The Kiss Principle (Hazardverse: Sidetracks)

4

Two days later, I was late for an appointment, and the nanny still hadn’t shown up.

More importantly, the baby was crying.

Those two days had flown by. Mom and Cannon were, according to her texts and, more importantly, my credit card bill, having a fantastic time in Vegas. I’d spent those days trying to (in no particular order) get settled with the baby, reschedule appointments and meetings, and find my junkie brother so that I could, once and for all, murder him myself.

It had been twenty-five years since Augustus had been an infant, and apparently, a lot had changed. Part of that was probably the fact that I was an adult, that I could go to stores and see what there was to buy—we’d never had money growing up, and basically everything Augustus had was either a hand-me-down from me or Chuy, or something a neighbor or friend had given us. It was eye-opening (maybe a better word would be ball-shattering) to walk down aisle after aisle of expensive strollers and car seats and pumps and swings and diapers and formula. Everything looked and sounded great—and was seriously fucking expensive. It was overwhelming. I caught myself in a kind of fugue state, stalled out in the car seat aisle, reading the specs on the tags and comparing crotch buckle depths (great name for a band, or for the next time I needed to yank Augustus’s chain), when I finally realized I was in over my head.

That first day, I bought pretty much everything I could put my hands on: diapers, of course; my weight in wipes; some clothes (those I got off the clearance rack—they had about eighteen of these hot dog onesies, and I bought all of them); a crib; crib sheets; blankets (I refused to call them blankies like the woman at the register); a baby monitor; a waterproof changing pad; a sleep sack, which was apparently a straitjacket for babies; bottles; a bottle brush; a bottle drying rack; baby wash; baby shampoo; a baby tub; baby nail scissors; burp cloths (I’d needed them, desperately, the day before); and so much goddamn formula.

I could return all of it, I figured, once I tracked down Chuy and found the baby’s mother.

The rest of that day, I moved or canceled all of my appointments, and I spent the time putting together the crib, figuring out the car seat (okay, figuring out both of the car seats—I bought an extra because the crotch buckle thing threw me), and reacquainting myself with the types and quantity of things that come out of babies. She had three blowouts, I shit you not. No pun intended.

I’d forgotten about the nights. I swear to Jesus Christ himself, every forty-five minutes she woke up again. She didn’t want to eat every time. She wanted to be awake. And have me be awake. Every. Forty-five. Minutes.

But even with the brain fog, day two was actually easier. Things started to click, my body (and my brain) remembering little things that had worked with Augustus—how he’d liked to be rocked, or the best way to burp him (honestly, trying to replicate any of Neil Peart’s drum solos worked like a charm), or the fact that sometimes babies were fussy and nothing you did would make them stop crying. I remembered the blessedness of naps, and we shared a few of those. And, of course, I spent a lot of time on my phone, reading, because I realized that there were probably some better ways to take care of a child than whatever an eight-year-old had cobbled together. I also spent a lot of time on the phone, trying to get a nanny, which turned out to be harder than expected. I ended up having to agree to an outrageous service charge (“rush processing” like I was calling QVC, for fuck’s sake), but it was worth it, because I had to get back to life.

The next night, she only woke me up three times, which I considered a win.

Only now it was the morning of the third day, and the nanny still wasn’t here.

I changed the baby. I got her dressed and fed. I burped her, and only after I was sure I’d cleared the danger zone did I jump in the shower and get ready for work. She watched me from the floor as I buttoned up my shirt.

“You’ve got your dad’s eyes,” I said as I scooped her up. “Let’s hope that’s all you got from that miserable son of a bitch, huh?”

She fit right in the crook of my arm, which was perfect for pacing and looking out the window and, every five minutes, calling the nannying agency and getting a busy signal.

I was getting ready to call Dr. Phan and cancel (which would be better, in the long run, than not showing up) when a knock came at the door. I threw it open, a few choice words already rising in my throat. I was pretty sure that ripping someone a new asshole and then entrusting them with a child wasn’t the best course to follow, but that advice occupied a small part of my brain in the moment.

Then I forgot what I was going to say because a dude was standing on the doorstep. He had surfer hair—windswept, dark except where the sun had lightened it, a perfectly tousled mess of texture that was long enough to cover the tops of his ears. He was tall and well-proportioned, athletic, but toned instead of bulky. Almost as dark as I was, I thought, but I couldn’t tell how much of that was the sun. In the cool of the April morning, he wore a Baja jacket and board shorts, and where the shorts hit him at the knee, I could see an angry red scar.

“Hi,” he said, a hint of an accent that marked him, for me, as Latin. “My name is—”

“Don’t care,” I said and pushed the baby into his arms. “I’ll be home by five. She just ate. You should have everything you need, but if you think of something—” I checked the curb and saw a weathered Buick LeSabre (maroon). Its tires were bald, and paint was peeling off the hood, and something about the car, even motionless, suggested the possibility of sudden and complete spontaneous combustion. “—get it delivered, and I’ll reimburse you. Phone number is on the fridge. Call me if there’s an emergency.”

He stared at me, and I figured he fell into the same category as most boy toys: pretty and a bit touched in the head. But he was rocking the baby, and he seemed to know how to hold her, and the agency had sent him.

“Mister—”

I checked my phone; I could still make the appointment with Dr. Phan if I drove like Satan was eating my ass. I sprinted toward the garage and called back, “Only if it’s an emergency!”

The last thing I saw when I looked back was the nanny—I guess they called them mannies—standing on the porch, cradling the baby and staring after me. Well, there was a reason he was a manny, I decided. A bit simple. And maybe he was only a temp.

On the drive out of our neighborhood, something felt off. The Escalade was too quiet, so I turned on the radio, got a talk station with what sounded like a man shouting inside a phone booth, and turned it off again. I tried Spotify, and because Augustus wasn’t within a hundred miles of me and my back was bitching at me and I’d had my life turned upside down and gotten approximately twenty-seven minutes of sleep over the last three days, I put on Destiny’s Child. The sky was a wide, clear plate of blue, and the day would be dry and mild. Relax, I told myself. Relax. You don’t have a baby to feed or change or snuggle. You don’t have laundry to do. (My God, how many clothes and towels and blankies—blankets—could one child go through?) You don’t have anyone to take care of except you. So, relax.

But then I hit the dregs of morning traffic, cars piling up ahead of me, some jackass trying to shoehorn himself in. The sun off the glass started to give me a headache, and the Escalade was too hot now, so I buzzed the window down and fought a wave of nausea.

What the fuck, I thought, was wrong with me?

I’d shoved the baby into the arms of a total stranger. I’d run off like a maniac—why? To keep an appointment with a doctor who was, admittedly, nice, and who had also told me she had no intention of buying from me?

Not a total stranger, I argued with myself. Not some rando off the street. The agency vetted him. Approved him. Trained him. He’d looked comfortable with the baby in his arms. Not quite all there, maybe, but he didn’t have to be a rocket scientist. He had to be careful with her, make sure she was changed, fed, warm, safe.

A call came in on the Escalade’s system.

“Mr. Lopez? This is Brigitta with Not So Nanny. I am so sorry we missed your call.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “It all worked out.”

“I’m so happy to hear that. Now, I know we weren’t able to accommodate your needs today, but I do have Zora lined up for the end of the month, and if it’s a good fit, I believe she’ll be interested in discussing the possibility of a long-term arrangement.”

My brain cycled around Zora. Does she wear a mask? That was a knee-jerk thought, the kind of dumb joke that would have made Augustus groan. And then the rest of that sentence freight-trained through my head.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, typically a nanny likes to meet a family before committing—”

“What do you mean you weren’t able to accommodate—what do you mean? He’s there. He’s there right now.”

She made a vexed little noise. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see anything on your paperwork. Let me put you on hold.”

He’d rung the doorbell. He’d rung the fucking doorbell, and I’d—

The way he’d stared when I’d put the baby in his arms.

The way he’d tried to say something.

A rash of sweat broke out across my forehead, my face, my chest. I spun the wheel and whipped the Escalade around.