Pamela Bauer - A Baby In The House

“Wait, I can explain,” he began, but she wasn’t going to listen to one more word he had to say.

She threw the key at him, bouncing it off his bare chest. She turned and ran out of his apartment, sickened by what she’d seen. To her surprise, there were no tears flooding her eyes.

As she stepped outside she saw that Garret’s car was still at the curb. He saw her coming toward him and got out to open the door for her. She slid inside.

He didn’t say a word to her until he was behind the wheel. Then he said, “Change of plans?”

“Yes, change of plans,” she managed in a voice that was surprisingly calm.

“Where to now?”

When she looked at him she didn’t see her landlady’s son. She saw the man who’d looked at her with desire in his eyes. “Did you mean what you said earlier this evening?”

“You ought to know by now that I don’t say things I don’t mean,” he answered in a voice that sent a shiver of awareness through her.

“Then take me to your place.”

“I’M SORRY YOU HAD TO WAIT, Angie,” Krystal said as she escorted her eleven-o’clock appointment to her workstation.

It was an apology she issued often in a typical workday. No matter how hard she tried to stay on time, she usually failed. Not because she was slow, but because she regarded styling hair as an art form and one that shouldn’t be hurried. Creating the right look for a client was more important than staying on schedule.

Angie brushed away her apology with a flap of her hand. “No problem. I needed the downtime and your reception area provided a very nice distraction. That construction site across the street is crawling with men in tight, dusty jeans. Have you seen the size of the arms on some of those guys?”

“I try not to look,” Krystal told her, shaking out the black plastic cape before draping it over Angie’s shoulders. “A guy I used to date works there. A real zero. Cute with a great body but—” she pointed to her head “—nothing up here.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. A good personality can make a guy look attractive, and you can always drag him to the gym and work out together to get his body in shape, but if he’s dumb as dirt, what’s the point?”

“There isn’t one. So what are we doing today? The usual?”

“Uh-uh. I need a change. Chop it off.”

“Oh-oh. If you want me to cut it, you must be having guy trouble.”

She grinned. “You know me well, don’t you?”

Krystal knew most of her regular clients very well. She regarded them as friends and she often found herself privy to information some of them hadn’t even shared with their closest family members. She knew that before this woman left, she’d know all about her breakup with her boyfriend.

“Any ideas as to what you want me to do?” she asked, running her fingers through the blond tresses.

“Take it up to about here.” She used her hand as a measure, raising it to just below her ear. “I’ll let you decide how you want to style it.”

Krystal studied the hair from all angles, lifting and rearranging strands as she mentally sculpted a new style. She loved it when a client gave her carte blanche. Creating the right look for someone was a challenge and she took great satisfaction in knowing that if she did her job well, she would make a woman feel better about herself.

While Krystal shampooed and rinsed the woman’s hair at the sink, the client filled her in on her troubled love life. Krystal didn’t mind. She was a people person and enjoyed hearing what was happening in their lives—the good and the bad. It was one of the aspects she loved most about her job—interacting with others.

“So how are things with you?” the young woman finally asked Krystal when she was once more sitting facing the mirror.

It was a question Krystal expected to hear from all of her regular clients at some point during their visits. And usually her life was an open book, with many of her customers knowing as much about her personal life as her friends did, but not today. A page had been written she wasn’t ready for anyone else to read. At least not yet.

“Things could be better,” she said, tossing the wet towel into the bin behind her.

“Does that mean you and Roy have split up again? The last time I was in you told me you were giving him one more last chance to make things work.”

“I did and that was a mistake.”

“It didn’t work out?”

She chuckled sardonically as she reached for a comb. “It lasted all of three days. I wanted to believe that serving in the military had changed him. I was wrong.”

“You don’t sound brokenhearted over it,” Angie observed.

“Because I’m not.” It was the truth. Looking back now she could see how foolish she’d been when it came to her relationship with Roy, seeing only what she wanted to see. She’d wasted her time trying to recycle an old love—only it hadn’t even been love, just a misplaced devotion. She wished it hadn’t taken her so long to realize that.

“I suppose you’ve already found one…or two…or three guys to take his place,” she said with a sly grin.

“Uh-uh. My juggling days are in the past. Gone for good,” Krystal said on a note of finality.

“You’re kidding!” Wide eyes met hers in the mirror. “You are like the queen of the dating scene.”

“Not anymore I’m not. I need a break from dating.”

“You and me both,” she seconded, then went on to lament the lack of decent men in their age group, concluding with the statement that life would be less complicated without men.

Krystal knew that her life certainly would be if she hadn’t let one particular man into it. When she’d finished styling her client’s hair, she handed her a mirror. “What do you think?”

“It looks fabulous.” As she climbed out of the chair, she pulled a folded ten-dollar bill from her pocket and gave it to Krystal. “Thank you so much for the great cut.”

“Thank you. I’m glad you like it.”

“Oh, I do. And I appreciate you letting me whine about guys,” she said as she straightened her skirt.

“Hey—we all need to do it now and then,” Krystal told her.

“Yes, we do, and especially with someone who understands what it’s like out there in the dating world. You, Krystal, are one smart lady when it comes to men,” she told her, then, with a grateful wave goodbye, headed for the front desk.

A few minutes later one of Krystal’s co-workers approached her with her lunch—an order of take-out barbecue ribs. “Want some? I’ll share.” She held up the package invitingly.

The aroma hit Krystal the way heat blasted her face when she stepped outside from cool air-conditioning, causing her stomach to revolt. She uttered, “No, thanks,” then bolted for the bathroom. She barely managed to get there before she was sick.

As she washed up at the sink, she stared at her reflection in the mirror and thought, Oh yeah, I’m real smart when it comes to men. She clicked her tongue in disgust, dried her hands and went back to work.

GARRET WAS TIRED. He’d spent most of the night at the hospital with a patient and after only a few hours of sleep on a cot in the doctors’ lounge, he’d had to make his morning rounds, fill out a mountain of paperwork and attend a staff meeting. Now he’d promised one of the nurses at the clinic that he’d stop in and check on her mother who was a patient in a nursing home.

Garret knew that if Dolly Anderson still lived in her house on the east side of St. Paul, she’d be outside in her large floppy hat tending her vegetables. But at eighty-nine, a broken hip had marked the end of her days as a home owner and landed her in the nursing home not far from her old neighborhood. Although her bones had healed, she’d never regained the strength and agility to return home. That hadn’t stopped her from gardening, however.