​​Chapter Twenty-Four
Natalie

I work Saturday mornings. I work all the time.

But not Saturday afternoons.

In the afternoon, I’m off. I want to go back to the apartment, but I know Wren will be there with that Mareck, the boy who will ruin her life because that’s what men do. I warned her, but of course, a warning from a sound, reasonable human being only added fuel to their juvenile fire.

I have to let her make her own mistakes, I suppose.

I want to go to a bar although I hate bars. I settle instead for the TGI Fridays in Junction, still in my Double Dees outfit. It’s a real doozy. Short shorts with tights and knee-high boots. My top is cut too tight, a powder blue with “Double Dees” in curly script. I’m wearing my black trench coat, though, which I’m sure looks like I’m covering up something even more risqué. But it’s one-thirty when I finally roll up, and the lunch crowd has thinned out. This is where I typically go. I leave the subpar restaurant I work at for a gimmicky chain, and I sit in a booth. My legs are thankfully covered so I can’t feel the stickiness of the seat. But still, I imagine them, all the people who have sat there over the years and wonder who’s alive and who’s dead.

I don’t have a lot of other hobbies.

When my broccoli cheddar soup comes lightly bobbing in the hands of “Tiffany” (who’s treating me a little like I’ve escaped the local insane asylum), I dig into it, looking for answers. Wren asked me once why her daddy killed himself, and I look for that answer but can’t find it. Rochelle asked me once why I had to be so selfish, dragging her grandchild to “who-knows-where-ville.” Can’t find that one either. I keep digging but nothing comes to me, not even at the end of the bowl when I’ve eaten everything inside but feel even emptier than when I started.

My phone buzzes. A text: Meet soon?

I don’t even wipe my hands or mouth before I type my reply: Of course.

I pay Tiffany and give her a twenty percent tip. I know what it’s like–your feet sore, your back sore. Life pinning you between a plate full of cheesy fries and some customer’s bad breath.

She’s looking at me like I’m a little less crazy now.

In my car, I spray Binaca into my mouth and absorb a mist of body spray. I brush my hair and check my mascara. I rub a glob of gloss against my lips. When Wren was little, I liked playing games with her. At the time, I thought it was a good way for her to process things, to cope with the wild world we were chaotically flung into. Rochelle would have called it “organized chaos.” A journey we take to grow like we’re flowers or some other nonsense.

Thing is, weeds grow, too.

I would hide and Wren would come and find me, and every time her face was so happy. She knew I hadn’t left the apartment. She knew I was somewhere deep inside the shallow space. But no matter. When she saw me, she loved me, and her face showed every ounce of it.

I haven’t seen that face in a long time. And I’m starting to think I don’t deserve to.

I show up to the condo but park around back. I check my favorite mirror again, studying my face in sections. Things are expensive, I tell myself like I always do.

I open the car door and walk around the block. I stick out like a sore thumb, a black thumb in my trench coat.  I take care not to slip and slide on the sidewalk, icy in patches where concrete meets grass. I take a deep breath before I push the doorbell of 103. I ignore the “Welcome” sign which would turn its face if it realized the kind of person it was welcoming.

The door opens and my boss, Hootie, answers with a slimy smile on his face. “Right on time,” he says.

“Always am.” I go in deeper and deeper into the shallow condo and wish somebody would come find me.