Real Life is non-non-non-non-NON-Heinous!

So it's been a while. And I haven't written, haven't called, haven't so much as posted up a quick link to someone else's top ten. I wish it could have a good reason attached, this sudden drop off in posts- like, that I had secretly fostered super powers and was spending my free time running about in long johns, fighting crime via punching people doing the crime a lot. Or maybe that I had been tinkering in the kitchen so long, I discovered a cake that tastes exactly like red velvet but actually is made of celery, and the more you eat, the more you look like the very first movie character you ever found beautiful. 

On second thought...

 However comma, I have no such life-altering goodness to share. Or goodness. There is something afoot in my life, and not in the funny way that would provide either an entertaining or a Very Special episode of this rinky-dink one-chick show we're running here. It's something I can't go into, not now, and really, probably not for a good long while, as I'm having trouble finding humor in the situation at all. Which, come on people, if you've been reading along, you know full well that if I can't wrest out a "dumb me" story or even crack a joke about what shenanigans I got up to this time...

then it is probably, potentially, possibly (and in this case, definitely) something pretty horrible and let's just spare the melodramatics and woe-is-mes for when I'm on the rag and much more likely to provide adequate waterworks as to convey just how awful it all is. 

So here's a story I wrote that got published. 

She straightened as her friend approached the booth, hands skirting down to smooth her scrub pants as she did so. "Well there you are, Susan!"

"Sorry I'm late, lunch-time rush traffic." She pulled her sunglasses up over her forehead and with a quick smile and a nod, dispatched the approaching waiter for a glass of water. "But you knew I wouldn't flake on you, not when you've got juicy details." She leaned forward against the table and in the conspiratorial fashion of little girls with candy, lowered her voice an octave. "Now. Spill."

Rebecca slouched back with an exhale. "Oh, wow. I thought he was obnoxiously persistent on the flight, but when he called the third time the next day-"

"The old divorcee called again?" A titter erupted as Susan followed suit, sitting back against the booth in her own body language for disbelief. The waiter slipped her water onto the table, and after a perfunctory order of salad nicoise and peach cobbler, disappeared again.

"I know, right? But should we be surprised, from how obnoxiously he behaved on the plane, and me, completely held captive -check that, hostage- at 30,000 feet?"

"It's probably the only time he ever gets a girl's number, when she's good and trapped. Then he can casually bring up his millionaire self -flying coach- and his yachts and music videos." Her eyes rolling, Susan continued. "I mean, when you told me the bit about his owning a clothing label specifically for his own use, because, what- he's so special that he can't bring himself to wear something us pedestrian bourgeouis pick up in stores?"

Laughing, Rebecca jumped in, "Right, because that just means he really must be a millionaire; it's a well-known fact that Armani and Versace's lines are really only for the middle-class, and any really rich people just open their own lines when they spill a little sauce on their white button-ups."

The giggling continued as lunch was served, and Rebecca tucked a stray red curl behind her ear as she speared a cucumber slice with her fork, continuing her story between bites. "Well, apparently the elderly have nothing better to do than phone girls half their age and beg for dates, and well, I figured if it went poorly enough, that'd be the end of the phone calls. So he promises me a day I'll never forget, right? Makes a reservation at some little bistro, orders a car, I'm to be out waiting by the drive at nine.

"So the car rolls up- only it's not a chauffered car at all, it's him driving- he wanted to show me he was a 'take-charge man.'" She paused for effect as Susan nearly choked on a hard-boiled egg, then continued. "The restaurant is some hole-in-the-wall Italian joint, and point for him, it was really good -burned-tomato-flavored sauce, excellent garlic bread- and then we hit this country bar for dancing. Hypothetically."

Susan tilted her head, subconsciously mimicking her last patient, Woofles, the French Bulldog. "And pray tell, how does one, "hypothetically," dance?"

"Well I'll tell you, Suze- you go to a bar, boasting a whole host of knowledge and alleged compliments on your dancing abilities, and then you get inside, realize the median age in the bar is approximately that of your youngest child, and then claim that it's too noisy to get to know eachother and relocate to his 'pad' for a nightcap."

Susan regarded her coworker with incredulity. "Ugh! Seriously?"

"Seriously. And the whole drive there, he kept mistaking my thigh for his gear-shift." She shook her head. "Thing is, he was almost in the clear... up to the groping, that is. And the rohypnol in my drink."

Susan's eyebrow quirked. "So that'd be a gin and amnesia for you, and a Geritol and Viagra for him?"

Rebecca held up a hand as they giggled on, empty salad plates being replaced with peach cobbler. "No no, I have no idea what his drink was... because I was too busy staring at the gold-framed 2-by-3-foot portrait of him, his current wife and three kids."

Susan let out another laugh, but her reserve was depleted and the sound barely carried. "So that's when you knew."

Rebecca nodded sagely, turning to regard her reflection in the window. "That's when."

The redhead lowered her eyes from the glass pane and blushed. Susan coughed delicately, then picked up her fork to prod her cobbler. "So what about the body?"

"Turns out, he wasn't lying... about the yacht."

750 word flash fiction; published under the name Joan Colairta* by Bank Heavy Press in their September 2011 offering, "Orangutan."

*Oh, come off it, anyone who's ever dreamed of authoring more than a shopping list has toyed with a nom de plume. Especially if their name puts them in shoddy cupcake territory.