Eddie Listens In

Eddie was still sitting on a milk crate near the wall when she walked in the door. He sat with the glass in hand, hanging between his legs. When she walked in, he looked up at her and shrugged. It was obvious that he'd heard every word. The corners of his mouth were turned down. His eyes were big, like he'd just witnessed a car accident or seen a ghost. She sat down beside him and took the glass.

"Did you hear it all?" she asked.

Eddie nodded.

"Do you think we can find her?"

Eddie nodded.

"I'm not going to get any help from Daniel."

Eddie shook his head slowly.

She stared at the glass in her hand. "You know," she said. "Talking to Daniel just now was a little like eating glass."

Eddie got on his knees and turned to face her. He put a hand on each of her shoulders. "Babe," he said. "Don't take this the wrong way." He lowered his chin and looked up at her with wide puppy eyes.

"But you kind of like the taste of blood in your mouth."

She could have reacted by throwing the glass, or taking a bit out of it and spitting it at him. She could have screamed and thrown her hands up and stomped around the house. She could have gotten angry. She could have denied it. Instead, she thought of all the difficult tasks she took on, including her boyfriend and her high maintenance tenants. She thought about how she was taking on the task of finding the little girl. She'd have to decide what to do with her once she did find her. The options were bleak: police, Daniel, kidnap the kid herself.

He Took Her

Ginger waited while Daniel sobbed. She bounced her knee for a while. She nodded her head, up and down, for a while.. She looked around her yard. Finally, when Daniel's tears started to let up a little, she leaned over and put her hands on his cheeks.

"You took her where?" Ginger asked.

Eddie had gone back inside and the streetlights came on. They were alone on the block. No one was witness to the slap she gave him when he took too long to answer. It startled him. He put his hand over the spot where it stung. Ginger took him by the shoulders and shook him.

"You took her where!?" she shouted.

"I didn't take her now," Daniel whispered. He glanced up at her door to make sure Eddie wasn't coming back outside at the sound of the slap.

"I took her and we came here," he said. After hearing himself say what he'd done, however vaguely, Daniel stood up quickly. Ginger rose with him.

"Maybe the police found her," he said. Ginger's head started to hurt.

"Or maybe she went home," he said. He seemed pretty excited at the second option.

"Where's home?" Ginger asked, suddenly aching. She was pretty sure that her property, that duplex, with the yard they were standing in - she was pretty sure that was home for the little girl.

"With her mother," Daniel said to his feet. "She's not gone. She came home one day and we were gone."

Ginger stepped away from him. She walked over to the bush, to the spot where she noticed the little girl on the day she and Daniel walked into Ginger's life. Ginger turned to look at the man, the father, her tenant. She thought of her own parents as she turned away from Daniel to look at her property. She spent a lot of time restoring it. She really loved it. She loved it so much she heard a deep, guttural groan escape from her lips.

She loved it. The only obvious remedy was to move far, far away from it.

But first, the little girl. And Daniel. She didn't know them, not really. She wasn't sure about their names, even. She shook her head.

"Let's go inside," she said. She took Daniel by the elbow and led him into his half of her house. She was fairly certain that if the police had picked up the little girl, they'd have arrested Daniel by now.

"We'll find her," Ginger said. Daniel didn't look very sure.

"I'll find her," Ginger said. She was good at finding things: tools, tenants, properties to own. She had a method. She simply drove around until she saw a sign.

Missing

When Ginger pulled into the driveway, she knew immediately that something was...amiss. She put both feet on the ground and stood slowly, turning slightly and then placing her hands on the top of her car. Daniel was in the yard screaming at Eddie, who held his hands up like a clueless criminal. He was standing on the porch near Ginger's front door. The overgrown bush separated him from the hysterical man, who whipped around and pointed his finger at Ginger.

"You!" he screamed. "You can't just take her."

She understood the scene all too quickly. The little girl must be gone, and Daniel would have assumed that she was either at Ginger's or with Ginger. Her face became a grimace that Eddie must have noticed, because he threw his head back. The three of them each felt hopeless, but wouldn't unite in their despair. Daniel needed to point fingers. Apparently literally. Ginger needed to figure out why the little girl was gone, and how, and where. Eddie wanted to go back inside and finish his dinner, maybe play a little guitar, caulk a sink or something and go to bed.

"Daniel," she said as she carefully closed her car door. "I didn't take her."

He was still pointing at her. Then he pointed to her passenger seat. Then at her again.

"When did you notice that she was gone?" Ginger asked as she took a step toward him. She could see Eddie out of the corner of her eye. He dropped his arms and let them hang reluctantly at his side. He tilted his head in disbelief. Playing along or soothing Daniel may not have been the absolute best idea, but she didn't think aggravating him further would help anyone. Least of all the little girl.

His face was red and his eyes were swollen and wet. He was in a panic. "Where is she?" he yelled in Ginger's direction.

"I don't know," Ginger said. She looked at her watch. Usually at this time of night, the little girl was eating dinner - either with her or Daniel. Last night, the little girl had dinner with her. She ate a bowl of peas with butter melted over them. She asked Ginger if she liked her parents. Ginger said yes.

"They taught me how to do a lot of this stuff," she told the little girl and waved her hand over her head to indicate all the renovation work. "We had this house when I was a kid," she told the little girl. "And we worked on it until we loved it."

The little girl's face had softened, and Ginger could have quit the story there, at the happily-ever-after part. But, she didn't, because she wouldn't, and because both she and the little girl deserved better. Ginger liked to live with the painful, obvious, hilarious truth.

"And as soon as we loved it, my folks moved 5,000 miles away from it," Ginger said.

The little girl paused, the spoon hovering just below her open mouth. She held Ginger's eye contact for half a minute or so, and then they both started laughing. They giggled. They guffawed. They howled at the moon.

It was just dark enough that the moon was making an appearance in the night sky. Ginger sighed. She lost all will to remain gentle and walked over to Daniel and grabbed him by the collar. She half led, half dragged him over to the step, where she shoved him down to sit. She motioned for Eddie to go get a phone by making the appropriate hand gesture with her pinky pointed toward her mouth and her thumb pointed toward her ear.

She sat beside Daniel. "Where would she go?" she asked.

Daniel shrugged.

"Has she ever done this before?" she asked.

Daniel shook his head.

"Could someone have taken her?" she asked.

Daniel started to sob. From beneath the cries, she heard him say, "No."

"Is that an answer?" she asked. "Does that mean someone didn't take her?"

Daniel screamed. It came from deep within his gut. It got caught on his crying. It made Eddie stop in his tracks. He didn't want to come any closer, so he put the receiver on the porch and pushed it toward Ginger with his foot.

She grabbed it and started to call the police, but Daniel smacked it from her hands. It landed in the yard with a thud.

"What the hell?" she said, still staring at the phone in disbelief.

"I took her," Daniel whined. He choked a little before he looked Ginger in the eyes and whispered, "I took her."

Rental Agreement

Ginger was unpacking the small bag of tile samples for the kitchen when she heard a crash and a howl come from the front porch. She opened the door slowly, with caution, to see a handsome man backing down the step. He stopped in the yard and brushed the front of his pants with both hands.

"Are you alright?" She called out to him.

She startled him, and he turned around quickly, almost in a complete circle, before he saw her. He pointed at her and she took a step toward him.

"I was looking at the sign," he said.

The red and white "For Rent" sign was in the window, and it looked as if he tripped over a few loose bricks and stray painting accessories she left lying in front of it. She walked across the porch and joined him in the yard.

"Are you interested in the apartment?" she asked as she approached him. Once she was closer, she realized he was as handsome as she thought. His face was friendly, and he smiled when she offered her hand to shake. He reached out to take it when she noticed the little girl standing behind him, near the bush that ran the length of the porch. It was a tall bush, taller than the little girl. Ginger shook the man's hand while the little girl gave the bush a nonchalant kick.

"How many bedrooms does it have?" the man asked. While Ginger gave him the details - two bedrooms, one bath, nice kitchen with a view - the little girl kicked at the bush again.

"How much does it rent for?" the man asked. Ginger answered.

The man shook his head. "I can't afford that," he said.

"What do you do?" Ginger asked.

"I teach physics over at the college," he said. "My schedule is all over the place. Sometimes I tutor kids in math."

"That doesn't pay well?" Ginger asked. The little girl kicked again and a bit of shrubbery fell to the ground.

"You'd be surprised," he said. "My name is Daniel, by the way."

"Ginger," she said.

"What's the landlord like?" Daniel asked.

Ginger smiled. "The landlord is fair," she said.

The little girl looked over at Ginger, and in that second, Ginger recognized her. It was the little girl her gave her the finger, who put all that energy into flipping her the bird, as she drove by the other day. The little girl went back to what she was doing. She kicked at the bush again, but instead of causing the bush any damage, her foot caught in a branch and she fell flat on her back.

"Honey," Daniel said as he lunged toward the child, "are you alright?"

The little girl stood up and brushed her legs with both hands. She glared at Ginger for another second. Ginger could feel the little girl's hostility. That kid wanted to flip her off again. Her, or anyone. It didn't matter. Daniel just turned to look at Ginger and smiled a half-hearted, exhausted smile.

"How much can you afford?" Ginger asked.

Card to Folks

Every year, she sent her parents a joint birthday card, even though her mother was born in May and her father was born in September. Ginger took pictures of her properties and made a collage, then wrote a little update. She mentioned how much she paid for each property and what renovations she made to each. Then she wrote out the birthday poem that her father started when she was little and through the years became a family tradition:

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
You're getting older.
And I am, too.

When her parents sent her a birthday card, they wrote out the same poem. Every time Ginger wrote it out, she missed them terribly.

After years of buying and fixing up properties all around the lower part of the state, her father decided he was tired of catering to the upper middle class. He was tired of using his skills solely for profit. Her mother agreed. They decided that instead of retiring, they'd try pioneer life. They sold off most of their properties except the larger units, and they let a management company take care of those. Ginger was able to purchase the house she grew up in, which she was slowly renovating. It was taking her more time than any other house or apartment she'd ever worked on. Some days she wanted to gut it and other days she wanted to preserve it.

"Burn it," her father advised from the two room cabin he shared with her mother in the Alaskan wilderness. It became his salutation, his sign off, before he signed his letters to his daughter. Instead of "Sincerely," he wrote, "Burn it." And he always meant the family home.

It wasn't fancy. It was a simple three bedroom ranch with a few mid-century modern touches, although not enough to entice an enthusiast. The yard was small. The back steps were crumbling. There was water damage in the garage. The basement was always damp. But every time Ginger walked into the kitchen, she thought of the first time she ripped up carpet, the first time she measured for appliances, and the first time she fitted face plates on the light switches and electrical outlets. She wasn't quite ten years old.

"You're getting pretty good at that," her father said as she turned the tiny screwdriver to secure the tiny screw which held the plate in place.

"By the time we're done here," her mother said, "she'll be a master at it."

The face plates were plastic numbers made to look like paneling or wood. By the time her parents moved far away, the face plates were outdated. They were old. And Ginger was getting older, too.

But she didn't think that was a good reason to demolish the dwelling. Even if, as her mother said, "It's sometimes easier to start from scratch."

Instead, she let the house sit and wait for her to decide what to do.

Working with Eddie

One of her single family houses needed a new countertop before she could rent it out again. The previous tenants had apparently set their hot pots directly on the counter, without putting down a towel or a pot holder. They didn't like to clean up grease, either. Scorch marks and burned indentions decorated the pale blue kitchen surfaces, and Ginger would have none of it. She liked to offer smooth surfaces to her incoming tenants. It seemed fitting, like a display of the service she provided as their landlord. Landlady.

"Domestic Dwelling Provider," Eddie once said.

Strong pipes, smooth kitchen surfaces and safe electrical currents. "If I advertised, I'd make that my tagline," she said to Eddie.

They lifted the countertop out of Eddie's truck bed and carried it quickly into the house. It was a quick job, and the sink fit without hassle. All the measurements lined up.

"Smooth like the new counter," Eddie said.

"Easy installation equals easy living," Ginger agreed.

Once the hard part was over, the pair started to clean other areas in the kitchen. The stove sat under a window, and oil had made its way onto the glass. Oil was splattered across the ceiling, too.

"I'll get the step ladder," Eddie said.

While Ginger scrubbed the windowsill, she thought about how little she knew about most of her renters. She knew a few from her bar tending days, which meant she really only knew their names, their best jokes, and their drink preferences. A few she knew by credit score. Some of them had better jobs than others. She remembered that one of her tenants was a doctor of some sort. And she knew that Daniel had a daughter who didn't talk much, but had a heck of a way with a hammer, a wrench and a paint roller.

She sighed. When she looked up, Eddie was standing on the ladder and scrubbing the ceiling. His arm reached over his head and lifted his shirt away from his waist. She reached out and slid her finger through a belt loop on his jeans. He stopped what he was doing, looked down into her eyes, and then lowered himself slowly from the ladder.

"What's up?" he asked.

"Do you want kids?" she said.

Eddie shut his eyes for a minute. When he opened them, she was still looking at him, waiting for an answer.

"I don't know. Do you?" He thought deflection might be his best bet. He didn't want to answer incorrectly, if there was an incorrect answer. He just wanted to finish up and go back to Ginger's place and kick back and watch television. Maybe he'd play a little guitar. Maybe he'd put in a light fixture.

She looked around the kitchen. "I've got these places," she said, as if it were the same thing.

Listening In

Ginger scooted the milk crate closer to the wall. She leaned in, pressing the water glass against her ear, which was still wet from the shower. When Eddie walked in, he took one look at her, wrapped in her bathrobe, wet hair clinging to her face, straddling a milk crate, and he hung his head. He walked over and took the glass from her grip. She smacked at his hand until she realized he was just turning it around and handing it back to her. She'd been holding the wrong end to her ear. Once she leaned back toward the wall, she could hear much better.

Eddie sat on the sofa and watched her listen hard. He studied the scene. She had a wild look in her eye he didn't see often. Her body was completely still, as if every cell in it were concentrating on the task at hand. He stood up to join her, but his small, quiet movement was too much distraction. She waved him away and back into his seat on the couch.

When Eddie walked up to the door, he saw that the lights were off in Daniel's apartment. He would swear that no one was home. But Ginger seemed convinced otherwise. He sat there, watching her react to whatever she was hearing through the water glass. Something was happening in the dining room next door.

She was essentially listening to a silent argument. Daniel and his daughter were trying to out quiet one another.

Ginger could feel the little girl's presence in the room, but she couldn't hear it. She was desperate to hear her voice. Once Ginger knew that the little girl was okay, she promised herself she'd put the glass down, go sit on Eddie's lap, and pretend it was a night like any other.

But Ginger also knew that the little girl didn't always speak, and if she did, it didn't mean she was alright. It just meant she felt like she had something to say.

She let the glass slip away from her ear and out of her hand. Eddie stood up as it shattered on the floor. He walked over and scooped her up in his arms. She let herself hang limp, arms dangling over her head and toward the floor. Eddie had to stop halfway down the hallway to readjust her body. She brought her arms up and put them around his neck. She looked him square in the eyes and said, "You can just take me."

Daniel Flips Out

Daniel stood on the front step, arms crossed, and stared at the empty driveway. When Ginger turned the corner and drove up the street, she could see him concentrating. It was almost as if he were trying to will her car into its usual parking spot.

He didn't seem to notice them approaching, but when she pulled in, his head snapped up and he suddenly realized that they were real. He made them appear. He manifested them. Ginger and the little girl opened their car doors, but before Ginger could come around to the step, Daniel grabbed his daughter by the arm and shook her enough to frighten Ginger.

"Where have you been?" he growled. The little girl went limp in his grip. All the personality that Ginger had encountered over the last few weeks disappeared, and she was the little girl with the blank face again. The one who didn't speak.

"Hey!" Ginger shouted and took a step forward. Daniel released the girl's arm, and she slid to the ground. She laid there in a pile. Ginger looked from one of them to the other.

"What the hell?" Ginger said.

"You can't just take her," Daniel said. He stepped toward Ginger with his index finger pointed at her face. "You can't just take her."

Ginger started to smack his hand out of her way when she noticed the little girl shake her head at her. Instead of start a fight, Ginger lowered her voice and said, "I'm sorry. I had an emergency and I didn't want her staying here alone."

Daniel lowered his finger. "You can't just take her," he said again. Then he said it one more time. "You can't just take her."

"I can't just take her," Ginger said. Daniel's face was blank for another second, and then he looked at his daughter lying still on the ground. He went over and sat beside her in the grass. He whispered something in her ear, but she didn't change her expression at all. She stared ahead, away from Ginger, away from the house. Ginger watched them sit on the ground in silence for a few minutes. Then she shook her keys and said, "Do you want a beer?"

Her tenants looked up at her but neither said anything. She unlocked her front door and stepped inside. She turned to look at them, but they were both staring off into the distance by then. She shut the door, turned on the lights, walked to the kitchen and reached for a longneck. She was tired, but she was also concerned. She went to look out her front window and saw that father and daughter were still in the same spot.

Ginger walked outside with her beer in her hand. She approached them carefully, slowly, but neither looked up at her again. She was standing over them before Daniel seemed to notice her. The little girl didn't bring her focus back to the immediate area. Her stare reached more than a thousand miles.

"Go inside before I call the cops about a couple of vagrants sleeping on my lawn," Ginger said.

Daniel stood up first. He reached down and scooped the little girl up. She was completely limp in his arms, her head dropped back dramatically, her hair practically brushing the ground as he carried her toward their apartment. Ginger turned to watch the little girl be carried away. The little girl's face was upside down, but Ginger thought she saw a tear run up the girl's forehead. It disappeared into the little girl's hairline. Ginger stepped forward and then stopped herself. She watched Daniel open the door, cross the threshold, close the door behind them. Ginger took a swig from her beverage and sighed.

"You can't just take her," Ginger said to the closed door. Then she sat down in the grass and finished her beer.

Apartment Maintenance

Ginger was waiting for a pizza to be delivered when she received a call from her tenant across town. She owned a four-unit in the neighborhood where she once tended bar. Most of the people to whom she rented apartments in that building were old regulars. She knew their criminal and credit histories without having them fill out the usual paperwork.

"Pipe burst in the basement," Ron, a one-time rabid whiskey drunk, said when she answered the phone. Most tenants called the service she hired to take such calls. The folks in that particular building called her directly to report problems. When they told her about the issue, it sounded like they were placing an order. They gave short, curt statements full of expectation. Because they expected swift service. The nature and location of their relationship had changed, but in a lot of ways, Ginger's role was exactly the same.

She looked at the little girl, who had already set the coffee table with paper plates and napkins. Eddie wasn't around, and if the pipe burst, she didn't want to wait until she found him to fix it. She considered, for a second, leaving the little girl alone in her apartment filled with power tools. Ginger sighed.

"Put your shoes back on," she said to the little girl. Ginger wrote a note on a napkin that said, "Leave it on the porch," and then taped the note to the door with a twenty dollar bill. "We've got to go take care of a place," she told the little girl.

They were quiet in the car. Ginger didn't like to take the freeway, so she drove surface streets to get across town. The little girl stared out the window and seemed to watch every turn that Ginger made. When they got to the building, the little girl reached into the backseat to grab Ginger's tool box. Ginger let her carry it through the building's front door. When they reached the door to the basement, she took it back.

"Stay right here until I make sure it's safe to come down the steps," she instructed. The little girl nodded.

Ginger was pretty sure that Daniel would be furious if he knew that she'd taken his daughter on an evening fix-it job. He had a real aversion to the possibility of his daughter leaving the duplex or learning a trade. If the little girl didn't love it so much, Ginger obviously wouldn't have kept showing her how to do things. But the little girl took to it the way Ginger took to it when she was growing up. And frankly, Ginger thought it was better to encourage her, to feed that hunger, rather than leave that curiosity wide open with no teacher in sight.

"Come on down," Ginger yelled up the stairs. The little girl stuck her head in the door first, then made her way down the open stairs. She stopped on the bottom step and looked at the floor.

"It's wet but not flooded," the little girl said.

"It's always a little wet," Ginger said. "I don't put a washer or dryer down here and no one has ever asked to use it for storage.

"Where do people do laundry?" the little girl asked.

"Down the street at the laundromat," Ginger answered.

The little girl stepped down and walked over to the tool box. She opened it up and dug around until she found the wrench. She held it up like an offering to Ginger.

"Because it's a pipe problem," the little girl said.

"Good call, kid," Ginger said. She was proud of her protege. She was going to smile at the little girl, but as she reached out her hand to take the wrench, she noticed her mouth had already made the decision. The corners were turned up. Her teeth were showing. She felt the weight of the tool in her grip and she stood there for a minute. Beaming.

Girl's Mother

The little girl was asleep on Ginger's sofa when Daniel came to pick her up. Ginger stepped out onto the porch and said, "Why don't we let her sleep a little bit longer?"

As a response, Daniel stared at his feet.

"Do you want a beer?" Ginger asked him.

He looked at her and a sincere wave of relief rolled over his face. He shook his head as if he were too exhausted to make his mouth form the word, "Yes."

When Ginger handed him the beverage, he hesitated at taking it from her. Then, once it was in his hand, he held it to his chest. Ginger twisted the top off from the bottle she brought outside for herself. She took a swig as she sized him up.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" she said.

He nodded. His gaze had fallen back to his feet.

"Where's her mother?"

He glanced up quickly and then focused his sight on the top of the bottle. He inhaled deeply, and with the exhale said, "Well...."

Daniel started to rub his hand across the back of his neck.

"She's gone," he finally said. Ginger had almost finished her drink by the time Daniel gave her that much of an answer. "She's gone," he repeated.

"Passed away?" Ginger asked. She knew she was prying, but something the little girl said earlier made her curious.

"No, no," Daniel said. "Just gone."

They sat in silence a while longer before Ginger said, "Well, thanks for clearing that up."

Daniel looked her in the eye and said, "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"Sure," Ginger said.

"Where did you learn to do all this stuff?" Daniel waved his hand toward her door. Ginger was puzzled for a moment before she realized he meant the remodeling work.

"My folks," she said.

"Where are they?" Daniel asked.

"Gone," she said. "Just gone."

Remodeling Work

The little girl had quite an aptitude for painting the hard parts. She was good at cutting in, keeping paint away from woodwork and off the windowsill. Ginger showed her how to use painter's tape, but once left alone to do her work, the little girl didn't place one piece of it on the wall. Instead, she wrapped a single strip around each wrist, like tight bracelets, and another over her mouth. Ginger smiled when she saw it. She liked to stay silent when she worked, too.

Slowly, Ginger's side of the duplex was coming together. Eddie finally had all the electric working. The floor was no longer a splinter garden. Rooms were starting to take on identities. The kitchen was complete enough to have face plates on the electric outlets and even a few appliances plugged into them. The little girl helped apply the sticky tiles to the floor in the kitchen, and then Ginger had her painting the back wall, the big one, the one it would be hard to mess up. The little girl painted it, then she painted the space between the overhead cabinets and the countertop. She somehow pushed the refrigerator away from the wall just far enough that she could wedge herself in to paint that wall, too.

Left unsupervised, the little girl could get things done. Ginger admired her efforts, and gave her bigger jobs.

She was alone, painting in the living room, when her father stopped by.

"Are you getting paid for this?" Daniel asked his daughter. She sat on the floor with her back to him and the doorway in which he stood. She didn't answer him. She just kept painting.

"She's well compensated," Ginger said from the dining room.

"Well," Daniel said, "I hope so." He took one step forward to hand her his rent check.

"Thanks," Ginger said. "You want to come in? See what your daughter can do?"

He looked down at his daughter, who still ignored him. "Oh, I know what she can do," he said.

Ginger didn't love their dynamic. And, since the little girl spent more time at her house, she noticed Daniel's demeanor change, as well as his behavior toward both of them. He didn't like it. He didn't like something about their relationship. Yet, he didn't stop the little girl from spending time with Ginger. Instead, he glared at both girls. He gave short, rude answers to questions. And he snarled at any mention of his daughter's good work.

It made Ginger consider, briefly, adding a kindness clause to the lease.

Bedroom Renovation

When she walked into the room, she stepped on a pile of outlet covers and their loose, tiny screws. Eddie was on the floor, hunched over the small, square hole in the wall. Wires poked their wild yellow and red heads out. The room was losing light as the sun set. She crossed her arms and looked at Eddie. Here they were again. Out of electricity.

"It's been days," she said. It had been days. She woke up every morning and reached for the flashlight on her bedside table. She made her way to the kitchen, where Eddie set up a camp stove. Some mornings she fumbled her way through making coffee in a french press. Other mornings, she sat in the dark until and the light hit the windows and then she banged around the kitchen and slammed the cabinet doors until Eddie woke up.

"Getting a late start," he said as he came down the hall.

She glared at him. "I work for myself," she answered.

She lived in unfinished rooms without flinching. The possibility of a splinter sticking in her bare feet as she walked down her hallway didn't phase her a bit. Drywall and plaster and tools on the floor - she could handle it. But she needed to be able to see the mess in order to live with it. She had to confront it daily, and the darkness in the morning made her aware of it on another level. She knew it was there. She could feel it. She couldn't see it. And to fix it, she had to look at it.

Eddie sat on an empty milk crate. She kept a lot of those lying around. He reached for her cup of coffee, which she sat on the counter. She watched him lift it up and bring the mug to his lips. He sipped from it. He flinched at the bitterness of it. She drank it black when she made it at the house. Any other time, she'd have filled it with cream and sugar. But at her house, in the dark, without a refrigeration to keep the cream cold, she didn't bother.

"I'll have the bedroom done today," he said, and sat the mug right back where he found it.

She simply nodded. There was a time, in the beginning, when she directed his work. She would have told him that the kitchen was more important. She would have demanded faster progress. That time was long over. Instead, she nodded. She understood. He knew which room was the most important in the house.

First Encounter with Little Girl

It had been two days since Ginger put the sign in the window and she was doing nothing but fielding calls from people who asked, "How much?" The deciding factor was never beautiful cabinetry or the view from the kitchen window. When it came down to it, people cared most about the price. It was no surprise. She just tired from saying the same thing over and over.

On Wednesdays, she drove around and took a look at the other properties she owned. She checked in on her tenants, and took notes on any concerns they had. If something needed fixed, she nodded and wrote it down in a steno pad. She could have dropped her pen and fixed a lot of problems on the spot, but she found that her tenants didn't trust her handiwork. She hired a guy to show up and do the work. It cost her money she could have saved if she'd done it herself, but she found that tenants stayed longer and didn't call her as much if a man took care of the maintenance.

When she fixed a leaky faucet or changed out a hot water heater, sometimes tenants kept calling, certain they heard dripping, convinced their water wouldn't heat up - even though a ten second test proved otherwise. She shrugged it off and hired a handyman. She still inspected any job first, though.

She was on her way back from a property when she saw a little girl at the bottom of the hill. She was alone on the sidewalk in front of a house that rented for two times what Ginger charged for her duplex apartment. As Ginger drove closer, the little girl's face seemed angrier. Just as Ginger was about to turn up her street, the little girl pushed her middle finger as high up in the air as she could - thrusting it in Ginger's direction. The little girl seemed to be straining herself. Ginger's eyes widened, and then she shook her head to herself. "I know," she said aloud in her car. She knew that feeling. She understood what it was like to want the world, or anyone, even a random stranger driving by in a car, to just go to hell.

babysitting game

Ginger froze. The little girl agreed to talk, and now Ginger had no idea what to do with her. She wasn't even sure why she'd offered such a deal. She would have let the little girl smash popcorn regardless.

"What do you like to be called?" Ginger started.

The little girl frowned. She shrugged.

"Come on," Ginger said. "Do you like being called 'Girl' and 'Kid?'"

"No," she answered.

"Then give me a name or something," Ginger said.

"My dad calls me Sweets," she said.

"Do you like that?"

The little girl slammed her fist down on a piece of popcorn.

"You seem like a nickname kind of kid," Ginger said. She looked around the room for inspiration. All she saw was unfinished walls and floors and the overall ugliness and state of upheaval that she usually lived in without complaint.

"What do you think of my place?" Ginger asked her.

The little girl stared at her blankly.

"Am I boring you?" Ginger asked. The little girl nodded.

Ginger wanted to know about the girl's mother, her relationship with her father, the reasons she didn't like to speak much and what made her as irreverent as she was at age eleven. The questions were too big, though, for her to ask and for the little girl to answer. Ginger felt exhausted just from the weight of wanting to ask them. Then it occurred to her.

"Okay," she said. "I've got it. I'm going to ask you a few questions, and you answer them all and then I'll tell you what your answers mean."

Another piece of popcorn turned to dust under the little girl's fist. She nodded again.

"You're walking in the woods. Who are you walking with?"

The little girl was taken aback. She seemed surprised. She concentrated for a second and said, "You."

Now Ginger was taken a little bit aback. But, she continued the questions. The game revealed a lot about a person. Or, it revealed nothing at all. The point was to create conversation.

"In the woods, you come upon a house. What's the house look like?" Ginger asked.

"The one across the street," the little girl said. She was talking about the two-story brick house with the wide porch and white shutters. Ginger nodded in approval.

"Okay," Ginger said, and then paused for a moment when she considered the implication of asking the next question. She'd have to fudge the meaning a little, but she didn't mind. It was just a game, anyway.

"You go through the front door," Ginger said.

"Like breaking and entering?" the little girl interrupted.

"No," Ginger answered. "Like the door is open and you're allowed to enter. You go through the door and walk through the rooms and into the kitchen. Over the sink is a window. You can see a body of water. What's the body of water?"

"What's a body of water?" the little girl asked.

"Like a lake or an ocean," Ginger said.

"Like a puddle? I see a puddle," the little girl declared.

Ginger's brow furrowed.

"What does that mean?" the little girl said as she placed pieces of popcorn in a long line across the table.

"Well," Ginger started. She took a deep breath. "Whoever you say that you're walking beside in the woods is the most important person in your life."

She saw a brief snarl pass over the girl's face. She continued.

"The house represents the size of your ambition," Ginger said. She took another deep breath before revealing the meaning behind the body of water.

"The puddle...represents your...capacity to love," she said quickly. Then she smiled, pleased with herself for making up such a good answer on the fly. Yes, she thought. Why couldn't it mean that? Just because that's not how she learned the game, when she learned it, as a bar game one night.

"A puddle?" the little girl asked. She seemed disappointed. Ginger had seen her look a lot of ways, but sad wasn't one of them.

Ginger handed her the hammer. There was a time when Ginger would have said, "Puddle," too. But that was speaking to the original meaning: the body of water represented your sex drive.

More babysitting

Ginger stood with her hands on her hips and stared at the blank television screen. She was about to spend three to five hours with a little girl who didn't talk or smile or seem to remotely easy to entertain. Ginger was running through contingent activities in her head when she noticed the little girl standing beside her. The little girl had her hands on her hips and was staring at the blank televisions screen, too.

"Do you like TV?" Ginger asked her.

The little girl shrugged.

"Sorry!" Daniel shouted from the open door behind them. "I told her to knock first," he said.

"It's alright," she said and waved for him to come in. He stepped inside and dropped a pink duffle bag on the floor. "I packed her toothbrush and pajamas and few things that might keep her occupied," he said.

"Cool," Ginger said. Both she and the little girl had dropped their hands and their arms hung limp beside their bodies. They stood watching Daniel look back and forth at both of them before he pointed at his daughter and said, "Behave." He waved at them, but with his back turned toward them, as if it were an afterthought.

Once he was out the door, Ginger looked at her charge. "I'm hungry," Ginger said in her direction.

The little girl nodded.

Ginger looked toward her kitchen. She didn't think to stock it with kid food. She had the basics, which would have to be good enough. She clapped her hands together. "Let's eat," she said.

She made a giant bowl of mashed potatoes from a powdered mix. She popped two bags of microwave popcorn and filled another bowl. She realized her bowl inventory was exhausted as she was mixing the cheese sauce in the macaroni, so she wrapped the pot with a bath towel and used duct tape to keep it in place. She had a three spoons and a ladle. She handed the ladle to the little girl.

"Don't cross contents," she said. They sat on the floor with their feast on the coffee table and started to silently swipe bites.

"We could watch something," Ginger offered.

The little girl squinted at the TV.

"What do you like to do?" Ginger asked.

The little girl squinted at her.

"You're going to have to talk to me at some point," Ginger said.

The little girl shook her head slowly.

Ginger shook her head, too. She reached into the bowl of popcorn and grabbed a handful. She scattered it on the coffee table and then reached under the sofa to find the hammer she kept there. When the little girl saw it, her eyes almost popped out of her head.

"Check this out," Ginger said and smashed every piece of popcorn with the hammer. The little girl reached for it, but Ginger pulled it back, out of the little girl's reach.

"I'll make you a deal," Ginger said. "You talk to me, and I'll let you smash popcorn until you heart is content."

"Deal," the little girl said. Her voice was softer and lighter and higher than Ginger expected. She was almost surprised that the little girl didn't have a whiskey voice, damaged from years of smoking cigarettes.

Babysitting Prep

It surprised her just a little bit that a man would let his daughter spend time in an apartment where lawn equipment was kept where furniture might have otherwise stood. Ginger looked around her house at the tools and parts and scraps of wood and shrugged. She offered to watch the little girl at their place, but Daniel said, "No."

"She'll have a better time looking through your stuff," he said.

The floors weren't finished, but Ginger rolled out a scrap of scratchy green indoor/outdoor carpet as a rug. She stacked a pile of poetry books next to the television, just in case the kid wanted to hear a story. Ginger could read off an absurdist sonnet or something epic, if she needed to keep it educational. That was as much as she knew to do. She told Daniel she was available to babysit, not that she was any good at it.

On the Porch

When she pulled up to the house, she saw Daniel on the top step, leaning against railing. He was reading his mail or something else that seemed to have his full attention. He glanced up as she walked toward him.

"How are you settling in?" she asked.

He shrugged and went back to reading his document. Ginger made her way up the three steps and stood across from him. She heard a muffled noise at his door.

The little girl stared at her from behind the screen.

"How are you settling in?" she asked her. The little girl slowly pushed the door open and stepped out. She had a deck of cards in one hand.

"What are you playing?" Ginger asked her.

Daniel practically shrieked, "No!" But, he barely had time to get the word out before his daughter looked Ginger in the eye, and then threw the entire deck up into the air. Cards floated down around her. A few settled haphazardly at her feet. A few more made their way across the porch.

She heard Daniel sigh behind her.

"The babysitter taught her 52 Pickup," he said. He went back to reading his letter. The little girl stared at Ginger expectantly.

Ginger nodded. She looked at the mess on her porch. She set her bag down and walked over to her front door. She left it open while she went inside. She came back a few minutes later with a leaf blower. Daniel's eyebrows knitted together. His daugther's eyebrows jumped into her hairline. Ginger turned it on and blew every single card out to the curb. It took a good ten minutes, and Daniel shook his head at her, but the little girl watched with wide eyes.

She left the leaf blower next to her car and reached down to pick up two random playing cards from the pile along the curb. She walked back up to the porch where her tenants stood waiting. With a card in each hand, she lifted her arms out into a "T." She stared back at the little girl for just a minute, and then she released the cards. They floated down to the floor. Just as they touched the scratchy green indoor/outdoor carpet, Ginger said to the little girl, "Look. It's Fall."

The little girl turned three shades of red before she narrowed her eyes. Then, the corners of her mouth turned up for just a moment. It was long enough for Daniel to notice his daughter's reaction, though. It wasn't disgust that he saw. He looked at his daughter and then he looked at his landlord and said, "Do you ever babysit?"