You know how I keep saying that one of these days I'm going to do something good for one of those poor kids I see out on the street all the time? Well man, I did something and I'm regretting it.
I was coming home after working third shift. I was tired, looked like shit, probably smelled like chemicals and grease. I saw this girl on the doorstep to my apartment building, bawling her little eyes out. She had short dyed-red hair, a bullring through her nose and a stud in her bottom lip. If it weren't for the fucking metal, I'd say she had a cute face. She must have been all of, I don't know, twenty-one at the most. I say to her, "Hon, are you all okay?"
"Does it look like I'm fucking okay," she said. I said to her that she didn't look okay, and that if she would like, I could help her out. "And just why should I trust you?" she said. Man, the girl is like a bad shot of whisky, bitter all the way down, you know?
"Well, you shouldn't," I said, "but if you want food, a shower and a place to crash, and someone to talk to, I'm right upstairs. Hey, I don't want shit; just trying to be a nice guy."
"Whatever," she said. Sure enough, just as I had reached my apartment door, I heard her walk into the building. She asked, "You aren't a druggie are you?" I was like, no. She nodded and followed me in.
I said to her "So, what's the big deal?" She said that she didn't want to talk about it. Like a fucking moth to a flame she went to my little girl's porcelain doll. I didn't freak out or nothing, I was cool. "Uh, What's your name, darling?" I say to her.
"Mercy," she said, rubbing her grubby fingers all over the damn doll. "Is this yours?" she asks.
Is it mine? It's in my goddamn apartment, right? So I say to her "It was my little girl's."
"Was?" she asks.
So I say - I say, "Yeah. My little girl died at the age of two." Then she gives me the 'you would have been a good father' number, like I haven't heard that a thousand times. I was okay though, I didn't freak out.
I was making bacon, eggs, you know, the usual. So I say "Your name isn't Mercy, is it? You don't look like a Mercy to me."
She turns and looks at me and says, "Nope, don't look like a Mercy - but that's what you'll know me as."
I'm making food and she's being all quiet and all. Finally, she bursts out with "Fine, I'll tell you what happened to me."