UpHill

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

The hum of wheels on metal tracks makes her eyes close and her head droop. In a reflex, her neck snaps back, her eyes pop open, and she stares around her.

“The only thing worse than being on a smelly, stuffy, overcrowded subway train is being on a miserable, empty one on Christmas Day,” she grumbles.

Apart from herself, there is only a drunk with puke on his camel coat, asleep across three seats at the far end, and a bun-haired, eighty-year-old in black across from her, reciting her rosary out loud.

Lary’s eyes drift closed again; her mind returns to her last thought in the bathroom. What had happened to her beautiful life? And how was she ever going to get it back? Where is Alan anyway? She and Alan had been dating casually before she was fired. Truth be told, he had been missing for over a month before she had even noticed.

Must work on those relationship skills. While she’s at it, she should make a new plan.

But what would be on her new plan? She knows how to make plans. After all, she made plans all the time on the cooking show. So, Number one: fix finances. How to do that? Talk to a financial planner. No, first, a new job. Must get a new job to make enough money to afford a financial planner. Okay, new job first.

Number two: get your body back in shape. Join a gym. Wait, she can’t afford a gym right now, so free exercise is what’s needed. So, start jogging or speed walking, or whatever they call it. And dig out the old Jane Fonda workout tape and do that. Okay, what’s next?

Number three: a new love life. A proper one this time. No more actors. No more artists. No more handsome waiters and bartenders who wanted to get into the movies. She would like a proper fella. One with his feet on the ground. Unmarried, of course. With an actual job.

But first she would get herself a good job and lose weight. And don’t forget, quit smoking. That should have been Number ….

Lary’s hand relaxes with the hypnotic subway drone, slowly dropping the bag of presents dangling from her glove. She jumps up clumsily to chase three pathetically wrapped boxes across the gritty floor. Rosary Woman glares at her in disgust.

Lary makes a bug-eyed face at the old lady. “Oh, go peanut-butter!” She steps on the jewelry-sized box with her boot, crushing it. Hanging onto a pole, she lurches down to pick up the gift just as the train pulls into the station. The other two presents roll to a stop nicely, right in front of the sleeping drunk in the camel coat.

Lary holds her nose with one hand, retrieving the boxes with the other.

“Wanna go ta pardy?”

They are on eye level. Red-rimmed browns stare into Lary’s bleary blues. Oh no, he’s awake.

“I’m goin’ ta pardy. Wanna come? You god nice boobs.” He directs his sixty-year-old stockbroker’s grin he assumes is irresistible at her chest, visible inside her open coat while she crouches down to retrieve her gifts.

“As charming as that sounds, I’m going to pass,” Lary snaps, grabbing her parcels and stumbling awkwardly towards the other end of the moving train.

Back in her seat, she notices Rosary Woman is gone, replaced by an offensively happy couple in their mid-twenties, giggling and playing kissy-facey. Lary watches them listlessly for a while, attempting to un-crush the small box, and brush off the wet mud streaks from the others. In a temper she suddenly jams them back in her shopping bag, leans back, and closes her eyes.

Life used to be so easy. Why was that? When she wanted a job, she found a job. When she wanted a man, she found a man. She didn’t necessarily keep the job or the man, and they weren’t necessarily good jobs or good men, but they crossed her path so easily.

Was it because that, back then, she was young, slim, pretty, and had the most alluring quality of all, smarts? To be fair, most people would say she was a smart aleck rather than smart, strictly speaking.

Her first break in television was thanks to her father’s golfing buddy, Frank, who wanted desperately to seduce her. (He had failed miserably heh, heh.)

Meeting her first husband? Now that was a meeting she wished she could unmeet. Arthur the art dealer. Fun until he left her for his protégé artist. Then her second husband Randy the American surfer playwright. She had adored Randy. All his creativity. His brilliance, really. He was a fountain of stunning ideas. When he had asked, or more truthfully when he had begged, she had lent him every cent in her bank account to get his play off the ground like a good wife should, right?

Luckily, her brother Roger had paid her ticket back from San Francisco. And Frank the Seducer at the TV station had rehired her right away, even though she still refused to sleep with him.

You see? Everything had been so easy-peasy way back when. So, what happened? What had changed?