Jeanie Writes Genre

Because I'm in a sharing mood.

***
Claire drove. She didn't listen to the radio. She didn't sing along with her mp3 player or make phone calls or dictate notes to herself or any of the other things she usually did in her car. She just drove. If somebody asked her, she couldn't tell them where she went. Sometime after dark, she ended up in her own driveway. She didn't know how long she'd been driving.

On autopilot, she went inside, went to her kitchen and made a sandwich. Then she left it on the counter and went to take a shower. Standing under the spray, she had a vague, dreamlike recollection of showering with Michael. Or had it been Not Michael? The dragons from her dream flashed through her memory, and she shivered. She shut off the water and went to get dressed.

Back in the kitchen, she took a bite of her sandwich, then spit it out. Her appetite was gone. She wrapped the remains and put them in the fridge. There, she spotted an open can of tuna, and took it out. She stared at it, wondering if she should toss it. She was about to when she heard a meow.

Startled, she spun to see Sam running up to her. Still meowing, he stood on his hind legs to get a better whiff of the tuna. Claire bent down and scooped him up. His collar jingled and he yowled in protest as she held him up by his armpits and stared into his eyes. Blank, hungry, aloof and annoyed cat eyes started back. Brown-green eyes, not yellow. This wasn't Sam.

He'd replaced the cat. That's how she had seen them both together.

This strange new cat let out a low, warning growl. Claire let him drop to the floor, then she turned around and dry heaved into the sink. She hadn't just lost a lover. She'd lost a pet, too. She'd lost the last week of her life to a lie. Absently, she uncovered the tuna and set it down for the hungry cat. Then she grabbed her keys, returned to her car, and pointed it at Timmy's. She needed a drink.

She needed a lot of drinks.

The bar was fairly crowded for a weeknight. Sickness returned to the pit of her stomach as she walked through the door, remembering the last time she'd been there with Michael. Not Michael. The other Michael.

That was crazy. But it sure explained a hell of a lot about that night.

With a shudder, she swallowed and found a seat at the bar. She grabbed a handful of boiled peanuts and chewed on them to settle her stomach while she waited for the bartender to take her order. By the time he came over, wiping out a pint glass with a towel, she had eaten them all. She opened her mouth to order a gin and diet tonic, double on the gin, but the bartender cut her off. "'Bout time you got here," he said, and jerked his chin in the direction of a table behind her. "That guy's a reporter for the Inquirer."

Not looking back, Claire sighed with impatience. "So?"

"So, I thought you'd want to get your guy outta here before he ends up front page in all the supermarkets."

This time, when he did that chin-jerk thing again in another direction, Claire turned to look. Michael--or somebody who looked exactly like him--sat alone in the back corner, obviously hammered. She watched in horror as he sang along with the jukebox at the top of his lungs, annoying his neighbors and sloshing beer all over himself, the table, the floor and some of said neighbors as he swung his stein back and forth to the music.

A bouncer near the door also saw him. The huge, burly man started his way, passing right by the reporter. Claire knew that that wasn't Michael. She also knew that everyone else would believe it was Michael. She knew she had to do something. She wanted to down a few shots of tequila first, but she knew there wasn't time; so she hopped down from the bench and intercepted the bouncer. "Please," she said, laying a hand gently on the guy's enormous arm, and he stopped. "Let me handle him."

The guy looked back and forth between her and... the other one, and shook his head skeptically. "I don't know, lady. He looks like a handful."

Claire fished her emergency cash out of her back pocket and pressed it into his palm. "Please? I'll get him out of here. Just make sure that guy doesn't see him."

The bouncer looked back at the tabloid reporter, then at Claire, then at the money in his hand. Finally, he nodded. "Five minutes, then I'm taking over."

"Thank you," she said. As he moved back in the direction of the reporter, Claire took a deep breath and went to the back corner table.

©2007-2008 by JM Bauhaus

Labels: excerpts, Hero+Factor