I woke. The sun was shining in on me. I was in Sid's bed with him. He was still asleep. I was still nude. I was very content. A mild breeze blew across my bare skin and chilled me slightly. It felt good. I felt good. I felt alive.
This is what I had been searching for. I was home. I belonged here.
I was in an old abandoned bus sitting in the middle of a fenced in lot. This was Sid's home. It was amazing to me that I could be content there. The breeze wafted through the broken window next to the makeshift bed we were lying on. Life in CB land. It would be as alien to someone like Alvin as where I was forced to stay had been to me when I had first been removed from the house where dad, mom, and Shela lived.
It was stupid to make people live life in a bus. It was stupid to pay them more to loaf than to work. It was stupid for me to worry about it. What could I do? One thing I planned to do was either have Sid move in with me or to move in with him. I had had enough of being by myself. What was the good being by myself when I could be with Sid everyday of my life.
"Whoa!" I told myself, "One night with a man and you are planning your marriage! What a fool I am! He might just think it was a good way to spend a night while I'm thinking it's how I want to spend the rest of my time!"
I knew I needed to put the binders on my emotions/needs. Just because I was living in a state of deprivation was no reason for me to suddenly do a complete turnabout and live in indulgence. A little balance here would be a good idea.
I chuckled to myself. What a coquette I was! What a little cookie!
I dreaded going home alone. I was already dreading the time I would be apart from Sid. I looked around the interior of the bus again. It was a mess! There was no way I could be polite about it (to myself). Dust covered everything. I guessed it had blown in through the broken windows. I could feel the grit on my back.
I wondered how Sid could live like that. Dirty clothes were scattered around everywhere. There were bags and boxes of old discarded clothing all over. Suddenly I noticed that Dick was slouched across a pile of rags! I sat up startled. Sid woke up as I struggled to cover myself. I pulled the dingy sheet over my head. Dick would see me for sure!
"Wha...what..what? What's going on?" I heard Sid ask groggily.
"Sid?" I heard Dick ask.
"Sue? Honey, you ok?"
I giggled in spite of myself and pulled the sheet down to where I could see. The way the two guys were sitting there going "what, what" tickled me.
"Hey! It's Sue dweeb baby!" Dick shouted happily.
"Hi, Dick. Did you miss me?"
"Sid missed you, ya cunt! Where have you been?"
"Dickhead! I got kicked out of the house after the cops busted me again. I live up near the clinic."
"Which one?"
"Over where they had that riot this week."
"Really? Chesbrook?"
"Near there, yea."
"I usta' hang there. Know a cat named Eddie fish?"
"No."
"Hey! You guys keep it down!" Sid complained miserably. I've got a killer headache!"
"Sorry." I apologized. I reached around to my purse and pulled out my bottle of green-meanies. I offered one to Sid and Dick. Sid and I took one apiece. Dick refused. I think he hadn't taken any that time at Toni's. "Hey, how's Toni doing these days?"
Both men looked at me glumly.
"She..she's not...d.." I started to stammer. I was afraid she had died the way Sid and Dick were looking at me.
"No!" Sid pronounced and he put his hand on my knee to comfort me. "She finally got caught selling pills. They took her and locked her up about two months ago."
I looked at them. Why was I always making the people I liked sad? "Tell me about it."
Sid relaxed and eased back down on the bed.
Dick pulled a bottle out from under where he was sitting. He took a swig then handed the bottle to me. I was thirsty so I took a swallow and offered the bottle to Sid. He held up his hand. I shrugged and took another swallow before handing the half empty bottle back to Dick.
He accepted the bottle, took a big drink and hid it again under where he was sitting. "The cops had been setting her up for a long time. They had all of these witnesses. Toni knew about it but figured that they hadn't gotten anyone to agree to go to court to testify against her. She thought Killer could protect her. She was wrong. One piece of shit was willing to do what the cops wanted. She got it down to fraud. Two years."
"Two years!" I exploded. It made me mad and it hurt me to think of Toni locked up for that long. "I bet you guys really miss her."
"Yeh." Dick told me. His voice shook as he said it. My heart went out to him. I didn't know what the relationship between Toni, Dick and Sid had been. I knew they both looked up to her.
"Can we see her? Y'know, is there a time we can visit?" I asked timidly trying not to tread on tender feelings.
"Gotta be kin." Dick explained.
"Does she have any?"
"Nope."
There was a lot to question there. CBs could usually trace their roots back fairly far. There were those who had been abandoned. That had happened a great deal too. The male parent would leave and the woman single parent would be left with the job of bringing up the child. I remember talking to some kids about that once at school. We had thought it was pretty funny. All of those miserable CBs leaving their families behind. We had thought they were trying to take over the world by making as many babys as they could. When we found out the men were leaving the woman pregnant we thought she deserved it. I used to be one stupid dweeb! We used to smirk about the way CBs kept shooting CBs. How dumb.
"We can't call her or send her stuff or anything?"
"Nope, if you try to send her anything it will just get lost before it gets to her. It's a bummer, Sue!"
"Wow. I wish there was something I could do, Dick."
"She'll get out in a year or so, Sue. The prisons are overcrowded. She'll get that early-release."
"I hope so." I told Sid. I caressed his face with my hand. He kissed my fingers. I wanted to hold him and have him melt in my arms. I couldn't with Dick there. I wanted to get up. I wanted to go outside and feel the light on my face and breathe in the fresh air of freedom--for Toni.
I lie back. My head felt funny. I was still a little polluted. The pill I had popped and the two swigs off of Dick's bottle hadn't helped. I remembered Toni telling me to be careful the morning after a drunk, something about the booze still being in my stomach or something.
The room was spinning. It had been spinning like crazy the night before when Sid and I had made love. I had been very hungry for it. I don't think we had done a good job of it. I had been satisfied by virtue of being so needful. You go all day and don't eat so you go home and stuff a Sandwich in your face because it's the easiest thing to fix. It wasn't that good but you're satisfied. Get it?
Sid rolled over--on top of me! I thought he was going to do it right there in front of Dick, but he just lie there. After awhile my mussels relaxed and I began to drift back off to sleep. I heard Dick get up and leave. I was too far gone to move. I let sleep overcome me.
***
I felt Sid trying to crawl over me to get out of the bed. I grabbed him playfully then looked around to see if Dick was still with us. I didn't see him. I had a momentary vision of fooling around with Sid but my bladder had other ideas. Sid had the same thought on his mind, his bladder. He went outside around the corner of the bus. I was surprised to find that the bus had no sanitary provisions at all.
"How am I supposed to go to the bathroom?" I asked myself. I eased out of the bed and slowly dressed myself so as to not excite my bladder any more than I had to.
Sid came back in. He grabbed some toilet paper. "C'mon, there's a restroom in that building on the corner." He pointed and I grabbed the paper while making the best time that I could. I was telling myself "Please, please don't do this in front of my boyfriend! Don't embarrass me like this!"
I made it in time. I thought about what it would be like to live like that everyday for the rest of my life. Hell, Sid was young--what would his life be like when he was old and couldn't live in an old bus in a vacant lot? I could see myself as an old lady darting into the back of some building every morning to use their bathroom. Yuk!
I walked back to the bus slowly. I was trying to find a way to remain, but I knew I wouldn't allow myself to live like that not even for one more night. I was sad. The night before with Sid had been beautiful, not everything that I could have hoped for, but still a lot better than I had had for a long long time.
What had happened in the club had been fantastic. The concept of making your mate feel like you would do anything for him was great and the way Sid had stopped the whole show just to honor me. We had been exhibiting ourselves. We had played for the crowd. The crowd was what had made it so wonderful.
There was no crowd now. There was no bathroom either. Was I being shallow? I was disappointed. Perhaps all I needed was time to think about it. I could have Sid come to my place. To be sure he could understand me wanting to live someplace with all the windows intact, with a lock on the door to if not keep unexpected guests out to at least make them knock before entering, and of course the aforementioned hygiene facilities. I would have to put my foot down.
I raised my eyebrows in amazement over what I wa thinking. If I was in Sid's place and some guy that I had feelings for but who I hadn't seen in a year showed up and told me I wasn't living up to his standards I guess I'd have to tell him where he could stuff it.
I wanted Sid because he had remembered me and showed me that he cared, yet I didn't want to live like he was allowing himself to live. Was that it? What difference did a stinking bathroom make? Couldn't I figure out some way to help him out so that we could get a decent place together? Where there's a will there's a way.
Maybe what I needed to do was give this some time. I could see Sid all day long and even come by before work the next week. We could see each other and find out what we really felt for each other. Who knows, I might swear off of bathrooms altogether, or maybe Sid would come live with me and we would both work in the restaurant. That would be nice. With both of us working we might be able to get a better place to live and I could go back to school and get my diploma and then Sid could get his and we'd be the world's first CB nuclear scientist and CB brain surgeon team.
Maybe I'd just grow up to be a princess, right!
The whole book in zipfile format.
|
|
|
This page hosted by
|
