“I…” My blood begins to boil. “Yes, sir. Right away.”
That’s their game. A free meal. As if they need it. The polo shirt Jay is wearing costs more than I’ll make this weekend in tips, and they certainly won’t be leaving me anything. All I can do is go tell Mr. Smith that the gentlemen at table six want to talk to him. He’ll comp their meal. He’s a pushover. Then he’ll take it out of my check because the customer is always right. I screw up enough on my own without having a group of arrogant jerks steal money out of my pocket. But what can I do? I need to keep this job if I want to pay my rent.
I just have to make it through the rest of my shift without strangling one of my customers…Home sweet hell.
An apartment on the east side of purgatory that I share with a girl who deals drugs to pay her rent and another girl who smokes so much weed in the living room I get a contact buzz just walking through the door.
“What’s up Kitty-Cat?” My roommate Laura looks up from her bong long enough to acknowledge me.
“Just getting off work.” I force myself to smile. “Gina around?”
“Nah, she’s making her runs.” Laura laughs. It’s a stoner laugh. There’s nothing funny at all, but she finds everything hilarious. “Want to watch some TV? I just started the newest episode of South Park. It’s hilarious!”
“Maybe later.” I nod. “I need to make a couple phone calls. I’ll be in my room if you need me.”
“Cool.” She leans forward, and I hear her bong start to bubble.
She’s wrapped her bong in Christmas lights. How festive. It might be the only holiday decoration we have in our apartment this year.
I never imagined I would end up here. Living with a drug dealer and a pothead. I had a good life, once upon a time, and it felt like a fairy-tale. Not anymore. That’s all in the past. I don’t live anymore. I just exist.
I need a fresh start. Anything, really. I’d even settle for better roommates. That’s the first call I have to make. Our lease is coming up, and while it will be tough to swing my share of the rent, I responded to an ad for a roommate in a much better part of town.
“Hello, this is Catriona Phillips. I called you yesterday about your ad for a roommate?” I sit down on my bed. “Oh, you already found someone. Okay, thank you.”
Another dead end. Just like my life.
My next call is to my mother. The conversation is fairly brief. We don’t have a lot to say to each other these days. There was a time when we would have spent hours talking about things we wanted to buy, my plans for college, and how we were going to gang up on my father so that he would take us to whatever exotic location we wanted to go on vacation.
Those days are long behind us.
After talking to my mother, I reach for my laptop and fight to get it connected to our neighbor’s Wi-Fi. He’s generous enough to leave it open so others can use it. I wish everyone were as nice as him. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep leeching it. My laptop seems to be on its last legs, and it will be a while before I can afford a new one.
“Oh wow.” I stare at an email in my inbox, and it feels like the wind is sucked out my chest immediately.
I have an email from a woman named Holly Huckleberry. I’m scared to click on it. One night, after spending a little too long in the living room in the middle of Laura’s bong haze and drinking some cheap wine that Gina brought home, I signed up for a Mail-Order Brides service.
I never expected to get a reply. I thought it was some kind of joke, but I felt like I was as close to rock bottom as I could get.
It’s gotten worse since then.
“This is crazy…” I click the email and start reading it.
It might have seemed like a joke when I signed up for it, but Holly’s response isn’t. She’s found a match for me. A woman in a town called Snow Valley has six sons who aren’t married, and Holly believes I’m a perfect match for one of them.
A guy named Nate. He’s a mechanic, well, he owns the mechanic’s shop in Snow Valley. He’s twenty-nine. Nine years older than me. His mother describes him as a bit rough around the edges, but a genuine sweetheart once you get to know him.
I fall back on my bed and stare at the crack in my ceiling. Sometimes I have nightmares that a million roaches or spiders are going to crawl out of that crack while I’m sleeping.