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At that exact moment, I wasn’t even sure how many co-habitants we would have, though was sort of hoping for one parent/child combo. It could only make things easier, the more, the merrier as much a line of bullshit, as you can do anything you set your mind to. Drive and education were of course important but meant little with little to no talent int the area. I couldn’t do math to save my life, which was why I went into a job that was predicated on reading and memory, with a good portion of rhetoric thrown in to keep things interesting.
“What do you think, hon?”
Gen looked around again before answering. “I like it, it’s pretty.”
“I like it, too.”
“I’m hungry,” she complained.
“Already?” I asked, and she nodded, “Well then, we’d better go see what’s in the kitchen.”
There was really no accounting for when it was going to happen. Gen’s tummy seeming to have a mind of its own. Attach of munchies popping up like ninjas in the deep, dangerous dark.
Picking her up into my arms, feeling her heartbeat against mine, we returned to the sun-dappled main floor.
It was an explosion of color. The boxes and cans arranged just so in the well-stocked cupboards. I went over to the fridge, finding much the same situation in its chilled confines.
“Pizza?” Gen asked.
“You really are a fan, hey?”
“Yes!”
I didn’t see anything pizza like in the pizza but figured the freezer to be a more likely candidate. Sure, enough there were three different brands and types of frozen pizza on the offing. Provided on the firm dime. I wondered idly if they’d done research on all the employee before setting up the co-ops. The evidence to the positive only giving me hope for our potential cohabitants. It had been a while since I’d lived with anyone, aside from Gen, but hope sprung a new in the dusty depths of my heart that such a thing might just be possible. I could only hoe the same would be the case for Gen, though she seemed to be able to take most things in stride.
The usual process took it course, cheese going and crust rising to a brown in beautiful concert.
Gen and I joined in a rousing chorus of ‘The Pizza Song” ‘pizza’ the main, and only lyric, as the circle of heaven was taken from the oven to the wooden cutting board. Seeming very much like it had been placed there for just such a purpose, which just had to be a coincidence.
The limo glided like a cloud; the engine so quiet as to be undetectable by the human ear. One of the first things I’d noticed with limo that drove us out. Though the chances of it being the same vehicle were so slim as to be statistically negligible.
None of the voices were familiar. Peeking out the window, I saw the driver, different to the one that had brought us out, going around the side of the limo. Unable to pull away, despite what my grandmother always said about spying, I noticed an oddly familiar haircut appearing over the sleek black roof. Odd, because men’s haircuts tended to be roughly identical from what I’d noticed, particularly in legal circles. A certain corporate neatness, permeating the profession.
Niles Veek strode at the long, leisurely pace I’d so long mistaken for a strut, and opened the other back door. After some time bent inside the back seat, he produced a little girl, like pulling a rabbit from a hat. Just as the driver similar conjured a few pieces of higher-end luggage from the trunk.
It was difficult to tell how old the girl was. She looked about five, but she was quite tall if that was the case. The three of them made it to the stoop and the driver placed the luggage just so on the front step. Niles took a couple of pieces himself as well as holding his daughter’s hand.
Rumor rarely held up to real life, and actually seeing Niles with his kid was quite different than hearing second-hand he was a single dad.
“Honey I’m home,” he called from the front hall.
Gen looked at me, but I held a finger to my lips to quiet her, still not quite sure what to do with the situation. Were I to make a list of people I thought for sure wouldn’t be put with us in a co-op situation, Niles Veek would have been near the top. We had nothing in common as far as I could see. Aside from us both having daughters who weren’t too far off in age. Maybe Ann knew something we didn’t. All I could do was hope. Otherwise lay potential madness, and I’d already been there before.
“Who was that?”
“Just someone from where I work.”
“Oh. Is he nice?”
Well, how to answer that one. I certainly didn’t have the best impression of him, but that could also be down to my own prejudice. If there was one thing I would have learned from Jane Austen it was not to judge by appearances.
