David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Two or three times a month, Leo could count on staying late with a hyperactive boy named Malcolm whose mother would tear up at half past seven in a heaving BMW, desperate with apology and excuse. Such a parent was, per BND policy and contract, supposed to be charged a dollar per minute for any child care provided after 6:00 p.m. That was just stupid and punitive, though, so Leo would back-time Malcolm’s mom’s arrival to, say, 6:15. The last time that she had been late, she put cash in Leo’s hand under a dark and soggy sky outside. He’d accepted it accidentally, because she’d slipped it to him so discreetly, as if he were a maître d’. There followed an awkward operation in which Leo tried to give the money back, and he’d succeeded only when he’d finally pressed it against her. Which in turn complicated things, because there was a little spark, and they were both suddenly and briefly aware of the fun they could have fucking.

There was definitely something off about his equilibrium, Leo thought as he wheeled his lame bicycle up to the door of Brand-New Day. The right side of his body was beginning to feel like meat wrapped too tight in cellophane, and his hands were clumsy working the key of his bicycle lock, as if he had two fingers instead of five.

That fall really gave me paws, he thought to himself, and he chuckled, which hurt his ribs.

He gave up on the lock, thumbed a code into the keypad around the side of the building, and rolled his bike into the play area. Employee bicycles were not supposed to be stored in the play area, another Sharon-promulgated rule.

Louise, a self-assured five-year-old on a Razor scooter, was the first to see him. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.

“I fell off my bike, Louise,” he said.

“Did you have a helmet on your head?”

“No. I forgot it,” Leo said.

“You shouldn’t forget it, Leo,” said Louise sternly, and she Razored off.

Then Bennett and Milo, inseparable four-year-olds, stamped up to Leo, huffing, in spotless Nikes.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Bennett.

“Nothing, Bennett,” Leo said. “How are you doing today?”

“Okay,” said Milo. “You fell off your bike?”

These kids were rhizomic, thought Leo. “Yeah, but I’m okay.”

“Can we play Rolling Death?” asked Bennett.

“Maybe in a little while,” said Leo.

“When?” asked Milo.

“Gimme a minute, guys,” said Leo as he slid down a wall to sit on the ground. His neck felt like a stem. He tried to keep his head between his shoulders and directly above his body. He was weirdly aware of his skin as the sack holding his person. It was un pleasant.

Alka approached him. She was a little Indian girl, all eyelashes and shoelaces. “Are you okay, Leo?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m okay, Alka,” he said. Then, because she was a child and would not call him crazy for saying it, he added, “But I think that they just tried to kill me.”

“You should be careful,” said Alka.

“Mos’ def, Alka. We should all be careful.”

It was probably due to his disembodied — or, rather, too keenly embodied — state that Leo was unaware of Sharon, who had come up behind him.

“Can I speak to you inside, Leo,” said Sharon.

“They tried to kill Leo,” said Alka.

“No, that was just a joke, Alka,” said Sharon. “Leo was joking. Why don’t you go and play with Cecilie.” Sharon was in a purple pantsuit. Alka, all of five, heard the edge in Sharon’s voice and shoved off. “Leo. Inside. Right now,” said Sharon.

Every successful person knows that he’s supposed to have a story about having been fired. But if one is telling such a story, it is presumed that the teller has overcome the embarrassment of the event and is telling it beneath the smiling light of a vindicating future. However, Leo had been fired from, or failed at, a few jobs now, so the walk from the outdoor play zone to Sharon’s front office was a long one indeed, especially because his feet seemed to lag in their response to his brain’s commands, which meant that he was staggering.

The other play facilitators weren’t looking at him. Or maybe they were just engaged with those children who stayed in a mild posttraumatic state for twenty minutes after drop-off, the ones you really had to look after. Samuel was not one of those children. Samuel, a stoic riddle of a child who happily did blockwork while classmates shrieked murderously beside him and who would probably soon receive a distinguishing diagnosis, had dropped his gluestick and was beelining toward Leo.

“Hold on there, Samuel,” said Leo to the boy as he approached. But Samuel ignored him and flung himself at Leo, open-armed. Leo picked him up and held him strongly, though in doing so, he noticed, painfully, his torqued spine. So, gently, he put Samuel down. Sharon was standing at the open door to her office. Leo trudged in.

Sharon’s office was full of beanbag frogs; she thought frogs were winning and childlike. She gestured for Leo to sit, and then she sat too, among her frogs, and put her arms on her desk.

“Leo, I think we both know why you’re here,” she said.

Yeah, but he wasn’t going to help her do this. “Promotion?” he said.

Her fingers were laced pudgily on her huge desk-blotter calendar. “You’ve gotten stranger and stranger these past few months, Leo. I’m afraid I just can’t have you responsible for these children. I am going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Ask me? Really?”

“No. Tell you. Okay? I’m telling you to leave. Let’s not make this unpleasant, Leo. Brand-New Day has no further need of your services.”

His face went hot and the small room got smaller, like someone had twisted the zoom lens on his vision. He felt like a child. Tears — oh hell, not tears —came to his eyes. He was going to lose something dear to him. The mayhem of cleaning up after crafts, the riot of Rolling Death, the quiet of nap. The children. They didn’t care what a hash he’d made of the past ten years. They were joy uncorrupted, bad liars, openhearted. They were his fan base, his gorgeous, dirty rabble. They loved him.

“But who will write the daily journal sheets?” he tried to say but squeaked instead, the words rushing, high-pitched, to beat out the sob rising behind them.

“I want you to leave the building when you leave this room, Leo. Do you understand?” she said.

Leo tried to collect himself. He paid close attention to his breath. He set his mouth, looked at his hands. Then something strange happened: anger began to eclipse the pain and confusion.

“You’ll have to pay me to leave, right? You can’t just fire me like this?”

“I think if you look at your contract, you’ll find that we owe you two weeks’ pay.”

His contract? He had forgotten he had one of these. “Okay. I’ll take that now.”

Sharon looked at him as blankly as one of her frogs.

“I mean right now. You got nine hundred and sixty bucks in that desk?”

“Of course not. I’ll have Linda send you a check.”

I’ll have Linda send you a check. And just like that, Brand-New Day would be done with him. Oh, it made his blood boil; it made him light-headed. So few people could give these children the kind of care he’d been giving them. He was sure of that. Never lying to them; engaging them with all he had . I’ll have Linda send you a check. He wanted to rifle through Sharon’s desk drawers, her purse. He wanted to take whatever money she had, kick her in the pantsuit. He wanted to break her stupid fat fingers, scatter her zillion folders, command the fours-and-fives to set on her like jackals. Uh-oh. He had mumbled some of that aloud.

Behind the rage was another feeling: a keen pleasure at feeling enraged. He tried to hold on to the rage and the pleasure at the rage, because beyond these was a deep lake of sadness at the fact that he had just lost a job he loved, that he would not see these children again, that tomorrow the hours would yawn in front of him. Others would go to work and he’d have to pick his way across the moody rubble of the day. Plus, he didn’t have any breathing room in his budget. He spent every cent that came his way. And the last time his sisters had given him money, they’d made it pretty clear that they were tired of bailing him out.