Bebe Moore Campbell by 72 Hour Hold

proved to be a good move for both of us. She really was ready for a change. I kept mentioning school, and after the first year she enrolled in college at night. She brought me her grades: all A’s and B’s, and when I praised her she seemed to float. And, except for the occasional tardiness, she was a hard worker, always trying to please me. Maybe too much. But now I wondered if a man with an evil profile was lurking in her life.
    In some ways Adriana was like a second daughter, one who had chosen me for a mother. Maybe it was because, after all her other potential employers had turned her down, she had come back to me with the truth. I worried about her. She always seemed so lonely. Adriana never mentioned hanging out with the girls. She seemed not to have a life apart from the store. From time to time she spoke of going out with a man, but it never went any further than two dates. It was on the second date that she always revealed her past.
    “Why do you have to tell them anything?” Frances asked when Adriana informed us of her policy. “It’s not like you’re going to marry them.”
    “Suppose we’re out somewhere and some john comes up to me?”
    “Just say, ‘You must have me confused with somebody else,’ ” Frances said.
    Adriana shook her head. “I don’t want to live a lie.”
    “That ain’t a lie; that’s your business,” Frances said.
    Frances and I kept rooting for the Third Date Man, but so far he hadn’t materialized.
    Adriana wasn’t the only redeemed soul working with me. Right before I hired her, Frances had lived in a shelter for battered women. She’d landed there after she fled from her first husband’s fists and finally his weapon. Her social worker was one of my customers. She’d told me about Frances’s situation and convinced me to hire her. I never thought about why the three of us came together, but people come into each other’s lives for a reason. If it’s not clear in the beginning, all you have to do is keep on living.
    I WAS STILL PRICING GARMENTS, MY HEAD BENT OVER A beaded silk purse, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I looked up, Frances was smiling at me. “Somebody’s here to see you,” she said.
    “Orlando?”
    I smiled to myself, feeling smug.
    She shook her head. “It’s your ex.”
    As in husband, not boyfriend. My heart pumped a little bit harder. I put my jacket back on and pressed my lips together quickly to maximize their color.
    When Clyde saw me, his eyes widened just enough to let me know he thought I was looking good. Which made me smile.
    “Sorry I didn’t call. I was in your area and, uh—I just—”
    “Is something wrong?” He rarely came by, and never without calling.
    “No, I just—have you had lunch?”
    The restaurant was in a strip mall off Wilshire in the heart of Koreatown. The owners, former guest workers in Japan, had learned the art of making sushi from the masters and brought their skills to the west. The place was located down the street from spa row, where new immigrants had opened luxury massage parlors that catered to an arriviste clientele as well as anyone looking for the cheapest body scrub in town. Koreatown had risen like the phoenix from the fires of 1992. That year rioters enraged by the verdicts that had exonerated the LA police, whose video-taped beating of Rodney King had been seen around the world, unleashed their fury on a group they viewed as exploiting them in their own neighborhoods. Although their gripe was with those Koreans who’d established mom-and-pop stores in black and Latino communities, charged high prices for goods, and never hired any of the people who lived in the area, rioters and looters traveled to Koreatown to exact their revenge. Businesses were destroyed, and so were dreams. But now the area seemed to be surging with an abundance of shops and malls, offering everything from clothes to electronics to karaoke-infused happy hours and barbecue à la Seoul. The Koreans had survived the