Outside the Lines (14 page)

Luckily, I had too much to do to give the issue much thought. I had people waiting for dessert. The next client through the door could be my father.

“So, it’s been a few weeks,” Jack said several hours later as I was putting on my jacket to leave. “What do you think?” Now that dinner and dessert had been served, we stood in his office while Rita was in the bunk room coordinating the clients’ sleeping arrangements for the night.

Jack helped my arms into the sleeves. “I think it’s great,” I said, turning around to face him. “I’m happy I’m here.”

“We’re happy, too,” he said. “Your dinners are a hit. A lot of the clients are asking if we’ll see you on a regular basis.”

I nodded. “Definitely. I work a lot of nights, but I usually have Tuesdays off. I’m looking forward to talking with everyone more.”

“So they can keep an eye out for your father.”

I glanced at him a bit quizzically. “Well, yes, but I also feel like I sort of fit in here.” I laughed. “Does that sound weird?”

“Not at all. You seem very at ease. And not everyone can relax around this population.” He dropped his eyes to his desk, busying himself by shuffling a stack of papers into a neat pile. I took that as my cue to leave, but before I could, he cleared his throat, looked up, and spoke again. “It’s a little late. Can I walk you to your car?”

“Sure,” I said, grabbing my purse from a brass hook on the wall. I usually tried not to play the damsel in distress but was surprisingly charmed by his chivalrous gesture.

Jack put on his jacket and we walked down the hallway out the front door. The air was chilly and a steady drizzle fell, so I flipped up the hood on my jacket and tucked my hands into my pockets to keep them warm. There was a bar across the street, and a low bass rhythm thumped through the air. Some of our clients stood outside the bar’s door, talking to the exiting patrons—asking, I was sure, for a few dollars or spare cigarettes. Part of me wished I could gather them up and bring them home safe with me.

“Who watches over things when you’re gone?” I asked Jack as we strolled toward the parking garage two blocks down from the shelter. “Rita?”

“Sometimes.” He threw his gaze both ways before we crossed the street, then looked back at me. “I have a couple other people on staff, too, but I don’t take many days off. This place is pretty much my world.”

“Is this what you’ve always wanted to do?” I was curious about what had motivated Jack to feel so passionate about his work. Did he have a homeless family member, too?

A strange look flashed across his face but disappeared too quickly for me to discern what its significance might be. “Not always. I majored in business and got my master’s in organizational development.”

“Sounds like you were prepping for the corporate set. What made you change your mind?”

“Long story.” He smiled, but the words were clipped.
The end,
they said. I knew enough to figure out he didn’t want to pursue the subject. At least not now. We entered the garage and I directed us to my car, standing by it a moment in slightly awkward silence.

“Well,” I finally said, “thanks for walking me.”

“No problem.” He looked around at the empty spaces and shuffled his feet. “It’s pretty well lit. You probably would have been fine on your own.”

I smiled too. “Probably. But it was still nice of you.” I opened the driver’s-side door and slipped into the front seat. “I’ll see you next week. And hey, I was thinking, if you can get your hands on a bunch of tomatoes from your produce guy, I could make spaghetti. I get a great rate on bulk pasta through work. Seriously. Pennies a pound.”

“That sounds fantastic,” he said. “I can get more ground beef, too.” He placed his hand on the door, holding it open for a moment. He seemed hesitant to speak.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

He nodded. “Oh, yeah. Thanks again.”

I pulled the door shut and started the engine. Just as I looked down to put the gearshift into reverse, Jack rapped on my window, shooting my heart right into my throat. I rolled down the window.

“Jesus!” I said. “Did I forget something?”

“No, but I did.” He took an audible breath. “I meant to ask you earlier, but we were so busy and then . . . well, I felt a little weird about it. But I’m going to ask you anyway. What the heck, right?”

“Um, I’m not sure,” I said. My pulse immediately picked up speed. “That depends on what you’re going to ask.”

He laughed, a staccato noise. “Right. I was just thinking, you know, about what we talked about a few weeks ago? Your father’s old apartment building?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, I was thinking if you wanted, I could go with you to talk with the other tenants. To see if they remember your dad.” He looked down to the ground, then back up to me.

I had half expected him to ask me out, and I wasn’t sure if going to my father’s old apartment qualified. Still, I appreciated his offer to help. “Really?” I said. “You’d do that?”

He shrugged and smiled. “Yeah, really. I was just thinking it might be easier if you had someone with you. I mean, I’m sure you have other friends or family who could help you out, but I thought that since I’m the one who brought it up, it wouldn’t hurt to ask if you’d want some company.”

“I’d love it. Thank you. When do you want to go?”

“How about I call you tomorrow and we’ll figure it out?”

I nodded. “Sure, sounds good. I’m an early riser.” I hoped I was keeping my smile to a reasonable size. I wasn’t the kind of girl who got asked out a lot, so when a man expressed interest in spending time with me, I couldn’t help but be flattered.

“Me too,” he said.

As I
backed out of the parking space, I was already anxious for morning to come.

“I think I have a date,” I told Georgia when I called her the next day at her office. “But I’m not sure. I need an expert’s opinion.”

“I have exactly three minutes until my first meeting,” she said. “So spill, but make it fast.”

I gave her the quick summary of my evening at Hope House, including Rita’s teasing and my subsequent conversation with Jack while he walked me to my car. “And he called, just like he said he would.”

“Already? At what unholy hour?”

“Seven. And it’s not unholy, because I told him I’m up early.” I leaned forward on the couch to grab my mug from the table. “He gave me just enough time to have a cup of coffee and let Jasper out.”

“So, he asked if he could come with you to look at your father’s old apartment building?”

“Yep. We’re going today, since neither of us has to work. Is that a date? I mean, technically?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, my friend, but I’m thinking not so much. I mean, he wants to spend time with you and all, which is a good thing. But in order for it to count as a date, it can’t really be an errand.”

“What if we get lunch afterward?”

“Post-errand meal. Sorry.” She laughed. “Look, I’m just happy that you’re doing something with your social life other than going to work and walking your dog. And it sounds like at least he has some potential, right?”

“Right. I know I said I’m not looking for anything—”

“Pfft,” Georgia said, interrupting me. “Whatever. You are so full of crap and you know it. Rita even knew it and she just met you. So stop lying to your best friend and let me get back to work. I expect a full report tonight. Can you do drinks?”

“Sure. I’ll call you later,” I said.

“Aloha, bella!”

I hung up, smiling to myself. “Okay, Jasper. I have to get dressed.” He wagged his tail and looked at me with those loving, soulful brown eyes that suckered me into bringing him home a decade before. “Want to help me pick out what to wear?”

He barked once, which I took as a yes. He followed me into the bedroom, where I chose to keep it simple in jeans and a V-necked royal-purple sweater. Georgia considered me wardrobe disabled since I rarely dressed in anything other than my chef coat and kitchen clogs. I didn’t see the point in spending the money when I could save it for opening my restaurant.

After a quick shower and blow-dry, I threw on a little makeup and got dressed. “What do you think?” I asked Jasper. “Meat-flavored perfume?”

He barked again and waggled his rear end.

“Oh, you would say that, you dirty old hound. We wouldn’t want to give Jack the wrong idea, now, would we? This is only an errand, you know, so don’t get your hopes up.”

After I locked up the house and helped Jasper into the backseat of my car, I punched Jack’s address into my GPS and followed its instructions to a neighborhood near the Ballard Locks. I pulled in front of the apartment building to see him waiting under the awning. Jasper barked when Jack opened the door and jumped into the passenger side.

“Hey,” he said, and then twisted around in his seat. “Who’s this?”

“That’s Jasper. Jasper, this is Jack. I hope you’re a dog person. Or at least not allergic. I probably should have asked if it was okay to bring him.”

“Totally okay. I love dogs.” He extended his arm, his fingers curled under to allow Jasper to sniff him. It was good to see he knew proper dog etiquette. Jasper must have thought so, too, because he nudged Jack’s hand with his wet nose. Jack obliged by scratching Jasper behind the ears and thus forever etched himself a place in Jasper’s heart. He was easy like that.

“I’d have fifty if I had the space,” Jack said when he turned back around and pulled his seatbelt on. “But since I’m gone so much, it wouldn’t be fair to have one, even, you know?”

“Yeah, I get that.” I selected the address of my father’s old apartment building on my GPS, then flipped on my indicator to rejoin the flow of traffic. “But Jasper sleeps pretty much every minute he’s not eating or pooping, so I don’t worry about it too much. He’s getting to be an old fella.”

“I plan to have the exact same routine when I’m an old fella.”

“One can only hope.”

Jack laughed, and then we rode in silence for a few minutes. It wasn’t the uncomfortable variety of not speaking, which I took to be a good sign. I’d spent time with men with whom sitting in silence felt akin to having bamboo shoots shoved beneath my fingernails.

“Turn right in twenty-five feet,” my GPS told me.

“Thank you, Bertha,” I said.

“You named your GPS?” Jack asked.

“Sure. It felt too impersonal not to.” I patted the display screen. “Bertha and I are very close. She has saved my life on numerous occasions.” I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’m directionally challenged, you know.”

Jack laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you.”

“Turn left now,” Bertha’s computerized voice ordered.

“Bossy little bitch, isn’t she?” Jack said.

“Oh, it’s fine. I need someone who’ll stand up to me.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Keep that in mind for what?
I wondered.
Getting to know me better? Or is he considering having more than a friendship with me?
My insides warmed a little at the thought.

“So,” I said after I’d turned up Mercer to head toward Capitol Hill. “Who’s holding down the fort for you at the shelter?”

“Starr and Paul, my other two employees. They’re both social workers, fresh out of college, so they work cheap and they’re almost as gung ho about the place as I am.”

“Anxious to help, huh?”

“That’s what most people think. That we want to ‘help’ our clients.” There it was again, that slightly irritated tone. The same one he used on me in our first conversation. It was easier to stomach knowing he was more impassioned than annoyed, but still.

I flashed him a quizzical look before putting my eyes back on the road. “And you don’t want to help them?”

“Not exactly. How would you feel if someone came to you with this attitude of, ‘Here, let me
help
you.’ The inherent message being that there is something fundamentally
wrong
with you. That you’re somehow ‘less than’ because you live differently than they do. Most of my clients don’t want help. They want to be treated like members of the human race. They want camaraderie and friendship and connection. Like we all do.”

“Well,” I said, wanting to tread carefully around what was obviously an important subject to Jack, “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

“Most people don’t.”

“But—and I hope you don’t mind me saying this—aren’t a lot of your clients caught up with drugs? And crime?”

“Some of them, yes. And they’re just as much in need of connecting as anyone else. Maybe more so.” He sighed. “Is that a good way to live? No, of course not. Are they responsible for ending up in whatever situation they’re in? Sure. At some level, they already know that. They don’t need me to lecture them on it. And it’s certainly not up to me to try to make them change. How well do you react when someone tells you how you should be living your life?”

“Not very well
at all,
” I said. “I’ve been known to bite. Or kick the offender in the leg.”

He laughed and I was relieved to see a sparkle in his eyes. “Look,” he said in a much friendlier tone. “This is how I see it. I provide a humane environment so any client—no matter what their choices have been—can come in off the streets and feel worthy of love. If I provide them food and general information about what they can do to
help themselves,
then I’ve done my job. I personally can’t help them. The best I can do is create a space where they can build up their own self-esteem and hopefully as a result make healthier, more productive choices for their lives.”

“Is that the ‘hope’ in Hope House?” I asked, silently impressed with how eloquently he stated his beliefs.

“Exactly.”

After another left turn, Bertha informed us that we had arrived at our destination. I showed off my parallel parking skills, then glanced at the building we were about to enter. It was redbrick and only four stories high. Jack and I got out of the car. I left the windows cracked for Jasper, who was accustomed to waiting in the car while I ran my errands. And that’s what this was, according to Georgia. An errand I just happened to be running with Jack.