Geometry

(Richard)

1. Richard

The girl walking the bike--Dolores--had a rip in her tights. It ran the curve of her calf from achilles heel to the fold in the back of her knee. Tights (lime green) and shorts (black), denim work shirt (blue), scarf (peach) in her hair (light brown), too messy. She was neither neat nor polished. Richard noted that he did not love her and felt relief.

Two hours and 42 minutes prior, across the library desk, she smelled like the neem oil and lavender mixture his grandmother had sprayed around the closets to deter moths from eating his sweaters. This young woman--Dolores--couldn't have been older than 22, at least 2 decades his junior, yet the scent and unkempt of her reflected his grandmother once she'd become too old and demented to care.

Phillip, aged 4 years and 4 months and 4 days on this particular Saturday, had arrived at Richard's door  the day before, exactly when the court said to: the fourth Friday of June. Although Phillip typically returned to his mother the following Monday, this time Phillip would return to his mother's door in four weeks: the fourth Friday of July. You're home all day. This shouldn't be a problem, Phillip's mother had said to him. Richard felt titillated by the easy sequence of fours.

Phillip did not speak, yet, nary a babble--and not just to him, but to anyone. Aside from the worrisome pestering of Phillip's mother, Nadia, and a small team of child psychologists, this pleased Richard, although he knew enough not to confess it. The plastic bonk of toys his mother sent with the boy was enough.

Richard rose early to press all of his tan pants precisely four times before taking Phillip to the library for 10:00 a.m. Saturday storytellers, just as he had all twenty-two of Phillip's previous visits since a swab inside his cheek determined the boy was his. Richard had not necessarily wanted these visits, although he would not say this, either. Rather, the boy's mother, whom Richard had met at the dry cleaners and bedded as a personal test of his normalcy, believed such connection with a father would be proper and good. Also, Richard suspected, she wished to have dinners with men on the fourth weekend of each month. One such dinner went so well that she was now somewhere in Costa Rica marrying the date while Phillip rumpled child-sized bed sheets at Richard's townhouse for three weeks longer than usual. Regardless, Richard agreed to these visits on account of custom and believed accompanying Phillip to library story times reflected positively on his aptitude for fathering and similar social customs.

After the story--a twelve-page tale about cows told in neatly rhyming, four-line stanzas--Richard and Phillip marked time quietly in line to check out a Summer-themed picture book and to pick up a small package of library goodies from the young woman behind the desk. Her name tag called her "Dolores," which seemed fitting considering her smell and lack of grooming.

Dolores smiled over the desk and asked Phillip if he enjoyed the story. He said nothing. She handed him a READ THIS bookmark. He took it and held it in front of his navel for approximately three seconds before depositing it in the bag with the other goodies (a thick pencil, three tootsie rolls, and sticker with a truck hoisted on imposing tires). And then, Dolores winked at Richard and said, "Oops. Your shirt's making a break for it."

 "What's that?"

"Your shirt." She smiled, reached across the desk, and tugged lightly once and twice on the narrow corner of fabric shrugged free from his pants. "It came untucked."

Richard froze despite the pronounced heat blazing the waistband of his trousers. How had he missed this?

"Sorry, are you all right?" she asked.

Phillip, whose brown hair--grossly in need of trimming--grazed the outside of Richard's thigh, lightly grabbed one corner of the errant shirt corner and tugged just as Dolores had. Once. Twice. Phillip made prolonged eye contact with the woman named Dolores.

"Stop it," Richard balked and pushed the boy's hand away. He felt the burn from his core redistribute evenly up his chest, his neck, over his chin, and feather across his cheeks all the way to his ears. 

Hot burst in the center of his brain as a coil slipped. Like monkeys, they had jibber-jabbered into the story room and squatted on the carpet. He loathed this ritual of storytelling; would it be so much trouble to offer proper seating? Week after week, he tolerated the feel of his trousers scratching against the nap of the rust-hued, bacteria-laden carpet, breathing the expelled air of mothers and fathers and babysitters whose pockets bulged with grocery lists and used kleenex. On the fourth Saturday of each month, he had obediently followed them outside to watch them drive away in minivans and SUVs. Later in the week, he made no remark as they pulled into diagonal spots at the grocery store. He narrowly missed them as they pushed race car themed carts through cereal aisles, and he submitted to their clamor when they shared stoplights before returning home to dogs who scratched their toenails against the hardwood and shed on the rugs. Despite his best efforts to contain and preserve himself amid the squatting and scooting and chattering, the right front corner of Richard's carefully executed button-down, starched cotton blend monochromatic pine green Oxford dress shirt, had squirreled out of placement and revealed its hem.

Dolores squinted at small Phillip who picked quietly through his goodie bag.

"Hey, it's…" She adjusted her scarf until one thin cluster of hair looped around her ear. It wasn't supposed to do that. "It's okay," she looked back at Richard. "You didn't show, you know, skin, or anything." She widened her eyes when she said the word skin.

Richard pulled the boy like a half-emptied balloon out of the children's department, through the front foyer, out the automatic sliding doors (greasy handprint), down the front steps, and to the car.

Phillip climbed into his booster and affixed the seat belt, carefully maneuvering the small plastic goodie bag out of the path of the nylon restraint.

Richard slid behind the steering wheel, feeling his chest tighten and go slack, tighten and go slack, tighten and go slack. He loosened his belt, unbuttoned, unzipped, and feverishly smoothed the strayed corner of his shirt beneath the waistband before re-zipping, re-buttoning, and re-fastening the belt. The car door had not closed completely, and a sliver of daylight seeped through the perimeter of the frame. In the backseat, Phillip made soft t, t, t, t sounds with his tongue against the roof of his mouth as he traced and re-traced the edge of the bookmark.

"I don't know what to do now," he said to the boy, whose eyes met his father's without expression in the rearview mirror.

When the doors of the library opened and the girl whose name was Dolores emerged carrying a large white trash bag and wearing a backpack, Richard watched her throw the garbage into the dumpster. She wore flip flops, and he observed a large hole had formed in her tights just at her heel. He counted her steps from the dumpster to the bike rack--14--where she unlocked her bike, took off her flip flops, tucked them into her backpack, then mounted her bike and pedaled to the street barefoot. She waited for traffic before she turned right.

Richard glanced at Phillip who flipped the pages of a book about a family of bunnies at the beach while clucking t, t, t, with his tongue, then pulled the door tightly--the sliver of light disappeared--turned on the car, pulled forward, and followed the girl.

This is Post #1 of Story #1. To learn more about this project, click HERE.