Somebody That I Used to Know

It's All Temporary

AN INDIFFERENT WORLD

by Marianne Carlson

“This ain’t no way to treat a lady.” 

“She knows, she just KNOWS that we can’t make a move without her. Why would she LEAVE us like this? It is humiliating.” 

Gracie, near tears, spoke from a prone position underneath the stage. Head thrown back, her mouth appeared massive, way too big for the rest of her face. Partially open, no teeth, there was nothing cute about her. The studio was a mess. A large backdrop, a photograph of an ultra modern kitchen,  leaned against one wall, the heavy pots and pans hung from hooks on the ceiling.  

“My arm hurts. I think it needs stitches, and my glasses fell off. How am I supposed to read without my glasses?” From behind a stool, Deedee, was almost in tears.

“Reading is the least of our worries, Deedee. What if she has skipped town? 

“Skipped town?  You mean just up and left? Deedee sounded horrified. She would never do that without putting us back in the trunk. And she wouldn’t leave all these props scattered every which way. She is very meticulous. She likes things in their proper place, she’s obsessive compulsive, she’s got an attention deficit disorder,  she’s got a borderline personality disorder, she’s deteriorating as we speak.

“She is a manic depressive, approaching a complete psychotic break.” Gracie continued their litany of psycho babble from under the table as if they actually knew what they were talking about.

“I liked her a lot better when she was in her manic phase. We may have  worked a lot, but at least she was fun to be around.”

“Yeah, remember the show about the parking wars? That was funny.”

“And the fortune teller?”  

“Well, she is depressed now.” 

“And for good reason. Cooking with Gracie, got exactly 12 hits. In the  entire internet youtube world, 12 hits.” 

“Well this cooking crap has got to go,” said Gracie. Who wants to watch puppets cooking?”

“Nobody. I have an idea. Puppet porn,” said Deedee.

“Puppet porn?” Gracie thought for a bit. “ I like it, I love it. Puppet porn.

“No, I’m serious, Gracie, we need to step up our act.”

“I think I heard her come in. Shhh, she’s talking to someone.”

That someone was David, Brenda’s friend with benefits. Brenda, a small blond with stiff kinky hair like a mop was sitting in the living room, a room not suited for living, but the living room nonetheless. Everything about the room was dark, including (at the moment) Brenda. The drapes, upholstery, carpets, were all more suited for an older, more mature person. Brenda inherited the house and everything in it from her uncle, an attorney who had a propensity towards the dark side of life. Into this house blew Brenda, like a small tornado. She converted the dining alcove into a puppet studio; this studio became the heart and soul of the house.  

Today both the heart and the soul were in need of a boost.  When she made a puppet, Brenda became so obsessed with her project that she shut out everything else. The rest of the world simply did not exist; she and her growing puppet were enveloped in an invisible protective shield. Day blended into night, sleep and meals became superfluous. Her love for her creations was something fierce to see, it gave her a persona that sometimes resembled a vicious mother, a mother blinded by love and an inability to understand why the rest of the world did not appreciate her efforts.

“I suck, David.  It’s an indifferent world out there. I am a complete failure, a pant load. No one cares what I do.

“You’re not a pant load, Brenda. You are the most talented person I know.” 

When Brenda fell into one of these moods, David assumed his mentor/therapist/priest mode. He was tall, thin and serious, a PhD student in biomedical research with rimless glasses behind brown eyes as calm as cows and soft blondish hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was far more interested in parasites than puppets.    Although he loved Brenda dearly, her moods were becoming burdensome to him. Not knowing what was coming next, he tried to reason with her as if he was talking to an exotic caged parrot with a large vocabulary.  Gracie and Deedee adored him.

“I am too a pant load. I am going to build a fire and throw every one of my puppets into it.” With an ominous glint in her eye, Brenda methodically stacked wood in the fireplace, placed scrunched up newspaper under the logs and lit a match exactly as her uncle had taught her years ago. Soon a blazing fire lit up the dark room.

“What happened? Where are we?” Deedee woke up. She was sitting on a large desk, leaning against a stack of books, her glasses on the bridge of her nose, right where they were supposed to be.”  The room, far from dark, was brilliantly lit by large, florescent lights overhead. Unforgiving in their intensity, they glared on both Gracie and Deedee, offering them no place to hide.  David stood over his microscope, his white lab coat unbuttoned, his attention fixed on the slide under the glass. Gracie, although shaken, was sitting next to Deedee. Both girls had managed to regain their dignity, as they whispered to each other. 

Neither David, Gracie or Deedee had any idea what an impact the presence of the girls had on the other students in the lab. David carried on with his research, digging deeper and deeper into his thesis. Language in the lab cleaned up considerably. Experiments went smoothly. Long-standing disagreements cleared up almost overnight. All went well until the day that Brenda came looking for David.

“You bastard, I want my puppets. You stole them.”

“No, I saved them, you tried to kill them, Brenda. You are an unfit mother.”

“They are mine and I want them back.”

While the bickering continued Gracie and Deedee slipped quietly behind a bookshelf. There they remained until peace returned and Brenda left empty handed.

It's All Temporary

THE TIP JAR

by Marianne Carlson

Helen was not a wealthy woman, far from it. She worked as a food server at a bar and restaurant called Annabelle's.  They used to be waitresses, now they are servers. Although she had  zero patience with political correctness, apparently the political correct mafia sent out a decree declaring that waitressing was demeaning, serving was worthy, therefore she served.  Actually it's not a bad motto. "I serve."

Annabelle's owner, an intense, methodical man with no sense of humor named Matt required that his servers wear uniforms: pale blue/green dresses which fell to the knee. The servers hated them. The color washed away any sign of health, they always clocked in  looking as if they had been up all night. Matt had poured over catalogs for days before choosing these uniforms and he chose this particular "green" because he thought it would be a good neutral color that would please both his customers and his staff. The opposite was true.  No one would say it to his face, but there was a universal groan from  hungry people as they slipped into a booth on the day the uniforms made their first appearance.

        "What happened to your uniforms? I liked those little red checks!"

        "What a horrible color."

         "He can't be serious."

"Barf green."

Matt was unaware of the bruhaha his choice of uniform caused, but Helen was mortified. Customers and staff alike were unhappy, and from that day forward life at Annabelle’s took an unfortunate turn. For Helen, the turn was almost catastrophic. It was as if she woke up one morning a different person, like a child recovering from a long illness who was regaining her strength, but not her old self,  which had been replaced with a much sadder soul. 

“What’s with you these days?” Helen’s long-term lover, Jeff, asked as they lingered over coffee. It had been a long day at Annabelle’s, a day where everything that could have gone wrong, did.

“I’m just tired. Matt has been in a terrible mood for days now, the sous chef never showed, tips are down, Agnes quit.”

“Agnes quit?” Jeff was surprised, he always liked Agnes, she had the same biting sense of humor that he had.

“Yup, she told Matt that life was too short to wear vomit green every day, took off her apron, threw it in his face, and said I quit.”

“Wow!” 

“You should have seen the look on his face, I think it was the first time he realized what effect these new uniforms have on his beloved Annabelle’s.”

Without Agnes, work became tedious. Helen did not realize the joy Agnes had brought to her day. No one else had the ability to make her laugh in quite the same way as Agnes because her laugh consumed her. When Agnes laughed, Helen laughed, sometimes with her, sometimes at her, but there always seemed to be something to tickle their funny bones. They had nicknames for the regulars: Shifty, for the man with the shifty eyes, Ms Tits for the buxom blonde who came in every morning for coffee, and Quaker Oats for the truck driver who ate oatmeal every morning for breakfast. The customers still came like clockwork, but without Agnes, the nicknames didn’t seem satisfying, they were merely customers.

What did not tickle her funny bone, was the gnawing sense that Agnes had been stealing. The tip jar on the counter was a prime target, it always sat there unattended, and more than once Helen saw Agnes take money from the jar and pocket it when she thought no one was looking. Now that she was gone, the jar remained solvent, bills and coins stayed put.

Several days after Agnes quit Helen and Jeff were getting ready for bed when their was a knock on the door. They were both tired. This was odd, no one was expected,  so when Jeff opened the door to find a most distraught Agnes, neither knew quite what to do.

"Can I come in?"

"Of course, what's up?"

She was so agitated that every cell in her being seemed on fire. She sat on the couch, fell on the couch is more like it, and speaking in a whisper, told them she was being stalked. 

"Stalked? Who is stalking you? You don't have to whisper,  only Helen and I are here.

"Please close the blinds."

"Ok." Helen closed the one remaining blind, tip toeing to the window at the same time rolling her eyes behind Agnes' back. 

"Who is stalking you?"

“I don’t know. Maybe one of the customers from Annabelle’s. Maybe one of the staff. That creepy sous chef. He gave me the creeps from the day he walked in the kitchen.”

“Were you followed today?” Helen thought about the sous chef’s absence, but said nothing.

“I think I was. Can I sleep on your couch tonight?”

“Of course.” Jeff grabbed a pillow and blanket from the linen closet, handed them to Agnes with a smile, went into the bedroom, and fell asleep quickly, like a small tired child exhausted from play. No stalker would disturb his sleep but this was not the case for the two friends who noticed a small dark car parked outside. The sous chef drove a small black VW.

Helen and Agnes kept vigil, waiting for the car to move, but it remained until about 2:00 a.m. when a patrol officer checked the car and told him to move on. With the aid of the cop’s flashlight, the girls could make out the profile of the sous chef.

The following morning Agnes was gone when Helen dragged herself out of bed. The sous chef was also gone from the kitchen at Annabelle’s. when she clocked in. He, too disappeared in the dead of night never to be seen again. Helen tried repeatedly to contact Agnes with no luck. She simply vanished.

What also vanished were the barf green uniforms. The little red and white checks reappeared, and business at Annabelle’s immediately picked up. The tip jar was almost always full but Helen’s heart was empty. For days her hands shook when she poured coffee, mixed orders, arrived late, burst into tears for no reason. Before going to bed at night, she always checked. The black VW parked outside frightened her, so much so that she called the police who told her that there was nothing they could do. The driver was not breaking the law. Not yet.

It's All Temporary

NATALYA AND VALENTINA

NATALYA AND VALENTINA

by Marianne Carlson

For as long as she could remember, Natalie had an imaginary twin. As a child her twin was her constant companion. Had it not been for Valentina, life in the small NJ suburban town outside New York City where she grew up would have been unbearable for it was Valentina who pushed her, kicking and screaming, to try out for the swim team, to sing a solo in Guys and Dolls in the local theatre production, to denigrate herself continually auditioning in front of bored clients looking for the perfect teenager. How ironic her life had become. Since the Ruth White Agency had signed her up, Natalie was  the perfect “girl next door” in magazines and on billboards. She sold shampoo, deodorant, jeans, her soul. As her fame grew, her ego, brittle to start with, diminished and was in danger of disappearing altogether. Natalie walked through the door,  charming agents and photographers alike, but it was Valentina who always sealed the deal. 

Tall and graceful, she moved like a giselle with the long, lean look of a ballerina. When she smiled, which was rare, she was captivating. When pensive, she appeared to be consumed with melancholy, her mind was clearly somewhere else,  not a good place for her to be. 

“Natalya, we have to be more careful, people are beginning to notice.” Valentina always called Natalie “Natalya.”

“Notice?”

“Yes, never talk to me in front of other people. They will think you are odd, that there is something wrong with you.”

Fear gripped her. As Valentina talked, a feeling  of  pure terror engulfed Natalie.  They were coming more frequently, the preliminary rush in her head leading up to a full-blown panic attack, leaving her weak, vulnerable and shaking.  She had learned early on to never let anyone know what she was thinking,  never tell anyone, never utter an opinion about anything. Valentina thought for her. The magnitude of losing her twin began to take hold from that moment on. Natalie’s reality, her fame depended on Valentina, without her she was nothing. 

“Look at it this way, Nat. I’m the alpha dog, you the beta.” 

“OK. Fine with me.”

But it was not fine. If you are always someone else, who are you? Natalie was a graceful swimmer, her free style times beat everyone else in her age group but while Natalie walked into the locker to change into her bathing suit, it was always Valentina who walked onto the deck of the pool.  And then there were those damn auditions. Natalie’s mother enrolled her in a spiffy advertising agency in Manhattan. The woman who interviewed her was everything Natalie hated - large, loud and brassy with lots of bracelets that clanked as she drummed her long red nails on her day planner while looking at Natalie through myopic, pale blue eyes too proud to wear glasses. One too many face lifts had frozen her thin lips into a smile that looked more like a perpetual grimace, and through that grimace she oozed hostility born from jealousy. Surrounded by young girls on the cusp of their   allure, hers had long since passed her by. As a result, anger bubbled below the surface, and  unacknowledged anger can be a very scary thing. There was no way Natalie could deal with the horror of this woman, but Valentina loved her.  She was a challenge, and Valentina loved nothing more than a challenge.  

“Dear, you are exactly what Ruth White looks for. How do you stay so slim?”  Both Natalie and Valentina hated it when anyone called them “dear,” it was the kiss of death as far as they were concerned.

“I swim.”

“Wonderful. Just keep on doing what you are doing and you will go far with us.” The Grimace said she would be in touch, and the next thing she knew Valentina was signing a contract. She signed “Natalie” on the dotted line.  

“Oh, my dear, you are lovely beyond belief,” Natalie muttered as she went down the elevator, talking to the mirrored walls surrounding her.

“You bet your sweet ass I am, and we are going to make some big bucks off of you, Grimace, ” answered Valentina.

And so it began: the “cattle calls,” looking for teenage girls for a fast foods commercial, a shoe line, a family scene advertising a mini van, rain gear. Natalie auditioned for all of them. The panic attacks reared their ugly heads on a regular basis. Every time she read or danced or smiled or cried or ate some God-awful processed cheese for yet another self-serving client, Natalie panicked,  but Valentina was always there to put the pieces together as quickly as she fell apart.

“Please swim to the edge of the pool, pause, and then climb slowly up the steps. Try it again, you almost have it.” The client for SwimGear was becoming exasperated.  It was hot on the deck and the lights from the crew and photographers were making it even hotter. Natalie began to shiver, she had been in the water for over an hour and she was cold.

“What am I doing wrong?”

“The timing is off, if you could swim a little slower, and then pause and wait before you climb the stairs.” The client, the ad people, The Grimace was pissed. 

“I can’t do this, I just can’t. Natalie’s world was beginning to cave in on her, the panic, the voices, they were in the pool, they were coming after her.  

“Over here, Natalya, over here.” Valentina waved from lane six, her white bathing cap and black goggles shrouded in a cloud of mist.  Natalie left lane one, and swam under water across the pool.

“What the fuck is she doing now?” The camera man shook his head while wiping the sweat off his red, pudgy face. 

Natalie’s lungs were caving in but she managed to reach Valentina.

“Valentina, I thought you had left me, I thought you were gone, this time for good,” Natalie sobbed.

“I told you, Natalya, I would never leave you. You need to believe me. 

The crew on the deck watched the white bathing cap go under water again, and waited for it to reappear. After ten minutes, The Grimace called 911.

It's All Temporary

AN AIRPORT ENCOUNTER

 

By Marianne Carlson

Tony was early. As he sat waiting in the generic holding pen the airlines created for passengers waiting to board, he watched her. Not especially attractive, yet for reasons unclear to him he couldn't stop himself from staring. She had the gift of youth, both a blessing and a curse - blessed to have a face clear of wrinkles or lines, yet her face lacked character, like a mannequin in Macy's window.  She was remarkably thin.

He checked his iPhone for messages. Nothing new. Now she was looking at him, her eyes somehow veiled as if glossed over by a microscopic film, yet he could tell she noticed him.  He couldn’t read her, he didn't know what to do. Approach or avoid? She looked at him with a half smile, almost a smirk,  as she removed her black leather jacket with a jerky impatience, took one more sip from her Starbucks cardboard cup and began leafing through a magazine, abruptly turning pages. Somehow he found her more attractive when she was not smiling. 

Every page seemed to annoy her. Everything seemed to annoy her, the magazine, the airport, the waiting passengers, life. She reminded him of a small stuffed animal, a tiger maybe or a lion that had suddenly been given the gift of life and had no idea what to do with it. From her boots to her thick mantle of hair, she was an enigma, but an enigma with fantastic energy who dominated the space they inhabited.

“Flight 460 to New York City has been cancelled due to inclement weather on the East Coast. Please check with the American Airlines ticket agent for rescheduling.”  Like sheep in a pen, they gathered up their belongings,  lap tops, briefcases, bags of half eaten food. The herd stood in line, approximately 25 disgruntled sheep, baying discontentedly. Tony stood behind the girl with the hair, a time bomb waiting to explode.

“Here we go again.” She spoke to no one in particular, but Tony took this as a good omen, and did not hesitate to answer. If he thought she appeared annoyed before, it was nothing compared to her present anger.

“We can’t blame the airline for the weather.”

“Why not?” 

“Well, it’s not their fault,” he answered weakly. 

By the time they reached the ticket agent, it was clear that they would not be going anywhere for awhile. Flights were cancelled up and down the coast, and both Isabelle and Tony were marooned, at least for the foreseeable future. While in line he learned that her name was Isabelle. It suited her.

“Tony? Is it really? I was engaged to a Tony. I will call you Anthony, Tony brings back very bad memories.”

“You can call me whatever you like.” Actually no one ever called  him Anthony, it felt as if she was talking to a stranger.

“Like a drink? It looks like we have nothing but time.”

“Sure.”

They made their way to a bar with a huge flat screen TV broadcasting a Knicks game. The volume was way too loud. She grabbed the last remaining table while he ordered a couple of beers. Between the Knicks and the disgruntled passengers, the atmosphere was anything but intimate, yet as soon as they sat down she began.

“I just had a marathon session with my boss, begging, pleading with him not to fire me, but he fired me anyway. I thought I  was more persuasive, but not so. It was: don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

“Oh, I am sorry to hear that.” He was surprised, she didn’t look to him like the type that spills all but he was to be in for quite a ride. She held her mug lightly, playing with the frost.  He couldn’t take his eyes off her hands, they were so beautiful.  She could have been a hand model, advertising soap or toilet paper with her long tapered fingers. Anything soft. 

“Where do you work?”

“Where did I work, is more like it.”

“Sorry, where did you work?”

“Rhinehart Labs. It’s a small laboratory in Los Angeles.”

“You’re a scientist?”

“You could call it that. Actually I am a chemist.

“I never would have guessed it.” His work in the art department in a small Hollywood film studio suddenly seemed insignificant, almost demeaning.

I was working on a huge project. Rhinehart perfected salt water chlorination, a replacement for chlorine  used in swimming pools.” 

“Really?”

“Yes, it was going great guns. YMCA pools all over the country were converting to salt water when suddenly people began to get sick. Certain viruses popped up. 

“Oh?” 

“A little boy died, we were sued, the Y’s stopped using our system, and that in a nutshell was that. Twenty of us were laid off, I was the first to go. 

“But it sounds as if you were on to something. Couldn’t the formula have been tweaked, perfected, made stronger?

“Yes, but the law suit wiped us out. And someone died. A little boy died, and I feel responsible.”

The transformation in Isabelle was remarkable. Tony sat in stunned silence as she dropped her mask. What remained was hard to look at: confusion, guilt,  the horror of the death of a child, and he began to feel uncomfortable because he realized that he was the first person she had confided in. Her pain was unbearable, he wasn’t equipped to handle it.

“I feel responsible. I was the one who signed off on the formula. I should have tested it further, but we were all in such a hurry to go forward with this. The money was unbelievable.”

The Knicks game ended. They lost in an overtime. Strangely the two strangers were aware of the score as they discussed the death of a six year old boy who had lived in Dayton, Ohio. It served as a form of comic relief to an otherwise excruciating topic.

“Perhaps you should go to Dayton, visit his parents?” Where that  came from Tony did not know but it was exactly the right thing to say.

“Will you come with me?”

“I will.” 

An exhausted ticket agent asked Isabelle, then Tony where they were going. They both changed their reservation to Dayton and waited in the same holding pen. Neither would ever be the same again. 

It's All Temporary

The Pickaxe by Rumi

The Pickaxe

tear down this house. A hundred thousand new houses can be built from the transparent yellow carnelian buried beneath it, and the only way to get to that is to do the work of demolishing and then digging under the foundations. With that value in hand all the new construction will be done without effort. And anyway, sooner or later this house will fall on its own. The jewel treasure will be uncovered, but it won't be yours then. The buried wealth is your pay for doing the demolition, the pick and shovel work. If you wait and just let it happen, you'd bite your hand and say, "I didn't do as I knew I should have." This is a rented house. You don't own the deed. You have a lease, and you've set up a little shop, where you barely make a living sewing patches on torn clothing. Yet only a few feet underneath are two veins, pure red and bright gold carnelian. Quick! Take the pickaxe and pry the foundation. You've got to quit this seamstress work. What does the patch-sewing mean, you ask. Eating and drinking. The heavy cloak of the body is always getting torn. You patch it with food, and other restless ego-satisfactions. Rip up one board from the shop floor and look into the basement. You'll see two glints in the dirt.

Rumi

It's All Temporary

Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert

Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It's the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it was a mistake, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last. Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist. Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.

It's All Temporary

WORK LIKE HELEN B. HAPPY

by Marianne Carlson

Valerie was a waitress, sometimes bar tender, sometimes in-house shrink at Annabelle's, the most popular watering hole for miles. In spite of the poor economy, Annabelle's continued to thrive. Some say it was because of the poor economy. Many regulars were out of work. With too many hours of daytime TV,  too many mind-numbing Angry Birds, too many items crossed off the to do list, people had to get out of the house. Significant others were becoming insignificant and on top of that, the dog was exhausted. He refused to take one more walk.

"Last night was a good night, I made close to $200 in tips." Valerie punched her time clock into the slot with a clunk, talking to no one in particular as she entered the kitchen a few minutes before noon.

"But I'm feelin'  it today."  She looked tired. Working so many late nights was beginning to show on her face. She counteracted this by too much make up around her eyes, concealer that never concealed, mascara that accentuated both the positive and the negative of her hauntingly beautiful blue eyes that craved more sleep. Although she was still young, somewhere in her mid 30’s, she had a matronly quality about her, a softness that made her easy to talk to. This was deceiving. A rapacious reader, she had a mind like a steel trap, packed with one liners. Male customers found themselves pouring their hearts out to her, tipsy or not, but they underestimated her sheer tenacity for survival. She never married, the only male she seemed to care about was her father who lived near by.

Anyone in the hospitality business knows there are two distinct parts, "the front of the house" and "the back of the house."  Annabelle's was a refuge for lost souls with broken egos, and those lost souls could be found in both houses. 

“Hi Val, how’s it going?” 

“Hi, Paul, it’s going.” 

With zero training in the restaurant business, Paul had been hired as a dish washer and worked his way up the chain - potato peeler, food prep, stock boy. Before he knew it he was behind the grill flipping  cheeseburgers and French fries. Tall and pencil thin, he was able to consume large quantities of food without gaining an ounce.  His skinny jeans were covered by a dirty white apron, his Converse All Stars never stopped moving as he danced from sink to grill, singing out orders. He looked like a skin head with his tattoos and earrings, but he wasn’t menacing as skin heads tend to be. Over Paul’s chopping block was a sign: WORK LIKE HELEN B. HAPPY, and he did. And he was.  

“Hi Paul, it’s going well but I’m bushed, I hope it’s quiet tonight. I just want to go home and sleep and sleep and sleep.”

“Well, be on your toes because Big Foot is on a rampage.” Big Foot owned Annabelle’s. Since he had no life, (other than Annabelle’s) he was always there. Nothing happened at Annabelle’s without Big Foot knowing about it.

“What now?”

“Some guy caused big trouble right before we closed last night.” A small , seemingly insignificant, shadow passed briefly through Val’s consciousness and then left as quickly as it came.

“Do you know who it was?”

“I think it was one of the guys who was laid off from the plant.”

“Who?”

“Not sure, but I guess he was pretty smashed.  Big Foot was pissed that whoever was tending bar didn’t shut him off. This is getting to be a real problem, when to shut people off. Gotta keep those bar tabs up.  Big Foot can’t have it both ways.”

The lunch crowd drifted in. Regulars took their favorite tables, patrons of Annabelle’s were very territorial, and Valerie knew almost everyone in the crowded room, where they would sit, what they would order, who they would vote for, who they loved. The tempo in the room picked up, a steady buzz, like waves of bees changed the ambience from a sleepy tavern into a ruckus of hungry patrons.  The bar crowd buzzed, everyone was talking about the bruhaha that occurred the previous evening.

Val had the ability to ignore waves of fatigue, sleep would come later, today she must work. As she placed orders, refilled drinks, cleaned tables, she was vaguely aware  of something. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Were people looking at her, as if in a new light?  Was it her imagination that the focus was on her?

“Big Foot needs you in the kitchen,” the bar tender told Val, pushing two beers towards her for her station.

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“I’m pretty busy, can’t it wait?”

“He said now.”

Val took the beers to her table and handed them over with a smile. Nobody smiled back. An eerie foreboding gripped her as she entered the kitchen. What the hell was going on? Paul and Big Foot were in Big Foot’s office, one of the kitchen lackeys was cooking in Paul’s station. This never happened. Paul never allowed anyone else to cook for him.

“Val, sit down.”  She took a pile of menus off the one available chair and sat.

“What’s up?”

“It’s your father, he was a part of the altercation last night.”

“What happened? Is he all right?”

“He was beat up pretty bad.” Paul told Val what happened. She could not have asked for a more benevolent soul than Paul to give her the horrendous news. As he held her hand, he told her how her father tried to break up the fight that occurred in the alley behind Annabelle’s.

“Where is he?” Is he all right? My father is not a violent man.” She found herself shaking all over, partly from the news, partly from the almost Christ like effect Paul had on her.

“He is in the hospital, you need to go see him.”

“Will you come with me?” She didn’t want to go alone, she didn’t feel strong enough.

“Of course I’ll come, I’ll stay with you for as long as you need me.”

Need is a sometimes thing, but Val’s need for Paul never left her from that day on. They stayed together during her father’s long, painful recuperation, their eventual marriage, and her difficult pregnancy. When Paula was born, he held her hand throughout eight long hours of labor. The staff at Annabelle’s gave Paula a tiny white apron. Val and Paul gave Paula a framed sign which they hung over her crib:  WORK LIKE HELEN B. HAPPY.  And she did. And she was. Today Paula owns Annabelle’s. 

It's All Temporary