It was stupid, I knew, but it was something to hold on to…it was mine. Like the mediocre job and the too-tight shoes and the ratty place currently keeping me upright.
Think, Mari! When did you have it last?I mentally pulled it forward, trying to remember the last time I wrote in it.This morning. Before I left for Home Run. Shit!I’d left it next to Vera in the “apartment.”
It was like fate knew my life was going to implode today and was saying,Leave your book of good behind, kid. Less painful when you have to watch your dreams burn to ashes with the rest of your life.
I had no idea why I was so attached to the stupid thing. The same went for Vera. It wasn’t like I ever had anything good in my life to call mine,for good, but once upon a time, I felt like I could. The possibility for something better was there. It was the chance that something great could happen to me, or I could make it for myself, if only I could get two steps ahead.
The day the idea took root, it had all felt so kismet.
During one of my evening shifts at Home Run, the happiness guru appeared on the television, claiming that she’d written in her journal for years. She wrote down all she was thankful for, even if she didn’t have it yet. She claimed that being thankful for a life you didn’t have prepared you for a life you would have. She had compared it to having enough faith to build train tracks before the train even had the route.
It all sounded so…true…and doable.
It didn’t take a lot of money to give it a try. All I needed was a journal. So, after work, I ventured to a part of town known for sidewalk vendors, looking for something I could afford. It would put a dent in my stash, but one day it would be worth it. I’d look back on that journal and have proof. I’d changed the course of destiny. I had earned an ocean to put out that fire consuming me.
I found two things that day: a purple journal and an aloe vera plant.
The plant had been sitting on top of the journal, real artsy looking, and the vendor sold me two for one. Five bucks for both. I named the plant Vera and the journal Journey. From that day forward, Vera Journey was born. When I needed a confidante, I talked to Vera. When I needed to feel not so broken, I wrote in Journey. Needless to say, Vera was doing pretty well with all of our chats, and Journey was almost full of notes.
Both of them were right beyond my reach. My hands tingled, like I hung on to the highest mountain and my fingers and palms were just too slippery. I was falling.
“Just my luck,” I mumbled.
The panic attack passed and suddenly I felt so tired. Like I could sit on that shitty floor and sleep for eons. I lifted my head, turned my eyes to the ceiling, and then closed them. Wishing. Hoping. Wanting something so different.
Ineeded. I needed a safe place to land for once in my life.
I didn’t even have the energy to open my eyes when the tip of a boot touched my leg. “I changed the locks,” Merv said. “You didn’t pay your rent. I’m not running a charity here.”
“Get lost, Merv,” I said. “I wasn’tthatlate.”
“Over a month, and not for the first time. I forgot about the late fees, didn’t I?”
“You ever heard of cutting someone some slack? It’s not like this is the royal palace. You let the rats live here rent-free. A huge-ass family lived with me the entire time. Bastards stole my food, when I had it, and then shit all over the place!”
He was quiet long enough that I forced my eyes open. He hadn’t left, I knew, because his cheap-ass cologne kept assaulting my nose. I never got a good feeling about him, so I usually kept my distance, and the feeling was as strong as ever. There was something about his eyes that reminded me of a diseased rat. I always assumed he was their leader.
I used my knees to push up the wall, keeping the straps of my bag clutched in my palms, sliding down a little bit, but he bulldozed over the space between us and came close to my face. “I could forget this month.” He shrugged. “If you’d do something for me.”
Before he even told me what that something was, I’d started shaking my head. I knew what that something was, and there was no wayin fuckinghell. This wasn’t the first time he’d insinuated sex for payment, but this time, something had changed. He felt more like a predator.
Get. Out.A voice screamed in my head. It came from my gut.
“Go fuck yourself, Merv,” I said, and I meant it literally. “I need two minutes to get my things and then I’m gone.”
He shook his head. “You owe me. You want your things? You have to do something for me first.”
“When hell freezes over,” I whispered, hoping the low tone of my voice would hide the hint of fear. “You’d have to kill me first.”
I might have jumped from house to house, place to place, throughout my life, but I hadn’t gotten to the point where my hunger and fear were worth more than my body, my strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other onmyown terms.
Tiredness might have made it to my bones, but the thought of him made me cringe to the point where acid burned the back of my throat. I’d rather pick up a seedy stranger in a dark alley than to see him in the light of day. He had ass crack for days, and it didn’t always look like dark hair back there.
“You’ll be back!” he yelled toward me, leaning one beefy shoulder against the wall while I hauled ass to get out of there. A door across from mine opened and two people spilled out. “And the cost will go up when you do!”
* * *
Since I livedon the third floor, I sometimes left the window cracked. Call me foolishly hopeful or truly insane, but I always wished for a stray cat to slip through so he could take care of my rat problem. I couldn’t afford anything else, and getting anyone to listen in this city (a complaint against the landlord) was harder than talking a brick wall into moving by itself.
