Being Poor and a Pregnancy?!
Things were going along steadily. I was really fitting into a groove in Colorado now. I was becoming really close with my co-workers which had pretty much become my only social outlet. Alan, my supervisor was as big a Beatles fan as I was and our friendship grew from that. Eric and his wife Lucinda would invite us to parties. Jennifer and Bill would invite me over for dinner. There was a customer of ours named Dana that I sort of flirted with when she came in. And when she came by through the drive-through I’d send her lollipops through the tube. Not only was she pretty, but she also lived out on the East Coast for a while, so we had that connection.
Over the next couple of weeks Lori and I hung out a lot. Because I was trying not to spend any excess money I could, we did things on the cheap. One weekend we drove down to ‘South Park’. Another day we baked brownies. We took her 3 year old nephew kite flying at the park. I never truly felt ‘poor’ before. But now, I was trying to live on $10.00 a week for non-essential things. Everything else went to bills, gas, & food. In that order. Meanwhile, Chrissy decided to get a job working weekends at the Renaissance Faire that was open for about a month just south of Denver. She even found someone to carpool down there with. Was she, dare I say it, becoming responsible?
One Sunday, Lori and I had taken her Nephew out for a day of fun. At one point we went back to my apartment to hang out and I was setting up my Disco Ball to entertain him with a ‘Disco Dance Party’ when the phone rang. It was Zak.
“Hey there. Is Christine there?” he asked pretty distressed.
“Um, No. She’s working down at the RenFest. Like she does every Sunday.” I told him. He knew that.
“Oh…” Then he let out a huge sigh…
I took the bait, “Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Well, no. I had a business meeting downtown at the Hard Rock Café and now I’m stuck here because my ride fell through.”
I looked over at Lori and her nephew. If I was alone, I may have just ended the conversation with, “Yeah, well, she’s not here. Sorry about that.” Or at least I would like to think I would have, but in actuality, I was in a good mood and Zak was Lori’s friend as well. He didn’t ask me because he didn’t want to have to, and I let him off the hook by offering.
“I’ll pick you up, but I don’t know where the Hard Rock is.” He gave me the cross streets but that meant nothing to me. Lori said she knew where it was, so we strapped A.J., her nephew, into his car seat in the back of my Jeep and drove downtown.
We got to the 16th Street Mall where Hard Rock was and Lori jumped out of the vehicle to get Zak. I drove around the block to avoid having to find parking trying to entertain a three year old while driving. It took a little longer than expected. Lori found him quick enough and said ‘let’s go.’ But he couldn’t go. Apparently he owned his share for his business lunch or something, because Lori had to give him money to pay his bill. We drove him to his house and when they got there, Zak wrote her a check for the money. I cracked a joke about how she should call to verify funds before she deposited the money based on my experience with Chrissy and her rent checks…
Within a few weeks, there was something amiss with Chrissy. There were some telltale signs. I suspected she was pregnant. One clear hint was she stopped drinking coffee. I never drank coffee at home but she did, almost religiously. Then suddenly, one day, she left a half pot of coffee in the coffee maker and it stayed there for a week. I told Lori my suspicions. That evening, the girls from across the way invited us to a party they were throwing. While there, it came up in conversation and to test my theory, when Chrissy came home, we invited her over and offered her a beer. She declined. That party gave me the answer (and the idea to stick bottle caps into our ceiling).
The girls agreed with my theory. They had gotten to know Chrissy better a few months before, when they were hosting a Bachelorette Party and knocked on the door to invite Chrissy over. She had been borrowing my Jeep at that time, but I sa
id as soon as she got home, I’d send her over. When Chrissy did finally come over, I told her of the party, but she wasn’t interested. I forced her to go because, at the time, I was struggling to make friends myself and if someone extends a hand, you should make an effort and accept it unless you have a good reason not to.
After Lori and I left the party and Lori went home, I confronted Chrissy and flat out asked her. She said she wasn’t pregnant. I dropped the subject. I had other things to think about anyway… Like my first trip back to New York for a visit.