Chapter 9 #3
“I’m glad you like the changes. I’ve been thinking more about jobs,” I said.
That topic had been on the forefront of my mind as I’d dragged the plastic bins out of the locked closet next to his bedroom and through the yard to the barn.
They were heavy and it had taken a while, so I’d had plenty of time to go over several ideas.
“Pinar said that I shouldn’t jump into something else that I wouldn’t like and might disappear. ”
“Like the carnival you used to work for,” he said, pointing again to my résumé. I should have removed that one. “Or the magician.”
“I don’t really know what I want, though. Well, that’s not totally true, because I know what I want in other areas. I want clean sheets because I like them a lot, and I want to eat meals at times that are generally accepted as normal in North America.”
“That sounds reasonable. Do you want more of this meal?” He spooned up the last of the dinner onto my plate.
“Thank you.” I twirled my chopsticks and mentioned, “I’m not going to go back to my current job. Today was my last day.”
“Did you put in your notice or did you just walk away?”
I had picked up the cash from the table and then left for good.
Today had made me sad enough that I’d been crying at the end of it, and he’d snarled at me to get the fuck out, that he wouldn’t keep paying me if I was going to depress him rather than getting him off.
“It’s not a formal thing, and I can quit anytime,” I answered. “Now is the time.”
“What was your job, Grace? Dealing?”
“No, no drugs. I wouldn’t bring illegal stuff into your life.”
He nodded. “I’m glad to hear that.” He didn’t ask anything else, but it felt like he was waiting for more from me.
“It’s just client services,” I said. That was what I usually told people and I stopped there, but I continued.
“He only watches me.” Now I watched Theo but he didn’t seem to react very much.
He did a good job of keeping himself impassive, just like he must have done with his patients when he heard something weird or disappointing from them.
“He only watches you,” he repeated. “Are you undressed? Doing things?”
“Yes.” Theo was very smart, and I didn’t need to specify the things I was doing.
“I didn’t plan to start this,” I said. “He was somebody that I met through someone else, and it didn’t seem like a bad idea when he suggested it.
He has a lot of health problems and he thinks it’s easier to pay a stranger rather than trying to find a real girlfriend.
He has very unattractive personal habits and an unpleasant personality, so meeting someone might be hard.
But you never know what women will go for,” I mused.
“His sister is a police officer so he doesn’t want to do anything illegal, and there’s no touching except him touching himself. ”
“I see.”
“The first time I did it, I wasn’t thinking that it was very important. It’s easy physically, not like pulling heavy, plastic totes into a barn. I’ve never cared too much about being naked or things like that,” I said.
“But this is the job that made you feel weird. You said that it made you uncomfortable.”
“Well, it does,” I admitted. “It’s really strange to be in a brightly lit room in the middle of the day with no clothes on, doing things that are usually reserved for when you’re alone and in private, but instead there’s someone staring at you and breathing hard.
He has lung issues so that’s very noticeable.
It feels weird to get into the positions he wants and do the things he wants to see, and then to pick up the cash next to the door.
It’s easy money but it all started to bother me.
He left today to visit his sister for the holiday and I don’t think I’m going to go back. I don’t want to do it again.”
Theo didn’t speak. He nodded a little but looked at the empty wok instead of meeting my eyes.
“You shouldn’t tell my siblings about it. Please don’t,” I said. He would be coming to JuJu’s for Christmas dinner, even though Regina had also asked him over to her house.
“Why? Because they wouldn’t like it?” he asked, and I nodded. “They would think that it put you in a vulnerable and maybe a dangerous position. They would want you to have a job where your clothes stayed on, and you’re afraid of their judgement.”
“I’m not afraid,” I said. “I don’t want to have to argue about it.”
“Do you argue, or do you refuse to answer?”
I didn’t answer him at this moment, and we stared at each other until he broke the silence.
“I’m not judging you and what you choose to do, Grace.” But he was rubbing both sides of his face, his fingers massaging his jaws. “You’re an adult. You don’t have to worry about my opinion and you don’t have to hide from your sisters, either.”
“I’m not hiding!”
“Then why didn’t you put it on your résumé, like the thousands of other jobs you’ve done?” He tapped the nice paper a lot harder than he had before. “Where are you going right now?”
“To bed,” I answered, and took a few more steps. “You didn’t notice that it’s late because you stay at your office for too long and make other people wait to have dinner with you.”
“No one needs to wait for me,” he retorted. “People can do whatever they want.”
“And they do!” I told him. “They can have the jobs they want and live how they choose, and other people can claim not to judge but they are! So I’m going to bed.
” And I did, but I didn’t sleep for a long time.
I couldn’t hear Theo at all due to these stupidly thick cabin walls, not even with the extra holes we’d punched in them lately, and no matter how hard I listened.
I got up after a while and worked on a different project instead.
The next morning, I was gathering my meringue mushrooms and other cake ingredients when he knocked. “Hi,” he told me. “I made eggs, if you’re interested.”
I was, but I wasn’t feeling like I wanted to eat with him.
I had bought those eggs with the money I had earned from the job he’d claimed not to care about, but which he did care about, and which I didn’t like but also didn’t want him not to like.
It was very confusing because I also did want to eat with him and I also wanted to hug him a lot, something I’d never done but which seemed like a great idea all the time.
But my other ideas were bad, like the outdoor oven for the Christmas cake, like putting my arm into an aquarium, like a trillion other things I’d done which I was now looking back on with…
maybe it was regret, which was something that I’d felt before but tried to push down.
What was the point of it? Anyway, I wasn’t going to hug him.
“Grace?”
“No, thank you,” I said, and studied my mushrooms.
“Are you going somewhere? Did you figure out a place to make the cake?”
I nodded. “I texted my brother-in-law and he doesn’t mind if I use the kitchen in his restaurant, as long as I don’t bring any sick birds or other animals with me.
He’s also going to be there making stuff but he doesn’t watch me like my siblings do.
Or maybe he does, but he’s sneakier about it so I don’t know.
I think he used to be a spy so it all makes sense. ”
Theo’s expression showed that maybe it wasn’t making sense to him, but he didn’t need to know everything.
He pointed next at my bags, which were full of clothes and all the other stuff I’d collected in twenty-three years on this planet, what was left after things had been lost or stolen as I’d moved around. “You’re all packed?”
I nodded again. “I’m going to head out. It’s not really a room and board deal here, not the lumber kind for sure but it’s also not fair anymore.
You don’t need me for work since the building is so cleared out.
I moved stuff into the barn yesterday and Keon and his crew will be here soon enough to start the construction.
You’ll go to a corporate apartment until it’s done. Right?”
“Uh, I haven’t totally decided on that. Grace, I’m not a mind-reader but it seems like you’re upset about what happened over dinner.”
“I’m not upset with you,” I answered. “I’m not anything with you. I’m going to make the cake now and I’ll probably see you tomorrow at my sister Juliet’s house. If you’re still coming.”
“Am I not invited to dinner?” He seemed very surprised. “I thought we had a little argument, not that we weren’t going to be friends anymore.”
“Ok,” I agreed. “That’s fine, then.” I felt extremely relieved and the urge to hug him grew. “I’ll go make the cake and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I was thinking that I would like to come and learn how to make that, too,” he suggested. “Would Granger mind if I was there?”
No. My sister Addie had specifically mentioned that she and her husband had both liked Theo a lot when they’d met him on Thanksgiving. “He would probably be ok with that. I could ask him to make sure.”
“That’s a good idea.” He still stood in my bedroom door. “Would you mind if I was there?”
“No. I would like it almost more than anything else,” I said. “But I really don’t like it when people are upset with me, and that’s why I don’t tell them things. Nicola has no idea about a lot of stuff that goes on.”
“You’re an adult and you’re living on your own. She doesn’t need to know everything, does she?”
“She thinks that she does. She probably does need to,” I admitted.
“My dad used to say that if there was a poor choice to be made, I would hunt it down so I could choose it. I don’t always know whether I’m doing something dumb or not.
That job was dumb, because some people really wouldn’t care and it wouldn’t bother them, but it does bother me.
It makes me feel small and humiliated. Maybe it didn’t at first but now it does and I don’t want to do it anymore, and I acted mad at you because I was sorry that I told you, because now you’ll think of me as that woman who’s small and humiliated. ”
“No, I don’t. I remembered you saying that you didn’t like that job, though. I don’t want you to do it anymore either.”
I nodded. But what was next, then?
“We don’t have to talk about it now, but it would be a good idea to eat breakfast. I make great scrambled eggs,” Theo told me.
“It would be a good idea for you to come with me to make the cake, because you perform surgeries so I bet you’re really good with knives and that may come in handy.”
“I’m not bad,” he agreed. “It would also be a good idea for you to spend another night here, if you want. I’d like to talk more about the cabin and what’s going to happen to it during the construction process.” He held out his hand. “Can I see those mushrooms?”
When he gave them back, his fingers took mine.
We went to have breakfast and then to bake the cake, and then off into a future that wasn’t entirely clear to me.
It never really had been, but now that was making me nervous.
The uncertainty made me feel like rubbing my jaws even though mine didn’t actually hurt, but I held Theo’s hand instead.