Chapter 1

'I might get the fingers to start turning flips and the language will spill like some 5 gallon box of wine'

Excerpt from 'Ugly People' Shane Helnsley

It's not as if she had anything better to do for the next month of her life – just writing a bunch of redundant articles and reviews on the local music scene in St. Louis. It wasn't that she hated her job at 'Room', a small, alternative entertainment paper, but it really had become tedious. Her nights would – as usual – be spent attending shows, which never left her any time to finish her current novel. Finish . . . that was funny. She had never gotten past jotting down a few notes long hand in a cheap pharmacy notebook. It was just an idea in its embryonic stage. She knew, however, that if she had found the time, she would never get around to submitting it in anywhere, anyway. 'Too many anys,' she concluded.

Then there was the perpetual hangover. A thick skulled feeling that she wasn't altogether certain was caused by the loud music every damn night, or the drinking she felt she needed to participate in to tolerate it. Just an occupational hazard, she supposed, while she would continue to pound them back.

Regardless, she had accepted this newest job and here she sat, in the back of a taxi cab headed for Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. She was so preoccupied dreading the trip that she barely noticed when the car pulled up to the front entrance. She paid the unkempt and rather unsavory taxi driver and grabbed her laptop and bag off the seat. "´Scuse me, Sir. What time is it?"

"Mmmeahey forhee fi."

"Pardon?" she asked, but the car squealed away before she had a chance to hear him repeat his answer. She wasn't even given the time to close the car door properly. She reacted by shooting him the finger and hoping that he saw it in his rear view. "Asshole!" she mumbled under her breath.

She had forgotten her watch in her rush to get out of the apartment on time, but forgave herself for allowing her impending terror to steal her organizational skills away from her. She was positive that her loss of wits was only temporary and the result of a mild phobic anxiety toward flying. Mild –that was the understatement of the week. She was already two Dramamines into the game and her head felt like she was witnessing the world through a snug fitting sandwich bag.

Her flight was at five after nine in the AM and she had been warned to get to the airport at least one hour beforehand, preferably two. The largest of the clocks on the wall in the airport read eight fifty, meaning that the cabby's "Mmmeahey forhee fi," meant eight forty-five. She hurried at full gallop through the airport trying desperately to get a good hold of her luggage, but the damn bags kept slipping off her shoulder.

She reached the counter huffing wildly, trying to ask for directions while catching her breath. The woman behind the desk directed her to the proper terminal with a one-dimensional smile and the overwhelming stench of cheap hair spray.

Marren's hurried pace had her forgetting just how horrified she was of flying, and before she knew it she was on the plane and settling in.

She glanced around at all the safety blurbs, taking note of what they said, but wanting to ignore them like everyone else was. Everyone else seemed so calm. Too calm. 'You're all just too fuckin' calm,' she thought.

She pulled a compact out of her bag and checked her reflection. She didn't look nearly as flustered as she felt. Her fire red hair was still neatly tucked away in its tidy ponytail. The minuscule amount of make-up she wore seemed in place and her flushed complexion from the rush only made her radiate a healthy looking glow.

The flight attendant passed by and Marren asked when she would be able to get a drink. "Not until we're in the air, Ma'am," she said. Marren smiled at her pleasantly, not much liking the answer but accepting it readily enough. Still, she was fairly certain that all the passengers in first class could enjoy a drink whenever they damn well pleased. Probably had a glass of champagne offered to them upon boarding. Spoiled upper class brats.

Her painfully polite smile fizzled off her face as the flight attendant moved on. Marren wished she had tripped the Barbie impersonator on her way by, but kept her thoughts silent. 'Ma'am? I can't believe she called me Ma'am. Hey lady, I look way younger than you do. And MY tits are REAL. Christ, why did I take this job?'

She knew very well why she took this job. It was an opportunity to break into a larger market. One published novel didn't deliver nearly as much recognition as she had hoped and working for 'Room' wasn't her idea of an exceptional stepping-stone in her writing career. She was still tightly wedged into a dollar more than minimum wage, and still a nobody.

At first, she was thrilled that a large national publication wanted to hire her. 'Literary Today' was no small potatoes – it was the big boy of its kind. The bad ass of literary magazines. Gavin Preston, the Editor in Chief, called Marren himself, asking to meet with her. She agreed and met with him. How could she not? She wasn't crazy. Even if he had her mistaken for someone else, which she felt had to be the case, she jumped at the chance for a meeting.

She went to his big chic office and he quickly sat her down and then flung the proposition on her. She asked him if he was sure he had the right person and he assured her that he did; he then offered her the job again. This time it hit her like a pillowcase full of doorknobs and she wasn't even able to form words in response. She just sat there staring at him, her jaw too frozen in shock to even dangle stupidly. After several long moments, she began to stutter, "I . . . I . . .", but he interrupted her.

"I know this must come as a bit of a surprise." He smiled. "Why don't you take a couple of days and think on it. Get back to me when you've decided to accept."

She had met Preston a few years earlier, when he wasn't such a bigwig. It was some kind of awards banquet and Marren was only there as a favor to a friend who had been nominated for something or other and begged her to be his escort. She really couldn't remember the specifics, nor did she care to. She didn't remember it as one of the more pleasant chunks of her life.

Anyhow, now Gavin was the head honcho at 'Literary Today'. He was still as friendly and personable as she remembered him to be. At least he hadn't become an egomaniac with his hoity-toity job title. At least that.

Copyright © 1999, Ren\\a233e Angers