Package Deal

by Jess Bentley

  “You made this mess. You figure it out. I’m not a babysitter. And I’ve already raised two children. I’m happy to be a grandparent, but you’re the father.”

  Dad had not only backed her up, but made it crystal clear that anything other than welcoming my child into the family with open eyes was going to be a PR nightmare (thanks, Dad). So that night, Dad had all my things moved over to a penthouse apartment owned by the company in a newly-renovated high-rise in midtown, bought me a bunch of baby stuff I had no clue how to use, shook my hand, and told me, “Good luck, son! See you at work tomorrow. Be sure to utilize our fabulous company daycare program!”

  Seriously. Thanks, Dad.

  I wish I could say I feel like Chloe’s father, that there was some kind of instantaneous bond and I knew she was mine from the moment I saw her. But the truth is, sometimes I still feel like I’m living with a tiny roommate who screams at me for food and wakes me up in the middle night for no reason. Of course, the family insisted on a blood test, which unequivocally confirmed she is mine, but there are days when I look at her and she feels like a stranger.

  Maybe if I’d had time to adjust to the idea of being a father. But as it stands, she may as well have been left on my doorstep in a basket. I know things will change, maybe even soon, but right now? Being a single dad sucks. After work, all I want is a nap, a beer, and five minutes to myself to watch a football game. Instead, I have this tiny creature literally crawling into my lap and biting me. Which she has done. Several times.

  As I get Chloe into the bath and begin rinsing the partially-formed cake batter out of her curly blonde tendrils, my phone starts ringing. I see it’s my mother and put it on speaker.

  “Hello, Pierce? It’s your mother, Carol.”

  Why does she announce herself like we’ve never met before? Every damn time.

  “I know who you are, Mother. What is it? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

  She lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Well, darling, Your father and I have decided that you are spreading yourself too thin and need some help with Chloe. We’ve placed inquiries with a local agency about hiring someone to come in and watch her nights and weekends, just at first on a trial basis. Then maybe full time if you all get on well enough. Your father thinks it’s a little unseemly for his grandchild to be using the free employee daycare, though I think he’s being a proper snob about it.”

  “When isn’t dad a snob?” I ask as Chloe starts blowing bubbles off the top of the bath water, making herself laugh hysterically. “He told me to use the daycare, you know.”

  “You know him. He doesn’t quite know what to say when it comes to Chloe.”

  “No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know much of anything about how to interact with his kids, let alone his grandchild.” I sigh and lean back in my chair. The weight of the world seems to fall on me. The daycare at work is good, and my parents are in my shit, complicating things again. I guess I’m the one who had the kid. And the shitty grades in college. And the naked arrest. I bite my lip.

  “Fair enough, poppet. You may be getting some calls from applicants for the job so just make sure to answer your phone. And hire someone quickly. Your father says things are about to get even busier at the office now that you have this government contract.”

  I roll my eyes. “Is there anything dad doesn’t tell you? That was supposed to be entirely confidential.”

  “You know your father. Kisses to Chloe!” She hangs up before I can say anything else, and I know this wasn’t so much a conversation as an edict. For all their talk about me taking responsibility, my parents still treat me like a child more often than not, and it only got worse when I came back injured. In this case, however, I can’t say I’m upset. The idea of having someone to help me with Chloe is undeniably appealing, and it would give me the opportunity to get back to work full-time, instead of just “whenever I can manage it,” like I am now.

  I tuck the phone into my jeans and turn back to Chloe, who holds up her wet arms in the air and waves for me to pick her up. While she is walking really well for her age, she still doesn’t talk. Not even half-formed words or baby talk. We took her to a doctor, who said she may have delays in her speech due to all of the changes she’s endured, as well as any possible trauma we can’t really know about. Once a week, I take her to a speech therapist who works with her on developing her language skills, but so far, not a peep. Mom thinks she’ll just talk when he’s ready, and I’m happy not to rush her. She cries or babbles when she needs something, and until she’s prepared to talk, that will have to do.

  I dry Chloe off and put her in a pair of pink cartoon character pajamas, and we plop back down on the couch in front of the TV, where I put on her favorite Disney movie. It was Frozen last week. Now it’s Sleeping Beauty. She does something that sounds like humming when the Tchaikovsky music plays, and her little fingers reach up and curl into my hair. It isn’t long before she falls asleep in my arms, and as her tiny chest rises and falls, and her little eyelashes flutter while she dreams, I feel a knot form in my chest.

  It feels a lot like love.

  Arie

  I take a deep breath as I open the heavy wooden door to the bar on Avenue F where Danny told me to meet him. The truth is, I’m lucky he wanted to meet me in a bar, and didn’t just show up at the hospital the day I walked out. I don’t even know how they found out I’d been released, but I guess that’s why these guys are so good at their job, and why they always get their money back… one way or another.

  I’d only been out of the hospital for a few days when my cell phone started ringing. First it was Leo, the loan shark I’d borrowed the money from in the first place. When I explained my situation and asked for more time, I was not-so-delicately informed that I’d had more than enough time, and my time had run out. Then Danny started calling, and Danny didn’t sound like he much patience for anything. Danny would probably steal the rosary from a nun if it would get him a few bucks closer to getting his money back. And Danny was the second-to-last stop before the end of the line, in which a man with a gun followed me into an alley and decided teaching me a lesson was more important than money.

  Disappointing Danny meant my life was over, once again. For someone so young, lately a lot of people have been telling me I’m going to die.

  When I walk in the bar, every eye turns and stares at me, like I’ve invaded some sort of private club and their withering glances alone will be enough to send me back into the street. But in the corner, a burly man with a beard leans over from a booth and gestures for me to join him, so I assume that’s Danny, though I’m not sure how he knew what I’d look like. To be fair, I have a feeling there isn’t much these men don’t know about me by this point. I just hope they haven’t dug deep enough to find out about Chloe. Bailey promised he’d do everything in his power to make sure she could never be traced back to me, and he seems like a man of his word.

  I sit down across from Danny, and he just stares right through me. When he speaks, his voice his thick with a Newark accent, and it booms throughout the bar.

  “I’d ask if you want to join me for a beer, but you shouldn’t be spending any money right now.”

  “I appreciate your concern for my finances,” I mouth off without thinking. I half-expect him to kill me right there, but he snorts.

  “You’re a sassy one, aren’t you?”

  I shrug, not wanting to push my luck. “Just tell me why I’m here. What do you want?”

  “You know what we want, Arie.”

  “Obviously. But I just got out of the hospital. I was broke before. Where do you expect me to come up with $75,000 out of nowhere?”

  “You should have thought of that before. I ain’t stupid, girlie. You thought you’d take the money from us and then kick off before you had to pay it back. And fuck, that may have worked. But here we are. And you look pretty healthy to me. So, you have two options, as far as I can tell,” he says as he finishes off the bottle of beer in front of him.
<
br />   I raise an eyebrow. “And what are those?”

  “Well, you can try to run. People do that. But we will find you. And we will kill you. Or you can give us our money. I don’t care how you get it. But you have a month. Normally, we’d give a person in your situation a week. But because of all you’ve been through, my boss is feeling generous. At the end of that month, if you don’t have the money, we’re going to have another conversation, and it’s going to be a lot less fucking pleasant than this one. Have I made myself clear?”

  My stomach drops, and I feel as sick as I have since this whole mess started. “Crystal.”

  Danny nods, gets up, and walks out, leaving me sitting alone at the booth. There is less-than-zero chance I can come up with that kind of money. It wouldn’t matter if they gave me a week, a month, or a year. I owe the hospital even more than I did before, and they will only leave me alone for so long. My aunt and uncle are barely making ends meet and are lucky to make rent on the shop and their apartment every month. I have nowhere to go, no one to ask for help. Part of me begins to think that as long as I know Chloe is safe, it might be best for everyone if I just…

  No. I didn’t come this far, survive all of this, just to give up now.

  Then I remember my last resort from before, the man who saved my ass with Chloe.

  Bailey will know what to do.

  * * *

  “Quite a pickle you’ve gotten yourself in, again, Miss Blanchard,” Bailey says as he twists his moustache around his pudgy finger. I watch as he flips through a rolodex, which is an item so foreign to me I actually had to search my mind for what it was called. He stops in the middle, then lifts his phone and dials a series of numbers far too long to be a local call. After what feels like forever, he grins and laughs.

  “Hola, yourself, old friend! How the hell have you been? How’s the weather in Troncones?... Yeah, well, if I can ever afford to retire, I’ll be sure to come visit. Listen, I need some information on a pair of loan shark heavies working out of the Bowery named Leo and Danny… More information? Hold on, man.”

  Bailey turns to me with a raise eyebrow and covers the receiver on the phone. “Where did you hook up with these nogoodniks?”

  I think back to when I got involved in this mess for the first time. My Uncle Sal used to have a problem with gambling, and he spent a lot of his time at an off-track betting parlor in the Bowery where he thought my Aunt Marie wouldn’t be able to find him. It didn’t even advertise that it was an OTB, and from the outside, it just looked like a regular, crappy sports bar. When my debt started piling up, I started hanging out there, trying to look nonchalant, and hoping someone would catch on that I needed help. It didn’t take long for Leo to find me, and offer me the kind of “help” that got me where I am now.

  “It’s a tacky Irish pub called Barney O’Toole’s Pub and Grille. I doubt an actual Irish person has ever set foot in there,” I say as I nervously fidget with the strap on my purse. Bailey nods, and uncovers the phone.

  “Yo, Johnny. Still there?... Yeah, she went to O’Toole’s… Oh, yeah. I know exactly what that means. But is there anything you can do it about it?... Seventy-five large… Man, I don’t know, hold on.”

  I can see that Bailey is starting to get annoyed at his associate’s questions, and I’m getting more and more nervous with each passing moment. “How much time did they give you when this Danny guy gave you the last ultimatum?”

  “A month.”

  Bailey looks impressed. “A month? Wow, they must like you.” He turns back to the phone. “She said a month… No, she can’t get the money. Why do you think she’s here?... Uh-huh… Yeah… Okay… Really?... All right man, well, thanks for your time. The next time I’m in Mexico, we’ll get some margaritas.” Bailey hangs up the phone and turns to me.

  “Johnny says you’re fucked.”

  I drop my head on the desk with a thud. “What the hell man?” I mumble into the wood.

  “Well, you managed to get involved with the one loan sharking operation in the city run by Sebastian ‘Angel’ Cannizzo. That would be Sonny Cannizzo’s son. I’m sure you know who Sonny Cannizzo is?”

  I groan as I picture the man dubbed by the papers as “The Last Great Mafioso,” being lead off to prison with a giant grin on his face and a cigar between his lips.

  Bailey pats my head awkwardly with a giant hand. “Hey, listen. It will be okay. I might have another idea.”

  I look up with a groan. “What possible other solution could there be? I can barely afford the medications that are keeping me from getting sick again. I owe the hospital more money than I owe the son of a mob boss. I guess I could revisit my Brooklyn Bridge idea…”

  Bailey grabs a handful of my hair and gently lifts my head up so he can look me in the eye. “Don’t you talk like that, you hear me? No matter how bleak things seem, they can always get better. And we’re going to find a way to make things better. So, since you had me hand off your little girl to the Cochran family, I’ve been keeping an eye on things, from a distance mind you, just to be sure they’re doing right by her.”

  Tears well up in my eyes. “Thank you,” I squeak out.

  He waves a hand at me. “None of that. They may have money but that doesn’t always guarantee they’re good people, you know? Anyway, I got word through a few back channels that Pierce is looking for a nanny for Chloe. And maybe, just maybe… you could take a crack at applying for the job.”

  I almost laugh, except it’s not quite as funny as it should be. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, Roger, and I can give you about fifteen different reasons why. First, I’m Pierce’s ex-girlfriend. He’s never going to hire me to work for him. Second, I’m Chloe’s mother. It hasn’t been that long. She will remember me. The last thing I want after all of this is for these criminals to know I have a daughter, after I all I went through to make sure she was hidden from them. Third…”

  “Jeez, enough!” Bailey says with an exaggerated eye roll. “Do I have to think of everything? You tell Cochran you’re desperately in need of a job, and you’re counting on him as an old friend to help you out. I bet you dollars-to-donuts he won’t turn you away. And even if Chloe recognizes you, you can play it off as your skill as a caregiver. The last I heard, she hadn’t started talking yet. So, you might have caught a break there.”

  My breath catches in my throat. “She’s still not talking? Why?”

  “Search me. I don’t know everything happening in that high-rise. He’s taking interviews now. Just go. It will be a safe place for you to hide out until I figure a way out of this mess, or you find the money to pay off Cannizzo. If, in a month, neither of us has come up with an answer, then we’ll get you out of town.”

  I groan again. “Danny said they’d find me if I tried to run.”

  “Hogwash. If you skip the country, they aren’t going to chase you over $75,000. In the end, they’ve got bigger fish to fry. But, that certainly won’t stop them from killing you over it if you stay. Listen, I have to ask, before we move forward with this… nanny plan. Is there any chance you can just ask Cochran for the money and then pay him back? I don’t think he’s going to kill you if you take a few years to return on the loan.”

  My stomach is in knots at even the thought. “Absolutely not. I refuse to end up in another situation where I owe someone money I can’t pay back. Maybe Pierce won’t bludgeon me in an alley, but spending the rest of my life in debt to people who could buy and sell my whole family ten times over is no way to live.”

  “Cannizzo won’t bludgeon you in an alley either. He’ll just shoot you.”

  I realize Bailey isn’t being cruel, just matter-of-fact, but it’s doesn’t make me feel better. I must make a face because he sighs and runs his hands through what remains of his hair.

  “Sorry, I’ve just been doing this job for far too long. I don’t always think before I open my fat yap. Alright, Arie. Let’s try my plan. Go straight to the Cochran building in Midtown. Pierce and Chloe l
ive in the penthouse on the top floor. I think this is the perfect opportunity for a little reunion, wouldn’t you say?”

  I don’t know if Bailey is right, or if this plan is as batshit insane as I think it is, but at the end of the day…

  What other choice do I have?

  Pierce

  “Have any of the appointments I set up for you arrived yet?” my mother asks me over Skype. I can just see her perfectly made-up face from where I am standing in the kitchen, as she shouts at me from the computer in my makeshift office off the living room. I am trying to feed Chloe as I scramble an egg for myself, but I can already smell it burning and I know there is zero chance I will eat this morning.

  “Mom, I don’t have time for this. Can you reschedule these nanny interviews? Chloe has an appointment with the speech therapist, I need to go to CSL and schedule out meetings with those security firms visiting from Yemen. There is just way too much going on today for me to worry about trying to find someone who meshes with me and the baby,” I say as I dodge a spoonful of rice cereal that Chloe flings in my direction. I may not be the world’s best father yet, but I have become a damn ninja when it comes to avoiding things being thrown at me.

  I can hear my mother sigh from the other side of the room. “Fine, Pierce, I will cancel the interviews, but I’m going to reschedule them for the weekend and I don’t expect to hear another word about it. Understood?”

  I turn to face the stove and roll my eyes. My mother still treats me like a child.

  “Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me, mister.”