“Where was the accident?” he repeated. Marie could see fear creeping through his eyes. “What kind of question is that?” he asked.
The fact that his answer was another question bolstered her. “I want to know what you know about the accident,” she said. Her armpits were wet, her heart rate higher than it should be for simply laying in bed.
“You were in a car,” the golden man said. He tilted his head and his neck bones cracked. “What more is there to say?”
“I remember being in the car,” she said. She wondered if her intonation would make his believe she was confused. “I remember…was it raining?” she asked.
The golden man pulled back from her just a hair. He narrowed his eyes. “It was raining,” he said.
If she was going to outwit him, she needed to think faster. “Sprinkling,” she said. “Not very much.
He didn’t reply. She tried not to smile.
“But what happened?” she asked, continuing the pretense. “Were we hit?”
“An accident does involve two objects colliding, usually,” he said. He sounded almost bored. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Your car veered off the road.”
“Those are two different things,” she said. She sucked in her cheeks to keep the smile from spreading across her face. He hadn’t seen the accident. There was no deal. He was only here to take advantage of it.
“You veered off the roadway,” he said. His words oozed from him.
It was true, but she suspected it was a guess. “And what did we collide with?” She summoned her most earnest expression, and willed tears into her eyes. “I remember being so afraid we would crash. We couldn’t see anything. There was so much water.”
He hesitated. “There was,” he agreed.
She had him trapped. She knew it, and he knew it. She did smile then, leaning forward, stretching all the bones in her neck to put her face closer to his. “You weren’t there,” she said. “You didn’t come because I called you.”
He backed away from her, towards the window. “Give me the name of the baby,” he said, almost pleading. “I’ll make a real deal with you this time. Whatever you want.” She shook her head. “You want Ned to walk again? It’s done. You want your child to be well enough to sleep in your arms tonight? I can make it happen. Just give me her name.”
Marie could taste the hope. She shut her eyes against the impossible promise. Nothing he offered came without a price.
“I want you to go,” she said.
The door opened. Marie glanced away, watching as Margaret and another nurse came into the room. She glanced at the clock. 6:45. It was shift change. “Hi, Marie!” Margaret said. Cheery again. This time it was genuine. It didn’t mask any dread. “This is Vanessa. She’s gonna be taking over for you. I’ll be back in the morning.”
Marie let them attend to her. Vanessa took vitals, charted, changed her pad. The two nurses whispered softly at the computer for a moment. Marie looked towards the window, but the golden man was gone.
Vanessa came close to the bed. “Marie, I don’t want to get your hopes up too soon, but your baby is doing very well right now. If she does well overnight, I think we can bring her to you tomorrow, to room in.”
She thought about the promises the golden man had offered. “Oh, that would be great,” she said. “And… is there any news about Ned?”
Margaret and Vanessa looked at one another briefly. “Ned is awake now, but he’s in a lot of pain still.” Margaret said.
“Can I see him?” she asked. For the first time, the reality of where she was, and what had happened to her family settled over her. Tears leaked from her eyes. Vanessa offered her a tissue.
“Let’s see if you can get you out of bed tomorrow, and then we’ll see about taking you and the baby upstairs,” she said.
She thought back to the wish, to go back to the hospital, and get it over with. Even knowing the accident wasn’t her fault, she still felt the guilt of wishing time away slide through her guts. Time she could have spent with Ned. Time she could have prepared. She wiped her eyes with the tissue. “Ok,” she agreed.
The nurses left her, and she closed her eyes. As she lay in the stillness of the descending night, she made another wish. I want all of us to go home. She opened her eyes, half expecting to see the golden man standing at the foot of her bed again. She smiled to herself. She outwitted him once. She could do it again.
Marie stared at the golden man, unblinking, her brain unable to comprehend what he meant. She hadn’t made any deal with him. This was the first time she’d ever seen him. For a moment, she felt unanchored to the world. She wondered if she’d been given too much pain medication. Her head seemed open to the sky, as if her thoughts were floating away.
“I wished that we could go back to the hospital,” she said. Her head felt more solid as she said the words.
“And I delivered for you,” the man said.
“But…I didn’t mean…” she began.
“Oh, I’m afraid you didn’t specify,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes, feeling anger burn her face. “Who are you?” she asked.
“I’ve had many names,” he said, his voice like velvet. His softness smoothed away the anger. He was magical, she decided. A magician. A wizard. He was like one of those characters from a fairy tale: impossibly sure of himself, full of mystery and powers that no regular person could comprehend.
“Oh, that’s it,” she said. “You must be one of the fae.”
A smug little grin spread over his mouth, but he tucked it away for later rather than let it grow. He tapped a finger to his lips, indicating to her that it was a secret. “And now that I’ve done something for you, you will do something for me.”
“But you haven’t done anything for me,” she said.
“Did I not?” he asked. He stood, paced to the window. He laced his hands together behind his back. “It’s such a shame when you mortals are ungrateful.”
“Ungrateful?” she asked. She tried to sit up, but everything still hurt. She grunted against the pain and the tubes. “What you do you mean, ungrateful? Should I be grateful for this?” Her voice was sharp with ire.
“And what do you think would have happened that night without my intervention?” the man asked, snapping his head in her direction. “Do you think you’d be alive at all? Do you think your daughter would have been saved? And what of dear Ned?” The golden man came towards her, slow step by slower step, creeping forward, almost eerily. He lowered his face to hers. He no longer seemed beautiful. “I think you know that all of you would be in the morgue had I not come at your call.”
The scene in the car returned to her. The pounding rain. The sticky icing of the donut. The fear. Her knuckles white as they gripped the door handle. Ned’s irritation. The sharp, sudden kick of the baby. That other car which showered them as it drove through standing water on the highway.
But she didn’t remember the crash. No ambulance ride. No surgery. She was in the car. Then there was nothing. Then she was here, in this bed.
Had she died?
Marie couldn’t argue with him at the moment. “What do you want from me?” she asked.
“Not anything so great that you can’t give it,” he said. “Just a name.”
“A name?” she asked.
He wore a wide smile now. “Just a name,” he said. “The baby’s name.”
“No,” she said fiercely. She shook her head, hoping to clear the fog that had descended on her. “No, you can’t have her name.” In every fairy tale she knew, names were power. You never gave away your name.
The smile melted from his face. In its place, he wore a sneer so filled with malice that she drew back from him, pressing herself as far into the bed as she could. She gripped the sheet in her fists, and drew it up. It couldn’t hide her from him.
“I could snap my fingers and send you back to the scene of the accident,” he growled.
His naked anger painted stars across her vision, but she held her gaze steady. “Tell me,” she said, taking care not to betray her nerves or her suspicions, “where was the accident?”
If you like this blog, make sure to check out my newest book, Falling Down the Well, funding now on Kickstarter.
Marie opened her eyes. The soft light of morning peeked into the bedroom. Dawn seemed gray, and that made sense. It rained last night. She turned back the covers, rubbed a hand over her belly and gasped.
The swell of the baby was gone.
She bolted upright, looking around the room, realizing where she was. Back at the hospital, like she had wished. Panic shot through her as she looked at herself. Her arms were a mess of tubes and tape. As she became more aware, she noticed that her head was wrapped in bandages. One of her legs was in a cast. The other leg had a wrapping around it, which squeezed every few seconds. Under the gown, she could feel the bulk of a pad between her legs. A catheter tube was taped to her thigh.
Then the pain hit her. Everything hurt, especially her abdomen. She raised the gown, looking at herself. A scar ran across her pelvis. Now the missing baby made sense. But where was she? Was she okay? Tears leaked from her eyes, as she lowered herself down onto the bed.
Something was beeping, a frantic, grating noise that had her heart racing. She was lucid enough to understand that the beeping was likely because her heart was racing. She tried to glance at the monitor, but could not turn her head far enough to see the screen. Her neck was stiff like the rest of her.
The door of her room opened, and a nurse came in. The scrubs she wore fit snugly around her hips and her breasts. She tried to look as if she was not hurrying to the bedside, but her tight, frizzy curls betrayed her. They bounced with a life and force of their own.
“Hi, Marie, I’m Margaret. I’m your nurse today,” she said. She was cheery, but underneath, Marie could hear the concern. She pushed a button on one of the several machines in the room. Marie watched her, barely registering her movements, as she typed something into the computer. A moment later, she pulled gloves onto her hands. “I’m just going to check you over,” Margaret said. The nurse raised the sheet. “Have to check your pad, honey,” she said.
Marie obediently spread her legs. Margaret worked in silence. She was pressed, wiped, changed, feeling nothing at the invasion of her most personal places. There was only one thing Marie was thinking about. Margaret lowered the blanket. “How’s your pain?” the nurse asked.
“Hurts everywhere,” Marie said.
Margaret went still. “It was a very bad accident, I think,” she said. The way she said bad tightened Marie’s chest.
“Where’s my baby?” Marie asked, the question finally bubbling to the surface.
Margaret put her hand on Marie’s arm, gave her a gentle squeeze. “She’s in the NICU.”
Marie wondered what it meant that Margaret didn’t offer any other details. She swallowed a lump the size of an apple. Her stomach ached, in the same way it did after a night of heavy drinking. She felt ill and dizzy. If her nurse noticed, she didn’t comment. Mouth suddenly dry, she asked, “And…what about my husband?”
“He is in the ICU,” Margaret said. Her words crawled out of her, individually, as if they weren’t forming a whole sentence.
“Is he awake?” Marie asked.
Margaret’s mood darkened visibly. She shook her curls away from her face. “Last I heard, no,” she said. There was a finality in her tone that was hopeless.
Marie leaned back on the bed, the sickness overcoming her now. “I don’t feel right…I’m gonna be sick,” she said.
Margaret produced an emesis bag seemingly out of thing air. As Marie wretched, the nurse held back her hair. When she was finished vomiting, Margaret wiped her face. She checked vitals. She asked if she could bring another pillow, a sip of water, if she wanted the T.V. on, if there was anyone that the hospital could call for her. Marie shook her head at all these things, unable to think.
“Can I see my baby?” she asked. Her timidity nearly broke her own heart.
“We can’t get you out of bed for another twelve hours,” Margaret said. “But, as soon as we can get you up, we can get you in a wheelchair, and we’ll take you to see her.”
Marie wondered what kind of world she had stepped into. These were her daughter’s first hours of life, and she was laying here in this bed, while her husband laid in a bed on another floor of the hospital. It didn’t seem possible. I wished to get it over with. She nearly said it aloud, but the fear of what it meant glued the words to her tongue.
Margaret eventually left. Marie broke into sobs that were barely controlled. Somehow, she still managed to fall asleep for a few hours.
When she woke, there was a man she didn’t recognize sitting at the foot of her bed. She should have been wary, and yet… The man was slender, almost golden in the pale evening light that shone through the window. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old either. There was something familiar and soft about him, though he was certainly a stranger. He ensorcelled her the longer she looked at him. A slow smile spread across his features as he watched her studying him.
“I believe,” he finally said, “that now you owe me something for our deal?”
If you like this blog, check out my newest book, Falling Down the Well, funding now on Kickstarter.
As Marie climbed back into the SUV, her huge belly feeling heavier than when she had gone into the hospital, the tears of frustration and fatigue she had been holding back began to steadily leak down her cheeks. Her husband, Ned, took the driver’s seat without the usual pep in his step. He had tossed the duffle into the back seat before getting behind the wheel. It would probably stay there until they came back here. Tomorrow? The day after? Marie was too tired to think about how many more days she would have to wait.
“I just…thought she was coming!” Marie said. The words burst from her the same way popcorn explodes with a bang. She wiped her face dry and sighed heavily.
“Hey,” Ned said, reaching for her hand after closing the door of the truck. “She’ll come, baby. You don’t have much longer to wait.”
“I feel stupid,” she said. “I could have just drank more water today, and then we wouldn’t have had to make a trip.”
She wasn’t in labor. She was dehydrated. It caused those pesky Braxton-Hicks contractions. They hurt, but they weren’t the real thing. It was like her body was practicing, the midwife said. It hadn’t felt like practice a few hours earlier. But after a hour of monitoring, a urine sample, and some juice, she wasn’t feeling anything except round. They sent her home. It wasn’t time.
“Don’t feel stupid,” Ned said as he turned over the engine. The truck roared to life just as rain started to pelt the windshield. It was a hard, sudden rain. The fat drops were loud on the roof of the truck. “How about I get you a treat on the way home?”
Krispy Kreme was always open. “Maybe the hot light will be on,” she said with a slight smile.
They puttered along the streets, the rain now falling in sheets so thick it was difficult to drive. Even with the wipers on high, Marie could barely see through the water that ran down the glass. Ned kept the window rolled up in the drive-thru until it was his turn to order. He was soaked after just 30 seconds of talking to the kid on the other end of the mic. He rolled up the window. “This rain is wild!” he said, wiping down the door of the car with a cloth he kept tucked into the compartment between the two captain chairs.
Marie stared out the window. They baby was moving inside her again, and she needed to pee. She wondered where the rain had come from so suddenly. She had looked at the forecast earlier in the day, but it hadn’t mentioned any precipitation. “Just another joke being played on us, I guess.”
“What joke?” Ned asked. He was smiling at her even though she wasn’t smiling at him.
She wasn’t mad at Ned, but she couldn’t shake her foul mood. “I wish we could have stayed at the hospital. I wish we could just go back there right now and get it over with.”
She said it angrily, and the words felt wrong in her mouth. Her stomach lurched towards her feet. She wanted to take it back immediately, to snatch it back from being said. She put her hands to her stomach protectively, as if her words would somehow harm the baby if she didn’t. Her lip quivered as dread rolled through her belly. She had the thought that it was a terrible thing to wish for, but she didn’t understand why.
“Marie,” Ned said gently. He inched the truck forward, glancing at her as he did. He put his hand on her thigh. “Let’s just get you that donut, and then you can go to bed. Okay, babe?” He squeezed her.
She nodded, but the dread was still spreading through her. She covered his hand with hers.
At the window, a teenager who looked too young to be working popped a bubble in his chewing gum and said, “$4.24.” Ned fished his wallet from his pocket, handed the kid his card, and then waited for him to swipe and hand it back. The rain was still coming down hard and fast. The kid at the window handed him a bag with Marie’s two chocolate-iced glazed donuts in it. Ned didn’t like sweets, so he never ordered anything when they came through. “Have a good night,” the teenager said, shutting the window before Ned could reply.
“That should hit the spot, don’t you think?” Ned said, handing her the bag. The awning hadn’t done much to keep the rain off the bag.
Marie made a pleased sound in her throat as she took the bag from him, and pulled one of the donuts out. She bit into it, continued to make that low, soft moan of delight. “Yeah, I do think you’re right,” she said as she chewed.
She finished off the first donut before Ned pulled out of the parking lot. The main road leading to their neighborhood was either 3 exits up the expressway, or eight minutes of taking low roads that went mostly through neighborhoods. Ned always opted for the highway, even though it felt silly to be on it for such a short distance. She didn’t tell Ned how to drive though. It never went over well. It was the one thing he could get snippy about. She took her first bite of the second donut as he accelerated up the ramp. He turned on the wipers to their fastest setting.
“Jesus, Ned, you can’t even see!” Marie said, stifling the rising panic.
“It’ll be fine,” he said dismissively, though she could tell from his body language that he was likely second guessing his choice. Ahead of them, a long line of red taillights and flashers stretched into the night. She put the donut down and gripped the inside handle of the door for comfort. As Ned merged onto the highway, she audibly let go a nervous breath. “Marie, it’s fine!” Ned said.
“Okay,” she hissed, tightening her grip on the handle.
He drove. He wasn’t fast, but even so, Marie was internally screaming for him to slow down. She could barely see the exit signs as she counted. They passed the first exit, then the second. She started to breath easier. Just another mile or so and then back to low roads. They were almost home. She closed her eyes for just a moment, and her mind snapped back to the moment when she had wished to go back to the hospital. The sinking feeling returned. “Ned…” she began.
She never finished the sentence. The baby kicked her bladder and she gasped. The noise came at the same moment that another driver sped past them, spraying water across the already drenched windshield. Ned cursed, and slowed the car as the excess water ran down before their eyes, the sound of it drowning out everything else in the car. It took forever for the water to stop spraying. Then there were break lights in front of them, too close, and Ned slammed the breaks of the car. Marie screamed as Ned began to hydroplane. He jerked the wheel, veered the car off onto the shoulder. Or so she thought. She couldn’t see anything. She heard the crunch of metal though, just before she screamed again. She squeezed her eyes shut, dropped the rest of the donut, and wrapped her arms around her belly.
If you like this blog, check out my newest book, Falling Down the Well, funding now on Kickstarter.
There I was, in a wilderness of someone else’s making, wondering how I had gotten there and if I’d ever find my way out. Unlike Moses, I hadn’t committed a crime; and also unlike Moses I wasn’t in the wilderness with a purpose, like herding sheep. Nope. I was just wandering, looking for a sign.
When I said Jessica never spoke to me again, I really meant she never spoke to me again. I texted her and she left me on read. I tried to get mutual friends to speak to her on my behalf and they wouldn’t. I even reached out to Chris, but he ducked my messages too. I called her mother. No dice. Everyone said, just give it time. She’ll come around. But she didn’t. She cut me out of her life because I had offended her brother, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why it mattered so much.
Was it the drawings themselves? Was something about him drawing me like that upsetting to her? Why would Chris’ drawings of me as a hot car girl make her throw away our whole friendship? At some point it didn’t make any sense to keep asking the questions. I just had to try to move on, without the one person who I had shared my whole life with, who knew everything about me, and who I thought would be there to the end of the line.
It really sucks to find out your ride-or-die isn’t going to do either for you.
So, yeah. Wilderness. Wandering. Wondering without answers. Looking for signs. And then, one day, I saw it- the burning bush.
Again, it wasn’t a literal burning bush. And I wouldn’t even say that it was a place where God was waiting for me. Maybe God was there somewhere, but the feeling I got from what I saw wasn’t one of holy ground. I had a profound sense of peace though, a moment of clarity that was so raw I couldn’t keep being aimless, listless, friendless. I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to move forward, without answers, because the only answer I needed about anything was right there in the headline I saw as I scrolled on the internet.
Alleged Identity Thief Finds Herself the Victim of Her Own Crime
Under the headline was a picture of Jessica. The article laid out that for years she had been part of a scheme to steal and sell personal information, most often by hacking into online order databases from high traffic websites. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The woman they described didn’t sound like Jessica at all. They even called her by a different name- Meredith Smalls.
Had she never really been who she said she was?
I thought back to when I’d first met her, fresh out of college, looking for work. We used to frequent the same coffee shop back then, and we became friends after several weeks of both of us using the wifi to search for jobs. Jessica (Meredith?) had never landed anything permanent. She was always moving from place to place. How had I missed that she was a completely different person than the one that I had known, that she was living this secret other life that I had no insight into at all.
I still don’t know why Chris drawing pictures of me ended the relationship, but after seeing the article, it didn’t matter. I knew the truth, looking at the sign, the miracle in the wilderness without any kind of closure: she lied to me about who she was. That was all I needed to know.
I closed the article and texted my mom. You’ll never believe this. I sent her a link to what I had just read.
It was only a couple of minutes before I got a reply. Well, now you know.
I did know. It wasn’t the answer I was looking for, but maybe that was okay. After all, do you think Moses went up that mountain to see a bush caught on fire but not burning up, and to hear God telling him to go back to Egypt? No. I think sometimes you’re going about your life and then something smacks you on the head, and the pieces you tried to fit together all the sudden seem a lot more like a picture.
Let me get back to that burning bush- the one that’s way up in the mountain, after you’ve run away from your troubles. Somewhere you think you might be safe from having to confront what’s eating you. You find a burning bush when you have nowhere else to go, and when you have nothing better to do. At least, that’s how I always imagined Moses, when I used to go to Sunday School. He was running away from Egypt, wasn’t he? Maybe also from his father-in-law. Point is, he was in the wilderness, just him and his sheep, and then bam! He sees that crazy miracle.
I can’t really think about Jessica without thinking about the burning bush story. It’s not because I was running away, necessarily, but because everything that I had known previously had been upended by what should have been a big ol’ nothing burger. Okay, bad analogy to Moses, maybe. I mean, he did kill somebody. But for me, it was just an honest statement, taken a bit too personally, then taken out of context, to the point where it became a raging fire that burned down everything.
Jessica has a brother named Chris. Artist type. He draws cars and girls, mostly. He’s always trying to make zines. He’d be good at it if he could tell a story better. He just needs some refinement. Or he needs to illustrate somebody else’s ideas. Either way, I liked Chris well enough. A bit shy, a bit immature. But I wasn’t interested in him at all. Not like that. He was chasing after somebody else anyway, although, from what Jessica told me, she wasn’t too interested in getting caught. None of this part actually matters to what happened between me and Jessica, except for the fact that Chris is overly sensitive about everything- his art, his dating habits, his hair, his sister, his reputation. No criticism is taken well, even if you mean for it to be helpful. I knew this about Chris, and I should have just kept my mouth shut.
Jessica and I were at her place one afternoon, putting away her groceries and getting ready to order take out (because what else do you do after you get a load of groceries, right?) when Chris popped by. He had some new pages he wanted to show us of the zine he was endlessly drawing. Jessica and I flipped through the pages. The art was fine. Mostly. Some was mediocre. Some was really good, but only the pieces which I knew he’d done before, drawing the same scenes over and over again until he got them just right. So there we were, flipping through the pages, when one of the drawings really caught my eye, and I frowned at it. Chris saw me frown at it.
“What?” he asked.
This drawing… it was all wrong. The girl he’d drawn was sitting on the hood of some muscle car. She was in a tight tank and cut offs, just like all the other girls in the art. Imagine a 50s pin up mashed up with a 90s comic strip. She had this really pouty face, and her breasts were too big. Then I looked closer, and the face he’d drawn just reminded me too much of me, and the tank top his comic girl was wearing was definitely a riff on a t-shirt I wore all the time. So I looked up from the page, and stared at him, and said, “Didn’t know you were gonna put me in here.”
“What are you talking about?” he said, getting defensive. He took the page away from me, studying the drawing. “You think that’s you?”
“Looks like me,” I said. I shrugged. It really wasn’t worth getting him riled up, but I could tell that it was probably too late. “It’s fine. I don’t care.”
“Then why’d you frown?” he asked.
Now I rolled my eyes. Jessica had stopped looking through his other drawings, and was gesturing for him to show her the picture of me. He held it out without looking at her, and she took it, studied it, studied my face, and then said, “Stop. It doesn’t look anything like you.”
“She’s wearing my shirt!” I said. I wasn’t angry, I just didn’t understand why either of them were making such a huge deal of me pointing out that Chris had clearly drawn me with huge boobs and cut off shorts. But when neither of them made a reply, I attempted to cool off the room by making a joke. “Maybe you’re right. He could draw me better if he was actually trying.”
It was the wrong thing to say. I knew it as soon as it came out of my mouth. Chris gathered up the drawings silently, left the kitchen, and then left the apartment without saying goodbye. Jessica crossed her arms, staring at me in a way she had never looked at me before. I didn’t like that look. Again, we’d never fought about anything, remember? First time for everything.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“Do what? Be honest with him?”
“Make him feel bad,” she said, icily.
“God forbid a man ever feel bad about anything,” I said.
She folded up the last of the empty paper sacks that had held the groceries. When she finished she said, “I think you should probably go home.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, completely confused by her reaction.
“I said, I want you to leave!” she snapped.
So I picked up my bag, found my keys where they had sunk to the bottom, and left without saying goodbye. I fumed as I drove, wondering what had happened so suddenly that had made her go cold towards me. It was just drawings. It was Chris’ stupid drawings. Why did she care so much?
I never got an answer. She never spoke to me again.
Somewhere, high up in the hills, there is a bush that burns but is never consumed. They say a man named Moses first encountered God there, but I think maybe Moses had always known who God was, he just didn’t know what to call God until he saw that bush. Of course, the bush I’m talking about can’t possibly be the same one that Moses saw. Afterall, I don’t think Moses lived anywhere near here, and even if he did, he’s long dead by now. The bush I’m talking about isn’t a literal bush, and it’s not literally on fire either. Maybe I’m not explaining it well at all. I probably shouldn’t have tried to start off with that story of Moses; just trying to tie my story to something bigger that actually matters. What I really mean to say is, somewhere far away from everything else you know, in some remote place, there’s a chance you’ll find a miracle. For Moses, it was a bush that burned but was never consumed. For you, it’ll probably be something different. It sure was for me.
Let me see if I can explain it a bit better.
My name is Annie, and up until a year ago, I had one of those friends who was more like a sister. Her name is Jessica, but really I think her name should be Judas. It if was, perhaps she’d feel an ounce of remorse for what she did to me. She’d have to have a heart to feel remorse though. I thought she had a heart, and more specifically, I thought she had a heart for me. Turns out, she was just another fair weather friend who had never been asked to stick around in a storm.
And what a storm that blew between us. We had never had a fight before last summer. First time for everything right? Well, the storm was so big and damaging that there was nothing left after it blew itself out. Not a spec of love between us. It was like we had never known each other, and you know, come to think of it, maybe we never had.
I’m getting a bit ahead of the story, though. So me and Jessica. Best of friends. She’s one of those errand running friends- you know, the kind of friend you can call when you just want someone to go with you to do your shopping, to make it fun. But she was also a party friend. We were always going out. And we always talked about the guys we liked, and the ones we didn’t like, and the ones we dated. She got into a real steady thing with a guy once and then it fell apart almost overnight when she found out he had another girl too. And I was there for her. We were thick as thieves, as I’ve heard my grandpa say. In hindsight, I think I can admit that she wasn’t as there for me as I was for her. Grandpa used to say something about that too. Trying to be friends with some people is like riding a bike on the highway. Or something like that. I think he just meant you were unmatched. If I was gonna do another Bible reference like the good girl my mom still thinks I am, I’d say we were unequally yoked.
Do you see where I’m going with this story? You know the kind of friend Jessica was, right? And I didn’t notice it until it was too late. By then, the hurricane winds had already blown the shutters off the house. I’d like to say it was something stupid that came between us, like a man, but it really wasn’t stupid at all. At the heart of it, it was the most serious thing in the world.
It was honesty. Honesty got between us.
If your friendship can’t survive honesty, then honey, let me tell you, you never were friends in the first place. You were just two people who were good at pretending.
This story is part of the project A Writer’s Shindig. Jolene Rice’s story is the second of 6 short stories written for the project. You can read more about our collaboration and read all the stories posted thus far at A Writer’s Shindig.
Skin Care
Cassandra spent every Sunday at the library. The library was her happy place. The smell of old books brought back sweet memories of her childhood. On Saturday morning, while other children her age were watching cartoons, she and her dad were off to the library. It was always something different; from strange animals the children were allowed to pet, to puppet shows, it was all happening at the library. While she was living on the streets, the library intimidated her. What if they threw her out? It would shatter her happy place. Cassandra was thrilled that the library was on the other side of the park near the spa, close enough she could walk. Her Sundays were filled with sweet childhood memories and learning about skin care. She could do things like have her clients wash their faces in rose water. From time to time, she applied masks. Not being a doctor, she was afraid to do much more. That didn’t stop her from learning. The letter opener that she was using was an extraction needles someone left behind. There were other sized needles, tweezers, and comedone extractors. Cassandra had never used a comedone extractor. Didn’t even think there was one at the spa. They looked like a small open hole on the end of a pencil. Where her letter opener was used to poke the skin, you pressed down on a comedone extractor allowing the pustule to protrude through the hole. It was supposed to be gentler on the skin than using your fingers to squeeze the pustule out. She got tickled; one piece looked like a spatula. A tiny little spatula for your pores. Pieces could be purchased individually or in sets. Sets started around $10.00 to hundreds when you started looking at gold plated hypoallergenic tools.
When Mr. Daily discovered she was really interested in the job, he showed her tools other techs had left behind and gave her the pick of the litter.
Jackson rolled up beside her in his chair as she set at a computer in the library. She didn’t jump; he rolled up beside her all the time. “Would you like to grab a drink when you’re finished?” he asked. “Just a drink.”
While Cassandra was sitting at the computer, she did a YouTube search for the salon, Youthful Wishes. Jackson was right, hundreds of thousands of people watched these videos. After five videos, she could tell which ones Jackson had filmed verses the girl. Cassandra began pointing them out.
He laughed. “Good eye.”
They left the library to get coffee.
“What did you do in the before time?” Jackson asked. Cassandra just sipped her coffee. “Well,” he stammered, then tried a different approach. “Was their anything special about the before time?”
“Not much.” She sipped again at her coffee, “I’m from a painfully small town called Sunshine Valley.”
“Why did you come here?”
Cassandra said, “No plan. I thought moving to the big city would be the answer to all of life’s problems. You know, stay here for a little while and then go home being heralded a hero. I would be able to get what I wanted.”
“What you wanted.” Jackson asked.
“What I thought I wanted,” Cassandra told him as she sipped at the coffee. “It is amazing how our priorities change. Things that where once so important, now just seem stupid.”
“You moved here without a plan?”
She laughed, “You could say that. What about you?”
Jackson didn’t answer right away. “To be honest, I didn’t have a plan either.”
They both just laughed.
More homesickness
Cassandra awoke with a start. She’d been dreaming about her grandmother. Maw would be so ashamed of some of the things her Sue Bug had done in the big city to survive. The moonlight from the open curtains poured into her room, falling on a pack of paper she’d found in her scavenger hunt ‘girling up’ her new workspace. She hadn’t left home because of a horrible family life. Her family was fantastic. Hateful Guts was the reason she left. She wanted to prove to him that more than one person could leave a small town and win. But damn! Was this winning?
She used some of the paper to write a letter to her parents. Cassandra told them it was her goal to be home by Christmas.
Cassandra jumped when Mr. Daily called her name. The bow-legged penguin was sneaky. But then, she reasoned, in order to be a good, pervert you needed the art of stealth? She opened the door for him.
“Oh, sorry. Never meant to startle you.” He almost blushed. “Should’ve knocked.
“It’s fine, Mr. Daily. I was lost in another world.”
“I wanted to pick your brain. Do you have any great ideas for a Valentine’s Day special?”
“For the spa as a whole or just us?”
“As a whole.”
“I might not be the right person to ask but I will do my best.”
He smiled and left.
She sat cross legged on her bed thinking about ideas for a promo. Honestly, she wasn’t the right person to ask. Love had always eluded her. Even when she got close to love it slipped through her fingers. Her love life was a joke. In high school she had a huge crush on a guy. Her parents didn’t teach her about crushes. There was zero guidance. Subsequently, everyone knew about her crush. ‘One day’, she always told herself. ‘One day’. When that one day came, it would be perfect. She was already in love. He couldn’t help but fall head over heels in love with her. Life would be perfect.
When that day did come, it wasn’t the fairy tale romance she had little girl dreams about. It was horrible. It was screaming, shouting, an emotionally dead nightmare. He worked long hours. Would clam up and not talk to her for days. When he did speak, he shouted at her. She’d convinced herself she could fix it. Fix him. Sitting here, now, it hit her like a bucket of ice water. He had his own crush. And she had ran away to the big city chasing someone else. Trying to be someone else. If she could be that other woman, maybe he would finally love her?
“Jackson,” she said out loud. “Maybe he could help me?”
They got coffee and went for another walk in the park. She told him about Mr. Daily asking her for promo ideas. Asking Jackson if he had any ideas?
“I have no desire to help you.”
His comment shook her. “Why?”
Jackson took a deep breath, “Cassandra, I need your help. I’m an investigative reporter doing a story on Dr. Mac.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Three years.”
“You’re kidding?”
Jackson asked, confused. “About?”
“You’re an investigative journalist but you drink those drinks?”
“What do you know?”
“Nothing. Just the timing isn’t good.” Cassandra paused, pursing her lips. “I need to work this out in my headfirst.”
“I don’t follow.”
“That’s why you’ve been here three years.”
That cut deep but he sucked it up. “Then help me.”
“I’m saving up enough money to go home. I’m not sure I want to help you.”
“Help me tear down Dr. Mac’s playhouse.”
“Why?”
“Dr. Mac is not a good person. Who hires a pervert to run their side piece?”
“Side piece?” Cassandra asked.
“Her clinic is downtown. Miles away from this dump. Downtown is where all the action takes place. Where she does all her photo shoots with high powered politicians. Downtown is where her rich clients go. This dump is where she sends her poorer clients.”
Cassandra stopped walking. “Her?”
“Yeah.”
Cassandra was instantly pissed. “Do you want to bring her down just because she’s a successful woman?”
“No,” Jackson gasped. “Heavens no. She’s a bad doctor. Dr. Mac encourages the clients to eat oil rich or highly processed foods. She prescribes them oils instead of hydrating lotions. Some have even been prescribed oil pills.”
“Cod or fish oil can be good for people.”
“No, these are straight up oil. Like cooking oil. She owns a lab, Earth Bound. They make oil pills out of vegetable oil that you can buy at the grocery and then prescribe to her patients. It’s what got me onto her.”
Cassandra started walking again, thinking. “Here’s the first clue I’m going to give you, stop drinking those shakes. I want to be sure I’m right before I tell you what I think is in them.”
“First clue,” Jackson smiled.
Bringing down the house
Over the next year, Cassandra kept feeding Jackson information that didn’t make sense to her. The shakes. And while it was noble that Mr. Daily only hired society’s rejects; Cassandra never filled out one piece of income paperwork.
Cassandra’s new room was much closer to the massage parlor side of the salon. One night she heard crying through the air vent above her bed. A small voice whimpered, “I just want to go home.” Then she thought she heard someone say. “Shh, it will be okay. The first time is always the worst.” Cassandra had been through a lot of hard times, but no one had ever made her do anything against her will. This was the last straw. Yes, she would help Jackson bring Dr. Mac’s playhouse down.
Jackson couldn’t really bring Dr. Mac down. No newspaper wanted to touch the story. Dr. Mac donated heavily to the city and to many charities. She was considered a ‘who’s who’ among the city’s social elite. It was Cassandra’s idea to use the internet. To spread the word that Dr. Mac was a bad doctor. And they had proof. Dr. Mac was prescribing her patients oil and oil pills. The oil Millie used on her clients was Dr. Mac’s creation. Dr. Mac was encouraging her patient’s skin to produce too much oil so they would go to her spa.
Cassandra had started using her library time to find anything they could use against Dr. Mac. She found a newspaper article from five years back, outlining indecent exposure charges against Mr. Daily. She found another newspaper; front page was an article about Dr. Mac opening her first skin care clinic. In what she hoped would be the first of many. And who was in the picture with her, Mr. Daily. They learned that Dr. Mac and Mr. Daily were brother and sister. Cassandra and Jackson assumed that Mr. Daily was all in’ on her shenanigan since his sister was kind enough to let him run the spa. And she had bailed him out. Mr. Daily was never charged. Dr. Mac’s money talked louder than the charges. In a paper dated for the next day, following the indecent exposure claims was a retraction from the paper stating it had all been a misunderstanding. That same year, Dr. Mac donated $100,000 to the chief of polices reelection campaign. Chatter from several internet sites called it ‘hush money’. The more they dug, the dirtier Dr. Mac got.
Cassandra was right. The shakes were bad news. Least of all being that no one had filed for a food handlers license. When she was able to prove what was in them and told Jackson, he was sick for a week. “How many of those did you drink?” Cassandra asked smiling. His response was puking again. It didn’t matter where he was at when she mentioned the shakes, he threw up. Each one had a purpose: the ‘Cassandra’ was for vitality. ‘Sue’ was overall health. ‘Jackson’ was for mental focus. ‘Millie’ was for skin health. Mr. Daily’s was the ‘Randy’. It was blue for a reason. Giving the shakes employees names just ended up being creepy.
By the time the internet was done with Dr. Mac no one wanted her pustule shakes. Or her oil heavy skin care regimen.
Going home
Jackson watched Cassandra sprint up the steps of the bus. This was not the same woman he first met, dripping wet and hungry. She was alive. Happy.
“Do I get to know your last name?” He asked as Cassandra stepped onto the bus.
This story is part of the project A Writer’s Shindig. Jolene Rice’s story is the second of 6 short stories written for the project. You can read more about our collaboration and read all the stories posted thus far at A Writer’s Shindig.
Doing a good job
Cassandra had clients start asking for her by name. She tried to be gentle and not cause much bleeding, especially on someone’s face.
One day on her lunch break, Cassandra wandered over to the hair salon. As Cassandra watched the beautician work, one said, “I bet you’ve lost ten pounds.” The beautician showed the client a large pile of hair in the floor. It gave Cassandra an idea. She started collecting all matter from a client in a jar. After each session, she put it on a scale in front of her client and announced how much the jar weighed. Making sure the client knew how much the jar weight before she started filling it. Mr. Daily liked it so much that he made a contest out of it.
Cassandra was good at her job and Mr. Daily noticed. After a month, she got a cot. After two months, she got new clothes. After six months she got special items like Rose water for her clients to wash their face. Mr. Daily started doing before and after photos. Even her YouTube videos got more views than the other techs.
Move
As Cassandra came out of the bathroom, the smell of pizza hit her in the stomach.
“Come”, Sue patted the floor. “Join us.”
“Just a moment.” A sick feeling overtook Cassandra, as she started looking for her dollar. “Where is it?” she said more, to herself than anyone? She flung her belongings onto her cot. “Where is it?” she shouted.
“Oh,” Millie sighed. “We were a dollar short on the pizza, so I borrowed yours,” she announced with pride.
“You had no right.” Cassandra shouted.
“It’s just a dollar,” Millie reported.
“That was the last dollar from the last paycheck I made from the before time.”
“The before time?” Jackson asked, raising an eyebrow.
“It was the last dollar from my old life.” Cassandra cried.
Millie sank her teeth into a slice of pizza. “Time to let that shit go.”
“That was my decision. Not yours.” Cassandra left the room.
She bumped into Mr. Daily in the hall. He noticed her puffy cheeks and handed her a hanky. “Clean, promise.”
She smiled, “I’m fine. Thank you.”
“I was looking for you.” He returned the hanky he had offered her to a different pocket, before he pulled out one to mop his head with. “How would you like to move?”
“Move?”
“Come,” he grinned. She followed him through one dingy hallway to another. They stopped in front of a dirty green door. “Come.” It was an equally small room like the one she was already in, dirty but empty of people. And it had a real bed. The only door in the room led to a small bathroom with a tub. How long had it been since she’d had a proper bath? “Your reward.” Mr. Daily smiled. “Clients love you.”
“I’ll go get my stuff.”
“Good. Good.” He blushed. “Oh, good.”
Mr. Daily did a little dance in the hall. Not noticing that Cassandra saw him. ‘Dance fat man, dance,’ she thought smiling to herself. The image of a penguin flooded her mind again. This time it had on a top hat and was dancing with a cane.
It didn’t take long for the other techs to start treating her differently. Millie flipped her off. Down under the table where clients couldn’t see. “All over a dollar.” Millie hissed, with a downcast smile.
Each tech was busy, quietly working on a client. Soft music played in the background, filling in the space. Phyllis’s client was a young man. With each extraction, the man said, “Ouch!” or drew a sharp breath through his teeth. Phyllis ignored his winching noises and kept working. Jackson filmed the entire cession. Each time silence returned to the room the man cried out in pain. He’d give Cassandra a minute to relax and then shatter her nerves all over again.
Suddenly he screamed and started thrashing like a two-year-old in a candy store after being told he couldn’t have another lollipop. Cassandra almost poked her client in the eye.
“I’m so sorry.” Cassandra apologized.
The lady smiled at Cassandra, turned then shouted at the man, “Idiot! What’s wrong with you?”
Mr. Daily rushed into the room, mopping his head. “What?!”
“Sounds like a temper tantrum to me.” Cassandra’s client reported, pointing in the man’s direction.
“What did you do?” Mr. Daily questioned Phyllis.
“She hurt me!” The man rose up off the table, blood pouring down his face
“Phyllis?!” Mr. Daily shouted.
Jackson was now sitting beside Cassandra. He had stopped recording the cession with Phyllis when the man cried out. “She’s fired,” he reported. “That’s her third offense.” Before he moved to roll away, “Oh here.” He handed her a dollar.
“No, it’s okay.” Cassandra smiled. “I’m over it. Why will she get fired?”
“Phyllis will ignore client instructions.” Jackson said. “Her first offence was a woman who wanted her back done in sections. The client was on some very strong blood thinners and was afraid that she would start bleeding. The woman fell asleep, and Phyllis did her whole back in one sitting. We didn’t think we’d ever get the bleeding stopped. The client threatened to sue.
A new girl was sitting at Cassandra station when she showed up for work the next morning. Jackson was right. Phyllis did get fired. Mr. Daily did it quietly.
Mr. Daily had put the sign back in the window. He had a passion for hiring homeless people, drifters and folks down on their luck. Score one for Mr. Daily, Cassandra thought. Was it really hurting anyone that he watched the girls shower? Maybe he watched the guys too. Growing up in a small town, that was the sort of thing that got you branded as a pervert, but he did this really great thing of hiring undesirable folks.
Homesick
Cassandra stood in the phone booth with her fingers shaking. She picked up the receiver. Then quickly hung it up. “Let it go.” She let out a long even breath as a way to steady herself. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember her parent’s phone number. The only number that came to her was Hateful Gut’s. But he would know how to get ahold of her folks. The number rang once before she slammed the receiver back onto its holder. “No. Not him.”
She jumped as someone beat on the glass. “Hey lady,” the man was very drunk and slurring his words. “Get out lady.” As she opened the door, the man tipped his hat. “Gotta call a ride lady.” He licked his lips, “gotta,” stumbling backwards, “ride.” The phone rang as he stepped inside. His hand shook picking up the receiver. He spoke into the phone. “Gotta. Need ride.” He burped.
Cassandra sat on a nearby bench watching him as she built up her courage to try again. The man all but fell out of the phone booth. Smiled at her; tipped his hat again. He stumbled around. With his back to Cassandra, he peed on the phone booth. A beat cop walked past her then tapped the drunk man on the shoulder. As the drunk man turned, he peed on the officers’ shoes. “You, my ride?”
“Oh yeah,” the officer spoke. “Yeah, I’m your ride.”
A cold wind started blowing. It blew a sheet of last month’s news across her shoes. Why couldn’t people throw trash away? The streets were lined with garbage cans. Throwing this away wasn’t difficult. The phone rang, pulling Cassandra from her thoughts. She just stared at the booth while the phone inside rang out five times. Cassandra smiled; it would be too sweet if Hateful Guts was the one trying to call back. “Good, score one for me.”
Shots rang out through the night. “Time to go home,” she said to herself. Passing the booth, the phone started ringing again.
New work stuff
A knock-on Cassandra’s door startled her. It was Mr. Daily. She answered the door with a protein shake in her hand. “Good?” he asked, pointing at the shake.
“It’s okay.”
“Just, okay?” Mr. Daily asked.
“I’m not real hungry but I needed something.”
He changed the subject. “Come with me.” He talked as they walked. “This building is an old hotel. Dr. Mac has been transforming it into a salon. How would you like your own workspace? You did such a great job training our new girl. She’s gentle and kind.”
“Thank you.”
Mr. Daily stopped; Cassandra thought it was two doors down from the big open room they all worked in. He opened a door to a room. The smell told Cassandra it had been freshly painted. There were no decorations of any kind, it was just a plain white room. “This is going to be your workspace. We’ll get you a new workstation.” He paused. “You can girl it up.”
“Girl it up?”
“Flowers and shit.”
She couldn’t contain her laughter. “Thank you, Mr. Daily.”
He twisted his shoe on the carpet, “what’s your favorite flavor?”
“Carmal.” Mr. Daily looked blank. She smiled, “caramel.”
Mr. Daily just giggled.
The penguin was back. Her mind filled with the image of a penguin wearing pink rabbit ears, munching on a chocolate egg, with a ribbon of caramel hanging from its mouth. It was all she could do not to laugh. She never wanted Mr. Daily to think she was making fun of him, but he always conjured up that penguin image.
She did ‘girl up’ the new workspace, a little. Mr. Daily allowed her to look for things that might be nicer from the empty rooms of the hotel. Lighter curtains, a couple small end tables, a fake tree for the corner of the room. She even found a compact disc player with a bunch of classical compact discs; perfect.
Her first client for her new space arrived with Jackson in tow. It was Tantrum Man. He was drinking something. “Have you tried these?” Tantrum Man asked just before he sucked at the straw, forcing pink liquid up. “This is great.”
She and Jackson exchanged glances. Both admitted they had not tried the drink. “This might be the best thing Dr. Mac has done.” Tantrum Man drew more pink liquid up the straw.
More and more of Cassandra’s clients came in drinking Dr. Mac’s new drinks. Cassandra even saw Jackson drinking them. One day he held the drink in his hand up high so she could see it. It was in a clear cup. From the bottom up, it was white. About an inch from the bottom was a band of brown, more white, then a small pink band, then more white. The top was brown with whipped topping and a cherry. “This one is called the ‘Cassandra!”’ He laughed.
Cassandra didn’t say a word. She suddenly felt naked.
Jackson slurped at the drink. “I taste vanilla and caramel. Delicious!” He smacked his lips.
Her client had a different drink, the pink one. “It’s the ‘Millie’,” her client reported. “It’s hot strawberry. It’s a sweet heat. I like it.”
Jackson locked eyes with Cassandra. “The ‘Cassandra’ is my favorite.”
She moved to start setting her client up. “I’m honored.”
That evening Cassandra was surprised to find a bouquet of red roses in the floor outside her bedroom door. The card read, “Thank you. Dr. Mac.”
This story is part of the project A Writer’s Shindig. Jolene Rice’s story is the second of 6 short stories written for the project. You can read more about our collaboration and read all the stories posted thus far at A Writer’s Shindig.
A job
Cassandra stopped. Rain was seeping through the taped hole in her raincoat. Wiggling her toes inside the boots was squishy. The waterproofing was long gone. In her wildest dreams, she never imagined it would take this long. How many stories floated around back home of Bob or Bill going off to Detroit, getting a factory job and making it big? She had only heard one story about Carl, who couldn’t make the big city dream work. It scared her to death thinking she would end up like Carl. That’s why she stayed, too afraid to go home as a failure. This decision left her penniless, homeless and hopeless.
Looking up, there was a HELP WANTED sign in a window. Her damp hand caressed the last dollar she had to her name. She wouldn’t spend it. Couldn’t. That was the last dollar she had. Even if someone gave her $5.00; this one stayed. It was the last dollar from the last paycheck she’d earned. ‘The last one’, she reminded herself. Her dad would preach to her brother, ‘son, any job is better than no job’. Just now she was beginning to know what he was preaching about.
A drop of water ran down her back, it shocked her out of the haze she was in. This rain was relentless. Worst of all; it was cold. Cold rain was ushering in months of the white stuff. Bitter cold temperatures. Nights of worry. Nights of being afraid she would freeze to death. Long days of hunger. Even the rats were safe from her knife when it got that cold. All creatures needed warmth.
HELP WANTED. The sign seemed to pulse and glow. She admonished herself, ‘no one will hire me in the shape I’m in. I’m soaked to the bone, and I know I stink’. But the sign kept pulsing and glowing. Beyond the sign was an empty waiting room. No one was anywhere. “Go on. At least we tried,” that still small voice encouraged. Another drop of cold rain rolled down her back. “What the hell? It will get me out of the rain for a minute.” Taking a deep breath for courage, she opened the door, walked over to the sign and removed it from the window. In her hand, it no longer glowed. Or pulsed. It was just a plastic sign.
A man about her height waddled from behind a curtain covered door. His bald head shone, even in the dim light of the waiting room. He breathed hard, removed a hanky from his pocket and sopped his head. His walk reminded Cassandra of a bow-legged penguin. Her mind suddenly filled with the image of a penguin on a horse; complete with a cowboy hat, spurs and chaps with a piece of straw hanging out of its mouth. ‘Crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Funny little man’, she thought.
The polyester suit he had on was from 1970, at least, and was busting at the seams. ‘No one wore plaid or polyester anymore, did they?
“What you want?” He barked at her. Cassandra jumped, holding up the sign. “Rug! Rug!” he shouted. Pointing a shaky finger at her, “Rug!” She realized she was dripping in the floor. The carpet under her was wet. She did as he requested, moving to the rug. He waddled back through the curtain, returning with towels. It shocked her that he laid the towels on the floor with such care. Even more of a shock, his pants didn’t bust open when he squatted down.
After raising up, he wiped at his head with the hanky again and as he eyed her up and down. “You need place to stay?” he grunted.
“Maybe,” she answered cautiously.
“Come.”
Cassandra followed him through the curtain, down a dark hallway to a small dingy room. Four cots were in the room, three were occupied, with other people stretched out in the floor. He left her standing in the doorway. The empty cot obviously belonged to the lady standing in her personal space. Cassandra’s main thought was that this lady needed to back up off her.
“He never comes in our personal space.” The woman giggled.
This woman with ‘No personal boundaries’ ushered Cassandra into the room. “Come, come. He acts like a jerk but he’s really not. Not as long as you work. I’m Sue.” She touched her chest. “Millie,” she continued, pointing at the redhead. “Phyllis and Jackson.” Jackson had his back to the girls. “Jackson is one of our camera operators,” she giggled, as she led Cassandra to a small, equally dirty bathroom. “In the morning, I’ll show you the ropes.”
Cassandra didn’t get a cot. It didn’t matter. This space was dry. Unless the ceiling caved in, she was content.
When her nerves settled, her stomach let out a long loud groan. Jackson jumped, then asked, “hungry?”
“A little.” She admitted. Each of them pulled out something for her to eat, offering their treasures to her. “I only have a dollar,” she blushed.
Jackson snorted. “Who knows when we’ll be hungry.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact.
At, 7 a.m. Millie kicked the bottom of Cassandra’s foot. Millie was carrying towels and soap scraps in her arms. “Come. Lucky you, there’s soap scraps today.” Cassandra thought they were going OUTSIDE! In that moment Cassandra was too shocked to ask why they were going outside. She had enough of being outside. When they reached the outer door, a blast of cold wind hit Cassandra in the face, filling her mind with all the reminders of why outside sucked!
Jackson pointed to a shower; “no one really knows who set it up. We just know it works. We are all usually so tired when we get finished for the day; no one has the energy to search for answers.” This shower looked like one Cassandra had seen in a movie once. A girl was showering in a little box outside of a beach house to keep from getting so much sand in the house. Lucky for the house, she guessed, but not for the girl. That was the scene in the movie where the girl was violently murdered. This thought made her shiver and Sue noticed.
Sue yawned and stretched, pulling Cassandra’s attention away from the freezing weather outside for a brief moment. “We should let you pick. The shower in the bathroom is lukewarm, but we all know Mr. Daily watches us.” Sue gave a nervous chuckle, “who showers in their clothes. Right. I guess it’s the price we pay,” she shrugged. “We have all gotten used to cold showers.”
Phyllis gave a sarcastic grunt, “some of us like it.”
“Let him watch,” Cassandra snapped. Almost running away from the cold rain shower. It might feel good in the heat of summer but not today. The last thing she wanted was to be bone cold – AGAIN. Honestly, who really knew? If Mr. Daily wanted to watch them that badly, he might have been camped out on the roof. Cassandra didn’t care if he saw her naked or not. All the things she had done to survive on the streets, a Peeping Tom wasn’t that scary.
When she walked back into the small room, wrapped in towels, Phyllis giggled. “Mr. Daily got his money’s worth from you. Here,” she handed over a set of blue scrubs. “These are old but clean. They’ll do until you can get different things.”
Cassandra was happy not to be putting on her old, dirty clothes. One of the hardest things for her to do was put her dirty clothes back on once her body was clean. Doing this made her feel dirty all over again. There weren’t many places on the streets to do laundry.
Cassandra’s new job
The job she had stumbled into was a spa. Her first day was spent observing. There were three sections: a hair salon that included manicuring and pedicuring, a massage parlor, and skin care. She learned really fast that skin care was pimple popping and black head extractions. That would be her job. The skin care section had six chairs; four ladies and one guy were busy working.
Sue cut through the silence. “If we go to any of the sections for service, we get docked a day’s pay. Jackson and I have been here the longest. We let each other cut our hair.” She ran her fingers through her brown bob. “He does good. One of us can cut your hair when you’re ready.” She paused, “if you want to. We do good for self-taught. The only words of warning, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. The only holidays are Thanksgiving and Christmas. Don’t be mean to the clients. It’s so hard to know where Mr. Daily will draw a line. This guy Ted used to work here, got fired ‘cause a client smacked him on the ass and Ted told him to keep his hands to himself. Mr. Daily told him be flattered. He had a nice ass for a man.”
“You are beautiful.” Sue told Cassandra. “Don’t be surprised if you get lots of attention. Even from Mr. Daily.”
Cassandra sat with Sue, watching. The person she was working on had just a few blemishes that needed removed. Sue wore a face mask, glasses with a set of magnifiers clipped onto them. On her tray she had gauze, Q-Tip’s, and what for the world to Cassandra looked like a letter opener. On the thumb of Sue’s left glove, she stuck a sticker of a raven. On the thumb of her right glove, she placed a sticker with a name, logo, and phone number. “The stickers are to tell us apart on camera.” She wiggled her right thumb, “and of course advertising the spa.” They never use our names. Sue smiled. “You get to pick your sticker out before you officially start.”
Cassandra watched in silence as Sue worked. First, Sue instructed her client to wash his face. Then Sue tucked a towel under the collar of his shirt. As Sue massaged his face, she hummed a little tune. Cassandra hadn’t heard the song before. When she was finished humming, the cleansing began. Sue used the letter opener to poke a hole in the skin over top of the blackhead. Cassandra was amazed that Sue used her fingers to push the black head out of the pore. There was a little blood but not much. The pustule was then collected off the skin with the letter opener and gently placed on the gloved index finger of Sue’s left hand.
Cassandra thought she should be repulsed by this. In the moment when she found out what she would be doing, there was a moment of ick. But watching Sue work, that ick was quickly being replaced with curiosity.
If the client you were working with had a bad complexion, you got a camera operator. There were only two. Jackson and a lady.
Millie oiled her clients faces. Others did nothing, just got to work. Some clients liked to chat while others were quiet. Cassandra didn’t like the oil Millie used. It immediately started soaking through Millie’s gloves. Both the client and Millie were oily messes by the end of the session.
Day 2
Before Cassandra started, Sue showed her sheets of stickers. “We have already chosen our stickers. Pick what you like.” Sue smiled. It didn’t take long; Cassandra picked out a sunshine. As she caressed the sheet with her thumb, a ping of homesickness raced through her. What was her family doing right now? Mom was cooking breakfast. Dad was puttering in the shed. She hadn’t talked to them in a long time. How nice it would be to hear their voices.
Cassandra’s first client was a sixteen-year-old girl. It was all Cassandra could do not to cry. This girl didn’t have a face. She was a pustule with eyes. A woman was berating the girls every step. Cassandra thought it might be the girl’s mother. She wasn’t sure. Living on the streets had taught her not to judge relationships. Here was a young girl with an older female making her life hell.
“You haven’t been following the doctor’s orders!” The woman yelled at the girl. “You haven’t been taking your pills! How am I going to marry off a pus bag? If you were fat, at least that would give me something to work with!” This woman wanted to sit close to the girl, continuing her assault, but Cassandra wouldn’t let her.
Once alone with the girl, Cassandra got her to talk. She was taking the medicine. Doing all the skin care regimens Dr. Mac had prescribed. Her face had never gotten this bad.
Jackson rolled over to them and began filming. He made eye contact with Cassandra and mouthed, “You got this.”
Cassandra started at the girl’s forehead and worked her way down. Cassandra felt more confident starting at the hair line. If she did more harm than good, this girl could comb her hair this way or that way to hide a fraction of her face. After her client had washed her face, Cassandra tucked a towel around her client’s shirt collar. She instructed her to remove her earrings. Cassandra didn’t see a necklace.
Cassandra’s hands shook as she picked up her letter opener. Looking up, Jackson was watching her. He winked. Right, she’s got this. She traced her client’s hair line with her finger. Then began above the left ear. Her first extraction slid out with ease. As did the second and third. Poke, squeeze. There went four and five. With each extraction, Cassandra became more confident. She felt bad the first time she made a pore bleed. It didn’t last long. A wipe with her cotton ball usually did the trick before moving on.
In the center of the girl’s forehead was a cluster of inflamed pores. Four of them were massive as compared to the smaller ones Cassandra had been extracting. She poked one, did a little squeeze and nothing happened. With another try, she poked a little deep. The hole started bleeding. Cassandra gave it a good squeeze. She jumped as pus hit the face shield. “That one was juicy.” Jackson commented. “Take off your shield, let me get a shot of that before you clean it off.” Cassandra was thrown a little by his comment. But she figured he knew what he was talking about and did as he had instructed.
After four hours, her eyes needed a break. “How are you feeling?” Cassandra asked the girl.
She snubbed, “just wanna cry.”
“Let’s take a break. Go to the bathroom and cry. Wash your face. Maybe even go get something to eat.” The girl gave her a weak smile. “You’re doing great.” Cassandra reassured her. When the girl had left the room, Jackson spoke, “we are getting some really good footage. That one that popped and went airborne was great.”
Cassandra carefully took her gloves off, stretching out her fingers. “My hands are already killing me.” She rolled her shoulders and neck. “I can’t believe how exhausted I feel.”
“I’ve learned from other techs, this first week is a killer. Don’t worry, your hands and shoulders will get used to this all too quickly.” Jackson smiled.
“What are you doing with the footage?”
“The really good,” he put great emphasis on the work good. “Stuff gets put on YouTube. You won’t believe the thousands of people that watch these. It’s more exposure for the spa and Dr. Mac.” He noticed Cassandra squeezing her hands. “When we are finished for today, I know where a couple stress balls are. They will do great things for your hands.”
“Thanks, you.” Cassandra was amazed that he noticed anything at all. The one man that had been in her life, other than her dad, noticed nothing other than what was right in front of him.
It hadn’t been fifteen minutes; the older lady and Cassandra’s young client were back. “Why are you up? You’re not done. Now you’re swollen and still gross,” the older lady yelled at the young girl.
“I stopped the session,” Cassandra reported. “You scheduled this session for eight hours and you will get eight hours, but state law says I get an hour for lunch.” Cassandra pointed around the room. “Everyone else is busy.”
“I want to see the time stamp on the video,” the older lady demanded. “I want to make sure I get my eight hours.” Cassandra looked toward Jackson in disbelief; he nodded in acknowledgment. “Why is her face still puffy and gross?” the lady demanded.
Cassandra held up her letter opener. “Our skin is our largest organ. I’m poking holes in it. Of course it’s going to be angry. How would you like it if I poked you?”
“Do your job!” the woman huffed, stomping out of the room.
That evening, the shower was the only place Cassandra was able to be alone. She sat in the floor shower sobbing. Not only for the way that woman, who she assumed was the girl’s mother; treated her. Cassandra assumed that level of destructive language murdered that young girl’s self-esteem. It was so hard being a girl/woman in the first place. To have your parents, especially your mother, not support you, makes it even harder.
The Quick and the Dead 