by Sadie Black
“Fuck you Cole.”
“You already did, three times if I recall. I also recall you enjoying yourself. Remember that if you ever decide to get off your high horse.”
“Your hair looks like Herman Munster’s…”
“What?”
“Gah! Just, fuck you. That’s it. OK?”
I stormed out for a second time, feeling even more unsatisfied than I had before. I managed to accomplish one thing though. Cole was pissed. Good. He could join me in my gut-burning misery. Why should he get to have a chill morning while I was all twisted up inside. He was a jerk. That turned out to be the perfect word after all.
The universe took pity on me and sent the 87 to the stop only moments after I’d returned there. I would head over to the restaurant now instead of going home to change. I wanted to catch the crew before our 10:00 opening. Luckily, Sonia would be the only one who knew I was wearing the same clothes as the day before. Still stewing over the events of the morning, I phoned her from the bus. I didn’t want to have this conversation in the kitchen within earshot of my new sous-chefs or out on the restaurant floor where the wait staff could spy on my misery.
“Hello?” Sonia answered.
“It’s Moneka…”
“Oh hun! How are you doing? Are you visiting Kaila again today?”
“Yes. In the afternoon. I’m coming in first though. I feel like I should make an appearance since I didn’t show up at all yesterday.”
“Are you sure? I’ve got it handled. I really do. Yesterday was a breeze.”
“How was the business?”
“Well, less breezy. But we got compliments on the menu. It’ll happen Moneka, it really will.”
“Ok.” I was too tired and angry to care about the business.
“Was that all? Will you be here soon?”
“Twenty minutes maybe….and no, it’s not all. Do you think you can steal away for a minute? Someplace private?”
“No one’s listening in.”
“I mean it Sonia. Please.”
“Ok ok.” I heard some shuffling and the opening and closing of a door. “Peace and quiet. What’s up?”
“It’s about Cole Saunders.”
“Ooooooo, do tell.”
“Stop it with that voice,” I snapped. I immediately felt bad afterward and tried to soften my tone. “I’m sorry. It’s just, I hate him.”
“Tell me something you haven’t told me a million times already.”
“I mean I really hate him now. Let me start from the beginning….”
I gave up the goods. The whole enchilada. I told her about our first hookup, about the moving truck, and about last night’s ill-advised activities. I powered through the squeals of delight that accompanied each encounter and tried to place great emphasis on the way he’d behaved this morning. I tried to characterize him as a classic player, something I knew she was familiar with. Of course, I’d forgotten the times when she herself had been a player.
“Look, Moneka. Fact one, you enjoyed yourself. Don’t taint that enjoyment with all your expectations. Fact two, he likes you.”
“Obviously not,” I interjected.
“You are painfully bad at reading guys. All that fumbling he was doing in the morning? That’s him being equally bad at telling you he likes you.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Welcome to the conclusion women have been coming to since the dawn of time. Changes nothing, however. He likes you. He likes you and you compared his hair to Herman Munster’s.”
“I did do that, yes.” I sighed.
Could Sonia be right? Could this all of been the work of a bumbling Neanderthal of a man? The idea of going back and apologizing crossed my mind. However, it was too exhausting a thought. We’d done the damage we were going to do. If there was anything there, it was gone now. I’d made sure of that.
“I’ll be there soon.”
I hung up.
I curled up in my bus seat, ignoring how ridiculous I looked in a wrinkly pantsuit, holding myself like a little girl who just had her puppy stolen. Boston storefronts zipped by like so many little pictures in a book. There was an old man smoking a cigar in front of a laundry mat. The old woman who was sweeping the walk turned to yell at him as my bus rushed past. Further down the road, I saw a couple of teenagers, the kind that chose homelessness as a lifestyle. One was playing on empty paint cans like they were bongos. The other was unapologetically smoking a joint. Sometimes I liked to let life wash over me. It helped me distance myself from the busyness in my head. It worked on my brain like bleach, emptying it of my confusion and replacing it with images of people who were just as mixed up as I felt.
Sometimes, when I was working on the restaurant, I imagined someone zipping by in their own bus. They would glance out the window at my restaurant and see Sonia wiping down the bar or me greeting customers by the window. I imagined them wondering about me the same way I wondered about them. I was curious what kind of life they pictured for me. Not the kind of life, I bet, where I’m incapable of getting a handle on love.
18
COLE
The smell of freshly sawed wood, paint, and finish all mixed pleasingly in my nose. This was my favorite part, when the place is ugly and covered in plastic sheeting and trash. Some contractors might look at that and feel overwhelmed by the job ahead. Not me though. All I saw was potential. I looked in one corner and I saw a million terrific ways that it could look before it was done. Often, I would go around snapping photos, preserving this moment of pure, unadulterated potential. Then I would snap photos of the finished product. I’d frame the best pair and gift it to the clients. I never did that for Moneka. Things between us ended on such a weird note. It didn’t seem right to send her a gift. Not when she clearly still hated my guts.
So far, I’d managed to avoid seeing her out right. That would have been fine and I would have happily continued that tradition up until the day I died. However, with our parents living together, this charade wouldn't last long. If I didn’t make some effort to keep the peace, our next holiday would turn into a wrestling match. As much as I wanted to see Moneka rolling around on the floor, I didn’t savor the image of her kicking me in the nuts at the same time.
Whatever my feelings about Moneka now, I was glad I was finished with the restaurant. I preferred jobs that didn’t involve grossly inappropriate levels of attraction to the person who is responsible for paying me. I should have trusted my instincts and kept it in my pants.
I continued my circuit, taking some pictures for the before and after and a few extra ones of my crew that I hoped to add to our website. This law firm gig was a big deal for us. I planned to brag about it as much as propriety allowed. As I paused to flip through a few of my shots and make some space on my digital Nikon, I noticed a few shots from Crave.
One was just a wide-angle shot of the kitchen. Normally, I stuck to regular lenses, but I knew how badly Moneka wanted a kitchen of her own and how particular she was about the details of its construction. I remembered now that I’d intended for this to be her before and after shot. It made me sadder than I expected to think that I’d never gotten that after shot.
A few shots later, I landed on one of Moneka. She was leaning over pieces of the bar, deep in discussion with Sonia. The jeans she wore framed her ass nicely. If it were any other girl, I would have treasured that shot, thanking myself for having the forethought to preserve that posterior for posterity. It wasn’t any other girl though; it was Moneka. An unfamiliar lump starting materializing in my throat and working it’s way up. I turned the camera off.
“Boss, which room gets the oak paneling?” One of my crew snuck up behind me with a slab of paneling. Another one of my guys was helping him with the other end.
“The biggest office. End of the hall-that way.” I pointed with my camera, taking care not to make eye contact. I suddenly felt like I might tear up the moment somebody looked at me.
“No prob Bob,” he said as they moved on.
<
br /> No prob Bob. I remembered feeling that nonchalant on the job. This was supposed to be the best part of my day. I just felt sick though, sick in a way that reminded me of the last morning that I saw Moneka. I’d decided since then that it was all for the best. She was nuts and unfair. Besides, I loved this bachelor life. I could build all day, drink all night and go home with whoever I damn well pleased. There’s no room in this world for a real relationship. At least, that’s what I told myself every night. It helped when I was trying to block out the other voice in my head, the one that sounded like Kaila and said nobody ever finds true happiness if they lie to themselves about what they want. It was easier to block it out than admit that I might have totally screwed up my best chance at this thing they call love.
I heard the sounds of celebration around the corner. When I went to check it out, I saw a handful of my crewman high-fiving each other like the Red Sox had just won the World Series. One of them kept getting slaps on the back from the others.
“What’s the news?” I asked. Trying not to sound like ‘the boss’.
“Tony here just got engaged.”
I stared. Tony was getting married. Toothless Tony who had lost three permanents on a bar top after a late night out two years ago. I didn’t even know he was in a serious relationship. I didn’t know her name or anything.
“Congrats Tony,” I said automatically. I slapped him on that back. It seemed like the thing to do. Everyone else was doing it after all.
I felt my extremities go numb and my head start to swim a little bit. I thought I’d been living a lifestyle surrounded by like-minded men. It turned out, they were all living their own lives at their own paces. I wondered how many more of them had families in their futures.
I was tired of pretending that I was above a real relationship. I was tired of using my flimsy familial connection to Moneka as an excuse to push all of these feelings out of the way. If she was overbearing and bossy, I didn’t care. I didn’t even care about the things she said to me during that last fight. Real love, I guessed, was when you knew it was a perfect match no matter what.
I resolved to commit. I didn’t care what my father thought, or her mother, or Kaila or anybody else. The only person I needed to win over, was Moneka. The thought of that behemoth of a task almost made me quit right on the spot. After all the things we’d said to each other, it felt impossible to believe that Moneka would ever want to be with me. I imagined myself calling her up and her taking one look at the caller ID and ignoring the rings. That, or she’d answer without looking and hang up the second she heard my voice. Did she love me the way I loved her? Was she struggling with this the same way I was? Did she worry about our parents being together? I was going to find out one way or another.
I took a hold of my cell and called her. I stared at her name on my phone’s screen as ring after ring disappeared into empty space.
No answer.
19
MONEKA
The phone ringing in the distance sounded worlds away as I gazed down at the tiny piece of plastic in my hand. I failed to wonder who was calling. Just like I failed to keep my cool around the person whose life I was about to make very complicated. Just like my birth control failed me a few weeks ago. There was one thing that I didn’t fail though. That was the pregnancy test I held limply before me. I checked and rechecked to no avail. A plus sign means pregnant.
My eyes quickly welled and fat droplets splashed on my hand and on the little screen that betrayed me. That test was such a small thing. So brittle and stupid, I could snap it in two. It seemed absurd to me that something so miniscule could cause such an upheaval in someone’s life. Here was a useless piece of trash telling me that my life was going to change forever.
I placed it on the shelf by the toilet and dropped my head to my hands, allowing the tears to flow freely. Due in the restaurant this evening, I resolved to ask Sonia to cover for me. There would be a lot of tears before I was finished here. I thought about telling her, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. How do you start that conversation? Hi Sonia, what are the specials tonight? By the way, I’m pregnant. What would she say?
Still sitting on the toilet, I considered my options. Abortion? Adoption? For some reason, both those felt wrong to me. If I were to choose either, I would be combating some deeper desire that was finally battling its way to the surface. It suddenly occurred to me that I wanted this baby. Sure, maybe it wasn’t how I imagined this moment. But I could be a good mother; I would be a good mother. Then there’s the restaurant to consider, another voice chimed in, isn’t that your baby too? No, this is my baby. My fingertips grazed across my belly as I tried to imagine what our future would hold.
Sadness and hopefulness filled my stomach until I thought I might vomit. Fear and joy made extremely unappealing bedfellows. There was only one thing I could be certain about now. I would need to tell Cole. Whatever our history, however we left things, he had a right to know that he was going to have a child in the world.
I fumbled around in the bathroom, cleaning myself up. I opted to leave the test on the shelf, lest I forget that it was real and convince myself that this was all a bad dream. I took a moment to fix my face in the bathroom mirror, whipping away the streaks of mascara that decorated my cheeks. I splashed a little cold water on my face, hoping to calm some of the redness and puffiness around my eyes. After doing my best to look human again, I went to find my phone.
It was sitting on my coffee table, looking threatening in its neon blue rubber case. Picking up the phone would be the first challenge. I could manage that. I just had to reach out and grab it.
I did.
As I woke it up, I noticed a missed call from Cole. The universe, it would seem, has a sense of humor. I hadn’t heard from Cole in almost two weeks. Now, he was calling me at the exact moment when I need to talk to him most. I tried to call this a sign and take heart from it. Then I remembered that I didn’t believe in signs. That sort of mumbo-jumbo belonged to my mother. Whatever. Pulling up Cole’s number, I closed my eyes and hit call.
“Moneka?”
His voice sounded surprised with a smattering of desperate. Only now did it occur to me to wonder why he had called.
“Cole. Hi.”
“Thank you for calling me back. I really want to talk to you. I know you must…”
“I want to talk to you too.” Every word I uttered was effort.
“Yeah? Is everything OK?”
“Well. Yes. Look, I don’t want to do this over the phone.” I felt gravity weighing my tongue down. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get the rest of this out.
“You want to meet? Tomorrow for lunch maybe?”
“NO! I mean, yes I want to meet. But I want to meet now.”
“Now?”
“Yes, do you think you can come over? To my place? I know you’ve never been, but my address is on all of your invoices.”
“Yeah, NOW now? Or, after work…”
“NOW…please.” I hung up the phone. I knew that was all I’d be able to say under the circumstances.
The next hour was the third longest of my life. The longest was the hour I spent waiting for Kaila to come out of the emergency room. The second longest was the hour I spent waiting for Kaila to wake up. I wanted to hate Cole for making me wait another hour of my life away, but I knew that wouldn’t be rational. The sounds of saws and drills in the background made it very clear that he was on the job. I practiced being patient and respectful. Besides, it gave me more time to look like I hadn’t been crying in the bathroom only moments ago.
When I finally heard his knock on the door, my heart skipped a beat. For a crazy moment, I tried to think of some other pretense for asking him over here. Suddenly telling him that I was pregnant with his child felt like an epic mistake. It would disgust him. I would disgust him. With a bolstering breath, I opened the door.
A herd of quashed emotions came charging back when I saw his face. I’d never wanted to hug and kiss and pun
ch someone with such equal vigor. He looked good, I had to admit it. He was growing a little facial hair and it suited his bone structure nicely. It made him look older, more mature, more like the kind of man I’d hoped to deliver this news to. I took another breath.
“Come in, Cole.”
With one hand I ushered him inside. Quickly, I took a seat at one of the dining room chairs, indicating that he should sit across from me.
“Hi Moneka.”
He sat down cautiously. I could tell I was really messing with his head right now. I had the air of woman who was getting ready to ask for a divorce.
“Moneka,” he spoke again once he was seated. “I really need to tell you something.”
“Same here.”
“Please, just let me get mine out first. I..”
“Cole, this is serious. I really need you to listen to me.”
“Moneka, I came all this way, didn’t I? Obviously I care about you. I just need to get this out…”
I was starting to get angry. This was not how I pictured this going. Why wouldn’t he just let me say what I needed to say instead of being his usual stubborn self? I made fists with both hands, rearing up to get into yet another fight. “Cole, I swear to God, I need you to…”
“Need me to what? Shut up? Because what I have to say isn’t important? No, you’re right Moneka, it’s never as important as…”
“Cole I’m pregnant.”
I put a lot of extra punch behind the word, arming it, shaping it into a weapon. Closing my eyes, I bit my lip a little to relax. It was not my intention to throw it at him. I’d wanted to hand it to him, offer it to him. I’d wanted this to go delicately and, I don’t know, maybe he’d soften a little and we could find a little of what we’d lost.