagined I would be.
Dad made good on spending my money on all of the shit I knew he would last night. He came back with a metric-fuck-ton of lottery tickets.
I don’t need to tell you that the money he invested didn’t pay off. The most he got was a fifty-dollar payout, out of probably what was at least five hundred spent on tickets for various games.
Worse than that, though, he came back with at least two cases of beer, a whole convenience store worth of snacks I hate, and enough porno mags to open up his own strip joint with all the pinups. And I had to hear him fucking masturbating to quite a few of them last night and this morning — right before meeting Melissa, in fact.
For all that punishment and abuse, I have only a couple hundred dollars to spend on today. A day I had promised I was going to use to lavish Melissa with meals and little gifts along with my own wardrobe update. Something I promised to furnish with my own money, while she provided the guidance.
Something I can’t do at all, now that my fucking dad decided that my money was his money, never mind the fact that he hasn’t done anything good for me since I was a little kid.
Melissa’s just asked me to give her my worries, but I can’t. She doesn’t need these worries, ones that routinely walk around in nothing but their underwear with their beer belly hanging out for everyone to see and claiming that they’re God’s gift to women.
So, I just tell her maybe I’ll tell her later, even though I have no intention of telling her anything. Doing tha
t will just ruin this day more than it’s already been ruined, not to mention the rest of the weekend, whatever can be salvaged from it.
I do the only thing I can do; stay silent, try to relax myself with the music Melissa’s got playing through the speakers of her nice car — something New Age or South American at the moment by the sound of the pan flutes — and keep my eyes focused out the window on the freeway, on where we might be heading for our date. Our shopping extravaganza.
After a little bit of time on the freeway and taking a particularly infamous exit, I know where we’re headed almost immediately: to a very ritzy, a very well-traveled outdoor shopping mall. It’s a combination between a strip-mall and a regular big, department-store type mall. I see it looming on the horizon shortly after taking the exit.
A beautiful red brick and silver-metal lined building, with exquisitely designed walkways, marble statues, and water features, along with a classy clock tower. There are street signs to point out each area of shopping, as well as food courts, bathrooms, and so-called “scenic” areas.
In addition to a shopping mall, this is practically a national Monument with the views of the city, and parts of the developing neighborhoods, a lot of people come here for the views as well as the clothes and other goods.
The moment we pull into the parking lot to this massive mecca of shopping, I despair of ever finding a parking place. Most look full up already, and it’s not even past ten a.m. Initially,
I’m a little disappointed by how many people are here and how crowded it’s going to be. How many people are probably going to be going to the same shops as I will be.
And then I remember: I don’t have nearly the shopping money I’d planned to have, thanks to Dad. Thanks to his selfish assholery.
I sigh and flop my elbow and cheek against the window. As I do, my hair comes out of its styling job, where I tried to slick back my growing bangs.