Watching Cassidy

I'm working on a radio jingle for dental dams when I get the call. It's Donna, my deadbeat brother's third wife. She says my brother fell off the wagon again and crashed their Land Rover into a drive-thru.

There were kids hanging out in the parking lot when it happened. One of the kids has a father who works in the D.A.'s office and they want to lock my brother up for endangering the welfare of a child.

“He's gotta go to rehab today or the judge is gonna put him away. The lawyer says he's looking at three to five if he doesn't get help.”

“My condolences,” I say sarcastically.

She knows what she married. It wasn't for love, I can promise you that. My brother may be a drunk, but he's also a lucky son of a bitch. By the time Donna had come along, he had already inherited our grandmother's palatial estate and stashed away a small fortune from flipping houses.

“I'm taking off work to drive him up there,” she explains unconvincingly. The only job Donna has ever performed was the blowjob that put a ring on her finger. “It's gonna take me a while to get back and I'm gonna have to go straight to my shift when I get home.”

What shift? I think. And then I remember Benny telling me that she had to take a shift waiting tables at Honkers after the real estate bubble burst.

“My total and utter condolences,” I repeat.

“I was hoping you could watch the house while I'm gone.”

“Watch the house.”

“Watch your niece,” she clarifies. “Pick Cassidy up after school. She has band at two. You could pick her up after that.”

“I could,” I say.

“Will you?”

Much as it pains me to lift a finger for Donna's benefit, I think of my poor niece and the wretched shit-bag parents she's been stuck with for the last I-don't-know-how-many years. No kid deserves to be raised by a drunk idiot and a lazy, vapid materialist, least of all a kid as bright and sweet as my niece.

I pull up to Jerry Lee Lewis High at ten to three. Cassidy is already waiting for me.

She's wearing a blush pink sleeveless scoop-neck tank top with a button-down placket front and tiny black jean shorts with a pleated hem. She's sprouted up since the last time I saw her—she is tall and thin and her tan legs seem to stretch for a mile.

She sits there on the bench, her size nine-and-a-half feet covered in strappy tan flats, with big, black fabric bows on their tops. Her Roman toes are bare. No polish. Nothing but natural.

Her body says she's becoming a woman, but her freckled face and soft brown eyes suggest a certain unspoiled innocence. But when she looks up at me, her warm brown eyes glow and I see her maturity reflected in them—she is at the age where sex is a mental constant, occupying the mind twenty-four/seven.

She looks up from her school books and her almond-shaped orbs snap up, seeking me out from yards away, her warm brown irises peering alertly at me, with a certain clear intent behind them. It is a mischievous look that says she knows she is trouble.

I recognize the look from my own grade school years. It's the look a young woman gets when she's starting to become aware of her own attractiveness and the power that attractiveness has over others.

As I get closer to her on the sidewalk, the look falters and her confidence begins to slip, replaced by a certain frailty also native to young women. She is no longer sure of something. Nevertheless, she smiles as she gathers her books and rises from the bench. I stand over her and grin like a psycho.

“Hey,” I say, waving at her as if we're friendly schoolmates acknowledging each other from opposite ends of a crowded auditorium.

What the fuck is wrong with you? I think to myself. Don't say anything else, you stupid motherfucker.

I shove my hands in my pockets and rock back and forth on the soles of my sneakers.

“How ya doing...?” I trail off as one does when they're greeting some old acquaintance whose name escapes them.

“Cassidy,” she says with a giggle. “What's good, Uncle Dan?”

“I'm... chill. I'm chillin'.”

Good God, man. Get your shit together.

I wave broadly to the parking lot and Cassidy looks at me weirdly as she brushes past and heads up the sidewalk, her straight light-brown hair trailing loosely behind her. She walks with a bounce that showcases her tight little rounded ass.

“Is this a foot race,” I say as I gaze down at her feet and hope she doesn't notice.

“If it was, I'd be winning,” she beams.

“No argument there. I'm parked over—”

“I know where you're parked,” she says.

“You do?”

“I remember your car anywhere. Not too many Monte Carlos he