After spending the day at Sylvia’s, I decide to head back to my own apartment. She has an early appointment with a client tomorrow morning, so I don’t see any sense in keeping her up. And I know if I had stayed there we would have been up half the night because she’s just so damn tempting to me. I have my driver come and pick me up, and I can tell he is a little disgruntled seeing as how his along with all of my other employees checks have not showed up yet. I assure him my lawyer is working on getting everything straightened out, and I also thank him so much for bearing with me.

We’re about halfway back to my apartment when suddenly my driver gets a little chattier than usual. He also has a bit of a smart mouth as it turns out. “Sir?” he asks.

“Yeah?” I grumble from the back seat, my mind a million miles away from our conversation.

“Do you know my name?” he asks.

I did not expect that question. Do I really come off as that big of a prick to my employees? “Leonard Troft,” I say, “But your friends call you Leo.” I look at him through the rearview mirror, and I can tell he is embarrassed for asking the somewhat random question. I sit upright, “Is there something bothering you, Leo?” I ask.

He grips the steering wheel tight. “My apologies, sir.” He says, realizing his smart mouth was a line crossed.

“No, seriously,” I say with firmness in my tone, “Say what you want to say.”

“There has been some talk around the company,” he says honestly, “to be honest, sir, we’re all just worried about losing our jobs… and whether or not you even give a damn about that.”

Harsh. “I do,” I say. “I really do, Leo. I am still hoping this all gets straightened out –not just for my sake. Yours too. And everyone else at the company. I never expected anything like this to happen. I’m doing what I can.”

“Of course, sir.” He says.

I am dropped off in front of my apartment, and I say goodbye to my driver –trying to appear friendlier than usual. He’s always been a nice guy, but evidently he has not thought very highly of me. I sigh, realizing I probably deserve that. I head inside and into the lobby of my high end apartment building, heading towards the elevator when I spot an attractive young woman just awkwardly standing outside the elevator. I smile at her, knowing she does not live here and is probably a guest of one of my neighbors.

As I pass by her and get on the elevator, she suddenly decides that she is going to get on the elevator as well. “What floor?” I ask her.

“Top.” She says.

The elevator doors close. “The top is a penthouse. It’s private.”

“I know,” she says, “but that’s where you’re going, isn’t it?”

“Um…” I smile at her. I am not really sure what to make of this. Women have been forward with me before, but not show up at my home and try to hitch a ride to my apartment without so much as a hello forward. For a second I wonder if I am about to get laid for the second time today, but then that thought quickly drifts away and is replace with self-disgust when I realize who this woman is. “Are you?” I ask, unable to form a complete sentence.

“Kate.” She says, “One of Eddies’ sisters.”

I feel a desire to claw my own eyes out because I had looked the woman up and down and attempted to imagine what she looked like under that knock-off petty coat of hers. I don’t ask her anything else, but I put in my keycard that allows access to the top floor. The elevator opens up into my penthouse, and she follows me inside. She looks around quite starry-eyed, clearly never having been somewhere this nice before.

I’m not really sure why she has come here to talk to me, but I play the part of the kind host. “Can I get you something to drink?” I ask.

She smiles and simply says, “Yes, thank you.”

I go into my kitchen, “What’s your poison?”

She frowns, “Water.”

“Oh,” I say, “You’re not the-” I bite my tongue.

“The alcoholic?” she says bluntly, “Yes. I see Eddie has spoken about us to you.”

“Not much, to be honest.” I say, “But truthfully I have never given him much of a chance.” I pour her a glass of water, and she shyly comes over to the bar and sits herself down.

“For the record,” she says while she plays with the glass, “I am nearly five years sober. That was a lifetime ago.”

“Good for you,” I say as honestly as I can.

She’s older than Eddie and I. I study her face for a moment and try to gather what I can. She has wrinkles under her eyes, yet she seems too young for that –probably due to her former alcoholism, but then again, I’m not so sure. Her hair is brown with a few gray strands here and there. There is a familiar gentleness about her that I can’t quite put my finger on just yet. I look at her purse, taking note that it’s a fairly large tote. I smile, realizing I figured something out. “You’re a mom?” I ask –recognizing that gentle, nurturing look in her face as something I had seen in my own mother as a kid. The large bag was probably full of emergency items that any mother would carry around.

She smiles, “Yes. I do have kids.” She suddenly goes digging through that giant Mary Poppins style bag of hers and pulls out a wallet. She opens it up and shows me a picture of three of her children. A sixteen year old boy named Bobby, a fourteen year old girl named Lana, and another boy at age twelve named Jack. She mentions she has more children, but I don’t see a picture. Kate nervously sips on her water for a few minutes before our conversation goes anywhere. She tells me she had tried to go see Eddie at the hospital, but that they would not let her in to see him because she couldn’t prove that she knew him. “I’m not sure how Max got back there to see him,” she says, “But I know the hospital has been letting you visit, so I came by here to ask… if you don’t mind, well, you see, Bobby really wants to see Eddie. And so do I. Bobby is really worried about him.”

I nod, “Of course. I’ll take you all by there.”

“Oh, good. Yes, thank you.” She smiles at me, awkwardly avoiding eye contact. “I’m sorry,” she says, realizing her unusual behavior, “It’s just that, well, I hate that this is why we are finally meeting. Eddie always spoke so highly of you, and I never showed much interest in meeting you.”

“It’s not all on you,” I say, “I didn’t even know you’re name or that you have children.” She does not say anything, so I keep talking. “So, is your son Bobby really close to Eddie or something?”

Her face lights up suddenly. “Yes. Eddie got him back in school. He had dropped out about a year before Eddie found all of us. I tried everything I could to get him to go back to high school, but I don’t know what it is about Eddie, but he could talk a vegan into eating pork. He has taken Bobby to a dirt bike track a few times, and it’s all he can talk about. He lets Bobby come out to his summer home with him sometimes to ride around on a bike he bought for him. Bobby’s so upset about all of this… Eddie had promised to come see him compete in a race, but from what Max has told me, it doesn’t sound like that is going to happen now. Eddie has even sat down and helped Bobby and Lana study for school before too. It’s just me, you see. My husband died… that’s what started the drinking….so it’s always been hard trying to balance my three kids by myself with work.”

“I can only imagine,” I say, “What do you do?”

She blushes. “I, um, wait tables.”

“Oh yeah?” I question, “Where at?”

“The Fox Hole.” She says.

I frown. “The strip club?”

She does this awkward flick of the writ, pointing her finger slightly as though to say that’s the one, you’ve figured me out. Holy hell, she’s a damn stripper… at a club I’ve fucking been to. I do my best to not think about the club. Dear God, I hope I’ve never gotten a dance from her from there… she might as well be a long lost sister. Kate looks absolutely humiliated. I shouldn’t have asked so many questions. “So…” I say nervously because I don’t really want to know the answer, but my stupid mouth won’t let me not ask, “Are you a stripper?”

Kate crosses her arms, “I used to be. I just wait tables now. I busted my hip a while back, so I can’t really get up on the pole like I used to.”

I try really, really hard for Eddie’s sake not to imagine that. I try to make light of the conversation. I try to joke. “What happened? Did you fall off the pole or something?”

Wrong question. “No...” I can tell from the uncomfortable look on her face that I don’t want to hear the rest of her answer, but she seems to have just as bad of a problem of stopping herself from saying stupid shit as I do, “I used to, um, take clients in the back room, and this one guy got a little excited and he, um, well-”

“I will pay you fifty bucks not to finish this story.” I say, and she suddenly starts laughing her ass off.

“I’m sorry!” she says, “I’m so stupid. I’m such an awkward moron sometimes.”

Her laugh is slightly contagious. I laugh too. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

Much like with Max, the two of us wind up spending a considerable amount of time talking about Eddie and life in general. She turns out to be a pretty nice woman, and I feel like an asshole for just now having met her.