An Inerrant Arbitration Is Good For Winnie

Trigger Warning — sexual violence, potentially triggering mental health and substance abuse issues.

There is something wrong in the way Lisa Clark and Lottie Beene were made to be friends. Ostensibly enamored of good role models, Mrs. Clark told her daughter to approach Lottie and make like she wanted to make nice. It was junior high, and Lottie Beene had a reputation as a nice girl that was always on track. Lisa, on the other hand, had a reputation of looking for trouble.

Next, didn’t Lottie Beene’s mommy issue a warning to her own? No, she didn’t warn her too innocent, nice daughter to keep her peer group free of bad girls, did she? Well. She heard Lisa Clark’s, to herself, magical words, Will you be my best friend forever? As daughter Lottie had not yet been graced with an entourage of followers and rivals, Mommy Beene thought, Contest on.

She didn’t share with Lottie how much the prospect excited her. She didn’t even make known she had either heard or overheard the chikdren’s conversation. Nonetheless she expected her daughter and her social life to become interesting, as they had never been before. Sometimes it even seemed Lottie Beene was somebody else’s daughter. After all, learning how to stay in by kindergarten standards had been what went on with Lottie. All the time sharing is caring... etc. You’d think she was born to lose!

It was fateful to try to accept the entitlement with judgment identical to or superior to that which that greased her immigrant mother’s palms. She must compete to rival somebody’s avid engagement for showing against her. If it was inevitable Lottie would win, she couldn’t tell by looking.

All her entourage subtracted themselves from the therein equation. They were expecting coming of age to be as win or lose as is known can pass, regularly without dissension, in heathen and third world societies.

Lottie, now on her own, spent many arrested development hours resigning herself to live in the Land of Losing. After all, for base of support, there was nobody that would comfort her. Nor did anyone tell her how to go about, or even what to do with Lisa the challenger equally in the hearts of the crowds.

Today, Lottie has learned to use etiquette’s answers rather than give in to her own reactive temperament. She remembered other teens’ outbursts making people treat them to little or no popularity. in the same-sane circles where she and Lisa are up for trial even after all these years, it wouldn’t be seemly to come across enraged. Putting on the perfect show of equanimity, though.., was within range of Lottie’s strong, albeit grasping, hands. She could continue to be good to Lisa, the line of least resistance. After all, she was her BFF nominally — until love either improved them both for friendship’s sake, or it would bust them apart.

If pressed, many wives can admit that Lottie Beene’s mother was not in poor taste, preferring such a contest to go on instead of avoiding it until the options were taking a fervent nip several times a day, or being destroyed. No good could come from abject avoidance of such a loutish and unsettling relationship between ladies.

If this were the very first contest of its kind to take place under an ever so slightly orange sun... even so the “contest” must go on, even if it is all going to come to a head explosively if these conditions keep up.

Yet you ask, what for has so panicked a wager gone up, as to how this is possibly going to end badly? Do you have to picture enraged woman pulling each other’s hair in a fracas WWE big?

Sigh. Surely the end of the day has to come every night as usual on God’s big earth. So long as every thought of the loss of a familiar triangle, once known to be fully as beautiful so as to resemble a masterpiece in rhythm-and-blues style... comes up empty handed... “No, I can’t remember back to the days when Dad was still alive. “

As can be seen beforehand, it can only make the world drip with heaviness, or pity, but not too much sadness. — Like when one is staring at eaves on a drain pipe atop a rain-wet house, under a great big sky darkened frightfully for the entire duration of a heavy, heavy tropical storms — fear would be what most grownups experienced, mainly because property could be damaged — but not all would be lost.

Lottie is a courageous girl. Not even in the worst case scenario is there any reason to forget she could and always had fended for herself, despite losing her Big Daddy. It was because of a genetically complicated blood disorder that he died.

…

Albert Rogers does find it promising that Lottie’s mother has never hesitated to display her haloed smugness before all the world. When Mrs. Beene felt smug, she did ask people to thank her for it. Considered by her to be the first and most trusty of her most savory range of happy emotions, a smug person, once you get to know her, is actually among the easiest to get along with, while we’re real.

Mrs. Beene lifted up her hands for dua prayer, and she asked God to make it known to Lottie, her daughter, that she was not alone even though no one wanted to speak aloud about the grueling nature of contending anymore with that little hellion called Lisa. Lottie might even deserve to know, entitlement-wise, Allah’s Mind. Mommy wanted Lottie to take His most loving suggestions on what was available in the storeroom of easy courses of action she may want to keep as a game plan. To keep up appearances in and around school or town, if it worked, Lottie could be caught embracing the nemesis most insincerely. Then there was the possibility He most stridently meant to recommend a more completely passive way.

What does her own special brand of submissiveness look like to Allah? He might even require Lottie to know in her heart that it was right not to evaluate nor ask people to judge her, so long as she kept up all her levels of basic prayer, as she needed to prove to God and to the world that she meant to stay on track, on the paths Allah liked to choose for her, the right way to let her shine. She is easy and beautiful. She doesn’t reject her own presentable self, not even when taxed or stressed, but when girlfriends are doing kinds of cocaine all about you, just some stressed bunny below Lisa’s ever shifty entourage of nice addicts... privacy seems so exorbitant, perhaps it will never be properly achieved in her life.

…

Mrs. Beene’s insistence it is, that Albert Rogers under God was the only one authorized to let Lottie know how much like one’s own prized little family society can be. Society, while larger and potentially more exciting than family... it pretty much never aims to bestow mercy, pity, and compassion equally unto the worthless. As Albert Rogers does like to affirm, Mrs. Beene’s candid observation about it is spot on.

It behooves society to bless or relegate trouble to members of any of its tribes before any of it has been arbitrated past due. It is also one of society’s greater successes, to Mommy Beene’s black metallic irises, that some people find their place in the world to be simply ingratitude, or failure. For those of us whose place it is to be a little better off, oh well, there is forever instead. We can struggle one minute and be grateful the next.

Therein arrives the caveat. No woman’s sensation, even that which is angled to resemble remorse, shame, or a uniquely misshaped appetite for love, can by itself predict that only good is coming to her peers. Nevertheless, rather than bestowing love on the opposite sex without being told first to do it, it is Lisa’s tort that betrothed ladies have to tell her how high to jump. Or preferably, she would have to take down the details of each inalterable contract with their men. She can read said contracts before adding to each her signature, that irrevocable signal of understanding as to whose terms are spelled out on vellum parchment. Like candy, the vellum contracts each betoken that her frenemies’ husbands have devotedly signed in perfect ratio, one for one to cut her out of their lives.

Sounds harsh, huh?

Lottie at this time has learned to admit, openly, that she cannot save Lisa and it is so like the worst of the past to keep leaping out the dumpster after all this time. After it was thrown out for being weak, still the offending, regrettable document makes as if Lottie must fully admit to its existence, which rightfully can not be denied once she stares at it. But let me tell you, it is like Lisa’s sanitation crew have not cleared out any of her garbage with Lottie, not in the past twenty five years!

Lottie’s betrothed is going to find such and such blackmail material as deluxe as it comes. Defensively, she realizes that from now on, only the real fighting, and/or the willingness to succumb unto an unhealthful level of clamor on the agitated side of equatable things, will be. A sequence of unsavory selfies will count as essential enough,. She’ll be “in.”

Achieving again the proper distance between the (soon to be married legally) Rogers and the mensch could require taking a needful priority stat. We must continue to be kind. We are against amassing votes towards our own perdition. We like perdition for ourselves approximately as much as we like the overuse of ammunition well after diplomacy has promised and proven itself the big(ger) bang for the bucks.

…

Perhaps easy to call to mind is how known it is to Lisa that Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Beene, as mothers and fence-guarded neighbors, each wanted to election to uncover and declare either one of their daughters a proven winner. Lisa Clark herself was thrilled at any chance to try to make her peers fall from grace. She already had fallen in sixth grade! Those of adequate humanism surely at this time could pass Lisa and Lottie as a case in point. Girls are less than predicted until nobody wants them. Yet Lottie somewhat fallaciously deems herself to be a giving and supportive person both to kith and kin.

As she is an equality-loving Homo sapiens, Lottie wants the world to concede that which cannot be denied Does that smart as a matter of fact? “I love being considered first and foremost a Homo sapiens. But first let the world insist she come up faster with a readier acknowledgement of what is real about being Allah’s favorite species. With the aid of her newfound access to the higher truth, what is more important than being loved by Allah? What was? What forever shall be? Or each meditative moment? Although she and Albert Rogers are alike created by the one infallible Lord they both believe in,… she knows her own powerlessness doesn’t compare with him above all winning a lot. A lady’s disadvantages are fairly lasting on this earth, as many a cultural connaisseur deliberately controls it.

…

Wasn’t it singularly frustrating and fruitless to try avoiding a falling out with the nemesis while she, Lottie, was tiny and alone? Lottie’s somewhat humorous description of the freedom that came next goes like so. Lisa granted Lottie ‘s request to leave town, for increasingly, it had been like working for peanuts on an ugly old plantation that couldn’t even afford two coats of paint. Hardy har. Har.

Outside opinion today is as courted or solicited by Miss Lottie as it has ever been before — because she knows they will go between her and the frenemy just as painlessly as before; as only those decent or even perfect at being strangers can do.

The issue is that Lisa’s loud sobs have been giving headaches to Lottie for weeks now, along with irking her friends who indirectly attempted the showing of concern, to see if they could help, It is true that a completely syllogistic whoredom is coming around in time for a special placement for Lisa to take this year. This seems to be everybody’s most empathic and therefore final answer.

.....

In the beginning, Lottie Beene had thought a bromide correctly accounted for Lisa’s on again, off again animosity towards otherwise respected peers. She had been proven inconsistent in benignity, even towards good and faithful Lottie. Honestly neither of them girls knew when to start signaling the friendship seemed to be over. Nor did Lottie do anything but surmise on how “Misery Loves Company” could be spelled “platonic commiseration among females.”

Lottie didn’t even think it more painful to agreeably be declaring all about how hard life really is, all the time tying up the mobile cellular like there was no good alternative. It was one fair and square way to go about the proper upkeep of this, her most taxing of friendships, was about all she guesstimated. It was requisite to use slang jargon and be with it.

Later in life, though, in thinking to accept a reprimand for a careless mistake she undertook just once, she decided the motto “Love is friendship” was too dangerous a slippery slope to enjoy herself. A small yet important matter it was, despite all the weird Tory value the opposite attitude did appreciate a bit carelessly.. After a time, even to think “Love is Friendship” could be classed as an appropriate term to live by, for a religious girl like her, just seemed gay or something. Lottie soon became prideful enough to start stepping in time with her own family values instead of the other girls’. She began to pray earnestly, despite the sickening sense that came over her that it could be too late, for all could be lost.

Everybody’s personal relationship with God is measured in the knowledge that despite all the right answers being known for a few of us religious types right from the start, it is even so that we make what we knowingly perceive, either dimly or lightly, as bullheaded choices against His stipulated will, each and every day.

Choosing the line of least resistance does lead a religious person places most people have never experienced. For instance, the nadir. Religious people experience letting God down by disobeying as a great demise, even the first time we’ve done something wrong. The same behavior found in one who has never studied his or her feelings by and large utilizing the standard light of a black rather than clear conscience won’t ever even feel as the measured do. When Lottie or Mr. Rogers break away from a commonplace religious ruling, it is as awful as to be unambiguously dubbed “reckless soul endangerment.” It may be that even Allah grades or marks us who love Him more harshly than anyone else. But we want to be near him, as compared with everybody else that barely knows him. So we take a shorter tether.

Bitterly is how Lottie concedes the battle she lost. Wrong-headed choices, we all make practically every chance we got. But it isn’t a small number of us Soul Cohorts that are neck to neck in cordial relations.

…

Being that she did wish to gather towards herself more happiness, less misery, Lottie did intend to own all her choices and decisions before the end. It could not be said that being out of control was frequently her own condition. Albert Rogers found not a little support for an ultimately perfect, yet perhaps drawn-out legality between his fiancée and her good old frenemy. Even for Lisa, there would be empathy.

Most people of devotion and religious bearing can no longer bring themselves to fault poor, oft-befriended Lottie for the length of the game called Chance, Fate, and Destiny. Under the guise of a such and such Best Friends Forever “Contract,” it was hard to escape. Many of the times that something more political than mere congeniality was called for, Lottie too could be so nastily entrapped as to show that she, too, could lose the standards of forever decorum. It was inherently within that she’d been overtaxed.

Lottie had never before afforded to herself any good grasp of Lisa’s secretly challenging mind. Lottie had liked blinders!

Evidently, though, the “Hit me where it hurts” law was indeed the one invoked most often for the more capricious points of establishment. When she was younger, Lottie wouldn’t have planned to hurt anyone, nor chosen to retaliate when someone boldly hurt her. She had truly feared the slogan, Fight fire with fire. You could be burning down the house! All that can be known indirectly and informally to be truer of one of the girls has made Lottie open up for a chance at true love or even real marriage. Lisa, meanwhile, just shamed her third live-in husband when she decided to go out, having really learned to spread her legs to any and every Dick, Tom, or Harry that comes strolling in to find her.

That she used to be Lottie’s most time-consuming friendship doesn’t fall forgotten by the wayside. Thanks to a redundant pre- engagement, well known by all peers of either girl. Lottie’s redundant flurry of announcing it, plus Mr. Rogers open letter to the universe, seem to have inspired a lot of people to start hollering. “Let the lowering begin.” To that end, ever since winter season began, she also lays flat on her belly to admit those of them who wanted to allow that. They shall pursue her the full length of her hallowed egress.

Lisa’s rank resentment, if there is any... it persists for the sake of the fine lady Lottie is, for the record, for the truth in scores, and as a formality, to be reckoned the final day. Albert Rogers as an eligible male has stepped up finally. It should be because of his splendid display of mating song and dance. Where once she was blind, now Lottie can see, as he prayed she would. Eight farm animals he chose for the status conscious type that she is. She values the farm animals as if the goal to realize them as completely partition-free was like he was asking for the impossible to be made possible just for him because he had to have her.

He has consciously been able to signal in decisive ways that it is time for the whole world’s to grant acknowledgment of the difference in class that had always been there between lady Lisa and Princess Lottie. Could it be finessed in such and such fashion that from now on in, the disparity in the girls’ ranks is to be something they all could likewise agree should be spoken of doggedly if devotedly. Has the germ’s point been made before all the world? Albert’s deep sincerity when it comes to the agreements of heart and of faith cannot be denied. Still Lottie fears getting married again could wind up making her lose all the ruses of maidenhood for the second time in her fully invested if exasperating life.

...

Still, is there something for Lottie to stew about? Observers of the precarious nature of the on-again friendship blooming between Lisa and Lottie in this eventuality that Lottie’s announcements aren’t dissolving in inner reservations worse than a Nestle’s chocolate bar sitting outside in the sun. Old hometown can only thank Albert Rogers for the drama of Lisa feigning interest in any good coming to Lottie this time around. Lottie just hopes nobody’s wedding announcement does her out quite as baldly as that.

They mean to know this man Albert, who Lottie claims to be affianced by. He interestingly helped to develop those two girls’ themed bouts of the For Life friendship. Yes, passably the first marriage to a friend couldn’t survive the careless use of relationship jargon as if he, the old groom, didn’t care about these things with her at all. It had been, for him, just an opportune time to mate with a girl he thought no prettier or mire desirable than any other.

The neighbors have opted to share with Lottie, in secret ways, the opinion that this Albert Rogers be made to feel completely welcome. His standards-driven take on the near familial relations she has with Auld Lang Syne should undergo a formal process of standardization.

His trick, making the girls’ true sentiments for one another count for once, making sure the comparisons stuck by his redundant willingness to help Lottie study it. In the past, she was always being shortchanged by the gossipy powers that be. Even though she used to dislike stake-driven conversations taking place in public, she’s done it a little for this suitor. By the light of high school cliques about it. Finally Lottie has been openly competitive. It is the wonderful test of desire people have finally witnessed as in her, Southern scansion!

A little on point and a little ennobling for Lottie it has been, as much as Alpert has encouraged her to know what he has done as an eligible bachelor courting her. He admires her looks about equally as much as he feels an urge to rescue her from feeling different or alone. How could she resist? “I will require and require your lovingkindness,” is one statement he expects her to learn how to read “Unlike that Lisa’s requirement it is. That girl from a hometown ago expects everybody to be in bed with it to let it be well-known that, at the tender age of forty seven, she has finally completed her coursework on how to be a trunk. Finally she has the rightly sized trick as gratis to each of her worthiest old friends. The one that didn’t give up caring about her, if actions speak louder than words — which they don’t always… — for her there could be a really good show. She was tricking for her.

…

Even though it took a long, holy passage of time for Lottie to turn to prayer about her own difficulty registering what has become of Lisa about herself… the moment has come. The Innie nature of “discussions” with her man have made it such that, even after all the years denying Lisa’s clear and present badness controlled her choices, today there it has been again, paid in full. There shall be paid!

God almighty, the orienting that has come from parlor time with Albert Rogers has seen about Lottie’s map of the world. Finally she has been made to comprehend as with no other person - not parent, ex-husband or friend. No one has ever shared so much before this. Now she wants to be seen with him in public!

While Lottie is a pietistical woman, startlingly so even to the predictions-oriented lovers along with their devout peers witnessing the sudden yet long-lasting reception base — everybody in the world has to concede she needed it. None of what has been these three years in the parlor can be called short-lived intended for a brief game of “ Didn’t we almost have it all? The clear sightedness about society’s upchuck over platonic, value-laden friendliness that Lisa still hasn’t proved she loved more than she could diss... even if she has not at all coincidentally chosen these midlife years to start taking flights away from home sweet home.

Back in the day, Lisa would regularly shortchange Lottie. Apparently she used Lottie for the greater ease of pleading that using sex and drugs for happiness, etc., is the very thing the nemesis does have as her hard core wealth even today. The main wish I have for her is that this time around, the men in her life remember it is customary to have a token monetary exchange to secure the deal. Just the going rate.

Things are so different from the way it was in the olden days. It is all augmented, and without any proper prayer ritual to call her own, Lisa never did have a chance to prove she could handle all her own problems. As far as Lottie now knows, no religious person has prayed against Lisa’s finances nor against her marriage it would be a small sin. Who can admit her honky of a husband made her do it, of hoping to pay the monthly bills?

Honky husband needs the money. Hence, the proffered ultimatum came from their drug dealer. “Mollies are good for you. And isn’t it high time you give up that soft-nosed inclination to say your life without good sex and drugs wasn’t all that bad!”

…

Back in the old hometown, misery was a theme that made Lottie needful of a little self-comfort. It required healthful attitudes and upright people skills. By contrast, in the new hometown with prayer as regular as the postman, Allah has moved her to make seek his answers from him instead. It takes out the guesswork, thankfully. Lisa had always loved to be seeded her own bad reputation. It took perspective to see that at all. By contrast, Lottie and Albert today are a Princess and a Prince. They are waiting on formal coronation, hopefully by clergy to allow for completely proper marital relations to begin for them.

But... Lisa’s story.

Lisa the promiscuous always did quickly afford the “Misery loves company” motto as an excuse to escape from every relationship tie in public, as mainly she alone could so creakily seek to destroy. Lisa is a Tahitian living la vie preva. She affords throwing away male and female cares. She exchanges them for drug-enhanced sex around the clock.

Her mom suffers from so much gray hair because of her. This is so much so, that after some time, even Lottie seems to have commissioned the prostitute. She herself has been caught telling her she had better learn when to come and go. Madam Lottie is more known to the jury, compared to the one facet of self who’d continue to pacify. That more quixotic Lottie isn’t gone, nor can it be predicted anybody wouldn’t like her.

Perhaps as evidenced by the plenitude of adequate outside observers that had always been there, it can be known for sure that Lisa invited people to judge her. Lottie similarly recognized her own needs to be aa inviting. For people to openly express and share with her their opinions, and by the lights of their proffered roans, she feels more popular and less alone.

In all depictions of Lottie’s tumultuous heart, people can trace her complaints, nearly mute and inaudible, in order to see how inevitable was the outcome of the Lisa-Lottie experiment on friendship. There is one thing a lady cannot do for another, even if she didn’t herself intend to harm anyone except for inadvertently. So, Lisa found enough men that could help her, in getting on the Horse as if for the first time. Now she counts customers, one or two per day, as her means to significance in the world.

....

It is said that on Judgment Day, we may owe intercession to the weak for what it is worth even at that late date.

It is funny how Lottie did but need to have reliance on the quick and easy gambits that the world had for her. It had to come before they could care to see that Lottie’s motives towards Lisa were never sinister, almost as if she had merited an award. And if all the malice at this time was a one-take fairy tale, somehow Lottie’s soul is considered the more intact.

“No, Lottie to us certainly is no boy-crazy, maven type… “ they’d always had to know as a binding truth. Her crushes had good boundaries. Nonetheless, the result of not knowing it, coupled with her extreme faith in platonic love and good company had her making hazy, unproven predictions for herself and for Lisa. That everything is going to be alright, she wanted to take for granted.

But Lisa’s pearlier conversations had her ruts and good times alike mostly engaged by revengeful settlements for each of her bad relationships.

Lottie wanted all her family-level relationships to guarantee they would be there offering and partaking in the formalism so peaceful as to announce, even to the extent of being in print,“All is forgiven.”

It isn’t exactly rock and roll.

“So Lisa, just suppose we, you know, you and the real boys, um, like, see to it. You know, our togetherness.”

...

Lottie stood in front of the dresser mirror agreeing a

with her reflections about the rule of germs; a moderately “on” immune system could achieve positive visualization as the cure for the common cold itself. You’d be surprised at what the mirror answered her with, after brushing and styling her hair so it would no longer fall in her eyes.

“By the understated ruby and diamond charm that I wear around my neck, like how a famous sports star can wear a large medallion… I will win, so long as I stick with that which Uncle showed me I have known inherently better than her. About that, I mean, counting every female family member to be someone as angular in familial love as she is true to us… whether witch or Angel... I will go on being a supportive friend. It is the only role that will pay it forward to me in the end.”

”Though I wish she weren’t sex and drug addicted, my wish that she couldn’t make me feel ill as a contract, I feel carries more freight. About the odds of our scores stopping at love, ignoring infarcts and other hopelessly unsportsmanlike conversations and behavior only criminals could root for. For all that? Even Lottie, whose reflections in grace as she studied being entrapped no better than an image... Lapsing into thought from one religion being incompatible with a more pragmatic and strong line with her chosen religion... she feels it is time to convert to Islam one more time.”

”Me, I have always had my wish I could up and speak and do for her... ensuring no more painful, unannounced visits from that girl Lisa, the most unrighteous… but I am only a sacred mirror from Fez.”

…

Her twenty fifth birthday, Lottie spent with family. “Today, Uncle Hugh, what do you have that you want to say to me?”

”It is the heart of caring that you have. From now on, give your care to Albert Rogers. He is enamored with you. He deserves for you to render your own familial love of love... and it is dope. Your love of family ties is transferable unto the worthy up and comer, Rogers, who is attracted to you, so attracted he even dreams as you do, that you’ll be a couple in life beyond Jehannat and up to Heaven.”

I’m in love with Albert Rogers for you, as sure as I can sense you would feel more calm if every minute, your world of loving family members could predict to be forever as pleasing to you two as to the professional harpsichordist invoking Allah’s will.”

“If only because he is a man, although he loves you alright, you need to always insist he let you in. You want to be intimate, to try and be everything to him. You know where you stand with him, every given minute and second of the hour.”

”You must give, in order to get. Give to him so that you can get what you need from him. You crave his solicitude and his promises. I can tell you something for your need to know. We men, being less suggestible than ladies, we take reminders.”

“Let him be aware of why in the world and pray it all the way up so it is even known in the heavens... he does love the religious ideal of being in love and married to you, his better half truer in first place. To be with a good lady, or a zina established, is Albert’s goal, so he can be seen as a good sheep in need of his ewe. Don’t know why he chose you, yet? You struggle as much as he thinks bad girls average.”

“He knows me well enough than he cannot rule me out. Or aren’t I nearly exactly as is — his in-think, made of pure imagination, couldn’t cast a pale better than to make me wonder myself. Is it like I’m real? I promise you, Uncle, just for letting me see how much you can bend a rule and tell me sweet somethings to think on, that i will make a practice of reminding my man all the time!”

“Each time he lets me in and puts me in the know, per his heart, I will show him how much love and mercy there is in the day. To make better the livid times, love is born of trying to establish the blooming trust there can be between a man and his lady. One million folds before each night. I will learn of his heart especially at night.”

”Thanks, Uncle. If I sound as sappy as a underage girl, my excuse is that my eyes are going blind! Do I need to go in for one more laser surgery, the better to see his? On the horizon, I try to cajole him.”

i have to wait for him to move decisively beyond my winning of this, his lottery ticket. If we get it together first and next patch it up with formal upright witness during the day some time after, I’m in Tahiti. If we see each other in the flesh before a formal exchange of terms and vows, do you think I won’t be sorry?”

“i especially won’t be sorry if he, Albert, composes himself enough to see about getting local clergy’s-blessings on our formal vow exchange. People from Tahiti give the lady’s jewel to her pimp of a husband before he makes any terms known. Arent i paranoid enough to be, instead of a heathen, a Kurd to the citizens of Turkey? As serious as I happen to be, I doubt I would survive if the mean idea turned up to bite me and it was next proven he wanted me only as his sexploit.”

Lottie scowled. “So, accept my thanks if you don’t give me bad advice, Uncle. If I am just forward enough, and I do not mean to be misunderstood as fresh as a head of lettuce... I can thank your guarded right to speak with good discretion of me.”

…

“Count on this being between us, Malaika Mikhaïl,” ruled Albert Rogers in his letter to the universe. “Mikhaïl, I am aware you can recognize a charming lady yourself. But you know a few of Lottie’s peers were long ago aware, firsthand, of how unguardedly she used to carry on with Lisa the rat. Through you, I seek somebody who had only a crush on her. Perhaps the person was mislead against knowing her to be of great or excellent character. He lost interest, once the lie was established. Afterwards, he was sheepish around the collar.”

Lisa had planted as gossip that Lottie was a very snobbish, uncaring, back-stabbing little girl. She said that Lottie had no love for anyone but herself. Years went by, the rumor challenged only subtly by each of Lisa’s bed partners. With them, no good proof was ever forthcoming that Lottie could even do so much as shoo flies successfully on her own. This weakness of hers was bad for the male ego.”

”She so wanted love and not a substitute. Love is that which many reach for before they remember to turn to Allah to answer to all perceptible needs. In the patriarchal scheme of things, that young tough called Michael Carson may now have a right to see about Lisa. For Lottie and me.”

”Michael, do you read me correctly to know you’ve got the right,” continued Albert’s enclosed letter, “as somebody seen to be privy to lovingkindness … to cease giving over to that back stabbing Lisa. Her family comes across short in the balance of proving they do care about her at all. “

“Lottie lets it be known how her nemesis, in a younger time, well, she used to call everybody in without much clear warning. In time, though, her reputation caught up everybody to the very drums in their sensitive ears. Anyone taking a liking to her should expect their most formal and important conditions or terms of friendship in some deeply unrequited way.”

“Lottie’s family allowed it, we’ve seen — instead of taking on the to them their most drastic option, to purposely reason with Lisa. I guess you would have to be an American President to effectively rule how to keep a parasite away from precious blood. Lottie’s thoughtful, supportive natural tend was now siphoned by the need to be an actress with her livid more qualities in display. It was just as if she would always be there for her no matter what, even if Lisa was taking advantage of Lottie and besmirching her at the same time.”

“Thus. they went on as if pleasant to each other, until even she, Friend in Need Lisa could passably expect to find a place at Lottie doctor’s office next — ostensibly the next of kin!”

”Throughout their high school years, they were seen together on a daily basis, as inseparable as two peas in a pod. That was so long ago! And so, now, for my bride, could Lisa be there no less than before? In a pinch? She still thinks Lottie able to engage on secular terms. My Lottie, contrary to the picture Lisa daily attempts to pass, of a known Lottie — approximately as insouled and religiously forsworn as a laminate floor. That is, somehow the best known use for her is to endure being frequently covered in dust bunnies. As adorable as are her mentions, we want Lisa to be so excited with the gift of giving that cones from us as to forget to try to convince anyone we never gave her a thing.”

“Now, I’ll bet you are wondering what I meant when I suggested Lisa wanted to be as central in Lottie’s life as to be ranked like next of kin. What does next of kin have to do with it? I am to be her next of kin. And well, as Lottie might say at this point, you didn’t have to be the world’s greatest psychic to know that the hardest burden on Earth for Lottie to endure in their shared past was Lisa’s Goti fishy emphasis on her sudden loneliness.”

”Whereas her family had always accepted her set-apart nature as a beautiful if placid way for her to be without questioning any of the ways of the world. Family had through the years more or less required her, and never had they taken it upon themselves to purposely make her feel bad. I guess this is what they mean by nemesis. Lisa took an imaginary highlighter and used it to mark Lottie. She wanted it “knowable” by druggies and sex addicts of her inset that Lottie’s first emotion to them was pain, instead of the tranquillity her family had attributed to Lottie all the God-given length of her life.”

”I want to be the only one that really knows what goes on with Lottie. Putting somebody on display is one thing. But if I’m to be intimate with her — and thus probing you to know for me, that she is all I wish for — I have to cancel all the lip from Lisa. She really makes Lottie annoyed. The three brain cells in her mind that aren’t deaf seem aware how common law thinks Lisa unfit for social life these days.. Before all my harangue is wasted, can we, Michael, and I mean you and I, do a little finagling with the public’s awareness of who is whom in lawfully lesbian jealousy.”

...

Hometown this side of life.

Just as Lottie’s lifelong patience under the Reckoner’s nose, awaiting his hard bounty announcements — now has come the time for her own spark and shine to come into play. Finally ready for the big plunge we happily know as marriage to be all we ever see to speak about... when will she let me know the lottery ticket is good?

As is second nature to all beings in love with God and his gracious plenty, Lottie opined something years ago. It was that He in His infinite wisdom, glory, and might by now would have a remedy for the “friend-seeking” harassment that Lisa is too bored with life not to enjoy. Without constant sex, like a prostitute, Lisa hopes all the time for a rescue by strangers’ demands for a good fuck. Once and for all, Lisa held on to her frenemies too tightly. It is high time she be known as the trunk, always in the same corner of the room, full of ever day stuff that fulfills no immediate need — not being sex, right?

Fittingly, people did need to start figuring that what she most of all needed or just wanted ever since childhood was to be told when and where to go.

As for Lottie, she is all for the sense of importance that an Albert Rogers ranking can accord will go her way. She feels a little cocky now about how her prayers seem to be answerable.

“Lisa will once and for all stop turning to me for direction, except for up-seeking her established pen-and-ink right to be our hedonist prostitute forever. Let’s have any “Worried about you” phrasing of our junior high conversation come to an end when it comes to her. Childhood ends, too.”

“We will take her to a more permanent place. We will cross the picket line from where I was protesting alone. From now on, we will encourage Lisa to forevermore lose track of the rules that tendered to favor her in polite society.”

”She used to shrug and say, “Anything Goes.” By now she is a danger to herself, consuming the poison all of us BFs have for her, while it is still not proven that we are an active threat. How could I have treated such a psycho like she was normal? I was under nemesis thumb, I guess. She could harm ladies only so much as she could bury us in our own nag nafs, as she so fluently did in yesteryear.”

Incidentally setting the bedrock to accurately be able to predict when this fussily purchased right was as all the stars of destiny could afford for her. Who?

Lisa is a homeless prostitute basting herself with heroin in an unregulated part of some strange new city that was never any of our high school hangouts. It is a tenement she is squatting in. She is just waiting for her thirty or so johns to show how well she is there for extreme, Warren Beatty-style use and abuse until she runs out of stash.

You should know, as the one truly psychic prediction Uncle had ever witnessed Lottie absent-mindedly making. about her friend, it was the startlingly satisfying that he knew it was coming, as long ago as twenty-five years ago. There was neither an anguished nor a triumphant look on Lottie’s face. She was hypnotizing in that minute, in a trance of her own. It was how he knew that telling Lottie she didn’t have to change her conversational and relational rules of engagement. That wouldn’t be necessary, no, not to show Lisa mattered more to her than a honey bee or an ant.

Catching up, it can be seen that Lottie is forever a skillful listener, making and breaking no conditions important to the lovers of speed. What she loves is to see someone make everyday, minute to minute choices, and then help the, be measured against every second guess if any great weakness or relative strength. Lottie normally listens unconditionally, except of course if the postulate speaking intends more so to harm her, than to take a free champion. It could work a little more than it irked. Preferably before all is lost in a predictable ending, kairos will have been achieved - not without her stamp. How prayerfully she is her peers’ witness under God.

In knowing Lottie to be the deeper girl and the more truly good girl of the two, he arbitrated for her the prediction with one sharp affirmation so suddenly there as to be a little alarming, if it hadn’t been he could as characteristically so with him, count on a change in conversation topic to be absolute. At that time, he was as occasionally so absolute they were closing the subject with no further ado, Lottie plumb forgot she knew or had said something.

In Arabic, the word is Alhamdulilah. It means that, if, according to God it already is His plan, soon it is that the plan will be carried through. All our human selves do as witnesses is confirm we can see that all praise belongs to Him. Uncle Hugh said Alhamdulilah.

Lisa, because of what was portended, should have started a prayer life, effective immediately. She should have gone to a place of worship about her willingness to turn over a leaf and beg for God’s protection. Unlikely it was Lisa could learn to turn to God and mend her ways. Ergo, Uncle knew the prediction could come true despite anyone expending efforts secular or otherwise attempting to forestall it with or without a cry for help that could be seen to be earnest. Lottie’s Uncle understood the psychological load.

Tacitly, like family we’ve relied on each other more than we knew we shouldn’t have to.. Uncle cleared away boulders and obstacles from his niece’s ESP path just to prove she be kin. He told family not to rush her, also being kin.

Once upon a time in a hometown far far away…

Lottie had fallen for Lisa’s less than transparent distress signals. Lisa had falsely claimed she wanted a straight-lace friend for her corner. Fighting alongside with her BFF, ostensibly attempting to eschew all supernatural ensnarement, had dreamily seemed doable to Lottie, a long time ago. But that was before all the betrayal began. It is now unclear to Lottie who said it first, yet today it is the inner truth. “Lottie wants nothing more and nothing less from Lisa than her complete and utter prostitution.” Lisa knows.

It is true that loneliness can and does alter a person’s once bright attitude until it is only the slow despair. For years, Lottie suffered an intense case of maiden’s loneliness. Nevertheless, God himself is allowed to lift up our chins for us, a reward for all the times we had given ourselves to be patient in terms of His lengths and ways. We can start to expect miracles. Even the poor in spirit have waited. By now it is felt that He does work for us in time, even when we are otherwise alone with our wishes.

Meanwhile, you want to know where is the health? Where is the hospital with its standard, spare blanket issued to the shivering?

Lottie was poor in health and reaching for a higher power because Lisa had nearly convinced Lottie that nobody cares.

Lottie’s Uncle, back when kids were kids, was always chief of making all the female cousins sing and show an everlasting love of female family ties. “Males, next to you gals, are rarely suggestible. To get us to behave, you have to discipline them. Us. Discipline us. This applies to you ladies, too. Now admit we have to care about one another. We have to know how to use our manners and pay attention when someone needs something — for instance good company. We’ve got to understand it, and really be there for one another in all weather. Right on.”

A quorum had predicted Lisa Clark could drag Lottie down with her, as distorted was the nature of their friendship to everyone. For most of senior high school, the guys paid more attention to her because of her finagling. The quorum of amassed votes included both Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Beene. Both their ballots, at the time, admitted Lottie had failed.

Then young Lottie Beene, nevertheless decided she wanted to continue to trust in the beauty of apparent compliance, and do as she was told was only her inner nature. No other advice was forthcoming, so she was forced to stay on the path of least resistance. It was her Uncle Hugh’s vision about females getting it on. It sustained her.

“We could solve all society’s problems,” intoned Lottie in college, remembering how she had shared the notion with Uncle Hugh. “If only we could recall that the smallest unit of care is two, though we’d prefer an entire family gathering with friends at every impromptu time… our day will prevail.”

“Two people like us would be lost in the crowds if on the other hand we couldn’t see to concede the point. The object seems to be to make one or the other of us erstwhile frenemies put her own Who Cares foot forward. Time after time.”

Such was the emphasis of Uncle’s philosophy of friendship as pertinent to Lisa and Lottie.

…

Finally, the plenum came. The fifteen year old relationship between the girls suddenly flailed hard enough to crash. Thus and thus was the ultimatum posed by Lottie”s fiancé. He knew better by now than to try to force friendship at this late date. Lisa had attacked against Lottie’s every public profession to faith as defined in Islam. Although Lottie’s faith was one of the most impressive thing about her, Lisa intoned, messily, about how no man loves a woman for anything but sexy choices made by clashing with one’s own piety. But Rogers is a Muslim himself.

He admired her prayerful fortitude, as well as finding Lottie“s Uncle’s determination for her to be socially perfect. He believed in etiquette, and also was ready to show it is proven that rose colored glasses can win in the end. As far as attitudes go, Lisa, on the other hand, had done not much besides through all the years but badmouth, back bite, and intimidate in true defiance. Best Friend Forever is supposed to be such a formality.

Shall we go back to explain what happened in the venom year of the falling out?

Once upon a time, Lisa used to heap gifts on Lottie. It was a conniver’s role to keep Lottie from trusting her own judgment. There was not enough live between them, but then for birthdays and holidays, Lisa had gone on trying to make it work. The gifts were meant as obscuring lyrics. It worked. Lottie was distracted from how bad her reputation was suffering, because of Lisa’s big, lying mouth, preferring to think the love was perhaps only one-sided.

One fine evening, Lisa decided to spill her own beans. After six militant years of Hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil, Lisa bought drugs and liquor to unload with Lottie. Every thing that had been a wishy-washy experience of trying to see things her way gave Lisa a diabolical plan.. She promised to be as intuck as a babysitter with her favorite client’s child. But the night didn’t go as foreboded.

They had a falling out. For once intoxicated, Lottie could now grasp the depth of devious back stabbing that had proven to be Lisa’s focused battle against her. She had purposely blocked off many of Lottie’s chances for the easy, rich life that good girls ostensibly “earn” when they are hardly even trying.

Lottie’s mean thought, in the other hand, wasn’t overtly about showing her whole heart in her hand. It kept her in good company, even if people did find themselves forced to watch from a distance the drama unfolding. It was, “Love isn’t free.” Yet trapped with the supposedly loving moniker BFF, the sadness did tend to come and go. On each and every occasion Lottie suffered being alone.

Lottie Beene has still to accept full ranks of Queen. Such a title will only come to her if God and his angels continue to smile down on her. Or it will come by the grace of the full acumen of her impartial witnesses, both human and celestial, waiting in her quiver for her to make a bullseye to the world.

…

To recap, BFF Lisa arranged for Lottie the unhappiest of nights, the coming truth of how unpleasant their intoxication together foreboded for Lottie’s future. She had never wanted a frenemy.

Realizing that their hometown wasn’t big enough for the both of them, next, Lottie Beene decided to pack up all her belongings and leave for someplace new. She moved several times in hoping to find a better place to stay. She wanted a new hometown, to feel welcomed in spite of all her failures over there (in the old hometown). The new lace would become her, and the new people could aim for Lottie’s forgive and forget to meet some kind of worldly standard.

Could she admit her new forever place was good enough for her, too?

An unexpected burst of light and love came when Albert Rogers took a shine to Lottie. Rogers was a big deal. His status as an eligible bachelor seemed to have been quite enhanced by the plethora of girls that would be happy to have him, till he couldn’t choose just one. But Lottie took it slow with Rogers. Even though his somber kisses threatened to make her lose her chastity belt and faith, she told him absolutely she was in love with him.

Although Lisa had already been first to get betrothed to some guy, to Lottie there hadn’t already been full closure with each other. You didn’t have to be psychic to know the race is also won by knowing a bromide such as Every Day Counts — forget about the past and let the world enter your heart. It will help to know the world is capable of showing some preferential treatment for you. Always remember, The best revenge is success.

…

When would comeuppance finally come for her nemesis?

Lottie did remember how Uncle had been sure of one thing. Uncle Hugh predicted that if anybody hurt his niece while she was wearing the rose-colored glasses he himself had prescribed for her...? Next, those people would be the worst victims themselves. See?

Having gathered and collected a great deal of animosity against defenseless Lottie — whose greatest vulnerability is known to be that she is ultimately really forgiving, even if rich herself — it would be proven Lisa’s bad idea had resounded. Upsetting on herself like a dog or snake biting its own tail. It would be due to herself that the usual gang and crowd lowered her in their estimation of her statutory malevolence.

Albert Rogers, fiancé, knew just how to proceed with this can of worms. He sent out a letter to the universe. It was a psychic note written about a hedonist, with such delicious phrasing as to especially snag the ears of the respectable Mikhaïl Furrier, back in hometown A.

Furrier owed Rogers Lottie’s better scansion for her reputation. One fine evening a decade ago, he had been distracted by Lisa’s boobs over a friendly beer, and had skipped over his chance to drive to Lottie’s, picking her up for their classy first date. He lost his chance with Lottie, who could forgive being stood up, but this was after years of his keeping her in the dark about what that lost chance really meant to him. Now this was the time. He’d predicted it would come for good old late bloomer, Lottie.

Mikhaïl Furrier had something in mind for the occasion. If only he Furrier could best, in good conscience, real define Lisa’s promiscuity as a completely sterling whoredom for even the once-naive Lottie to see, then the whole world would appreciate it. And that’s all they had to say. Ferrier, taking up with Albert Rogers, had pleasure in mind. If properly aimed, all in good humor of course, he could show her the new forever — all despite the current live-in boyfriend she had thought she was well-betrothed with.

This here is the contents of the letter from Roger to the universe: “Anyone that sees or once saw what I see about good, nice, innocent, sweet, naive Lottie… will someone please bring Lisa Clark her comeuppance? For me? You were there and from what I see, she has been a betrayer. She has pretended to admire and befriend many young ladies. Her motive back then may have been to show there was jealousy, the good old one-sided kind. Today, though, there is clear proof she enjoys the sex.”

We can now see Lisa Clark hadn’t been looking for a role model, not even back in junior high. No longer can her mother, Mrs. Clark, fool anyone about that anymore. Lisa “hunted” the good girls for a pittance.. Lottie remembered being perched aloft in a precarious world like a bird on a wire. On that note, Lisa tried to deepen it about who is whom in low self esteem. Lisa’s ulterior motive was that she wanted to be recognized for being as bad as could be, as sex hungry as only hard core addicts are.

Their last fateful night together, the drug Lisa had bought was acid meth. On the way to her house with the brown bag of drugs, she kept promising she would babysit Lottie until the trip was over, so that the high would be good and within the bounds of basic safety. There would be no flying off the roof. They did the LSD together, and yet somehow it was the last time they would ever cross paths.

The end of friendship was earned that night. On acid together was the first time Lottie learned, enough to really know, Lisa’s exact heart. It was she who had talked Mikhaïl Furrier into steering clear of his date on Valentine’s Day with pretty young Lottie senior year! It was she who had canceled the prom. She could not trip happily enough, confessing the fact. They had lain together. Also from the horse’s mouth, Lottie heard enough to acknowledge and recognize how all the lies guys circulated about her, Lisa had told them.

Until the day she had a truly first class date with Rogers, she had not even begun to allow witnesses to observe the “friendship” for themselves. To be honest, it had been hard to tell, while listening to Lisa, who was whom and who was psycho. She and her poor, sexual, wicked second nature had it in her mind the whole time to try and wreck Lottie for a dyke. Lottie, though, having been seen as vulnerable by Rogers for the first time, ... she realized moving away from that old hometown had been the most worldly wise decision she had ever made.

Clarity about her lost chance helped Lottie find her way into a new city, up seeking a new parchment inscribed with all that was worth calling fate. Albert Rogers was an educated, powerful man. His letter to the universe, picked up by Mikhaïl, might be the most clairvoyant thing Rogers had done to date. On the other hand, it did seem he tipped his hand. Somehow the rule of values’ arbitration was his practiced, lawyerly truth.

He could give out instructions to all these men involved in Lisa’s plots against her closest girlfriends, including Lottie. True to form, for a nemesis like that, everyman now has the impetus and access he needs. This is to completely, psychologically and sexually disenfranchise her. A bold move by Rogers, but all the small retaliations all along the way from several of Lisa’s girlfriends had made it easy to know who deserved it.

“Let’s finally get around to overturning the tables, shall we?” queried Mr. Rogers. It could be done, despite her having a man, ostensibly her new husband, in her bedroom. Ahem. She has no locks on the back door. See?

…

As it turns out, Lisa has proven to be completely hedonist. She loved losing the last of her “in bed” inhibitions. It was after approximately a year with her butt getting only sporadic attention, that she opined for more. Finally now, everyone could hear her intoning, “I’m a sex addict, once and for all, okay?” Even to Lottie.

Lottie said, “Deal. Occasionally I’m an observer of Walter Smitty.” At this point in time, it worked, because her vengeance drive had always been wimpy. It took a strong man admitting he loved Lottie to get Lisa off Lottie’s back and out of her hair. “What are you going to do about it?” She had taunted Lottie that revelatory night Lottie made up her mind about using the power of goodbye.

But to stay up to date...

It turns out, for Lisa, the patriarchy decided on Warren Beatty, as the comeuppance big enough to satisfy everybody of basic prurient interest. For twenty ones days on Lottie’s carefree calendar, Lisa was to enjoy a fully basted, sex binge extreme. The room had no curtains and no sheets. It was dirty. Yet, to cater to the sexual proclivities of men, all strangers, was her fate for 21 days.

It was the best time Lisa had ever had. Then, like the fabled, fated, elusive Lynx, she got on all fours the minute her last customer walked out. The drug stash was gone, depleted. Lisa got up and walked herself to the prearranged spot for her live-in boyfriend to find her. To the precinct, he came for Lisa, who hadn’t so much as taken the time to look at any of the other men that had come in her, not even as they celebrated her behind. The man was just happy she’s made enough money for that month’s mortgage.

Momentarily, he had been taken by surprise she could even make it to the rendezvous spot for him to find her. The drug dealer who had led her, blindfolded, to the tenement apartment had never specified in what town he was taking her for the prostitution. Nobody knew beforehand that her oriented self is what her happy husband would see, at the end of the Warren Beatty episode.

To the drug dealer’s credit, her escapade had really cheered her up. The months prior to this lark of a good time, every day had begun and likewise ended with the tearfulness that went on for hours. It was unknown if she lamented the “anything goes” encounters as a last vestige of maiden hood , or if it was simply her new, intense desire for anal love that was driving her to cry. The repetitive crying jags were seriously painful to see. And now, she was chipper again. The drug dealer’s case has made itself. Antidepressants never made her happy like that. The husband, too, has pled and then made a case for it himself.

...

One thing to know is that there is heart in horsey races being completely unpredictable. It is so, except to whom, as a lady, has taught herself how to navigate life’s little markers. By the wind in the horses’ ears, Lottie knows she is not cut out to be a prostitute, and still she expends much prayer time admitting to Allah she fears such a happenstance as a twenty one day Warren Beatty coming to get her, too. Just like how it got her BFF. Her frenemy, her FFF. For all that, she persists in asking Allah for no harm to come to her. As the lesbian maiden that she is, she has relative inviolability she wishes could be more absolute.

Even if the wind in our ears does help us be aware, it is true that there are people who are just as focused evil as we cannot stop them pleading our good. If I took joy in the someone else’s easy way of taking a demotion in front of everybody, am I undeserving for noting how much her new field has been uplifting to me? In trying to be proven good, even to the social Democrats, I don’t know what comes next. My Rogers got me sacrificial lamb and a pair of opera glasses.

....

There but by His grace go I. This much I know as I fold the rented glasses.

...

Lisa never agreed she wanted to be the one uplifted, cajoled, nor even steered to stay a course on the straight and narrow. Perhaps the completely centered humanist can’t make us admit it any better, and then again our prayers could. Even to somebody as butch-doll as Lottie, there is something to an insight we all should keep in mind: The other girl’s deepest wish as fulfilled, first stemmed from her desire and greed to be outclassed.

...

Prayer brought to Lottie an eligible partner like Albert Roger, a meany to her enemy... and otherwise she wouldn’t have known the real Lisa Clark, either. She is happy in her yellow cloak. Lisa could be just any prostitute, and the reason is she maintains no other point of reference with anyone. She wanted her “comeuppance”.

Yet to the revelers in the therein sexploitation, Lottie’s rose colored glasses have been replaced with rose opera glasses, an excellent trade. A bargain! These truly help her see, without effort, everything that is or isn’t going exactly as expected or required in life.

Mrs. Beene today swears while reading from her holy book, “I knew Lottie’s rank needs, and all along, I never prayed to make her lose a contest. I showed her how to be self protective. I am self protective. Next, who is marrying a King? She’s marrying a King!