The Billionaire and His Driver

CHAPTER THREE

TWO YEARS LATER

He loved to run. It was how he blew off steam. His driver, in a chauffeur’s uniform, parked the big, black Mercedes-Maybach on the back row of the city park and then hurried to the back passenger door. He stood at the door but didn’t open it because the boss was still on the phone with one of his brothers, who also happened to be one of his business partners. It would take several minutes of waiting, but then the knock came and his driver opened the door.

Warren Ronald Bradshaw, the Chairman of the Board of Bradshaw Technologies, stepped out of his car in a well-worn jersey that had paint stains on it from when he was painting a wall on the fourth floor of his mansion, and a rip near the shoulder from a fall he endured years before, but it was his favorite jogging shirt. He also wore loose-fitting running shorts, and a cheap pair of tennis shoes: his favorite running shoes. He did his stretches at the car in silence the way he always did the one or two times per week when he got a chance to jog, and then he took off. His board of directors, and specifically his brothers, hated his lackadaisical approach to security and often had to insist he keep a bodyguard on standby. But that was what the bodyguard was: back at the house on standby, waiting sometimes days on end to be utilized. When he was out of town on business or out of the country altogether, he did make it his practice to take his bodyguard along with him. But he rarely used him around town. And never used him when he ran.

It was nothing for Ronny, as he was called by friends and foes alike, to run thirty-forty minutes a pop with no breaks in between. But on this particular morning he was at it a good hour. Had jogged from the park on the outskirts of Eugene, Oregon, all the way to town where he was forced to take a break because of mild drizzling rain that quickly descended into a downpour.

He took shelter just outside a fast-food chicken joint that had an extensive overhang over its front two windows, an overhang that was seemingly built for days like this. But as soon as he stopped jogging, his body reminded him that he wasn’t a young man anymore, that he was in fact pushing forty-five, and needed to sit his old ass down.

His phone in the lefthand pocket of his shorts had been ringing several times during his jog, but seemed to pick up steam when he took a break. That was when he pulled it out, confirmed that all of the calls were coming from his lady friends, so he shut the whole thing off and returned it to his pocket. Mainly because the only people he cared about, his three younger brothers, were bestowed a particular ring tone. Everybody else, which usually meant his lady friends or those that worked for him, got the standard issue.

With his back against the building wall, he sat beneath the awning, his long legs outstretched on the busy sidewalk but still beneath the overhang. He felt he was out of everybody’s way, especially since it appeared to be a popular area for the young people that attended the University of Oregon.

Even in the rain they were out in force, either running with no cover, walking briskly with no cover, or walking casually with umbrella protection. But what Ronny noticed about many of them was how they seemed to be glancing at him with disdain on their smug faces, as if he was offending them by his presence alone. Which made no sense to him whatsoever. There wasn’t a high-dollar dinner party in America that wouldn’t love to have Ronny Bradshaw as a guest of honor and these snot-nose kids were looking at him as if he was beneath them ? What was that about? They never saw a man seeking shelter from the rain?

But when one woman looked down at his filthy, no-name sneakers and his muddy shorts after he’d been running in rain puddles that splashed him more than once, and how she looked up at his torn jersey, he realized why they were staring. They thought that he, a man at the top of his profession, was some vagrant or beggar! That he, the chairman of the board, had no place to lay his head. And that offended their sensibilities, apparently, because he appeared healthy enough to be able to do better for himself. What was wrong with him , seemed to be the prevailing look.

Ronny inwardly smiled. The foolishness of youth, he thought. That was why he was glad to see his own youth disappear in the rearview mirror of his life. But then why, he wondered, as he’d been wondering a lot lately, was every single one of his so-called lady friends just a few years older than those same college kids? Why was he fooling around with youth when he despised it so completely?

“I don’t mean to step over you,” said a voice just above his head, “but I don’t wanna get wet.”

He looked up and saw a petite black woman staring down at him. He couldn’t make out her features exactly because the sun was in his face, obstructing his view, but he could see she wore jeans, a tucked-in sleeveless blouse, and appeared to have a smile on her face. “Excuse me?”

Brina didn’t see the point of saying it again, so she just stepped on over his outstretched legs and made it to the other side of him where there was more overhang to share that would keep her body out of the rain and, more importantly, keep her thick, wavy hair from frizzing up.

When she stepped across him, he was able to look up at her without the sun view. She appeared to be thirty or so if she was a day, with a narrow, dark-brown face and a very shapely slender body. Her eyes were dark-brown too, but with a greenish tint that gave them an arresting look, as if she was equal parts cheerful, self-possessed, but overwhelmed too.

“Been sitting here long?” she asked him.

“Not long, no.”

“It was a nice, sunshiny day when I went into that restaurant, then I come out and it’s raining cats and dogs. But they were so busy it took them nearly twenty minutes to get to me. They interviewed me on the spot though.”

A woman her age working in some fast-food joint that was overrun by college kids? It seemed like a setback. “They interviewed you?”

“For a job, yeah. It’ll be temporary though. Until I start my new job.”

“Oh okay.” That made no sense to Ronny. “What’s your new job?”

“It’ll be at a non-profit. I don’t know which one yet. I have four interviews lined up with four of them. But since that’s been my field for over a decade, I’m sure I’ll get hired on.”

A dreamer, he thought. Counted her eggs before they hatched. Never a good idea. But that was her business.

“Guess what?”

She said it with such a big smile on her face that he found her refreshingly odd. “What?”

She crotched down to him, which placed them face to face. And on closer examination, he was even more intrigued by her. She had such a hopeful, cheerfulness about her, but her eyes seemed almost singularly melancholy. As if all that cheerfulness was what she was wishing was true, was praying was true, but she knew it wasn’t true.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a napkin. “While I was waiting for them to interview me,” she said as she began unfurling the napkin, “I saw this uneaten biscuit on one of the customer plates that none of the waitresses had removed from the table yet. So I grabbed this napkin from the napkin dispenser and took this bad boy. It wasn’t like stealing because they were just going to throw it in the trash anyways. Right?”

She looked at him as if she needed his confirmation. He was glad to confirm. “Yes. It definitely wasn’t stealing. You can’t steal trash.”

She smiled what he thought was a most angelic smile. “Right.”

But then she looked at that biscuit and looked at him again. She didn’t want to share it, she was just that hungry, but she wasn’t going to leave him out if he was hungry too. “Looks good, doesn’t it?”

It looked like a thousand other biscuits to Ronny. “Very edible, yes.”

Brina smiled. He was one of those educated homeless people like her, she figured. She wondered what was his story? But she learned the hard way to never get deep with anybody in these streets. That drew suspicion on you. That drew unwelcome attention onto yourself. Besides, she didn’t really give a squat about his story. She was too busy licking her lips. She couldn’t wait to devour that biscuit. But still. “Have you had something to eat today?” she asked him.

He hadn’t eaten a thing all day. But it wasn’t even noon yet, so that wasn’t unusual. “No,” he said.

She didn’t want to do it, but no way was she going to let him starve while she had something to eat. She careful broke it in two. “Here’s half,” she said and reached it out to him.

Ronny found her gesture so odd that it caught him off guard. He stared at the biscuit.

“Go on,” she said. “Take it.”

“No, no, I couldn’t.”

“Don’t make the mistake I made. I was offered half a sandwich like a few days ago and I said no, figuring I’d get something to eat later you know? I was pretty sure I’d get a labor pool gig that day, get some money, and then get me some food to eat. But they didn’t have any jobs, at least none they put me on, and I ended up not having anything to eat all that day. Take it,” she insisted. “You may not get any more food for the rest of the day. You know how that goes.”

Ronny was stunned. Did she think he was homeless too? But even more importantly to him: was she homeless? “Are you saying that you don’t have a roof over your head?”

When he said that, Brina looked up and noticed the rain had stopped. Which was good because she really didn’t want her hair messed up for her interviews coming up tomorrow and the next day. “The rain’s stopped,” she said.

“Answer my question,” Ronny said in a way so authoritarian that it caused Brina to smile at him.

“This isn’t the army,” she said.

Ronny smiled, even though it still concerned him. “But are you saying you don’t have a roof over your head?”

“I’ve got one. They put me up in this halfway house after I got out, but you have to supply your own food. I’ve been getting day jobs here and there waiting for my real interviews to come up, but everything’s dried up the last few days. My food ran out. But take it,” she said, shoving the half biscuit closer to him. “You’ll thank me later.”

Ronny was indeed hungry now that food had been shoved in his face, and he could tell she wasn’t going to stop until he took that biscuit from her. So he took it.

She smiled as she bit into her half. “It’s good,” she said approvingly. “It’s homemade. It’s real good.”

Ronny ate the half of biscuit. And she was right: it was actually very tasty. But was she going to be alright? “You said they put you up in a halfway house after you got out? Out of what? Rehab?” Was she a druggie?

She smiled again. “No silly. I wasn’t in rehab. I just got out of the penitentiary.”

For some reason, that news shocked him. “Prison? You were in prison?”

He saw a look appear in her eyes, but he couldn’t discern what it was. She nodded her head. “They gave me three years, but I got out in two. I got out on what they call good behavior.”

“Let me guess: You’re innocent right? You didn’t do it?”

She knew everybody said that, and he was being facetious about it, so she didn’t bother to give him the satisfaction of seeing her the way he saw every ex-con. She said nothing about it.

“How do you eat on the days you do find work?” Ronny asked her.

“Like I’m eating now,” said Brina as she continued to devour her share of the biscuit. Then she noticed, across the street at a bar, a merchant placing a Help Wanted sign in her store window. “God makes a way,” she added, and began getting up. “That lady just put a Help Wanted sign out,” she said as she quickly finished her biscuit.

But Ronny wasn’t ready for her to leave. “I thought you said you had interviews lined up.”

“I do. But I gotta work until they come through. Can sometimes take a month or even longer before they offer you the job. I’ll see you around,” she said, and began hurrying across the street.

“Be careful!” he angrily yelled at her when a car nearly hit her. He thought he was going to have a heart attack when she dodged that bullet. Then his heart dropped again when in her continued haste she was nearly hit by yet another car. But although those drivers blew their horns and gave her the finger, she seemed singularly focused. She went up to the merchant that was now sweeping around her establishment, and she and Brina talked. And then they went inside. As if she just talked herself into a position. Which Ronny was pleased to know.

But her absence and the continued stares he realized he was still getting, reminded him that the rain had stopped, and he was free to go.

He stood back up, stretching to prepare himself for the long jog back to his vehicle. He tried to wait around to see if she would come back out looking happy or if that Help Wanted sign was removed, as if he could then worry less about her. But no such luck. And his lingering only made him feel silly. He didn’t even know her name. Didn’t know anything about her, except that she was a criminal. What on earth was he thinking?

He took off running again. He couldn’t get away from there fast enough.