I think I know why Slim does this now. It feels good to hide from the world for a minute, even if I’m alone.
My phone vibrates, and I open my eyes back, looking down.
Slim
I’m waiting.
I hurry and send the message full of dead air and one pussy-ass word even though I shouldn’t have, but I really don’t know how to wrangle impatient baby birds just like I don’t know how to tell them “no.”
Slim
Yes?
Slim
Tell me more. I’m just sitting in the back of this Uber waiting to hear how my reticent friend is doing.
I blink over at Faye’s Camry parked next to Arnez’s Altima, then up at DeRay cranking up his lawn mower behind Beatrice’s open gate swinging in the wind. Wendell’s busted Nikes and Polos spill out of a black garbage bag lying on the curb in front of the gate.
Tamryn pushes out of the front door with a Capri Sun hanging out of her mouth and her face in her phone.
“Pup said you can take all that shit on the curb when you done!” she hollers at DeRay, pulling the front door closed. “He said drop it off at Goodwill if you can’t fit none of it.”
I look back down, pressing the record button and clearing my throat to get rid of the rasp that coated my voice before.
“I’m…I’m at B’s, baby. I’m just making sure her yard gets cut and I…I wanted to get some more measurements for the ramp in the back and take care of something.” I cut my eyes back over at Faye’s Camry. “Where you at? Why Faye sent you to do that by yourself? You got money, right?”
I send the message and stare at it as it sits there, waiting for her to listen.
My eyes dart from my phone, to my truck’s radio, then to DeRay tossing a few sticks in a pile he started, then back to our message thread.
This is what motherfuckas did all day when they texted their gal?
I shake my head. “Fuck this.”
I can’t wait and play these silly voice message games, so I press her name and call her. It rings too many times before she finally answers with rustling and loud voices in the background.
“Hold on, Rich…” she rushes out. “I need fifty black Gildan shirts. This is forty…and six of them have stains.”
“They’re not stained,” a nasal monotone voice responds.
“Yes, they are—here and here. I mean, I’ll take them stained, but you need to take ten percent off the total.”
My stupid, galloping heart finally slows to a steady jog, and I drop my head against my headrest while I listen to her haggle back and forth over fifty black Gildan T-shirts. Shit, I don’t even know why the brand matters, but I know better than to interrupt her and ask.
“Well, if you can’t take off ten percent, then I need six new shirts.”
I smile at the way her soft voice never climbs high, even when it should. Her and the man go back and forth until they settle on fifty black Gildan shirts, six without stains,anda ten percent discount just because he liked her cargo pants and “funky heels.”
“Mr. Lovelace…” she sings. “Are you still there?”
“Mr. Lovelace?”
“I mean, I can always let my intrusive thoughts win and call you ‘Daddy’ like that one weird chick does, but I have some decorum despite my raging daddy issues.”
I chuckle.
If only she knew that “Mr. Lovelace” sounds even better than “Daddy.” Shit, anything that comes out of her mouth sounds superior to the stuff that comes out of any other woman’s—even her moans.
