Free Goldilocks by Andrew Coburn

“But the cat don’t count,” he said.
    • • •
    “I’m here to work,” Henry Witlo said to Cole’s secretary with only half his usual smile. It was ten in the morning, and his face was puffy from a bad sleep, his stomach was not pulled in, and his hair was in need of a cut. The nap on the back of his neck fuzzed out at the sides like little feathers. “Did you hear me?” he said.
    “Yes, I heard you,” Marge said vaguely over her typewriter, a mug of coffee steaming beside her. Her penny eyes were on him in a way that did not entirely acknowledge him.
    He said, “Mr. Cole called the Y, left word I was to come here ‘stead of his house.”
    “Attorney Cole is busy. You’ll have to wait.”
    “No problem,” he said, stepping toward one of the chairs against the wall.
    “There’s coffee in the conference room,” she said. “You can wait there.”
    “This is fine right here, if you don’t mind.”
    She minded.
    “Christ,” he said, “I’m not going to bite you.”
    Twenty minutes later he was standing in Cole’s office with his hands driven into his back pockets and his elbows winged out. He cocked his head. “I guess your lady doesn’t want me around the house,” he said, and Cole looked up from the clutter of his desk.
    “There’re things you can do here.”
    “I don’t think your secretary likes me either. The problem is, Mr. Cole, people like me right off the bat or they don’t like me at all, ever. They add me up too fast, total comes to nothing. Or comes to something I’m not. In Nam I pissed off a lieutenant just by the way I chewed gum.”
    Cole’s expression softened. “You’re hard to figure out, Henry. Maybe that’s the problem.”
    “I got lots of problems, but I try to keep ’em to myself. Don’t like to bother people. Worst thing in the world is to be a pain in the ass, I know that. All I want, Mr. Cole, is to make something of myself. I don’t want to be a big shot, just want to amount to something. That’s why I’m going to hit the books again.” His smile suddenly was full-blown. “I might even become a lawyer like you. A guy at the Y thought I was one. What d’you think of that?”
    Cole absently shifted documents from one part of his desk to another. “All you’ll get working here is five bucks an hour. That’s not much, and it’s only part-time.”
    “I’ll manage. I’ve had it tough before. There were times I lived on Twinkies. The sugar kept me going.”
    “Then if you’re going to work out of this office, you should wear a real shirt. And you could use a haircut.”
    “I understand. I don’t want to shame you.” He pushed his hair back. “Truth is, Mr. Cole. I want you to be proud of me.”
    “You don’t need me to be proud of you. I’m not your father.”
    “Hey, Mr. Cole, I’m not looking for a father. A mother was enough.”
    • • •
    Despite the heat of the early June sun and the muggy air, Emma Goss was out among her flowers, weeding, thinning, and watering. Years ago around the flower beds her husband had laid a narrow stone path and nearby had anchored a birdbath. He had enjoyed puttering around on weekends, clad in the mended trousers of an old suit, a garden or lawn tool in his hand. Sometimes, when the sun slanted over the house at an obscure angle, she seemed to detect his footprints in the grass, a comforting illusion, for she was sure it meant he was still watching out for her, protecting her in a way no alarm system or passing police car could.
    Through a break in the privet hedge she glimpsed her neighbor Mrs. Whipple shaking Japanese beetles off a rosebush. Mrs. Whipple, who was wearing a sundress, freckles dusting her shoulders, was in her early forties and had an adolescent daughter. Mrs. Goss wanted to give her a neighborly greeting but lacked the nerve to speak first to someone she did not know well, even though the family, distantly cordial, had lived next door for four years and had sent a note of condolence