“I’ve got leftovers and a bottle of soda,” he said, the last hand he had to play and the most ridiculous. “It’s yours. I just want to check on the baby.”
The door opened a crack, just enough to let a nose and one eye peer out dubiously.
“I’m not a whore,” she said. “I’ve got a job.”
“I’m not straight,” Tag reassured her. She looked blank and still suspicious, so he tried again. At the same time, he handed her the leftovers. “I sleep with men, and I don’t want anything from you. Just to check the baby out.”
She licked her lips. It was obvious she was so tired she could hardly make her eyes focus, but she still shook her head after a second. “I told you, no help.”
Tag shifted his weight onto one foot and stuck out his hand. “I’m Taggart Hayes. I live downstairs. You’re…?”
He waited expectantly. After an uncomfortable moment a thin, scar-knuckled hand came out and shook his carefully.
“Maria” was all she gave him, which he already knew. It wasn’t an uncommon name in Plenty. Tag had hoped for a surname, but he didn’t push. “But the baby is fine. He has the, ah… the… umm… chills?”
A chill. A cold. It could be, but Tag had come this far, and he wasn’t going to be put off until he knew the baby was okay.
“It’s me or CPS,” he reminded her.
That was one word she didn’t need put into context. She pulled back and closed the door in his face. Tag swore under his breath in disappointment, but before he could reach for his phone, the door opened again. This time the security chain wasn’t strung across it.
“Come in,” she said with an impatient gesture from one square, practical hand. “You say you have to, so come in.”
Tag squeezed through the door into a room that could, more or less, have been his own. The TV was smaller, and there was a bucket of baby toys next to the couch, but those were the only differences at a glance.
The bathroom door was propped open and the shower was turned on full blast. Wet clouds of steam filled the small room and made the air in the rest of apartment sticky and humid. Tag could taste the hint of old soap and shampoo on the back of his tongue. The baby lay on a blanket in front of the open door, in a faded onesie, and coughed miserably.
“I would have got you some fresh food,” Tag apologized as he handed over the crumpled bag. There was a stain at the bottom where something had leaked. “But I didn’t have any in the apartment.”
Maria peered into the paper mouth of the bag and shrugged. She rubbed her hand over her face. “I have food most times,” she said. “For me. For him. But he is so sick, I haven’t time. Or I forget.”
“It’s hard enough being a parent,” Tag said. “Never mind to a sick baby. Can I—”
He gestured at the baby. Maria shrugged from behind the sack of food.
“I let you in,” she said tiredly. “I will already be in trouble. Why not more trouble?”
She lifted the food onto the counter and started to unpack. Styrofoam containers and paper boxes were lined up neatly on the counter. The burger she half unwrapped and took a huge bite from, her spare hand raised to brush crumbs and sauce from the corners of her mouth.
“He makes that noise all the time,” she said as she chewed. “Coughs sometimes, but not as much as last week. Maybe he’ll be better soon?”
She sounded hopeful but unconvinced. Neither was Tag.
He knelt down on the floor next to the body, warm steam in his face, and put his hand to the small chest. The baby wheezed and waved his arms and legs listlessly. Tag could feel the rattle of small lungs against his fingers.
“What’s his name?” he asked.
Maria didn’t answer. He glanced up at her. She took another bite of cold burger and shrugged as she chewed. “I call him Ribka,” she said after she swallowed.
Tag studied her for a second. Her English was better than he’d thought. Apparently she just hadn’t wanted to speak to him before, and his Ukrainian was still scant. But the few words he knew, he picked up in the ER as people fretted over injured friends and relatives.
Ribka meantlittlesomething.Fish, he thought.
Nobody had used it as a given name, but then some people named their child Abcde. Something wasn’t a name until it was.
“How old is he?” he asked.
“Six months,” she said promptly. “Six months and a week.”
