Darlene
The alarm went off at the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. I dragged my ass out of bed, started the coffee pot in my little kitchen, then swayed with my eyes closed under the shower spray in my tiny bathroom. I had never been much of an early-riser, but a friend of a friend in NYC had pulled a gazillion strings to get me a job at a posh spa in the Financial District. The pay was worth getting up for, but God.
“Is this what being responsible feels like?” I muttered as I dropped the shampoo bottle for the second time.
After showering, I sipped coffee in the kitchen, wrapped in my towel with another turban’ed around my hair, marveling that the sky outside my window was still dark.
Being responsible, I decided, sucked ass.
But after the initial sluggishness passed, I felt more awake than I had in a long time. Ready. The day was dawning on my new life, I decided, and I didn’t even care if that sounded cheesy. It felt good.
I dressed in beige skirt, men’s button-down shirt, thigh-high maroon socks, and my black combat boots. In the bathroom mirror, I put on the usual dark shadow and heavy liner around my blue eyes, gold hoops in my ears, and tied my long brown hair in a ponytail. I still looked like my New York self.
I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.
Outside, I pulled on my favorite old man sweater and shouldered my purple backpack. The sun was finally climbing out of the sky, and the sheer early-ness of the day was palpable. The street was quiet. Asleep.
An app on my phone told me I needed the J train to take me to the Embarcadero Muni station. Twenty minutes later, I emerged in a neighborhood of condos, modern loft space, and shops with a view of the Bay. My map said the Wharf, and all the fun touristy stuff was just around the corner so to speak, another ten minutes by train. This neighborhood felt quiet, and I wondered if I’d have enough clients to keep me afloat, or if I’d need a second job.
If you get a second job, you won’t have time to start dancing again.
I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad, either.
Turns out, I needn’t have worried. Serenity Spa was a pretty, sleek storefront that screamed expensive, and was bustling with clients inside, even at 6:45 a.m.
My supervisor, Whitney Sellers, looked to be in her mid-thirties, with strawberry blonde hair and hard blue eyes. She eyed me up and down with a furrowed brow.
“Darlene, right?” she asked, as if my name didn’t taste right in her mouth.
I nodded. “Yes, hi. Nice to meet you.”
She reached a hand for me to shake, hard and short.
“I wouldn’t get attached to this place,” she said. “Turnover is high. I’m up to my neck in hires and fires every week. You start in ten minutes and you need a uniform.” She appraised my outfit. “Badly.”
She gave me a pair of white yoga pants and a soft, white button-down shirt with short sleeves. I changed in the employee bathroom and checked myself out in the mirror
“I look like a nurse,” I told Whitney when I came out for her inspection.
“That’s the idea,” Whitney said. “You work in healthcare now, massaging for the therapeutic well-being of our clients.” She arched a brow. It seemed eyebrows did most of the talking around here. “Well? Go. Your first client is waiting.”
It took me all of three minutes to determine that the serenity of Serenity Spa was reserved for the clients. For a place that catered to luxury and relaxation, every employee there looked like they were stressed to the max.
“Do you like working here?” I asked one of my coworkers in the break room after my first appointment was done. The gal gave me a strange look.
“You must be new.” She sighed and rubbed her shoulder. “It’s like kneading dough all day, but what other job can you say you can make this much per hour?”
Selling X at a rave, I thought but did not say.
Serenity Spa was the elegant business of my new life, and I vowed to never go back to the old. I was going to keep myself as clean and pristine as my new uniform. But by the time my shift was over, my arms felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each, and my shoulders and forearms were screaming.
“I just have to get used to it,” I muttered to myself on the street. It was like a new dance routine. At first, your body was sore as the same muscles were worked over and over again, but I’d adjust. No, more than adjust. I’d conquer.
The clang of a cable car sounded, and I watched a sailboat glide across the Bay. A smile spread over my lips. “I did good today.”
And then my gaze landed on a post on the corner beside me, covered in bills and flyers; someone offering guitar lessons, a lost cat sign…and flyers for an independent, modern dance troupe that was having a showcase at a theatre in the Mission District in a few weeks. They were holding auditions. One spot. A female dancer for the ensemble.
I bit my lip. The cable car was rounding the corner, going the opposite direction from where I needed to be. If I jumped on, I might get lost, but I was feeling brave that day.
The car made its stop and I went for it. As I did, my hand snaked out to grab a phone number tag from the bottom of the dance flyer. I stuffed the scrap of paper in my pocket, and jumped on the car to who-knew-where.
After a late afternoon doing touristy stuff at Pier 39 along the Wharf—and eating chocolate from Ghirardelli Square to celebrate me in my new city—I navigated the buses and trains to get back home.
Duboce Street was bathed in twilight copper, and the beautiful houses, fronted with trees and flowers, looked idyllic. Like a postcard for San Francisco. I grinned and pulled out my phone and took a photo of the cream-colored Victorian.
I live here! I typed in a message to Carla, my sister, and attached the photo.
No response.
I told myself she was busy with family stuff, or having dinner. It was seven o’clock in New York, after all.
On the first floor in the Victorian I heard voices. The door to #1 was open, and a middle-aged Hispanic woman stood in it, talking to a young man. The guy looked to be about my age. He cradled a toddler on his hip with one hand, held a briefcase in the other, and wore a diaper bag slung over his shoulder. He had short, dark blond hair with soft, loose curls, sharp brown eyes fringed with long lashes, a square jaw, and a broad mouth that was currently turned down in a stiff frown…
I could have kept mentally appraising his attributes for days, but in the space of a second, my brain had tallied up the sum of his parts and came to the very definitive conclusion that he was fucking gorgeous.
Seriously? Do not tell me Mr. Mom is my neighbor.
He and the Hispanic woman both stopped talking when they saw me. The woman’s face broke out into a warm, welcoming smile. The guy stared at me with a mixture of alarm and disdain.
“Who are you?” he demanded rudely, shifting the diaper bag higher on his shoulder while hoisting his little girl in his other arm. Six feet of hotness in a rumpled suit, glaring at me with suspicion in his dark eyes.
The woman swatted his arm lightly. “Sawyer, be a good boy.”
“I...I’m your new neighbor?” I said. It sounded more like a question; as if I needed this guy’s permission to live. I straightened to my full height. “I’m Darlene. I just moved in upstairs. I’m a dancer. Well, I was. Had to take some time off but I’m going to get back into it soon...ish.” I put on my friendliest smile. “I’m a massage therapist now. Just got my license and...”
My words died under Sawyer’s withering stare.
“A dancer. Fantastic,” he said bitterly. “Just what I always wanted. Someone leaping and thumping above me, waking my kid up and disturbing my studies at all hours of the night.”
I planted my hands on my hips. “I can’t dance in a dinky apartment, and besides...”
Words failed me again as the sharp planes and hard angles of Sawyer's face melted when his daughter—I guessed her to be about a year old—clapped her small hand over his chin. Sawyer’s gaze softened, and his broad mouth turned up in a smile—a beautiful smile I was sure he saved only for his little girl, and one so full of love that, for a moment, I could hardly breathe.
“It is very nice to meet you, Darlene,” the woman interjected. “I’m Elena Melendez. This is Sawyer, and his little angel is Olivia. They live upstairs.”
“Me too,” I said. “Third floor, I mean. Obviously,” I added with a weak laugh. “The studio?”
“You’re subletting for Rachel, yes?” Elena smiled. “She’s such a nice girl.”
“And quiet,” Sawyer added, earning himself another swat from Elena.
“Yes, I’m subletting for six months,” I said. “Rachel’s doing a Green Peace tour.”
Elena beamed. “Welcome to the building.”
Sawyer took his little girl’s hand off his chin, gave it a kiss, then grunted something unintelligible as he brushed past me to go upstairs. I got a whiff of cologne and baby powder, and the strangest sensation ripped through me. It was as if every sexual and maternal molecule in my body ignited in response to Sawyer’s masculinity and the sheer babyness of his little girl at the same time.
Oh my God, cool your jets, girl. He’s probably married and is definitely kind of an asshole.
Except to his daughter. Over Sawyer’s shoulder, Olivia watched me and smiled.
I waved at her.
She waved back.
“He’s really a very nice young man,” Elena said with a sigh, watching Sawyer round the corner.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said, easing a sigh of relief that Sawyer had taken the strange tension—and his arsenal of potent pheromones—upstairs with him. “His death-glare could cut diamonds. His daughter’s a cutie, though. How old?”
“Thirteen months,” Elena said. “I’ve been babysitting her since she was an infant, and I love every minute. I’d do it for free but Sawyer insists on paying the ‘going rate.’” She leaned in conspiratorially and whispered, “I tell him my going rate because it’s much less. My pleasure to help him. He works so hard. Every day, all night.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s studying to be a lawyer,” she said proudly. “Very close to being done too.”
I scuffed my combat boot on the thinly carpeted floor. “What…um, what does Olivia’s mom do?”
Tell me he’s happily married. Have mercy.
“She is not in the picture,” Elena said quietly.
“Oh? That’s…too bad.”
“Sawyer has never mentioned her and I don’t ask. I figure if he wants to tell, he’ll tell but he’s sealed up tight. Like a drum. He has a heart of gold, that one, but so serious. All the time, so much stress. I worry about him.” She smiled warmly. “I tell him his handsome face was meant for smiling, but he saves those for Livvie.”
“I noticed.”
Elena gave my hand a pat. “And what do you do for work, Darlene? Massage therapist, you say?”
“Yes,” I said. “I started today.”
“A massage therapist. Isn’t that something?” Elena’s smile widened and her glance darted upward, to the heavens or Sawyer’s apartment. “Dios trabaja de maneras misteriosas.”
“What’s that?”
“A guess. I tell you later.”
A little dark-haired girl with large eyes appeared at Elena’s hip. She put her hand on the girl’s head. “This is Laura. She’s two and I have a son, Hector, who is five. My husband works late but you’ll meet him someday.”
I smiled and waved at the little girl. “You really have your hands full.”
“I do,” Elena said, “or else I’d invite you in like a proper neighbor and make you dinner. But I have to get these two in the bath.”
“That’s so sweet of you. Another time, maybe?” I said, and I meant it. Elena was like a prototype for the ideal mother, and a wave of homesick with a side of lonely washed over me. I had a sudden urge to sit on her couch, rest my head on her shoulder, and pour my guts out to her.
You are being extra ridiculous right now. No one needs to know anything. Not here, in your new life.
“Speaking of dinner,” I said brightly, “I should get going. I haven’t done any shopping since I got here except for the essentials: coffee and tampons. Where’s the closest grocery?”
“There’s a Safeway and a Whole Foods. Both are a short walk up 14th, then cross over to Market.”
“Perfect. Thank you so much, Elena.”
“Of course, querida. I’m very happy you’re here, and I believe Sawyer will soon come to feel the same.”
I blinked and laughed. “I’m pretty sure he’ll forget all about me. In New York you can go months without talking to anyone else in your apartment building.”
“Ah, but this is not an apartment building, is it? It’s a house. A home.” Elena’s smile was like warm bread. “You’ll see.”