A Place To Crash.
Eyeball took Chris to the house of one of his ex girlfriends. One of the nicer ones he assured Chris, not like that Jane Lawson who when Eyeball had broken up with her had scratched her initials into the Chambers car along with the immortal words 'Eyeball loves Ace'. Eyeball had just about died when he'd seen it, knowing that if Ace happened upon it he would literally kick him into the next week. Chris had spent a 'happy' morning helping Eyeball sandpaper the words from the car and though the results were not pretty and they had both suffered hugely at the hands of Mr Chambers, the words had faded enough so that if you didn't know about them you would never find them. Of course Chris had told a few people but that's another story.
"Here we go man," Eyeball said, stopping in front of a house even smaller than his own. Eyeball thumped on the door with his fist. "Jillian!" he yelled.
Presently the door swung open and a tired looking girl of about nineteen stood behind it. The first thing Chris noticed was that she was a lot prettier than most of Eyeball's girlfriends (Eyeball wasn't exactly the best looking guy in the world or the smartest or the nicest or…) and the second thing was that she looked exhausted.
"Hey Richie," she said glumly. "Come to see your kid?"
Now it took Chris a good thirty seconds for that particular sentence to be processed, then he looked in shock at his brother. Eyeball didn't look so shocked just sheepish and guilty. Did she say Eyeball's kid? What was with today?
"Your kid?" Chris croaked after what seemed like a year of silence had passed.
"Yeah, his kid, his daughter to be exact." Jillian crossed her arms.
"Yes well be that as it may" Eyeball said smoothly, "I have a huge favour to ask of you darlin'. This is my kid brother Chris and as you can see he's not in the best shape. Can he crash here tonight?"
"If it's not too much trouble," Chris added hastily, his mind still buzzing with the thought of his brother being a father.
Jillian looked from one Chambers to the other, her lips pursued. "I guess so," she said finally. "But you've gotta stop in and see your kid."
Eyeball looked kind of annoyed now. "You know that it may not be my kid Jillian," he said angrily. "It's only a possibility."
Jillian looked at Eyeball as if he were poison. "That kid is yours!" she snapped. "How dare you even suggest that she's not! Shit, I thought you had finally grown up but it don't look like it."
Eyeball frowned. "Nothin's definite" he said sullenly and he had lost some of his earlier charm, he had gone back to being Eyeball. Uh-oh, Chris had the feeling that Eyeball was going to make this girl take back her offer.
"Maybe we should just leave," Chris suggested weakly.
Jillian looked at Chris more closely. "Holy crap" she exclaimed. "You look like you had a run in with a truck. Come on inside." She paused, then "not you Richie, you can fuck off."
Chris glanced warily at his brother but Eyeball just smiled and laughed.
"Bye Christopher." A pause. "Bye Jillian darlin'."
Eyeball turned and sauntered off down the walk, his duty finished.
Chris followed Jillian inside. He felt nervous and out of place. The house was very small and crowded. From where he was standing there seemed to be about three rooms, the main room, a tiny bedroom and a bathroom. In the corner was a cot but the baby was silent. Jillian took an armful of clothes and stuff off the sofa and gestured for Chris to sit down.
"I'm Jillian Mackenzie," she said sitting next to him. She was short with long black hair in a braid down her back.
"Chris Chambers" he said in a voice barely louder than a whisper. "Does anyone else live here?"
"You're in luck, usually my mom would be here but she's away this week" Jillian smiled in a sad wintry way. "Then there's me and little Aimee." She pointed at the cot in the corner.
Chris stood up and moved towards the cot. "May I?" he asked.
Jillian nodded and also stood up. "Sure, I'll go get you something to drink, the stuff's in the bedroom"
Jillian left the room and Chris moved over to peer down into the cot. Little Aimee was asleep but she woke up when he arrived. Chris panicked thinking she was going to scream but she just stared up at him curiously. Chris tried to see whether the kid had any Chambers qualities. It was hard to tell.
"I hope you're not a Chambers, kid." he whispered, "it's a curse; we're sinking before we even hit water."
Chris smiled sadly down at the baby and reached down a hand. Aimee grabbed onto his index finger and clung on.
"You're nothing like your brother are you?"
Chris whirled around, Jillian was standing in the doorway holding two bottles of coke, and she was wearing a strange expression.
"No m'am" Chris replied. He didn't know why but 'm'am' seemed the right way to address Jillian.
"That's a good thing," Jillian said. "Believe me, that's a very good thing."
She walked over and handed Chris a bottle of coke. "She's definitely Richie's kid," Jillian whispered and her eyes were full of tears.
Chris nodded. "I know." He found that his eyes were welling up too and this had nothing to do with the pain in his ribs.
