I knew at that moment I might never get back for my things.
I had seen some unreasonable personality traits in the previous weeks, a streak of cussed meanness to be exact. The woman I had been staying with had warned me on the first day that nobody ever stayed there more than three months, but I gambled.
I thought we were in love, although it was not the mad love of youth.
We had much in common, but as it turned out even more than that was strange between us. She had grown up at the poor end of the working class, in a family well-known for a streak of lunacy and empty bravado. I had been raised similarly although without the edge of violence and abuse that she was familiar with.
Stories she told me of her own childhood and recent life brought out a streak of sympathy in me. I thought it might be time for both of us to find that elusive condition everyone seems to believe in but few seem to find. I had been alone for several years, and that was working on me as well. I was ready to take a chance, however disastrous failure might be.
I had overlooked her habit of speaking harshly of the other men she had known. It was easy to believe they were lesser men than I. For a while I overlooked her own peculiar sadness, and the despair which had settled around the destruction of her illusions, years ago. What she had done to replace those illusions was a quite predictable construction of alcohol and marijuana, and short love affairs ending in bitterness.
I had a little money in the bank when I arrived but there were no immediate prospects for finding work in that town. The 250 people who lived there almost all drove an hour or more for their work along the coast, and the few jobs at the grocery store and post office "downtown" were hereditary positions I would not be eligible for in this lifetime.
But I had foolishly squandered my savings without doing much to supplement the meager insurance payments I was subsisting on. A workplace fall had left me partially disabled, but the fact is I had no savings before that; I had been working at a last-resort job with no hope of benefits or even a living wage.
But I am nothing if not stupidly optimistic.
Which also explained how I had ended up moving in with someone capable of booting me out because she suspected, based on entirely circumstantial evidence, that I was planning to have multiple love affairs.
This wasn't a practical suspicion, since I could hardly travel off the property without her assistance, unless I wanted to ride my bike. To further ensure my fidelity, she knew every eligible woman within 50 miles by name, reputation, and fighting weight.
I had seen some unreasonable personality traits in the previous weeks, a streak of cussed meanness to be exact. The woman I had been staying with had warned me on the first day that nobody ever stayed there more than three months, but I gambled.
I thought we were in love, although it was not the mad love of youth.
We had much in common, but as it turned out even more than that was strange between us. She had grown up at the poor end of the working class, in a family well-known for a streak of lunacy and empty bravado. I had been raised similarly although without the edge of violence and abuse that she was familiar with.
Stories she told me of her own childhood and recent life brought out a streak of sympathy in me. I thought it might be time for both of us to find that elusive condition everyone seems to believe in but few seem to find. I had been alone for several years, and that was working on me as well. I was ready to take a chance, however disastrous failure might be.
I had overlooked her habit of speaking harshly of the other men she had known. It was easy to believe they were lesser men than I. For a while I overlooked her own peculiar sadness, and the despair which had settled around the destruction of her illusions, years ago. What she had done to replace those illusions was a quite predictable construction of alcohol and marijuana, and short love affairs ending in bitterness.
I had a little money in the bank when I arrived but there were no immediate prospects for finding work in that town. The 250 people who lived there almost all drove an hour or more for their work along the coast, and the few jobs at the grocery store and post office "downtown" were hereditary positions I would not be eligible for in this lifetime.
But I had foolishly squandered my savings without doing much to supplement the meager insurance payments I was subsisting on. A workplace fall had left me partially disabled, but the fact is I had no savings before that; I had been working at a last-resort job with no hope of benefits or even a living wage.
But I am nothing if not stupidly optimistic.
Which also explained how I had ended up moving in with someone capable of booting me out because she suspected, based on entirely circumstantial evidence, that I was planning to have multiple love affairs.
This wasn't a practical suspicion, since I could hardly travel off the property without her assistance, unless I wanted to ride my bike. To further ensure my fidelity, she knew every eligible woman within 50 miles by name, reputation, and fighting weight.
lolablu:
She sounds insane. The trouble with crazy people is that they can be so damn alluring.
aeryn:
I want to say I want to hear more...