I was in the midst of doing this, with a hovering printer-company manager staring anxiously over my shoulder, protesting too much that no one was allowed to get outside emails on company computers, which hinted that he was likely the culprit who opened a file with a virus, when the first call came in from my dad.
I got three more after that while still working.
I had to wait until lunch, which I ate at Mad Greens in an effort to deflect the pizza debauchery I’d engaged in the night before (which reminded me of Mag, which reminded me of the ugly things I said to Mag, which made me fight crying into my salad) to call my dad.
“Evie, sunshine of my life,” he said in greeting.
Dirk Gardiner, my father, reminded me of that Bob Seger song “Beautiful Loser.”
He was lovable. Affable. Gracious. He was “yes, ma’am,” if a woman was six or sixty, and “no, sir,” if a man was the same. And it was charming.
He’d wanted to hit it big in the music industry but sustained the one-two punch of not really having the talent and definitely not having the drive.
If he went somewhere, he wanted to stay at the Four Seasons, and since he could by no means afford that, he just didn’t go at all.
He’d wanted a wife and family, the love and laughter, but no part in taking care of it.
And somehow, with me staying in contact, and my sister being Daddy’s Little Girl, he got a lot of the former without much of a hint of the latter.
Though he wanted more, always wanted more.
He wanted it all.
And it was somehow the world’s fault he didn’t have it.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, and shoved a huge forkful of salad in my mouth, because Charlie had another job for me, and he needed me to get it done before I was off at one thirty.
And I needed to get it done, because I’d grabbed my day planner when I was home changing, and I had Gert that afternoon too.
“Your mom called,” he shared.
Great.
I swallowed my salad and began, “Listen, Dad—”
“Bring it here, I’ll unload it.”
I stared at my greens.
“No problems,” he continued.
“Are you…being serious?” I asked slowly to confirm.
“Sure. I got you covered, kid,” he replied nonchalantly. “Give you a split, eighty-twenty. Me bein’ the eighty, ’cause I’ll be shifting it.”
For once in this situation, I made a quick decision.
“Dad, that’s not gonna happen.”
“Serve him right. Stick in his craw, his old man did what he couldn’t do.”
So Dad assumed these were Mick’s drugs, he was dealing, and this was not only Dad finding a way to profit off this current situation, which was unsurprising, it was a way to best Mick, which also wasn’t surprising.
Dad’s version of a win-win.
What wasn’t, I noted, in any of that, was any thought to me.
Okay, I needed to check my planner and see when my period came last, because I thought I just got done with it, but I felt like I was going to start sobbing again.
Instead of doing that, I declared, “I’m not having this conversation.”
“It’ll get it off your hands and you won’t have to worry about it,” he pointed out.
“Yes, and not only will Mick have issues if I do that, and from what I can tell, they’d be very serious issues, I might have issues since this guy knows I have it and then I won’t have it and he’ll suspect I did what you’re thinking of doing with it.”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” he muttered.
Of course he hadn’t.
“’Bye, Dad,” I snapped.
“Evie! Wait!” he called.
I wanted to hang up.
I wanted to hang up.
I wanted to hang up.
“What?” I asked.
“Let this be done, girl. Let this be the last shit Mick unloads on you. Listen to your old man for once, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“Look after yourself. I’m in a new band, we got a gig, come see me play. I’ll shoot you the info in a text.”
Another band.
I hoped it lasted, for his sake. Even if it was just local gigs.
But I knew it had no hope of lasting, because nothing my father had a hand in lasted.
“Right. Great. Looking forward to it,” I said by rote.
“It’ll be all right, Evie. You always land on top, doncha?”
At another time, in perhaps thirty years, when I had the time, I would have to ponder this.
Ponder how anyone could think that their daughter working two jobs, one of them stripping, to pay for her tuition, her rent, her