“Fine. We can agree that you acted like a tool twenty odd years ago. So how does your baby mama figure into all this? I’m guessing you palmed her off with one of your fake business cards, too?”
Neil winced. “Stop calling her that, would you? It makes it sound like having a baby was something I agreed to, something that I was happy about. When that couldn’t be further from the truth, trust me. But Nikki was a manipulative, lying little whore, and I just hope her – our - daughter hasn’t turned out to be a chip off the old block.”
“You don’t know?” asked Jackson incredulously. “You haven’t kept tabs on this daughter of yours, haven’t at least kept in occasional contact with her?”
Neil shook his head reluctantly. “No. I’ve never met the girl, not even when she was a baby. And there’s been zero contact between us all these years. I’m sure as far as she’s concerned I’m just another deadbeat father who abandoned his kid before she was born.”
Jackson gave a hoot of disgust. “Well, from what I can determine - not that I’ve even begun to hear all the facts yet - I’d guess that’s a pretty fucking accurate description. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Neil glanced down at his shoes, but the expression on his face gave away how ashamed he felt at Jackson’s summation. “Yeah,” he muttered. “That about sums it up, all right.”
“So, go on. Tell me more about your baby mama - sorry, about this Nikki person. More specifically, how you met her, how she came to have your child, and why you’ve never even hinted at their existence. And this had better be the truth, Neil. Every damned word,” threatened Jackson.
It was more than obvious that Neil was extremely reluctant to divulge any of the pertinent facts, but Jackson figured his brother-in-law also knew that if he didn’t fess up the entire story there would be zero cooperation on his part for whatever Neil was hoping to accomplish here.
Once Neil began his tale, however, his reluctance seemed to dissipate, and soon the words were pouring forth almost faster than Jackson could follow them.
“Nikki was a cocktail waitress, worked at one of the big high-rise casinos, though she’d moved around from place to place quite a bit. She wasn’t exactly what you’d call reliable, liked to party and drink and get high, so I’m guessing she’d show up late to work one too many times or, worse, arrive intoxicated,” remarked Neil in disgust. “But there was no denying that she was a looker - blonde hair, stacked like a brick shithouse, long legs, great ass, you get the picture. And believe me, she flaunted all of her assets, flirted like mad with every guy in the place, and raked in a ton of tips.”
Jackson arched a brow inquiringly. “I’ll assume that you were one of the many men she, uh, flaunted her assets at?”
“Yeah.” Neil gave a small shrug. “At twenty four I sure as hell had more hormones than brains because I fell for her come-on hook, line, and sinker. At least I had enough functioning brain cells to insist that we go back to her place instead of mine. Claimed that my boss was rooming with me this trip to save money. No way did I want her to remember my room number at the hotel so she’d have a way to track me.”
Jackson pursed his lips in mild disgust. “Like I said before, classy of you.”
Neil shuddered. “What wasn’t classy, not even a tiny bit, was the shithole she was living in. She was still living with her mother but the old broad was passed out drunk whenever Nikki would bring me back there. The place was filthy, dirty dishes and clothes and God knows what piled on every surface, so that you could barely walk through the place. It was so bad that I was almost tempted to bring her back to my hotel room and take the chance that she wouldn’t be able to track me down. Thank Christ I resisted the urge.”
“I’ll take it that you gave her one of your fake business cards?”
Neil nodded in response. “Yeah. To this day she probably still curses the name of Tom Banfield. Assuming she’s still among the living, that is. Nikki had a pretty bad drug problem, something that became more and more apparent the longer I knew her. Meth, heroin, coke, whatever she could get her hands on.”
“If she was such a train wreck,” mused Jackson, “and lived in a pigsty, why the hell did you keep seeing her after that first time? And exactly how long did your, er, relationship last anyway?”
Neil instantly looked shamefaced and more than a little uncomfortable. “The answer to the second question is about three months, maybe a little less, whenever I happened to be in Vegas during that time. As for the first question - well, did I mention that she was hot? The, uh, sex was pretty mind blowing, enough that I could stop worrying for a few minutes about when the last time she’d washed her sheets had been. But then the – relationship - if you could call it that started getting way too complicated. Nikki was becoming too demanding, calling me all the time - against my better judgement I’d given her my phone number - and wanting to know when I was going to see her again. She wanted to come and live with me in Denver - that’s, uh, where I told her I lived. So I broke things off with her, told her not to contact me again. Stupidly, I neglected to change my phone number or block hers. Come to think of it, I’m not sure the tech existed twenty odd years ago to block someone’s number.”
Jackson was quickly growing impatient at hearing these inconsequential details. “Never mind all that. What about the daughter?”
Neil scrubbed a hand wearily over his face. “Nikki didn’t take no for an answer easily, kept calling and leaving me these hysterical voice mails. When she first told me she was pregnant I thought she was lying, just trying to keep me hooked and in her life. I told her that if she was really pregnant that the best thing for everyone involved - especially the baby - would be to have an abortion. When she realized I wasn’t going to cave in and resume our relationship, she agreed to have the procedure done, so I wired her the money and figured that was the end of it.”
“But it wasn’t,” stated Jackson flatly.
“No.” Neil took another swig of his water. “I hadn’t heard anything from Nikki after that last phone call, had more or less put the whole ugly mess out of my head. By that time I had started working here at Gilmore, wasn’t traveling much at all, and, well, I’d met Laura by then. We had only been dating a few months but I was pretty sure I was going to ask her to marry me - assuming, that is, your father would allow it.”
Jackson snorted in derision. “I was still a kid back then, but even I remember what a whiny pain in the ass my sister was, how high strung and high maintenance, how she’d fly into a rage or start crying over the tiniest little thing. I’m guessing my father would have happily married her off to Attila the Hun to get her off his back. No offense.”
Neil gave a small smile. “None taken. And, yeah, I knew Laura would be a lot of work, that I’d have to do a lot of compromising and coddling. But in spite of all her emotional issues, I really did care for her, knew that I could make her happy. I guess her neediness brought out some sort of protective instincts, you know?”