“Just put it all in the same package,” I said, unnerved by the polished gloss of instant happiness that exuded from the place.
“I’m going as fast as I can, ma’am,” she said. Finally I grabbed the bags, stumbled through the door into the mall and breathed in the tropical scent of air freshener. My shoulders instantly relaxed. I headed towards the coffee bar and promised myself a fat, sticky pastry. A sugar fix was exactly what I needed.
I saw Birdie a month or so after the car incident. The last week of school before summer break.
An early heat spell had charred the grass to a dull brown and polluted the air with dust. Sizzling heat pressed down on everything, blanketing me in sweat. It got so bad I actually caved in and showered in Patti and Lester’s moldy tub. Patti had given up housework months ago so the place was rancid.
The air conditioner was bust so they lay on the couch most days, a creaky fan whirring around in front of them, barely stirring the heavy air. Patti usually shoved a couple of bills into my hands and told me to go to the store for slushies and hot dogs. That’s what I lived on those weeks before the summer break. The fridge was empty. Nobody bothered to go shopping any more. Any spare cash went to Tray and Anita and a troupe of other junkie scarecrows who showed up wherever a good time could be had.
Birdie left a message shoved into my locker to meet her in a diner just a couple of blocks away from the school. I was starving and hoped she’d buy me supper. Two months of leftover noodles warmed up day after day had left me craving a fat, juicy burger and hot fries with ketchup.
I barely recognized her when I walked in. She sat at a window seat. Sunlight blazed through the blinds casting a shadow of slats across her bony chest. Her face was so thin the skin looked transparent. A network of bluish veins spread like a web around her temples. Her eyes were sunk into dark sockets. She chewed on her nails and I noticed a bald patch above her ear where she’d been pulling her hair out.
“What’s up?” I said, sliding into the seat opposite noticing how she persistently drummed her knee on the underside of the table. “You look like shit.”
“Screw you,” she said, twirling a piece of hair between her fingers.
The waitress, a lumpy fortyish woman with spiked burgundy hair swept up to the table. “You have to order. It’s not a drop-in center.”
Birdie looked right through her, reached into her purse and slid a couple of fives onto the table. “Two coffees. One black and…”
“One with triple cream. And an order of fries,” I added.
Burgundy-hair shuffled away mumbling to herself and I looked at Birdie. I wasn’t going to ask again.
“The baby’s gone,” she said, staring vacantly out onto the street.
I breathed an inner sigh of relief. “You lost it?”
She shook her head. “They made me kill it.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. She wiped her arm across her face and I handed her a napkin. Next thing she’d be blowing snot bubbles like she did when she was a kid.
“Who made you do that?” I leaned back as the waitress placed the coffees onto the table. She glanced at Birdie but I glared up at her. Didn’t want any of her fake concern.
“That guy I was seeing. Said he’d changed his mind and couldn’t deal with the responsibility. And his wife would make his life hell for him if he left her. She’d take more than half his money and business. Then Earl found out and told me I had to get rid of it. Just like that. They sucked my baby out in a few minutes.”
“Did your guy tell Earl about the baby?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I loved him. He said he wanted me to have his babies because together our kids would be the best. So I didn’t take my pills. I thought he loved me. He told me over and over again.”
“Don’t you know he was lying to you, Birdie?” I grasped at her skinny wrist and tried to get her to look at me, but she just shook her head and stared down at the table, jabbing at her paper napkin with a fork. “There’s no way he’d let some teenage whore’s brat pollute the happy family home.”
She looked up at me with wounded eyes, but I had to keep going. Had to make her see sense. I remembered the fine-skinned boy in the BMW. “He has a kid already.”
“How do you know that?” she said, tears running down her cheeks and a tiny dribble running from her nose to her lip. I felt as if some evil hand was clawing at my heart, squeezing the breath from me.
“I saw him.”
She glared at me with bloodshot eyes. “So it was you sneaking around out there. You scared him off.”
“You’re crazy. You think that guy would leave his fancy wife and kid for you?”
Her eyes drifted back to the street again. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking any more. That connection between us was long gone.
She looked back at me with those sad, puppy eyes. “I knew about his son, but he said the kid was going off to college and wouldn’t need him anymore, so he’d be free.”
“And you believed him?”
“He said I was the best thing that ever happened to him.”
I asked myself which soap operas this guy had been watching to come up with bullshit lines like that. “Did he tell you that when he
