From the train station, Gina drove straight to Franklin Middle School. Her heels clicked down the locker-lined hallway. Telling her husband that she wanted a baby felt urgent. She was already sixteen months behind Dani. Teachers’ voices spilled out into the hallways. At his desk, in the corner of an empty classroom, under fluorescent lights, Maurits looked pensive, perhaps thinking of fatherhood.
Gina walked up to him.
“This is a surprise.” He stood and fetched a chair for Gina. One of the tennis balls, sliced open to act as a silencer, slipped off the chair’s foot and wobbled toward Gina’s royal blue Manolos. “When did you get back?”
Gina pushed her straightened brown hair behind one ear. “Just now.”
A waifish Asian girl and a lanky white girl appear at the classroom door. “May we borrow tape, Mr. Smythe?” they ask in chorus.
“Excuse us,” Gina scolded.
The girls giggled nervously and left with Maurits’s tape dispenser.
Maurits took a deep breath. “There’s a lot to catch up on.”
Gina nodded.
He rotated his chair to face Gina, sat up straighter, and put his palms on his skinny thighs. “I’m not sure where to begin.” He rubbed his clean-shaven chin. “I’ve told a few colleagues this story. You should know too.”
An invisible slender needle pierced Gina’s neck.
Maurits continued in his baritone voice, “I befriended a waitress at Mario’s. She’s been serving me at my regular table.”
A new cheap gold-colored watch looked bulky on Maurits’s thin wrist. “Bibi lives in a small apartment with her little boy she had when she was sixteen.” He looked out the window.
Gina picked invisible lint off her slacks trying not to get impatient with Maurits’ tendency toward idealism.
“She’s from Guyana. Her uncle brought her here to America after her mother died.” Maurits saluted the flag with his coffee mug. “Her life could be a novel.”
Gina visualized a map of the world and placed this Bibi–who was likely short, overweight, and missing teeth–somewhere near Africa. “You’re gullible, Maurits. We’re not donating to a Go Fund Me for her. We’re going to need it for–.” She reached out, briefly squeezed his hand.
Maurits crossed his long legs. “She’s very pretty. Her skin is gorgeous. Some nights at Mario’s men and even couples invite her home.”
“Maurits,” she blushed, “are you suggesting we take her home?”
He held up a notepad and shook his head. “I write her love poems. We spent Monday at the Shore.” Now words spewed out of him like sewage. “I called in sick. Gina, I can’t take it anymore, all this sneaking around.”
The bell rang. Kids flooded into Maurits’s classroom, flinging their backpacks onto desks. Maurits stood. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” Gina said as he helped her out of the chair and guided her to the door.
Out in the crowded hallway, a group of busty adolescent girls stared at Gina then turned to one another and laughed.
