Seven Stories. Story One, Part 1
Editor’s Note: We are pleased and excited to introduce our newest Hummingbird Guest Contributor, Beth Kalet. “Trouble” is one of 7 short stories included in Beth’s book Seven Stories, published in 2012. Hummingbird will be publishing it in parts, one per week over the next few weeks, so please check Part 1 out and stay tuned for the rest of the story to unfold here.
Beth is an accomplished writer and editor. Her work, and her own story are what encouraged us to reach out to her. Please give a warm reader’s welcome to Beth, and feel free to comment at the bottom of the page.
Let’s dive into “Trouble.” I assure you, you will not be disappointed. Welcome Beth!
Photo Credit: Diane Pell
Trouble’s Always Just Around the Corner. Part 1.
The time was half past a freckle. The sun was beating hard on my dark head. There was no place to find shade and I had no hat, no parasol. There’s a reason Arabs wear white robes, to deflect the sun. My black hair was a magnet, drawing the heat to the top of my head. You could fry an egg up there.
I stopped pacing and crouched beside a trashcan. Two seagulls dropped in beside me, pecking at the sand near the can, squawking something to each other that I couldn’t understand before they flew off, giving me a glance on the way out.
Of course! The only way to get anywhere is to get up and go. Fly high. Reach for it. Those birds had the right idea. I pounded through the sand toward the water, splashed some on my heated face. It dried quickly and I could feel the salt crust up on my cheeks. Those birds had given me an idea. I was not going to wait for Harry to show up. Nope. It was too late. Just too darn late. He’d stood me up for the last time and now I was going to fly.
I walked off the beach, sand flying from my flip-flops as I reached the sidewalk that runs along the narrow shoreline. Bicyclists and roller-bladers wizzed past me, sometimes on the right, sometimes on the left so I had no idea which way to stay. My knees buckled and I caught myself right before I fell but then I tripped on a rise in the concrete and I fell anyway. My knee was bleeding Valentines on the oatmeal sidewalk. And it was so darn hot I thought I’d faint but I didn’t want to get run over by a rollerblader, so I sat up.
And for a few minutes I sat there on the sidewalk, without a single thought in my head. All I could do was hear the thump thump thump of my heartbeat. Soon I felt something stinging and it was my knee. It had stopped bleeding and I saw that two people and a dog were hovering over me. Actually they were talking to me.
I let them help me to a bench and tend to my knee. I petted the dog and he put his head in my lap. Oh Harry, you creep. It’s over, I resolved. I am going to get a dog and a much bigger apartment and I am going to keep all the money we got from selling those paintings. Oh, that was it. Just then, it hit me. Harry had gone off with the money. It wasn’t even that much. Maybe five thousand, maybe six, maybe less after you subtract the hotel, the massages, the fancy meals and whatnot. Well, he could have it.
Now, one thing I knew and he didn’t was that I didn’t need him. He could go jump in the ocean. He could take a flying leap. I could get by on very little, and he didn’t know the least way to live on nothing. Investments my foot! He didn’t know how to invest money. He was only good at spending it. Now that I thought of it, the Japanese dinner last night, the sake and the wine, the rental car we’d come down here in. If he kept spending like that he’d go through the money in no time and then he’d wish he hadn’t tossed little old me aside. Cheap date! He’d miss this cheap date girlfriend oh boy.
‘Course I needed a plan. More action, less inaction. First off, I would go back to the hotel room and get my stuff. I’d left him singing in the shower. He said, I’ll meet you on the beach. But I’d waited long enough. Harry didn’t believe in cell phones. Said they tied you down. So, now, I figured, he’d showered, sang and whistled his way right out of my life. Or forgot he said he’d meet me. Those tears pooling in my eyes were my sign of anger. I tried to keep that up. How much can a girl take? Lately everything he did was weird, and everything I did was wrong in Harry’s eyes. Why was I surprised this time to find myself stranded at the shore? I should have seen this coming.
I’d told Harry before he bought the tickets and before he booked the hotel that maybe we shouldn’t start celebrating so fast. Who knew when something just as bad as the good thing that had happened to us would – you know – happen. But Harry only sees the now. And he only sees it his way. For him there’s no what ifs.
Yah, thanks doggie and thanks people who helped me up and off the sidewalk. I’m good now. I’ll be on my way. They were awfully reluctant to let me go but I assured them I could handle myself. Thanks good Samaritans and dog. It’s fine.
When I got back to the room – did I say it was a hotel? It was really more of a motel, all on one floor, with a little overhang and parking spots where you pull right up to your room. You practically open the door into the bed but the TV worked and the shower was kind of fancy, with marble tile on the wall. There were big white towels on the shelf above the toilet, which now that I looked were gone. A note for me on the bed in Harry’s difficult to read printing-script said absolutely everything he needed to say.
“Jules, It wouldn’t have worked for us anyway. I paid the bill but told them at the desk you might stay on longer. Up to you. Check your suitcase. – H.”
I laid the note down on the bed. My suitcase was stuffed with two of the towels and another note, this time in an envelope, which had another envelope inside it. Both said: Private and Confidential. Like anyone who’d gotten to envelope number two would stop now.
Inside, a piece of motel stationery was folded several times around a stack of bills. Two thousand dollars. OK… so he ran out on me but he didn’t exactly cheat me. What a saint.
Part 2 to follow.
To learn more and to purchase Beth Kalet’s book, Seven Stories, please click here. You may also contact Beth through Hummingbird by clicking here.
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