“Oh my god, Grenadine.”
“Did you have sex with Mr. Richmond? Is that why you said you had to go over to his apartment? Did you use a condom?” McKenna whispered.
“She better not have; she needs to get that child support money.” The wine in the elderly woman’s glass sloshed.
“You want to share that?” I asked weakly.
“Grayson didn’t give you a drink to get the taste out of your mouth?” Grenadine cackled.
“I didn’t sleep with him, and I didn’t give him a blow job!” I shrieked.
“Really? So you were butt naked in his penthouse and it didn’t turn into one of those weird porn situations where he came home, saw you there, and lost all self-control and you had sex on a washing machine?” McKenna asked.
“Ugh. No.”
Grenadine shook her head. “Still a virgin. At your age.”
“Grenadine, shhh!” McKenna hissed.
I grabbed the wine bottle from her and took a swig.
“Blech! How are you drinking that?”
“It was found in a garbage can. I lowered my expectations.”
“But don’t you lower them for Grayson,” Grenadine warned me. “He needs to be fucking you in a bed. Make him treat you like a queen.”
“Oh my gosh, what are we going to do with a baby?” McKenna fretted.
“You’re pregnant?” Martha called through the paper-thin apartment door.
“Gosh no!”
“It’s a boy?” she called.
“You need to get your hearing aid adjusted,” Grenadine yelled, hauling herself up off of the cot and shuffling to the door to open it.
“Do you know who the father is?” Connie, newly retired from her job but not from gossip and who had a sixth sense for drama, had materialized, and she peered at me.
She whistled when she saw my new shoes.
“I’m not surprised you have a list of potential fathers with footwear like that. How much did you spend on those shoes?”
“Her boss bought them for her,” Grenadine said.
“When’s the due date?” Martha asked, doddering around the tiny kitchen-slash-living-room-slash-bedroom.
“She’s not pregnant!” Grenadine shouted.
“My word.” Mrs. Turner, cane thumping on the floor, had invited herself into the conversation about my nonexistent affair with my boss. “Pregnant and unmarried. This neighborhood has gone downhill.”
“Hey!” Grenadine yelled, jumping to my defense while McKenna pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’ll have you cut off the free food list if you think you’re better than someone who sleeps with her boss for free shoes.”
“I didn’t sleep with him,” I said as loudly as I could. “Grayson gave them to me as a gift.”
“Only one reason a man gives a young woman two-hundred-dollar shoes,” Mrs. Turner said with a pointed sniff. “He wants something.”
“She’s not wrong,” Connie said.
