Page 11 of Babydoll

He grabs my free hand and puts a couple Snickers bars in it. They’re warm from his pocket. I stare at them in my threadbare gloves and then look up at him, but he’s already walking away.

I shove the phone into my pocket and hug the chocolate to my chest, beelining for my frost-covered car. I take my time getting in, setting the chocolate on the console, putting on my seatbelt, adjusting my position and finally starting the engine, giving SSD plenty of time to leave.

I sigh in relief as soon as he’s gone, and once the heat has cleared a small patch on the windshield, I drive to the side street next to the factory. As soon as I’m there, I turn off the ignition and jam my hand in my pocket to pull out the pudding from earlier. I eye it, and then the candy bars.

Pulling the pudding lid back, I lick it clean and then fold it neatly and shove it into the grocery bag hanging from my gearshift. With no other choice, I pull off my glove and use my finger to scoop the pudding into my mouth. Why is it that your hunger doubles the moment food touches your tongue?

I tuck the empty cup, so clean it could pass for new, into the garbage bag and put my glove back on. Climbing into the backseat, I put the candy bars into the seat pocket and curl up under the wool blanket that I bought from Goodwill for five bucks. I settle in and stare at the brown chocolate wrappers. Tomorrow morning, I tell myself, my mouth watering for one bite.

With a flat pillow, a mostly empty belly, and the wind picking up hard enough outside to rock my little car, you’d think I’d have to fight for sleep, but I don’t. It comes fast and hard and I only wake when my alarm goes off at five am.

Stiff from a night cramped in the cold backseat, I head to the Y, where my yearly membership is still good for another few months. Once it runs out, I’ll have to say goodbye to warm showers, but thankfully, that’s not today. Today I can spend an hour in the spray, scalding the chill from my bones.

Chapter Three

Lu

Despite the candy bars not having been touched in my car more than a week after I got them, I still snag Sharpie Jeff’s pudding from the brown bag in the fridge. There’s another note, but also a second pudding. I narrow my eyes, considering taking both just because he’d underlined his name twice on the bag. As if an extra stroke of his sharpie would protect it.

Shoving one, a butterscotch, because I had a chocolate cup yesterday, into my pocket along with the new note, I shut the fridge and get back to cleaning. I make it all the way to trash duty alone in the room, but then as I yank the black bag out of the can, the door opens.

“Sorry. I’ll be out of your way in a minute,” I mumble, not looking at whoever just walked in. Tying the black garbage bag, I head for the door.

“You going to replace that?” SSD’s voice, both deep and smooth, makes me freeze. I look down to see if the pudding has fallen out of my pocket.

“Excuse me?” I ask, my voice cracking with some sort of guilt chasm. A quick glance up and my gut flips as his stern brown eyes pin mine. He points.

“The bag.”

I follow the direction of his finger with my eyes. The trash can is bagless.

“Oh.” I clear my throat. “Uh, yeah. Gimme a minute. This thing reeks.”

He only narrows his eyes on me and I feel heat burn up the back of my neck as I get to my cart by the door.

“I don’t want you to forget again.”

I grunt, suddenly irritated. Dropping the full trash bag dramatically with a sigh, I yank an empty one off my cart.

I like SSD much better from a distance. Ever since he nursed my wound, he’s been talking to me, mostly just in passing, but talking is talking. Greetings, idle weather remarks, and ‘hey, how’s it goings’ are more than enough though, especially when paired with his sexy but intense stare. The one good thing in my life had been fantasizing about Sexy Security Dude and now that’s gone too because I can’t afford to get soft where he’s concerned. I pause for a moment of silence in my grief.

Dear higher power, why me?

What was that line from the movie,Bruce Almighty? Something like,‘God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I’m the ant’.

“Lu?”

“Huh?” I blink over at him, now standing in front of the open fridge. I’m a little surprised he knows my name.

As a janitor I’m pretty invisible. No one likes talking to the person that cleans up the bathrooms where people suddenly become filthier than barn animals. But I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. He probably had to write a report about the dumbass that got a head injury while standing in line at the punch clock.

I groan aloud at the thought and SSD frowns at me, or actually at my chest. I look down at the patch on my coveralls that says ‘Trish’.

“I know it says Trish, but your name’s really Lu, right?” he asks. “That’s what I’ve heard people call you.”

Even my work coveralls are hand-me-downs, so yes, they do say ‘Trish’ underneath the BBW’s Friendly Cleaning Service emblem, which was the last company contracted to do the cleaning here.

Trish must have left her coveralls behind when BBW’s contract was terminated. The factory hired me on their payroll instead but didn’t have a uniform for me. I used Trish’s because it meant my clothes wouldn’t smell like day-old tuna fish. Trish was bigger than me… everywhere, so the coveralls are baggy.

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