Eve sits behind the nursery on an air conditioning unit, smoking her Parliament 100s and thumbing through a magazine. The weather has been getting progressively colder and the day’s breeze is starting to tear the first golden-brown leaves from their branches and shake the withering rose buds from their bushes. Eve wishes she’d worn something warmer when she notices a mopey old man pacing across the street. She’d seen him before when she’d started her smoke break – green sweater, khaki trousers, portly and bald – grandfatherly looking, and not at all noticeable.
Yet here he was again, pacing and watching the nursery. He makes to cross the road, but balks and resumes his nervous back-and-forth. This old man makes Eve uneasy, his nervousness somehow rubbing off onto her. Only last week in Michigan there was something in the news… she puts out her cigarette and heads back around for the door.
“Excuse me, miss? I say, miss!” Spying her, the old man hurries across the street with labored steps and a nervous smile on his face. Eve pauses at the door as he approaches, tittering and breathless. “Hello miss, I’m sure you don’t remember me at all,” and he pauses hopefully a bit as he searches for some bit of recognition in her face. Finding none, he continues “I had donated some things here a few years ago. Toys, they were- I was wondering if I could come in and have a quick look around?”
“I really don’t think so, sir,” Eve tells him, torn between her duty and a common sense of courtesy. On the one hand, what could be the harm? But then on the other, beneath the baggy-saggy exterior and elderly charm might lurk a monster, a potential danger to the children in her charge. It really isn’t worth the risk, and Eve cannot see how the scenario would end well. Even if he really was after toys and even if they had been his toys at some point, the nursery couldn’t simply give them back, or even really sell any if he offered to buy them.
“Those toys used to be mine, actually.” He leans around her and stands on tip-toes as he peers in through the window. “I mean look, there’s my old Spirograph! And -oh!- my jump rope and Raggedy Andy and the- where’s my Etch-a-Sketch gone to?”
“The Etch-a-Sketch? We used to have one, but I think that was broken a while ago.”
“Oh. Oh yes, I see. And the jacks?”
“I’m afraid you need to go, sir. You really have no business here.” The old man’s doleful expression is starting to bum her out, and besides it really wasn’t proper for him to be here like this. Already children are coming to the window to see what’s been going on, while other caregiver Sara steps out with a militant air.
“Is there a problem here?” she asks Eve with a malicious glance toward the old man. They both try to explain the situation to Sara, Eve in even tones and the old man with a frantic urgency, but she shakes her head sharply. “No, no, I’m afraid that’s impossible and if you don’t leave these premises immediately I’m going to call the cops.”
Tearfully the old man tries to push past them, but is soundly rebuffed by a much larger Sara. “I never had any children, you know!” he shouts at them as he stands at the end of the walk. “I-” he begins but suddenly breaks off and limps his way down the street again as Sara begins dialing the police on her mobile. Eve can’t help but feel sorry for him, the loping old man against a backdrop of falling leaves. Suddenly she wishes she’d worn something warmer and, rubbing her arms for warmth, heads back inside.
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