It Wasn’t Free

“I’ve got work with Mathew tomorrow, but we’ll get busy right after,” Rita said, smiling in anticipation.

I knew what “busy” meant.

Her gig was as an interpreter for a small legal firm, specifically for Mathew.
Mathew liked early mornings and clients before sunrise in Lower Manhattan.
The kind of cases that didn’t need to be mentioned at home.

Mathew had an overt interest in Rita, who was decades younger.
She was, at best, a tentative, often unintelligible, interpreter.

Deep in the throes of addiction, I pretended to believe the story. I regret that now.

“So… are we busy today?”

That was the code for I’m buying coke.

Ours was a daily kind of “busy,” to the exclusion of almost everything else, even whatever we once called a relationship.

Every now and then, we’d talk about looking for work, and she insisted Mathew would always be there, which made sense since he owned the building.

I convinced myself she lived there rent-free, a single mom and all…

It wasn’t free.

She paid for it in trade.

I’m not certain knowing would’ve made a difference.

Ten years went like that.
Blurred.
Wasted.
Hard to believe now.

It was a time when internet cafés and Video Professor were still a thing. Rita enrolled in free computer classes. At my suggestion, she recorded the lectures for me to transcribe.

One day she came in, animated, telling me about a job training program working with people with disabilities.

We’d been living together for almost ten years and, by then, I needed something to change.

Within days, I was sitting in a classroom.

That’s when Regina walked in.