something clever

Sandi had never really noticed the small civic center since it was hidden in the middle of the development. She sighed over the small assortment of cars that people had actually driven the 300 yards from their driveways and parked in the lot. What a bunch of shallow cunts, she thought.

She watched her husband check his watch for the third time in a minute. He was desperately making sure that they were at least five minutes late for the scheduled HOA meeting. They'd walked here as slowly as possible so Dan, who could sweat like a pig from walking up a single flight of stairs despite his fitness-club body, wouldn't completely soak his silk shirt. He was eager to make a good first impression and utilize the techniques in a blog post he'd found online regarding reforming people's impressions of oneself. Sandi couldn't care less, and the sooner the meeting was over the better.

Dan on the other hand was eager to rub elbows with Colin. Colin was the neighbor most men envied and wished they were. Largest house in the development by fifty-three square feet (the result of an unlicensed addition), local beauty queen trophy second wife (prom queen at the local high school and baby sitter of the children of his first wife), and a lovely midlife crisis-mobile, a 1981 Lamborghini Countach.

"Jesus, Tabitha actually drove that thing here? She lives a block away," Sandi said gesturing at a Expedition parked across two spaces.

"Honey, can you drop the environmental martyr act for five minutes?" Dan said. He straightened his tie again.

"Well, it's ridiculous. She could have walked like we did."

"I still think we shouldn't have. Look, I'm already sweating right through my shirt."

melancholy

There was a gap in the rose bushes. Sandi was aware of it, but she really didn't care anymore. She had spent the first five years of her marriage pruning the damn things, and she was sick of it. So one plant died of rot? Good riddance. She sat on her patio, staring through the hole in the wall of annuals, sipping a coffee with far more Irish Mist than she should have added this early in the morning, and dared the rest of the flowers to wilt before her eyes.

She sipped again. Really, this was more than enough liqueur for a single cup of coffee. Another gulp. Just too much.

As far as she could tell, she finished the cup of coffee/booze around ten. Dan wouldn't be back until six or later. There was the thesis, but Sandi hadn't read a peer-reviewed journal in two months. Hadn't sat at her computer in almost twice that. She'd even glanced at a copy of People in the checkout line last week. And sex? When masturbation's lost it's fun, you're fucking...something.

She giggled a little. The bottle of Irish Mist was sitting on the counter. Another cup of coffee? However, the pot was empty, and it would take five minutes to make another one. Straight Mist it was. She half filled her coffee cup with the liqueur. Here's to you Billie Joe, she thought and took a stiff sip.

"Cough! Ugh." Wow, had she ever drank schnapps straight? When was the last time she'd had actual booze?

The second half cup of alcohol bought her another half an hour. Now I'm done for the day, she thought. Don't want Dan to come home and find me passed out naked on the living room floor with a running vacuum in my hand after a drunken attempt to unpack and clean. She glanced in the pantry, and looked over the stacks of moving boxes still marked with what she was fairly certain was labels from the previous move.

A notice on the dining room table caught her eye as she was pondering whether to unpack or start a fire. She picked it up, and took a sip of the second cup of Irish Mist. God, the home owner's association, she thought as she rolled her eyes. Bunch of bored housewives.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the dining room mirror.

"Fuck you, I'm not that far gone," she said to the empty house.

Sunnyvale HOA

This is the third novella

---

there is never a gap when I get up to the stop sign bob randall and dave johns and mike fiztgerald can get up there and go right the hell out of the goddamn street but when I get up there and especially when I'm running late especially when I'm running behind and always on monday and why the hell do I always have to wait for an entire fucking HERD

Dan watched the traffic flood pass him. He pounded his steering wheel. His coffee, which he never let himself sip until he was already on the loop as part of his buddhist studies (denial), was cold, he just knew it. Sandi said it was because he put too much milk (skim) in it, but what the hell did she know. Jake Thompson was behind him, edging up to his bumper. If he "accidentally" hit him again, he was going to "accidentally" tell his wife he wasn't actually going across town to take the babysitter home on friday nights.