Diaper Dan

The towel was in the shape of a swan. White terry neck arcing down to a winged terry body on a pool of blue bedspread. Otherwise, the room was ordinary, like out of a Motel 6 playbook, but on the 11th floor. Brown carpet, cheap overhead light fixture with fan, minibarless mini fridge. Bedside reading lamps, drapes in some large sad print that wouldn’t fade or show stain, you know. But the swan towel, twisted and folded and shaped just so, that was a nice touch.

Lydia was in…where was she? Some godforsaken place like Phoenix but not. No, she was in Denver, higher and colder, but with that peculiar barren feeling just the same. Like you could still feel pioneers hugging their babies close when you looked out from a
high story window and saw brown earth spilling away at the edge of the city, just rolling out to Nowheresville.

Babies, that’s why she was here. Helping her brother, Dan, sell diaper bags at the Child Expo held in a giant convention center in downtown Denver. She didn’t do this as a full-time job. No way. Her job was getting her Law degree at Yale and then after some kind of killer job. This was downtime, cuz he’d asked. This was Memorial Day weekend with her older brother, Diaper Dan, at the Child Expo in Denver dodging rotund Hasidic men strolling the endless aisles with demo breast pumps strapped to their chests. This was standing transfixed as agile, toned women in leggings endlessly collapsed and reconfigured Bugaboos so you could practically live your fertile years in 2 minutes
bassinet, pack for car, baby facing you, baby sleeping, pack for plane, baby facing the world, baby-now-toddler rolling on attachable stroller runner while new infant lies in bassinet. Repeat. Inevitably, there were also a lot of booths of bad ideas presented with
hopeful faces, but she didn’t spend long at those.

Mostly she helped her brother man his Diaper Dad booth, demo-ed his diaper bags with names like Game On, Sam, and Daddoo in camo, navy, and black with a flash of bright orange, showed potential buyers the masculine merits and superior practicality of his design. Pockets for wipes and holders for bottles and a place to stash your iphone, a book, a clip for keys, a zip for medicine, a secret pocket for…your weed? It struck her that everything was pitched like with this bag you could survive the apocalypse, that fatherhood favored the prepared soldier or, at the very least, you could kidnap your baby from your bitch of a wife and take to the deep woods for a week. With this bag.

Anyway, people liked it and Diaper Dan. He greeted old buyers and fellow Expo sellers with high-fives and hugs. Still, like an asshole, she cringed for him.

“Lydia? Lydia?” her phone chirped. She’d made that Dan’s personal ringtone, him asking for her, this morning at the booth over stale Starbucks coffee.

“I’m afraid if I don’t do this, I just wont answer your calls,” she said, holding the microphone up to his face.

“Thanks,” he said, “I’m so glad you’re here.” He pushed her phone away.

“Pleeease.” She was good at begging. She was his little sister after all.

“Okay,” he said finally. He took her phone and put his finger on the red button. He still had the musician handsome face and the floppy hair, even if the career was no more. “Lydia?” he said, “Lydia?”

Lydia picked up her phone.

“Dan?”

“Lydia?”

“Yeah, it’s my phone, Diaper man.” The sarcasm was reflexive, came from that middle place, like a hiccup. Like Dad. Who was her single ass to begrudge him making a successful business out of being Mr. Mom? His wife pulled in a high six figures at an Internet company that did something cool with people and taxes. Really, he could just be home fucking the nanny and strumming his guitar.

“Convention getting to you already?”

“Sorry, no.” She leaned over and patted the swan’s head. “I’ve got towel art in my room,” she told him.

“Towel art?’

She caressed the elegant, tumble-dried beak that dipped toward the Aegean blue bedcover.

“Can you be down in 45? We have a dinner with a Target guy and the Dwell people.”

She nodded. Remembered she was on a phone.

“Yes, Dan. I’ll be down.”

Once she hung up, she peeled off her friendly patterned blouse, the camisole beneath, her dark wash jeans. She took out her yellow hair tie, put it on her wrist. Stood naked. She took the swan now in her arms, began to untwist its neck. It felt like killing the thing. But a girl had to shower. She smiled at the joke of it, death by unwringing. Still she brought the terry beak to her lips before giving the neck a final turn.

Certainly, a new kind of pioneer had made the bird – someone from Mexico or El Salvador, or god knows where, someone who had fled to here, this bleak mile-high city, for a better life. She wondered why so little touched her but now this. She stared down at the crumpled form she held against her bare breasts. Damn. But then she unfurled what remained, until it was just a rectangle of white. And she lay it on the field of blue.