October 3, 2003, continued
Five years! I did the math. Five years included the week-long vacation Jane* and I had taken together two years earlier, when she had called someone almost every day and wouldn’t tell me who it was. Toward the end of the trip she gave way, a bit, and said, “Just an old friend from Michigan.”
It was also on this trip when I complained to Jane about not having any sex (this seems to be a pattern). She told me that she was content because she was quite good at self-pleasure and Jane insinuated that I needed to improve my personal-pleasure skills. Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!
So for the first part of the conversation with Trent, I was not really there. I was on the floor, I was on vacation with Jane, I was once again feeling stupid. Focus, I told myself. Focus.
At this point Trent asked if I minded if he had a beer. I said no. He pulled two blue cans from the pocket of his sweatshirt and set them on the table. He snapped one open and began to talk again.
“It’s been a rough day for me. I thought she might have pimped me out.”
“What?”
“I thought Jane might have pimped me out.”
“To me?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, no. No.”
He let go of a long breath and looked out the window for a bit. Looking at the redness in his face I realized that he had probably had several beers ahead of the two on the table. He talked again.
“What do you want to do?”
I thought about it. I had propositioned the boyfriend of what I had thought was a good friend of mine—a boyfriend I hadn’t known about.
“I’d like to keep talking.”
He took a draw on his beer. Then he said,
“So would I.”
The next thing he did was pull out his keychain, thick and round with keys. He thumbed through them until he came to a plastic tab with a photo on it. He held it toward me.
“This is my daughter, Jenna. Jenna Jo.”
I was on the floor again. Jane had told me he had a daughter. “He’s a good father,” was one of the things she had said when she was convincing me to hire him. But in all my reveries about Trent, I had left out his daughter. I quickly inserted her into the rapidly expanding circle: Trent, Jane, me, and Jenna.
“She’s beautiful.”
I have learned that this is what you are supposed to say when you see a picture of someone’s daughter, no matter what you think of how she looks. It was hard to tell what Jenna looked like—the plastic tab was badly scratched. The photo had rubbed away in many places and white was showing through. Trent smiled as he told me about his daughter.
“She’s a sweetheart.”
“She looks darling.”
“She’s older now—older than the picture.”
“How old is she?”
“She’s ten.”
“How old is she in the picture?”
“Five.”
Trent looked sad and I thought I should change the subject.
*Not her real name
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