The Lowest Maintenance Sugar Baby novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: The Cheapest Dinner
My grandmother spent two days in my apartment, and in that time she reorganized my kitchen, my coupon folder and my opinion of my own thermostat.
On Saturday at six she wrote an invitation on the back of a grocery receipt.
"Dinner at Millie's. 7 p.m. Bring nothing. Eat everything. O. Pennock."
She gave it to her driver, who looked at it, looked at her, and delivered it to the Rainsford Grand in an envelope.
"He won't come," I said.
"He'll come."
"He walked out on me in front of a doorman."
"That was Thursday." Opal stirred a pot with a wooden spoon older than I was. "Today he's hungry and he's curious. Men like that can't resist an invitation they've been warned about."
At seven exactly, someone knocked.
Carlton stood in my doorway in jeans and a gray sweater, holding nothing.
He looked like he'd slept about as much as I had.
"I was told to bring nothing," he said.
"You followed instructions," Opal said. "Sit."
He sat at my card table, on the folding chair with the wobbly leg.
I sat across from him and didn't say anything.
He didn't either.
The tablecloth was a bedsheet.
Opal ladled soup into three chipped bowls.
It was lentil, with bits of carrot and something unidentifiable.
"What's in it?" Carlton asked.
"Four cans. All dented. The store gives them to me for free, but I paid for them anyway, forty cents each, because I don't take handouts from my own company."
He picked up his spoon.
"Is that a joke?"
"I don't joke about soup."
He tasted it.
I watched his face for a flinch, and there wasn't one.
"It's good," he said, surprised.
"It's cheap," said Opal. "That's why it's good. Eat."
He ate.
He finished the bowl and she gave him another, and he finished that too, with a heel of day-old bread.
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