Bad Luck Love

Not every day is fraught with the perils of bad luck but some days, its just not worth getting out of bed at all. Margo’s head drooped forward over her knees. Her bum was half frozen to the concrete sidewalk. Her jeans smelled musty and unclean. They were musty and unclean. She tried in vain to not scratch her head. Lice had moved in at some point and it was all just too much by then. She couldn’t face it anymore. She didn’t even understand how this had happened.

Weeks before this Margo had lived in the rich neighborhood. Her house was plaster and stucco and beautiful. Massive. They even had a maid. Her friends were the high class kind. The ones who swore fealty; but in reality hated you more then they hated their noses or that little bit of skin that crushed up against their waistbands. Margo wished she could be superficial again. How she was desperate for it.

A man passed her in ray-bans and a thick overcoat. He tossed a dollar down into the cup that sat at her feet. She gave him a weak smile, trying desperately not to be too noticeable but also just noticeable enough. She’d likely have to drown herself in the river if any of the high society crew saw her now. She scratched irritably at the lice in her now flat and waxy brown hair.

Of course this wasn’t her fault. Not really. It was that skunk, Geoff’s fault. Her husband had been a lawyer. Top tier. Powerful and charismatic. He had a million dollar smile and black hair that he pomaded every day. She had loved the smell of his hair. But he had betrayed her. Not only had he been cheating with the secretary, how boring, he was defrauding the government. She had no idea until the house was re-possessed and she was kicked neatly out onto the curb. He didn’t even bother to show his face. He called her from an airplane and told her bad luck love but she was on her own now. She could hear that little tart in the background giggling with him.

Margo stared at her sneakers. How did one get out of abject poverty? She’d always trusted Geoff. He did the financial work. He took care of the bills. He didn’t so much as leave her a red cent to survive on. It had been thirteen days now on the street in her one set of clothing.

She’d gotten very used to the idea of sleeping on the freezing ground. She could never raise enough funds to sleep in a homeless shelter. Who decided that? That the homeless had to pay for a bed each night, it was ridiculous. If they could afford anything they wouldn’t be sitting on the streets shivering in their boots. She noticed with worry that she was already associating herself as part of the “they”.

A woman in tall stilettos and a gorgeous pant suit passes now and mutters to no-one in particular the word disgusting. Margo wants to scream at these people. How dare they judge her. What choice did she have. She’d never worked. She met Geoff, fell in love, and they married. He set her up in luxury; working wasn’t necessary. Actually when you got that high on the social ladder you couldn’t work. You didn’t have the time. You needed to be constantly schmoozing and circulating.

She’d called a few different friends at the time of her ejection. Bad luck love they’d said just before hanging up. Not a soul among them. Not a single person thought that they should put her up in one of their many guest rooms or support her at all. She’d spent the first few days on the street kicking cans and being very angry. But thirteen days tempers the insulted feelings fast. Survival was the only goal now. Revenge would be later. Much later. If ever she could crawl out.

A paper floats down into her cup. She has missed the deliverer. She leans forward and plucks it out. Curiosity hasn’t failed her yet but ten to one says this is a rude message. They always are. That or a pamphlet to finding God. The paper is torn, the missive is in neat handwriting. Who even uses handwriting anymore? When do you begin to stand on your own two feet? It reads. When no-one else will do it for you. A bad pun? A riddle? A fortune from one of those hard little Chinese cookies? Margo stares at this paper with a long icy glare.

She stands up but it takes work. She is sore and achy. Her bum is asleep. Pins and needles shoot through her legs. Fine then, paper. How does she go about crawling out of this hole. She looks at the ring on her finger. A lawyer perhaps. But they’d never take her seriously as she is now. She doesn’t even have her wallet. Everything is still in the house. Since Geoff flew the coup the police have claimed the home as a treasure trove of evidence. She laughs at this idea. Now that she thinks about it Geoff didn’t really leave any imprint in the house. It was her. Her design, her furniture, her nick-knacks. His life was always self contained. Though in light of his criminal past, there was probably a reason for it.

Margo took her cup with its four dollars and went to a nearby coffee shop. They would glare down their noses at her but she’d get a coffee and maybe an application. She needed money and she was going to have to start from the literal bottom. She also would need to open a bank account but that was going to be probably nearly impossible. Maybe she would go drop into a mission or a church somewhere and see what they would do for her. She used to donate her dirty money to them all the time. There are photos in past newspapers of her considerable charitable donations.

After returning the application to the somewhat disgusted barista, Margo heads off in search of her Church. She’d once been a die-hard Catholic but in recent years she had stopped going and just sent money. Who had the time to listen to those stuffy speeches anyway, she'd reasoned. She had more important matters to attend to at the Country Club then.

The Church is a large Gothic revival building that boasts massive panes of stained glass. She enters the building slowly. She almost feels as if shes crossing some forbidden threshold. Its also perilous. People can recognize her here. A flood of feeling smacks her in the gut, warring with her embarrassment. Good she thinks. Let them see what they did to me.

Father Grober is the same stodgy old man as ever. Pleasant, judgmental without being openly so. In another life he’d have done very well among the socialites. He is floored by her current condition and can refer her to many good soup kitchens and missions but there is nothing he can do for her with regards to a permanent address.

“No address. No job.” she says to him in a thin worn voice before storming away. Once her voice was thick and luscious. It dripped with the riches and health that cloaked her comfortably. She storms out of the stuffy church.

She wanders around aimlessly. How can she sort this out? She goes to her old house. All her clothes are inside. Her purse. Not that she suspects shes part of the accounts anymore. Geoff was always quick to action. A shower. Oh how desperately she wants a shower. An officer stands guard at the door. They still suspect Geoff will turn up here eventually but they really don’t understand him at all. He’s never coming back and that realization hits her like a ton of bricks. Now she looks like a true crazy person, sobbing outside a rich house in front of a cop. She’s probably being viewed by her snooty neighbors now. They’ll be judging her. Bad luck love.

“He’s never coming back!” she yells randomly. She looks at the cop. He looks at her. He’s young and uncomfortable. No- one told him the crazies came here. She rushes up the small incline to the steps that lead inside her cavernous once-dom. “You are wasting your time.” her voice is almost venomous, not that its this poor mans fault.

“Please move along miss.” he says but his voice isn’t as firm as he probably hoped.

“I’m not a Miss.” she leans in conspiratorially and his hand goes to his gun. “I’m Mrs. Wicksham. I was left for dead! Maybe I am dead.” she does a turn. She’s lost it. She feels her loss. This is her new life. No address. No job. No way to crawl outside her own skin.

The officer is speaking into his radio. Another uniformed man appears. So neat, so tidy. She’s never realized before how strongly soap smells on a person. Its a squeaky smell. A smell of the unreal.

“Ma’am.” he states. “We’ve been looking for you.” A third man appears in a stodgy suit. Its brown and slightly wrinkled.

“Can’t be me.” she does a turn, pirouetting herself slightly away from them. “I’m just a crazy lady. If I had any money I could get a cat.” she cackles and hisses before repeating her new mantra “No address, no job.”

“We’d like you to come to the station. We have some forms and things for you to sign.” The uniformed soap officer steps toward her.

“Not me. Not me. He left me for dead. Dead. Thirteen days. How many more before I die?” shes spiraling and she can feel hot tears streaking her dirty face. She is unable to resist as they set her up in the backseat of the police car.

At the station she sits in a hyper sanitized room. She’s been here before. When the house was first re-possessed. Soap cop sits across from her with a folder in his hand. She’s spilled all about her last thirteen days. The myriad applications shes put in. The disgust she’s endured. The desperate attempts to put even a morsel of moldy food down her throat. Thirteen days of debasement and Bad Luck Love she thinks. Soap cop’s eyes are sympathetic but his fingers are tight around the folder.

“Your luck isn’t getting better.” his voice is strained. It’s probably her smell. He opens the folder. “These records indicate that you are the one who embezzled the cash.”

She laughs. Riotously. Shes crying shes laughing so hard. She can’t calm down. Margo points to herself as if it just paints the picture all the clearer and struggles to breathe.

“I realize you’ve been on the street without a penny but that doesn’t mean you didn't initiate the crime, just that you got double crossed.” faced with such outright psychotic mirth he’s getting annoyed.

“Well why not.” she folds her arms across her chest. She’s struggling to reign it in but already she can see herself provided for in prison. Not ideal but its better then the street. She’d be fed, clothed and clean. A veritable palace in comparison.

“Mrs Wicksham...” he begins but she cuts him off.

“Would I go to prison?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“I’m sure they’d go easy on you given the circumstances. Several years either way.” he returns but his eyebrow raises.

She agrees to confess but its clear very quickly that she doesn’t know the first thing about embezzlement or how to go about it. She doesn't even know which accounts were hit. The officer leaves her alone for a while and he seems to be sad. If this doesn't work she supposes she will have to try and find a pimp. She shudders. That would be the worst. But she needs cash to get out and there's no way to get out until she goes down.

They release her. Just like that shes back out on the street in the cold air. The idea of a pimp is painful. She walks to a lawyers office. She’ll file for divorce and attempt to get some of her life back that way.

They take her information at the office but they seem to be humoring her more then anything. But then the world can’t find her husband. He’s disappeared. Could she have him declared dead? No. He’s alive they simply can’t extradite him from his hiding hole with that little tart. As she steps back onto the street, it begins to rain.

Great. She trudges along getting soaked. A car roars past and the tidal wave tops her by a head before crashing down. She finds shelter under the bridge. A few others are there but they keep far away from her bedraggled mess. She mentally ticks off the things shes tried in the last two weeks to crawl out of this hole. Nothing is working. She’d flirted with the idea of prostitution far earlier in the days of numb stupefaction but at the crunch time she bailed. She couldn’t do it.

She could carry herself off to the river. Let her luck drag her under its murky depths. She’s bending her steps that way now without realizing it. Shes in front of the river, the muddy bank is squelching around her shoes. She takes one step toward the edge but pulls back. He’d win this way. How could she let him take everything including her life? But what is left?

She turns around to see a man standing on the road, rain spattering around his umbrella and he is staring at her. He beckons her up to him. She goes in abeyance though she doesn’t really know why. He’s magnetized, but when did she eat a magnet? His green eyes stare at her. His arm goes out and the umbrella is suddenly over her. The rain is pattering around her now but not on her. He is getting wet.

She cannot speak. She’s overwhelmed. Her face is wet with the tears she is now silently shedding. He does not speak. Just stares and holds that rainbow colored umbrella above her head while the weather turns into a storm that whips and hurls cold rain down.

“Good luck I was here.” he finally says.