Women at Work

The catering van speeds through I-25 southbound for DTC. Debbie drives and Ana sits in the passenger seat. Maria sits on the back, on the floor among coolers and boxes full of warm food. They reach their destination in front of a glass and marble building, a fortress of commerce, a business bastion among the other towers that house the engines that propel the new economy. They have done this gig before and like a well trained squad they deploy their boxes and tables and trade utensils fast and efficiently. With few words among themselves they have everything set up right before lunch hour.

A small group of men and women in casual office attires comes into the room and queue for their chance at free food. Debbie knows that there is no such thing as free lunch. Somehow the powers above will extract that lunch from these people, plus a little bit more. There is going to be a return for this investment. She smiles like a good hostess and slices cuts of beef and plops them on plates loaded with side trimmings. This is better than serving the slop in the jail’ s cafeteria, and she doesn’ t have to use a hair net either.

Debbie serves young women who have manicured hands and a college degree. At their ages she was walking the streets to snare a john, looking to score dope, living from day to day, from minute to minute. She serves beef with a polite tenderness. Debbie knows she is a survivor of sorts, still standing on her one leg and her prosthesis, flashing a smile of artificial teeth, but she is not bitter. She holds no grudge against these young women who came from good families and had their college and their first car paid for by loving parents. She had nobody, but hey, that’ s life; you do what you can with what you got. She made it this far, not in one piece, but made it this far and the future… well, no point to worry about it.

But she does worry about it now and then, like when she went to Ana’ s sister wedding. Debbie felt lost among the wall to wall crowd of relatives that made Ana’ s family, and there was a bunch missing that couldn’ t make the trip from Chihuahua. Sitting at the table, surrounded by noise and people linked by blood and marriages, she felt like a ship wreck at sea floating on a coconut sack in the middle of the ocean. She didn’ t know were she was drifting to, and it didn’ t matter because whatever the direction the currents might carry her, there was nothing but emptiness.

After two failed marriage she had no intentions of boarding that boat again. The first one had been to Nicky, good hearted but dumb as a rock and lazy. She got tired of working two jobs seven days a week while he slept on the couch all day long complaining about his back, a back that didn’ t hurt when it was time to go fishing or drinking. Marriage to her had seemed like an opportunity to share things but Nicky had been interested only in taking, taking her money, her time, her life, never giving anything back in return.

The second one had been to Billy. Debbie still cannot figure out how she ended up with such a loser. Sometimes she blames her eagerness to find a companion overriding her common sense. At other times she blames her innate ability at picking up losers despite their defects being as visible as the sun in a cloudless day. Billy the biker, the macho man, the wife beater, the ecstasy and meth dealer, the philanderer, the one that got caught cooking meth and distributing drugs and was still sitting in jail, where Debbie thinks he belongs. It had been a miracle that she hadn’ t been dragged into his mess. The cops had come around their shabby apartment with a search warrant asking questions, probing, looking for a way to send her away with her husband; after all, she already had a good size rap sheet.

They could prove nothing because there was nothing to prove. She had always made sure that none of Billy’ s crap was stashed in the house and her vigilance had paid off. The cops went away empty handed. The close call had scared her to death and she had filed for divorce right after his conviction. For once the courts had been on her side and she got a quick divorce. Listing in the sworn affidavit the occasions in which Billy had struck her had also helped her motion.

Debbie finds it unbelievable that she had put up with his abuse. At the first beating from a boyfriend she had always packed her bags in a hurry and left destination unknown. But that was when she was young and had nothing but her body to trade with and her addictions. Back then packing and moving was a matter of putting her few clothes in a gym bag and getting her money stash from under the toilet’ s tank lid. Boyfriends were nothing but a blip on her journey to nowhere. A husband had proven to be a little harder to get rid of because of the emotional investments, all false pretenses, poured into the marriage.

Still, there was no excuse. It was true she had been afraid of his bad temper and his mean streak that would flare with just a little bit of priming from alcohol or for no reason at all. Fuck him and the Harley he rode in, Debbie says to herself when she thinks of Billy.

After lunch the women pick up their things, clean up and load the van. Debbie drives through streets flanked by professionally landscaped grassy areas, all so perfect and yet so cold, as if there were not human beings to soil things and to litter the clean sidewalks, strips of bright clean concrete that look as if nobody ever walked on them. Ana and Maria talk to each other in Spanish and the radio plays a Mexican radio station. The gibberish doesn’ t bother Debbie because it gives her a excuse to keep to her thoughts.

Ana and Maria will go home to houses full of children and husbands. She has two spoiled cats waiting for her. When she gets sick nobody comes knocking on her door to see how she is doing. If death comes for her in her little place only the stench of decay will tell the landlord that she is no more.

But that is the price to pay to be free, free of love and commitments and passions that yield bitterness and disappointments. Free of assholes like Nicky and Billy. Even Lucy and Ricky Ricardo got divorced in real life. Nothing ever lasts; there is no such thing as perfect love. Love is nothing but a memory, like the most powerful and destructive of thunderstorms the day after when puddles and mud are the only witnesses to its passage. She had plenty of bad weather in her past, and only dried mud sticks to her memory, stuff that when examined closely, it crumbles into dust.

The things she remembers, that still hold a shine and a freshness that doesn’ t die with time are few, and she treasures them even if she doesn’ t quite understand why those memories keep their youth. She stands in the beach, looking at that frothy seam where sea and sand meet. The seam goes far down, as far as the horizon, and Ken walks next to her. Such a silly memory. Or the time they were in the jetties, naked under a pool of sea water, or having dinner, a cheeseburger, onion rings and a beer, at that little place in Port Orange. Every thing had been, and still is, so silly, so unreal. She feels ashamed of the memories at the same time she relishes them. She sees Ken as a creature of her imagination, not as a flesh and bone man, but the memories of him making love to her are too real; he had to be real. Making love? He was a john, a paying customer; still, she had made love to him even if he didn’ t know it at the time.

“ Debbie? Hello?” says Ana, smiling.

“ What?” says Debbie, startled.

“ Wake up girl. You were in dreamland.”

“ Oh, sorry.”

Debbie’ s memories recede like a wave, and like a wave, they will come back again. She cannot stop them.