I haven’t blogged in awhile from despair. Does anyone read these? Yes! Thank you Alexandro Botelho for seeing me. He’ll be reading 500 words from Pool Party on Sunday August 15, 2021 at 11am CDT (Winnipeg time). 9 am for us on the west coast. Soon I’ll be looking around for something to post my novels on so that they can be downloaded for anyone wishing to pay a modest price. You can email me and ask in the meanwhile: marintampa@hotmail.com is the best way to reach me.
For now, I’ll post a few pages from a newer work I’ve just finished dealing with the woes of palatably making a living. Belinda desperately hates her life and wants out. She succeeds. But what to do instead?
1. Late August, Early 1990’s
“Hurry up, we can make it to the boulevard!” Mrs. Tracy Worthington, looking to her left, in the direction of oncoming traffic when in North America, and called to her husband and daughter, standing on the curb of a busy London street. If asked what side of the road the Brits drove on, Tracy would have said on the left. Yet, at that moment, her brain didn’t apply what that meant having to do, which was look, not to the left, but to the right, before crossing, which was where the car came from, too late to stop, or even slow down. She was mowed under its wheels in front of her six-year-old daughter, and husband.
Mr. Carl Worthington, yanked their—his now—daughter, Angie, back from running to the remains of her mother. All the traffic going in that direction squealed to a stand-still, some of it by rear end collision. By-standers rushed closer to see and to try to hide the child’s eyes from carnage one so young shouldn’t see. Motorists excitedly disembarked from their cars, some in defense of the driver who had driven over the woman, others for a closer view of the mangled body, a few to ascertain the status of their own vehicles, and others to offer help, though they didn’t know how. Someone had already run into a pay phone booth, presumably to call an ambulance. The driver, not drunk or stoned—just numb from disbelief and incredulity because a woman looking the other way had stepped right in front of his car—staggered over to Carl. He stammered and babbled, attempting to justify himself for having done no wrong at all but with terrible consequences. “She just…I couldn’t…I wasn’t even…ten over, what everyone…She wasn’t at a cross-walk.” He shrugged then slumped in despair, and maybe fear too, wondering if he would or could be charged with vehicular homicide. In support, the other motorists nodded, each realizing that he or she also could too easily have been in that driver’s shoes had he or she been first in line off the last set of lights.
“I know.” Carl shook his head. “We’re from Canada. We drive on the right,” Carl explained his wife’s apparent suicidal charge. “No one’s to blame.” Yet still, in less than a moment, he’d lost the love of his life and become a single dad to a daughter he wouldn’t have a clue in hell what to do with.
2. Mid-Spring of the Same Year in Calgary
After a ten hour long deplorable shift at The King Leer, on the eve of her thirtieth birthday, Belinda dragged her ass out of the cab and up the front walk to her shitty apartment. Depressing. That this was what she had sunk to: not just broke, but in debt, at thirty, when other people had accumulated at least some wealth and security. All because of Ray. Every minute in her flea-trap apartment reminded her of her bank loan she still had to pay long after Mr. Down Under had smashed up her car. People’s circumstances were supposed to improve they got older. Hers seemed to have when she moved into Ray’s ritzy condo. How was she supposed to have known he was subletting and not paying the rent, half of which she contributed? Evidently, he’d been using the money to drink, along with other amounts he borrowed, either with or without her permission. So when the owner returned unexpectedly and threw her out, The Dump was the only place she could afford. And she couldn’t look forward to better, because already, she was hanging onto her job by her teeth. A bar was a place for the young; no one hired middle aged waitresses. And what other job could she get that paid more than minimum wage when she’d never worked at anything else?
Already, she’d advanced way past the expiry date for the “good” clubs, which weren’t that lucrative anymore anyway, with all the new tip-out rules, and not just to the bartenders, but to the door, the hostess, the kitchen, and in some places, even the house, like management and the owners didn’t make enough money. So she should be thankful she was still making good tips at the tavern she’d been at for the last five years, but she hated it. The drinking lifestyle—of the customers and staff—was starting to drain her. As was the continual fear of being fired for any cause Rusty trumped up as a reason. Also energy-sucking was the shabbiness of the place itself, liable to be shut-down by the health board—like for having no hot water after nine p.m.—if Rusty didn’t keep up his pay-offs. What would she do next, when her sex appeal, not quite what it used to be, diminished further, and her bitter attitude got harder to hide? Even though she hadn’t gained weight, her expression wasn’t as perky, and her demeanor no longer advertised a ripeness for being taking advantage of. Which meant owners would know she wouldn’t be willing to put in free clean-up hours, or blow the manager for the privilege of keeping the job or getting the good shifts. After the Leer, she’d be headed to the waitress graveyard; diners and family chains, catering to cheap clientele with kids or teens in by themselves: demanding but non-tipping customers. Or the high-class places, if she could get in, patronized by cheap rich people who didn’t tip either, but the hourly was a bit higher. The only problem: the staff, valuing security, never left, creating no openings.
After turning her key in the lobby door, Belinda kicked the stuck door open and didn’t bother pushing it shut after her. No one would hit this place to steal anything. People here had already been cleaned out—by men like she met, because she worked nights in a bar. Decent men looking for a long-term relationship or a mother for their children didn’t want waitresses—except for fast sex whenever they felt like it, in secret, and when they were drunk if they couldn’t find anyone else by last call. So she was left with addicts and cons who wanted the same thing. The only difference was they came back more frequently, used her place as a crash pad, and borrowed cash to finance their drug and alcohol habits. Why couldn’t she ever be the one who got looked after, like Yvette across the hall? Gerald, an accountant she met at the grocery store where she worked, was taking her to live with him in Vancouver. Though, given that Gerald was old enough to have a grandchild, Belinda wouldn’t want to trade places. Yvette would be earning her keep.
“You’ll be a gramma!” Belinda had teased her friend-by-proximity, when she heard the grandfather part.
“Some people enjoy children.”
“That’ll mess up the kid at school, when it has to explain that Gramma’s younger than Mom.”
Yvette pressed her lips; something she may not have considered.
Still, Yvette treated Belinda kind of cool after that, but what the hell. They weren’t really close friends, and Yvette was leaving anyway. Unlike Ray, Gerald probably owned his house; if not outright, his name would be on the mortgage.
Inside her suite, after much key-wiggling in the half-broken locks, Belinda pried her swollen feet out of pumps that always fit fine at the start of a shift and stepped into slippers, so her feet wouldn’t have to touch the stained carpet. Even with the stylish rent-to-own furniture, the place still looked like crap, with its yellowed cracked walls and warped, peeling linoleum.
Cigarettes, she groped through her purse, noticing her answering machine light flashing. Yvette, probably, who’d be sleeping by now, dreaming of her free-lunch life with middle-aged, comfortably off, and probably fat, Gerald.
“You should apply for my job at the grocery store,” Yvette encouraged earlier in the month, when she’d come by to tell Belinda she’d given notice on both her apartment and at her job. “It’s across the street from the executive suites.”
marilynntebbit 