by Andi Bremner
“Don’t say no,” he said and he almost sounded like he was pleading, “say yes. Let me take you out. I want to take you out and talk to you.”
He sounded so sweet and so sincere. He wanted to talk to me. He was interested in me. That warmed me and I found myself smiling back at him, the voice that replied only vaguely recognizable as mine. “Yes. I’d like to go out with you.”
Chapter Five
Trinity
I dropped Gwen back at the club where she’d left her car and then made my way to work, parking my car out back in the employee lot. Once more I was careful with locking it up. I had everything in there. My life. I couldn’t afford to lose a thing.
Checking my reflection in the mirror, I straightened my clothes, hating that they were all rumpled from being quickly stuffed into my overnight bag. I’d driven past my house on the way to work but his car had been out front so I’d kept driving. A blue Mercedes. Shiny and new. The windows gleamed in the bright morning sunshine and it looked ridiculously out of place beside my mom’s beat up old car. In fact the Mercedes looked entirely out of place in our neighborhood and I was constantly surprised that it wasn’t vandalized or broken into. Maybe he had a force field around it or something.
Anyhow, the fact that his car was still there meant that I couldn’t go home yet. I wondered what she told him when I wasn’t there, where she said that I went. I wondered if she even cared where I went.
“Morning, sunshine,” Damien the head barista said as I walked inside and tied on my apron, “ready for another busy day.”
“Sure am,” I told him with a grin. Damien liked me to be happy and chirpy and I found that it was easy to be happy and chirpy around him. He was a sweet guy, the kind of guy that made friends easily, had been the star quarterback for the football team and held open doors and said please and thank you. He was a charmer and the college girls who came in adored him.
“Well giddy up, girl,” he said with a playful swat across my arm. “There’s customers waiting for their morning coffee and you know how grumpy they can get.”
After my shift finished later that afternoon, I made my way across town to where I tutored piano. I did this four afternoons a week and today I was tutoring a little girl called Priscilla who was incredibly sweet if not incredibly spoiled. I didn’t like coming to this side of town, didn’t like that maybe one day I would rock up on my dad’s doorstep to tutor a half-sister or something. Not that I would even recognize my half-sister anyway. We’d never met and as far as I knew, she didn’t even know that I or my mother existed.
Priscilla had been practicing and was getting better. We played together and then we practiced her favorite Gwen song before I packed up and left. I was headed over to my own practice now, which took place back on the other side of town at Molly’s house.
I sighed. I was going to need more gas. More money.
By the time I rocked up at Molly’s, everyone was there and they were rehearsing already. I rushed in, apologizing profusely for being late again, but they brushed it off. I was always late and they always forgave me without asking questions. I couldn’t have asked for better friends.
“So, Olivia has a new song,” Molly was saying, “a bit of a ballad, softer than the others. It’s good though, wanna try it?”
I nodded. Olivia was a talented song writer and I hated that we couldn’t just perform her original tracks all night. But we needed to make a name for ourselves first, Molly insisted, and then slip in the originals to build up our brand.
“Oh,” I read over the lyrics, “sexy.”
“She’s had inspiration,” Molly said with a giggle.
Some of the lyrics were quite risqué.
“Can you sing it?” Molly asked watching me. “I know it’s a bit much but I think that it could be seriously hot.”
“I’ll give it a go,” I told them,” but for something like this, with so much sex in it, maybe it would be better if someone sexier sang it.”
Four sets of eyes stared at me.
“What?” I asked when no one spoke.
“You are kidding right?” Olivia said, looking at me earnestly, “someone sexier than you? Like one of us?”
“Well, yeah.”
Olivia started laughing and was soon followed by the others. “Honey you seriously have no idea do you?”
I was missing something here.
“Trin, there are about a hundred guys every Saturday night who go home and get off to thoughts of you strutting across the stage in your sexy dresses. And there are just as many who go home to their wives and girlfriends and get off with them thinking of you.” Olivia said this all with a straight face.
“Don’t say that!” I cried. “That’s disgusting!”
“It’s the truth,” she said simply, “we are as popular as we are mostly due to you. You are what people come to watch. They might come to hear us but they come to watch you. Even the girls. Have you no noticed how many girls in the audience are now wearing tartan strapless dresses?”
I hadn’t. Nor had I really thought about how sexy I might look up on stage. I thought I was looking tough, rock chic, and maybe fun? But never sexy. Oh god never sexy.
“So you sing that song, you do your moves, and I tell you what, you sweetheart are gonna make us famous.”
The song was good. We practiced it quite a few times before we went back to rehearsing our regular songs. We had every Saturday night lined up for quite a while, including, Molly announced, a wedding in about six weeks.
I made a face at that. “A wedding? Who would book us for a wedding?”
She shrugged. “A contact of Tony’s. He saw us, heard us, and wants us to play at his wedding. We have to tone it down a bit of course, and he wants us to play a few more traditional, romantic wedding songs.”
“I’m not sure about this,” I said.
“Ten thousand.”
I snapped my eyes up. “Say again?”
“Ten thousand,” she told us, and I heard the collective intake of breathes from everyone. “He started at five and I said no because like you already said, we aren’t wedding singers. But then he kept going. I think he might have gone higher but I thought ten was pretty decent.”
“Ten thousand,” Shawna echoed, “just for singing a few songs?”
“We do have to sing a few Mariah Carey songs.” Molly glanced apologetically at me. “Sorry.”
I hated Mariah Carey. A few people had told me over years that I sounded like her which only made me hate her songs more.
“And Celine,” she added. I winced.
“Ten thousand, Trin,” Shawna nudged me and I looked over at her. She was grinning like a looney.
I sighed and giggled. “Dig me out some Celine and Mariah. I have some songs to learn!”
****
I left Mollys’ a little later and headed back into town. I had to find somewhere to park and sleep. I was desperately tired. I drove to the back of The Bean and parked in the employee lot where my car had sat all day. No one would come back at this time of night.
Getting out my phone, I rested it on the door handle beside me, 911 at the ready should I need it. Then I reached under my shirt and unhooked my bra, sliding it off and dumping it on the floor. I couldn’t sleep properly with my bra on. Leaning my chair back I grabbed the duvet from the backseat and pulled it over me. I was cozy and in a strange, kind of sad way, it felt like home being snuggled up here. So familiar. I’d been doing this for years. I’d been doing this back before I’d even had a car to sleep in.
My mother didn’t like having me around when Kent came to visit. Kent was my father, or so she told me, although she could be lying. He came every few weeks and stayed a few days. He always bought her presents and she was always in a great mood after he visited, but that didn’t last long as she realized that yet again she’d been dumped and he’d gone back to live his real life with his real wife and his real children. My mother had been his mistress for more than twenty years. But she was a stupid
mistress. For twenty years she had lived in the hope that he would finally leave his wife and come to her, but he never did.
And for that, she blamed me.
I shivered under the blanket and pulled it up under my chin. I didn’t want to think about my mother. I didn’t want to think about him. I just needed to get some sleep and then maybe tomorrow I could go home.
****
A loud clanging sound woke me a little later on and I jerked upright. It was dawn, the early morning twilight lighting the sky around me. I rubbed my eyes searching the lot for what had woken me when I spied Magda by the bins.
Good old Magda.
She’d been homeless her whole life and I think she relished life on the streets. She looked to be at least eighty, although after doing it tough for so long I wouldn’t be surprised if she was only fifty or so. She’d just had a hard life. She glanced over at me through the windscreen and mouthed a sorry before she returned to searching the bins.
I sighed and lay back down, all thoughts of sleep gone. I wanted to shower and wash my hair. I hadn’t had a proper shower for days; I’d just been washing in the restrooms down by the lake, the ones people used to wash the sand off them after they’d been swimming. There was no hot water and it seemed like it was actually colder than any other water, but it was all I could do. But I really needed to wash my hair.
For a moment I thought about going to Molly’s. Years ago, when I’d first had to start leaving home I’d sometimes go to Molly’s house and she’d let me stay. Her parents didn’t seem to mind and they didn’t ask any questions nor did they ask me to go after a few days, but when I’d gotten my car I’d stopped going. It didn’t seem necessary anymore. I mean I did technically have a roof over my head.
Sitting the drivers chair up, I threw the duvet in the back seat and started the engine. Magda gave me a little wave as I reversed out of the lot and headed off campus. Maybe the coast was clear and I could go home now.
I came to a set of traffic lights and for some reason they decided to turn red even though there were no other cars around. I sighed and switched on the CD player, bringing the Mariah Carey album up that Molly had pressed into my hands last night when I’d left. It was her mom’s, she assured me, although there was a panicked gleam in her eye when she asked me to take care of it. I suspected it was secretly hers.
Immediately Mariah’s voice filled the car and I winced, turning the volume down. I knew this song. I’d heard it on the radio plenty of times, although I had no idea of the lyrics. I had six weeks to learn though. I would be the master Mariah impersonator.
Ten thousand dollars. Two apiece. It might as well have been a million the way it made me feel. That two thousand, coupled with the thousand I’d already saved would help me move out so that I had a real roof over my head, and not just for a few days at a time. I grinned to myself as Mariah began to wail.
Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by a rapping on my window and I jumped, screaming at the same time.
Luke.
He was smiling at me through the window, obviously amused by my startled reaction. But honestly, who sneaks up on parked cars at dawn. I’d had my fair share of weirdo’s looking in my windows over the year’s thank you very much.
I rolled down the window.
“Hey,” he said, grinning at me, “didn’t mean to scare you.”
His eyes flicked past me to all my stuff in the car and something flashed in his face. Was that pity? Then I remembered my bra discarded on the seat next to me. I hoped he hadn’t noticed.
“I was just daydreaming,” I said.
“Yeah.” He grinned broader now. “Mariah can you do that to you. I never pegged you for a fan.”
“Oh.” I turned down the stereo; she was still whining and wailing, minimal lyrics really as far as I could tell. I could do that. “We have a gig in a few weeks and they’ve asked us to sing Mariah. And Celine.”
He nodded, still smiling, his eyes burning into mine. “Interesting. I’d like to see that.”
For some reason I blushed, even though he hadn’t said anything suggestive I looked down. I wanted to get away, wind up my window and take my shitty car and my shitty stuff away from him. Glancing back at him I noticed for the first time the sweat and the exposed muscles in his shoulders.
“My light’s changed,” I said, “and you need to run.”
He was still grinning. “Now more than ever,” he said cryptically, “we still on for tonight?”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” I’d forgotten I’d agreed to go on a date with him. Now I really needed to wash my hair.
“And you’re sure I can’t pick you up?”
“It’s fine,” I assured him, my voice tight, “I’ll meet you.” I’d had to insist that I meet him there. The last thing I wanted was Luke coming to my house, seeing where I lived, meeting my mom. And that was even if I could go home at all.
“I’ll see you tonight.” He straightened up and stretched his arms up over his head, exposing the skin on his stomach.
I bit my lip. “Yeah. Um. Tonight.”
Then he turned and ran and I watched him. The light had turned red again anyhow and I would just have to wait it out.
Chapter Six
Trinity
As luck would have it, Kent’s car was gone from out the front of our house. I could go home.
Quietly I parked my car and tiptoed into the house, bringing my overnight bag with me. A light was on in the kitchen but my mother would be asleep. She didn’t normally wake until nearly lunch. Her shift at the diner didn’t start until mid-afternoon.
Taffy, the orange cat that had adopted us, hissed as I walked past but that turned into soft, contented purrs when I stroked him. It felt a little unfair that I was cast out when Kent came to visit but the stray, hostile cat could stay. When I was little and Kent came I was sent to my grandparents’ house. They lived in the next street over and were more than happy to have me. I had liked going to stay with them. Grandma made dinner every night that we ate sitting around the table, and then afterwards we would go into the lounge room and watch television. Grandpa knew all the answers to the gameshows. He was like my own living, breathing, genius. They didn’t talk about my mom and they certainly never mentioned Kent. They just let me stay. I even had my own bedroom there, and grandma had made me a pink floral duvet cover that was now faded and crumpled in the back seat of my car. Then it hadn’t been so bad, and mom hadn’t been so angry with me all the time because she had somewhere to send me when he came around.
But then Kent had stopped coming. And mom had gotten angrier and more depressed and the blame for her failed relationship was settled in my direction. At the same time my grandad had gotten sick and passed away and then grandma developed Alzheimer’s and couldn’t look after herself anymore. Or me. She moved away to a neighboring town to a hostel and I didn’t see her for ages. I’d had to work out how to catch the buses to the town and then navigate my way to the hostel to see her. And then it was a fifty-fifty chance whether she recognized me or not. Sometimes she did and I enjoyed those visits, other times she got me confused with my mother and said some pretty horrible stuff.
I didn’t like those visits that much. And I didn’t like that in her delirious state she could find anything remotely similar between my mother and me. I was nothing like my mother.
Dumping my bag on my bed I crossed the hall to the bathroom and switched on the shower. Hot. Nice. I stepped under the water and let it clean me, before lathering my hair and shampooing it. Twice. And then adding conditioner. It felt so good. I remembered my date tonight and shaved my legs, even using some of my mom’s expensive exfoliating stuff to clean my skin. The simple things in life, I thought as I switched off the tap and stepped out.
Suddenly the bathroom door swung open and a loud slap filled the air. As I hit the cold tiles I realized that the slap came from the contact between my arm and my mother’s hand. My skin burned and my butt hurt from where I’d landed. More bruising. At leas
t this time it was in a more inconspicuous place.
“Oh so you’re back are you, you little trollop?” she said, her voice calm and low.
I didn’t say anything. Instead I hugged the towel tighter around me, and stared at a spot on the tiles. If I didn’t say anything to antagonize her then she would go away in a few minutes. She just needed to vent.
“And so who exactly are you screwing now?” I could see her foot tapping impatiently on the chipped bathroom tiles out of the corner of my eye.
I didn’t speak.
“Answer me!” she screamed.
“Nobody,” I spoke low, almost a whisper, “I haven’t been screwing anyone.”
“That is such a lie,” she taunted, “I know what you are. And I know what people say about you. You’re the groupie chic who’s an easy lay. You are getting a reputation around town you know that?”
I wasn’t. This I knew. I wasn’t getting a reputation but now was not the time to defend myself.
“I can’t live like this!” she suddenly declared, and my head snapped up. “I can’t live with you vanishing for days on end with whatever guy has taken your fancy. I can’t live with the stigma of being your mom. Kent is so ashamed of you, you know.”
I snapped my head up but sucked in my bottom lip. I had so much to say, so much I wanted to say to her, but didn’t dare. The pain of my cowardice hit me square between the chest. I was a coward. Always in the face of my mother and her anger and her disappointment I was a coward.
“You know he would’ve left his wife you know, if it wasn’t for you,” she said quietly, her eyes going round, “but how can he leave a marriage to an upstanding community role model, how can he leave his other children who are all so moral, and so honest, to come and be a father to a slut like you? Can you imagine the disgrace? He would have done it, would’ve done it years ago if it wasn’t for the shame of being your father.”
I lowered my eyes again. Her words stung, but I’d heard worse.
