“See you there.” I hung up the phone. I didn’t have any interest in serving people their food. I preferred to be the guy who wrote the checks. That was what Kayla and Lisa wanted, wasn’t it? They wanted me to help. Well, logically, the best help was to pour money right into the ground-floor organizations that were making the biggest steps forward. It would certainly be more help than scooping box-mix pasta onto a stranger’s plate.
However, spending a couple of hours at the soup kitchen would afford me the chance to scope out this Rodney character. Maybe some time with him would help me rule out whether or not he was competition.
The soup kitchen wasn’t an impressive place at all from the outside. I parked the Lykan down the block and put money in a meter. Now I stood in front of the soup kitchen. To my right was a line up of people waiting to get their dinner. Some talked quietly amongst themselves. Some whispered back and forth conversations with no other participants, only the voices in their heads. Others fidgeted with strands of hair, their hats, or whatever they could lay their hands on.
Not one of them made eye contact with me.
Again, I regretted wearing a three-piece suit. I had to stop showing up dressed for my office when I was working with Kayla.
You could take a page from Rodney’s book and wear khakis and polo shirts, I mused to myself as I stepped through the front doors and into the soup kitchen hall. The thought almost made me laugh. There was no way I’d be caught dead in what Rodney was wearing.
I saw him before I saw Kayla.
Rodney stood at the front of the line for food. His hair was matted flat beneath his hairnet and he grinned and shook hands with every person who came up to get their food. It was impossible not to notice the fact that he knew every single one of their names.
Every. Single. One.
I gritted my teeth and wished he would make it easier to hate his guts.
I turned my attention to the people milling around the hall and settling in at the cafeteria-style tables to eat their meals. Dirty faces hovered inches above plates of food and forks shoveled corn and potatoes into open mouths. People didn’t talk while they ate.
They were starving.
My gut tightened uncomfortably at the memory of being a hungry child. I knew exactly how it felt to have a belly aching with hunger and a light head from a lack of nutrition. I knew what it was to be tired all the time, to have heavy limbs, and to feel like the world had turned its back on you.
Because it had.
Except for the people like Kayla who were in this very room doing what they could to make things better for these folks. There had been people like her in my life when I was young and my mother and I would sometimes have to spend several meals a week in a place like this to keep ourselves from wasting away. My mother had never been too proud to wait in line. She’d kept her chin up and told me there was nothing to be ashamed of. Sometimes, you needed help, and if there were people holding out their hands willing to offer that, you smiled, thanked them, and accepted what they offered.
You did not let yourself falter and grow weaker all for the sake of your ego.
It had been a hard lesson to learn and accept. As I stood here feeling like an imposter, I wondered if the lesson had truly ever sunk in. Why did I feel so small? Hollow? And hungry for something that wasn’t food?
“Lukas!”
I turned at the sound of hurried footsteps. Kayla was there, grinning like she wanted to be in this place as she tucked loose strands of hair under her hairnet.
When she reached me, she stretched out a hand and smoothed it across the lapel of my jacket. “I think you need to go shopping and buy some mundane clothes for when we’re working together.”
I arched an eyebrow. “My suits are part of my identity.”
She laughed and waved the comment off. “Oh please, that would be like saying my hairnet is part of my identity, and that’s just silly.”
“I think it looks cute.”
Her cheeks turned a pretty rosy hue and her cheek puckered as she chewed on it. “Thank you.”
Rodney stepped up behind her and closed a hand on Kayla’s shoulder. He leaned forward and extended the other hand to me to shake. I shook it. His grip was warm and firm enough.
“Nice to meet you, man,” Rodney said. “I’m Rodney. Kayla has told me lots about you. What you’re doing for the school lunch program?” He shook his head incredulously. “It’s the biggest donation we’ve ever received. I’m very grateful. I know a lot of parents who are going to be relieved when they hear the news.”
Kayla beamed up at me. For a moment, I thought she looked almost proud.
“Nice to meet you too,” I said to Rodney. What I really wanted to say was take your damn hand off Kayla’s shoulder. However, I suspected she wouldn’t like that too much.
“The ripple effect will be huge,” Rodney said, letting his hand fall from Kayla’s shoulder. She looked up and over her shoulder at him as he spoke. “Hungry kids have a harder time in school. They can’t focus without proper nutrition, so their grades slip. This causes tension between teachers and parents and so forth, and the last thing these families need is more strain in their household. Having a full lunch every day will turn things around for a lot of these kids. I hope you realize just how life changing this will be for a lot of people.”
I wanted Rodney to be an ass so I could justify my distaste
