Jennifer Lohmann - A Promise for the Baby

“I would want to know you cared for it.” Him? Her? When could you find out the sex of the baby? What was he supposed to call it until then?

She folded her other hand over her stomach. There was a baby under there. “I need health insurance.”

“You said you had a job.” Back in his hotel room, when he’d been sober, and the harsh lights of the hotel bathroom had ripped the dream away, he’d accused her of marrying a stranger for money. She’d told him to keep his damn money and that maybe there was room for it wherever he stored his ego. She’d said she had a job and didn’t need to have sex in exchange for handouts.

“I lost it.” She kept her hands on her stomach, the twisting of her fingers another sign of her nerves. “I will find another—I was hoping to find one in Chicago—but until then, I need health insurance. The baby needs health insurance. I have no other place to go.”

Karl did some quick math in his head. They still had four days to get Vivian and the baby on his health insurance. “I’ll need the marriage certificate.”

“Just like that?”

“Double,” the bird squeaked, then whistled.

“Do you want health insurance?” At one time in the distant past, he’d thought he understood women. Exposure had cured him of such idiotic thinking.

“Yes, but, you didn’t say so much as ‘hi’ to me downstairs. You accuse me of trying to sell you a pig in a poke, insinuating I’m some kind of slut who bangs tourists for fun, but when I say I need health insurance for a baby you don’t believe is yours, you say ‘sure’?”

“Even if that baby isn’t mine, you should have insurance while you’re pregnant. And you are my wife. If the baby is mine, I can provide it with health insurance and child support. If it’s not mine, I can provide it with health insurance until you are able to provide for it yourself. I won’t force a fetus to get less care than I can provide because I don’t trust its mother.”

“I can get a DNA test done while pregnant, as early as the ninth week.”

“Where are you staying?”

She turned her head to look out the windows of his apartment, the first time she’d not been willing to meet his eyes since he had walked into the lobby of his building. “I was hoping to stay here.”

“You don’t have another place to go?”

She faced him again, the pertness of her chin softened by her full, pale pink lips. How had he not remembered the lushness of her lips? “I have ten dollars, three suitcases and a parrot to my name.”

“Family?”

“They’re not available.”

When he’d considered her presence punishment for his behavior, he’d lacked the imagination to envision how the situation could get worse. If mother and child needed medical care, they also needed a roof over their heads. Not to mention the little bird she called a parrot. Chicago had enough wild parakeets without him adding to the population.

“What did you do in Las Vegas?”

“I wasn’t a prostitute.”

Any twinge of guilt he’d felt over accusing her of that the morning he’d woken up married to a stranger had long since vanished. Three weeks ago he’d hurled accusations at her, but he hadn’t asked what she actually did. He wasn’t going to ask more than once now. If he was silent long enough, she would share. She needed a place to stay and didn’t know him well enough to know he’d offer her a bed regardless.

She blinked first. “I was a table dealer. Craps, blackjack, roulette.”

God, how much had he had to drink to take her up to his room? At least she wasn’t a stripper.

“At Middle Kingdom?” His assistant had booked him a room at the Chinese-themed resort instead of the conference hotel. Greta had thought it would be good for him to have a minivacation—her words. But he’d ignored the brochures about the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon she’d tucked into his work papers in favor of overpriced hotel whiskey. If he’d listened to Greta, he would’ve come back with a couple of postcards instead of a wife.

Though postcards wouldn’t have looked nearly as pretty sitting on his couch in a pink cable-knit sweater and cowboy boots.

Thoughts like that had prompted him to engage Vivian in conversation, to fall under the spell of her mysterious smile and be hypnotized by the rise and fall of her breasts when she breathed. If all he’d done was invite her up to his room, the night in Las Vegas would make more sense, but he’d been thinking about marriage and families, and in his drunken haze had decided he wanted to wake up with her warm skin pressed against his for the rest of his life.

Reality had intruded the next morning and, almost a month later, was sitting on his couch.

“And you’re not working there anymore because...”

“My supervisor disagreed with a decision I made.”

“Was I your decision?” She wouldn’t have been the first woman unfairly fired because of sex, and she wouldn’t be the last.

She turned her head to look out the windows again. An effective nonanswer, which he let go for now. She was—the fetus was—his responsibility for another eight months. He’d get his answer eventually.

“I have a guest bedroom. You can sleep there for now.”

She closed her eyes, the light pink of her eye shadow sparkling in the lamplight, and exhaled. The wool of her sweater must be stiffer than it looked, because even though she went boneless with relief, she didn’t sink into the back of the couch. “Thank you.”

“Have you eaten dinner?”

“I’m fine.”

He took that as a no and didn’t ask how long it had been since she’d eaten. The worry lines at the corners of her eyes said it had been too long. “What do you like?”

“I’m fine,” she said again, as though hoping if she said it enough times he would believe her. Or maybe she hoped to believe it herself.

Karl stood and walked over to the small table in his entryway. He riffled through the menus in the drawer until he found the one he was looking for, then he handed it to Vivian. “Pick out what you want.”

She looked up at him, one thin black eyebrow raised. “Chinese?”

He ignored the uncomfortable reference. “They have the fastest delivery.”

“Buddha’s vegetable delight. Brown rice, please.”

“Soup? Egg rolls?”

Her stomach growled, betraying the casual look on her face and making a lie of her insistence of being “fine.” How long had those ten dollars been all she had to her name? Had she had no savings? All things he could learn tomorrow, after she’d eaten and had a good night’s sleep. He called in her order and his, adding enough extra food to give them leftovers for days. He didn’t know if she could cook, and he sure as hell didn’t. If not for takeout, the baby might starve.

“Let’s get your bags put in the guest room.”

* * *

FOR ALL ITS personality, the guest room might have been in a hotel. There was less glass and more wood than in the living room, but that was because the single piece of furniture in the room was a large, wooden platform bed with a built-in nightstand. The bedspread wasn’t white or black, so Karl must at least know color existed, but the geometric pattern and primary colors didn’t invite Vivian to snuggle. Still no curtains. What did this man have against curtains?

“There’s a dresser in the closet.”

“Thank you.” Thank you for acknowledging I might be here longer than just tonight. “Is there something I can put Xìnyùn’s cage on?”

“Who?”

“The parrot’s name is Xìnyùn. It means luck in Chinese.”

He eyed the cage sitting on the floor. Xìnyùn eyed him back nervously. “Are you sure it doesn’t mean bad luck?”

She picked the cage up off the floor and opened the closet doors to find the dresser to set the cage on. Parakeets didn’t like humans to loom over them and Karl loomed as naturally as most people breathed.