style="font-size:15px;"> “How about you, ma’am?” he said up to her. “Could you go for a cup of hot chocolate?”
She looked down at him, and he saw only bitterness. Not the slightest trace of happiness was in the woman’s face, hidden or imagined; perhaps there never had been. The shrug of her slim shoulders conveyed much more than ‘I don’t care.’ She said without a word that she hated him and every rich bastard who walked by and insulted her with a few tarnished coins. Yes, she would take his stingy offering of a hot drink, but only because she and the girl hadn’t eaten anything all day. That’s what he saw in her cold shrug.
“I help Mommy clean ‘partments,” the little girl said after a sip of the hot chocolate. She gave her sweet brown mustache a lick.
The three of them sat in a window booth at Hannibal’s Cafe, three blocks from where he met them. They were on one side of the table while Rigger faced them on the other. He slipped off his coat and let it fall behind his back. The woman and girl kept their coats on and buttoned.
“Oh,” he said, warming his hands on the steaming mug. “I bet you’re a big help to Mommy.”
The girl nodded as she held a sticky marshmallow to Barbie’s lips for a second, then popped it into her own mouth. She picked up her cup and slurped another marshmallow. Her mother stared out the window, with her hands wrapped around an untasted mug of hot chocolate.
Rigger looked to see what held her attention and was startled to meet her eyes in the reflection of the glass. She watched him in the mirrored window, not shifting her gaze. He blinked and took up his cup.
“We gonna get a pet l’phant,” the little girl said to Rigger.
The woman looked at the girl, narrowing her eyes. The girl narrowed her eyes back at her.
Rigger tried to interpret this fragment of intercepted communications. Was it a secret that the girl wanted a pet and strangers shouldn’t be made aware of it? Was ‘pet elephant’ a code phrase for something forbidden, perhaps an exotic bird, or maybe a father? Whatever it was, Rigger envied their easy relationship.
“Hurry up with your chocolate, Mama,” her mother said. “We have to go.”
“So,” Rigger said, “you do cleaning work.”
“Wait, don’t tell me.” The caustic knife of her words formed with practiced precision and cut without qualm. “You just remembered your maid went on vacation.”
“No, I don’t have a maid.” He kept his voice soft in spite of her combative attitude.
Has life been so difficult for her that every man is a threat? Or perhaps a menace to something close to her? Why can’t she see she has nothing to fear from me?
“Then your apartment is suddenly very dirty.” It sounded like an accusation.
“As a matter of fact, I keep it fairly clean.” This exchange was wearing Rigger down and getting them nowhere.
“What, then?”
“I just wondered how much you charge?”
“All that the traffic will bear.” Her cold eye-lock never wavered, never weakened.
“Oh.”
“Isn’t that what you charge?”
“I don’t charge anything, since—”
“I guess you just live off the fat of the land.”
Rigger gave up. “I suppose so.”
He returned his gaze to the little face framed in yellow curls and smiled as the girl silently admonished Barbie about something she apparently said without asking the girl’s permission.
I wonder if her hair is naturally curly. If not, someone spent a lot of time on it. Unusual for street people.
The woman sipped her chocolate, licked her upper lip, then took a big drink. She followed Rigger’s gaze to her daughter, who tried to catch a marshmallow with her tongue.
Ten minutes later, outside Hannibal’s, Rigger watched the two of them walk away. The girl hung on to the bottom edge of the pea-jacket as the woman shoved her hands into the pockets. Only the Barbie doll, cradled against the girl’s shoulder, looked back at him. He waved goodbye to Barbie, sighed, and went the opposite way. As he walked toward the drug store, he took the doctor’s prescriptions from his coat pocket.
On the following Tuesday, the day after Christmas, Rigger walked the streets. He really had no reason to return to Hannibal’s Café; he just wanted to taste the chocolate again.
He caught his breath when he saw the two of them across the street from Hannibal’s, working the busy lunchtime crowd. They wore the same clothes as last week. He hustled through the traffic while they watched a gaggle of stockbrokers in pinstripes waddle by, half of them with cellphones grafted to their ears, hands attached. The rest of them had Bluetooth earbuds. All of them chattered a bit too loudly and waved their hands in the air, very much full of themselves.
“Hi there,” he said, coming up on their blind side.
The woman jerked her head around toward him, almost smiled, but then took on an expression that could have said, I was actually expecting someone else.
The child had a new sign, “Please help. Mommy lost job.” The girl’s face was stony as before, but her eyes welcomed him, and she turned Barbie his way. The doll gave him a blue-crayoned smile that wasn’t there last week.
He returned Barbie’s smile, then spoke to the mother. “How’s business?”
An urge to grab her shoulders to keep them from shrugging rose from his pectorals and tingled down to his hands, creating an awkward gesture. But she surprised him, and for an instant he thought he saw an unguarded sign of relief in her eyes.
“Not bad.” No shrug.
“You two had lunch?”
“Nope,” she said.
“I’m on my way to see what Hannibal has on today’s special. Wanna join me?”
She glanced down at the girl. “You hungry, Mama?”
The child nodded vigorously.
“Well, then, let’s go.”
Rigger stepped around the woman and picked up the girl before either of them could change their minds. She was light as a new kitten in his arms. Without hesitation, she put her arm around his neck and held on.
They threaded through the traffic, and he opened the door for the woman to precede him into the cafe.
The waitress told them the day’s special was liver, and Rigger noticed an expression of yuck on the child’s face. They ordered from the menu, and the waitress scurried away to the kitchen.
Rigger spoke to the girl. “What’s your name?”
“Rachel. I’m in the Bible, you know. This is Henry.” She held the grinning Barbie doll out to him.
“Hello,
