Today is day 17 of A March of Marys, a literary experience where I share a sequential chunk of American Mary, my first novel, right here online every day throughout the month of March.
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Like the Pulp song, she wants to live like common people. She thinks this city will be a nice change of pace, but she isn't sure about the scene. She’s got that inert nepotism, that luck to know who she knows without ever thinking about it. Late at night on satin sheets surrounded by snack cake boxes and Free People blouses needing to be laundered, she drinks white wine from the bottle, browsing e-commerce menus and adding charges to her mother’s Amex card.
At my Halloween party she mixed hard liquor and some kind of pills and tried to French me after I helped find the purse she misplaced under my housemate’s bed. I wanted us to be friends, and felt like it might happen when she asked if I could show her how to trim her cat’s claws. She had never done it before. I brought my clippers over to her place and we sat on her floor, gently speaking to her cat and rewarding with treats after each clip. That was the closest we got. She asked me to stop by a few times to feed her cat while she was out of town. This is what friends and neighbors do, right? The whole apartment smelled like cat urine but I couldn’t find the litter box. Our last interaction was when I opened the hallway closet to get my Dyson and saw it was gone. The scabies guy living on the couch in my Oakland apartment told her she could take it one day when I was at work. He was already dead to me. I was more hurt by her. I sent her a text asking for it be returned immediately and fifteen minutes later she rolled it two blocks down the sidewalk from her apartment to mine. My housemate opened the door and told me “she looked scared shitless.” Once I got a better paying job I bought a new vacuum. I couldn’t get the cat litter smell out.
She shakes her privilege around like a thurible tied to a flailing limb. She calls herself a grown-up, but she could maybe use an older sister.
Missed the last post? Read it here.