i almost killed the little one (diary of a retired escort)
The problem was that the toddlers were slow. Catastrophically, biologically slow.
Mark had simply scooped Annie onto his shoulders. I looked at Sarah and remembered what carrying a toddler that far did to my neck. I wasn’t doing that again. So I took her hand and followed behind, advancing at the speed of a migrating snail.
Kate, who was nine and perfectly capable of walking, wanted my other hand. She kept reaching for it as we went, hooking her fingers around mine, trying to pull me into whatever story she was telling, while Sarah required actual navigation.
“Come on, honey.” Three steps. “Keep walking.” Two more.
Kate took my free hand again. Now I had no hands. I had no hands all day. I couldn’t reach for my phone, couldn’t hit my vape, couldn’t properly adjust anything I was carrying without first negotiating the release of a child.
Mark looked back at us, then ahead toward the car. He would go get it.
He left me on the side of the highway with Kate, nine; Sarah, four; and Annie, three. The shoulder was narrow, and cars came past in hard bursts, followed by pockets of quiet and then another rush of engines and displaced air. We sat on the curb, and I watched the girls get restless. They began bickering over the stuffed animals they’d gotten at the zoo, leaning over each other to grab at them.
I pulled out my phone, opened YouTube, typed kids video, and clicked the first brightly colored piece of bullshit I could find. It worked instantly. Sarah and Annie crowded around the screen, their stuffed animals tucked against them. Even Kate drifted closer. Three sets of eyes fixed on the phone. For the moment, nobody moved.
I kept glancing up at the road. Ten minutes later, I saw Mark pulling in across the street.
“Okay, girls,” I said, exasperated. “That’s your daddy’s car. We’re going to stand up now, the babies are each going to take one of my hands, and then we’re going to wait for a space and cross together.”
“Okay, Joanna,” the group muttered.
Two seconds later, Annie darted into oncoming traffic, giggling.
I screamed and shot after her. “Come back here right now!”
She turned toward me, still moving toward the median. “No! I am going to run!”
When I reached for her, she shoved at me with both hands and changed direction. “You are not going to tell me what to do!”
I lunged again, grabbed her hard, clamped my hands around her little body and hauled her against me. She fought me—little fists, elbows, knees—but I locked one arm around her and ran.
A Hyundai Elantra shot through the space where she’d been standing moments before.
I watched it go, breathless and shaking. Then I remembered the other two.
Kate and Sarah stood across the two lanes exactly where we’d started. They hadn’t moved an inch. The road cleared, and I doubled back with Annie pinned against me.
“Honey, you have to listen to grown-ups when we’re near the street. The cars are going really fast, and they can kill you.”
Annie stared at me.
“We don’t run near roads. We listen to adults. We hold hands when we cross.” I pointed toward the traffic. “Do you see those cars? Do you see how fast they’re going?”
She nodded.
“They will kill you. You will die.”
Annie went silent. “I’m sorry, Joanna,” she said softly.
“Let’s sit here for a second.”
We made it to the median and sat while the cars whizzed past. Annie watched them.
“Fuck’s sake,” she said, straight out of her father’s mouth.
“Fuck’s sake,” Sarah agreed. “They go fast.” She watched another car tear past us. “You got to listen, or you’ll die.”
In the car, I closed my eyes and hoped everyone would stop talking.
They did not.
“Joanna.”
“Dad, I—”
From the very back, Kate was trying to involve me in the social lives of fourteen-year-old TikTok celebrities. “Joanna, do you know who—”
I kept my eyes shut while she tried again. “Joanna? Joanna.”
Nothing.
I let my head tip toward the window and pretended to be asleep. Eventually the toddlers gave up on me and redirected themselves toward Mark.
“Dad. Dad? Dad, look. Dad, I—”
Slowly, the noise thinned. One voice disappeared, then another. Kate stopped talking.
The car went quiet.
I stayed exactly where I was, eyes closed, head against the glass. Moving would give me away. I still couldn’t reach for my phone or my vape.
After a while, I cracked my eyes open. Downtown San Francisco had appeared around us: glass, steel, the familiar blocks near the Saint Regis, and then the hotel itself.
The Saint Regis is modern, which is why I like it: warm wood, clean lines, rooms where the blinds descend at the touch of a button and the city disappears behind them.
I remembered walking through the colorful lobby dressed like a sexy PA—heels, a fitted dress, hair shiny and voluminous. I was the best-looking woman in the room, which is a relatively easy feat in San Francisco for anyone who can afford a GLP-1.
I was meeting a new client. We sat in a corner booth, and I ordered a dirty martini with a fistful of olives. Later there were steak frites. He made me laugh.
He was impressed by my background knowledge on his vertical and by my corporate career. We talked about work, his company, and the meetings that had brought him into the city. Then his wife: the fighting, the separate bedroom he slept in, the chaos of his child-filled household. How unhappy he was there. How little he wanted to go back.
I understood him.
“Why do you stay?”
“I just don’t want to lose my access to the kids.”
I didn’t understand that.
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edit: tried to fix the line breaks per Cypher's comment