Linda Horton’s sorry excuse for a car—the blue 1970 AMC Gremlin that her sorry excuse for a boyfriend, Tony, had picked up at Frenier’s Junk Yard for $600—chugged, coughed, and spit out its last breath of exhaust, giving up the ghost as she angled it into the driveway. The front end bottomed out on one of the dozens of frost heaves that made shoveling the damn driveway oh so much fun. The rear end bounced once, twice, three times before finally deciding to come to a rest.
Linda swore. At least the shitbox had got her all the way home, unlike last Wednesday when she had been three sheets to the wind after the late shift and it had stalled on the way home and she’d had to call for the tow truck at one-thirty in the friggin’ morning. Lucky for her Artie the tow truck driver hadn’t called the cops on her when he arrived and saw how messed up she was. Not so lucky for her what she’d had to do to return the favor to that sorry excuse of a human being. Lucky for Linda, there were forms of currency other than the greenback kind, which for Linda and her man Tony seemed to be in short supply these days. What the hell. The price she’d paid to Artie, for the most part, she could afford.
What a night that had been. She goes out with the girls after work—ok, Charlene, but just one drink because you know how I get—and before she knows it she’s drinking as if Prohibition was coming back the next morning. She has a good time with the girls—you were right, Charlene, this was fun!—she manages to steer the Gremlin most of the way home without incident, and then, without any hint of a warning whatsoever, the shitbox dies two miles from home. Home, of course, being the slumping triple decker palace she and her man Tony paid cheap rent for here on South Main, the godawful structure staring down at her right now, taunting her. Anyway, she gets towed home—after making full payment to Artie, of course (like the sign says in the garage, Linda—payment due when services rendered)—only to find Tony waiting up for her. Tony the man. Her man. Always lookin’ out for her. Takin’ care of her. Beatin’ her. You can bet your ever-lovin’ black velvet Elvis that Tony took real good care of his girl Linda that night. Course, it hadn’t mattered one bit to Tony that she’d needed time away from the glorious job of waitin’ hand and foot on him every friggin’ day, and that’s why she’d come home late that night. Nope. Hadn’t mattered one bit.
Linda sat in the Gremlin. She brought her hand up to her mouth and felt her upper lip that wasn’t as fat as it had been last Thursday morning. She put her finger in the space where her two front teeth had been last Wednesday night when she’d walked in the front door after getting towed home by Artie. A shiver ran up her spine, whether from the cold or from thinking about what waited for her up in the third floor Shangri-La, she couldn’t quite tell. Although, she kind of had a sneaking suspicion it was the latter rather than the former.
Linda turned the ignition key to the off position. For shits and giggles she tried starting the car, you know, just to see what would happen. She turned the key. Nothing, like she figured. Dead as dead could friggin’ be. Linda fought back the tears. She had hoped, just a little bit, that the car would start so that…so that what? So she could drive away, get as far from Tony as she could, start a new life for herself—it’s a sad state of affairs when a girl thinks about starting a new life when she’s only twenty-five—maybe get a decent job paying more than minimum, find a new man who would really look after her and take care of her and leave out the beating part? She laughed at the thought as tears trickled down her cheeks. Laughing and crying. She’d heard that the two were the same emotion, different sides of the same coin. Seemed that one always took over for the other. Something funny would happen with the girls that would make Linda laugh and laugh and laugh, until she was all laughed out so much that she started crying. Then there were the other times when Tony went to town on her and she cried and when he was done all Linda could do was cry until she laughed because she was all cried out. Thus was the cyclical essence of Linda’s life—crying and laughing, laughing and crying.
Mostly crying.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks and tried cheering herself up with the thought that a girl could do a lot worse than Tony. At least he let her go out on the weekends, probably for no other reason than to give himself time alone with that new girl who answered the phone down at the shop, that cute blonde that he had the hots for. He denied it, he sure did, but Linda knew better. Women always knew better. Didn’t men get that? She could see it in his eyes, the way they lit up whenever her name was mentioned, which, lately, had been quite often. Tony’s eyes used to light up for Linda like that. Back in the good old days.
Linda crossed her fingers and tried the key again. Again, nothing. Nice car, Tony. Real nice car you got me. Couldn’t ask for anything better from my man. Always lookin’ out for me and takin’ care of me, gettin’ your woman the best damn birthday gift six hundred bucks could buy.
After a minute of fiddling and fumbling with the key, Linda realized it was still in the ‘on’ position. She twisted it and yanked it out for good. The good old days, she thought. More like good old days gone bad. That’s what the good old days were. Just a bunch of good days gone batshit bad. How was it that days filled with love and joy and laughter, days that should be treasured in your memory forever, could, with the right circumstances—or were they the wrong ones?—and the fading of time, appear from the present to be nothing more than a mirage, or worse, a complete sham, only to be remembered not as fondly as they ought to be, but instead with a poisonous resentment lingering underneath. Funny how that could happen like that. So funny it was downright depressing as hell.
Ah, to hell with it. To hell with all of it. Making sure the car was in park—because heaven forbid it should slip out of gear and roll into the street and get smacked by the garbage truck—Linda cursed her boss for making her work another night shift as she snatched her pocketbook from the passenger seat and flung open the door. She then cursed the weather for being so friggin’ cold, and herself for not wearing a winter coat. She clutched the pocketbook to her chest—with the South Main Street Bar across the street, she didn’t trust anyone who might be hangin’ out in the shadows, even if it was daylight—and slammed the car door.
Hopefully Tony wouldn’t be awake yet. She didn’t need any of his crap at any time of day, never mind this morning. What she needed was a hot shower (if there was any hot water left), a quick bite to eat (if there was any food left), and then a good twelve hours of catching a few z’s. With her luck, Tony would be lying in bed, naked and spread-eagled, waitin’ for her with that stupid grin on his face like she was supposed to jump him whenever he flashed his ugly baby yellows at her which, back in the good old days, used to be white before he started smokin’ two packs of Marlboros a day. Funny thing was, Tony’s tobacco-stained teeth were his least repulsive body part.
She started up the sagging wood steps that led up to the sagging porch of their sagging triple-decker that, by all rights, should have been demolished a long time ago. Half-way up the steps a screeching sound stopped Linda from opening the first-floor door and beginning the climb up the steps to paradise. She looked behind her, expecting to see the neighborhood brats chasing after each other, their lazy mothers inside watching the morning news shows. Hell, if Linda had kids and it was vacation week that’s exactly what she’d be doing on a Monday morning. Here kids, take your coats and hats and mittens and boots and don’t even think about comin’ back till I call for supper ‘cuz it’s Mommy’s alone time. At the edge of the porch, careful not to slip on the worn and rotted plank, Linda looked up and down the street. No kids in the street, no adults on the sidewalk or in the yards. Linda turned back to—
SMACK!
The blow knocked Linda off balance and sent her pocketbook skittering across the driveway. She flailed her arms, fortunate enough to grab hold of the cold, rusty pipe railing, preventing herself from falling backward. She regained her balance and reached up to feel the back of her head. It was warm and wet. She pulled her hand down. Blood.
“What the hell?”
She searched the wooden steps and rotting porch for the rock that had hit her, certain it was one of the neighborhood punks from across the street tryin’ to break a window and instead clocking her upside the head. Lousy pot-smokin’, trouble-makin’, no-good-for-nothin’ piss-ant hooligans. She’d show ‘em this time. Call the cops on ‘em, fix their sorry asses. Except, there was no blood-stained rock anywhere. Not on the porch, the steps, the driveway, nor anywhere else. She looked across the street. No one there. Brave enough to throw rocks at people’s houses, cowardly enough to run away before getting caught.
Unless—Tony. That sonofabitch Tony had been waitin’ for her, hidin’ till she got up to the porch, and then ambushed her, whacked her over the head with his Louisville Slugger. That no-good-for-nothin’ sonofabitch finally got bat-outta-hell crazy. Good for you, Tony ole boy. Have at it, ‘cuz ole Linda’s got a brother on Old Wachusett’s police force and she’s pretty sure he and his buddies would be more than happy to throw you, Tony ole boy, into the slammer and maybe even have a few go-rounds with you, just to, you know, even up the score and all. And then, Tony my man, and then—
Another screech.
And then a WHUMP, like the flapping of a parachute, the kind with the hole in the middle the schools sometimes use in gym classes with the elementary kids, putting one kid in the middle hole and—
Linda turned in time to glimpse the blur coming at her, but not in time to do anything about it.
SMACK!!
This time from the other side. And this time, all the lights went out as if the power cord had been yanked out of the wall socket. Then someone plugged her back in and there was a spark and things came back into blurry view. The world spun, her feet slipped out from under her, and Linda fell. She split open her cheek on the floor of the porch and cracked a rib or two on one of the concrete steps. Pain racked her skull and exploded in her side.
Craning her neck to catch a glimpse of Tony before the cord got yanked out for good, Linda saw the pewter sky above her grow darker. Storm clouds gathering. Snow today? The pounding in her head grew louder before it started to fade.
The last thing to pass before Linda Horton’s eyes was a blur of brown and black and white.