BART
I’m writing 750+ words a day of fiction and publishing them here for the next 100 days. These are written quickly with minimal editing and based off a daily prompt.
Day 4 Prompt: She had missed the last train and there was only one person she…
She missed the last train and there was only one person she knew on this side of the Bay. The rain was coming down harder now, waves pummeling the metal roof of the platform shelter. Reina shivered and pulled her hoodie up over her damp brown curls. “Dammit,” she thought, “am I really going to have to call her?”
Reina rarely went to Oakland unless she was going to a concert. But she had needed this job and took it without thinking much about the logistics of getting back and forth to the East Bay on those few occasions when she needed to meet with the client in person. Most of her graphic design work could be done remotely, but sometimes you just had to go there. “When you took this gig you still had a car,” she thought to herself, peering out at the sheets of rain shimmering in the platform lights. “You still had a car, a boyfriend, an apartment, a full-time job…”
She stopped herself there, knowing that train of thought would lead nowhere but to a depressive episode. She had no interest in spending the night crying on a cold wet train platform. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and repeated the mantra that had gotten her through the loneliest, most barren winter of her life, “This too shall pass.”
The second DUI had been a wake-up call, of sorts. She just hadn’t listened. Or, rather, didn’t want to listen. She hated the court-mandated AA meetings, tucked into a sad forgotten strip mall and wedged between the Dollar Store and a donut shop. With the terrible coffee in styrofoam cups and everyone telling horrifying stories of what led them to this place. It was hard for Reina to hear testimonials; she kept comparing her personal experience to theirs and coming up short. It seemed like everyone else had a damn good reason to drink while she was just weak. At each meeting, her self-loathing flared and she left feeling like she deserved to be alone and miserable. A fitting punishment for her reprehensible behavior. Afterward, she always walked two blocks to The Corner Pocket for a beer and whiskey back.
She sucked her teeth and tooth three deep breaths, counting to five on the in breath and seven on the out breath like her meeting leader had modeled. “Shit, maybe I did get something from those things,” she thought, placing the flat of her palms against her eyes to hold back the tears that still threatened to consume her evening. Losing her driver’s license had been the last, humiliating icing on the crappy cake of life. She wished she could just drop out of humanity altogether. Be obliterated. Not dead, just temporarily removed. That was the beauty of alcohol. Total blotto and you could still wake up in the morning. Most of the time.
Standing on the dripping platform, Reina ran down her options on one hand: a hotel was out of the question. She could get an Uber, but that was so expensive and she really needed the rest of the cash in her wallet if she was going to get all the way to Santa Cruz for Bluesfest tomorrow. She could call Suzi. She could call Derek and ask him to drive across the bridge. Or she could call her sister.
Clearly, these were false choices. Suzi wouldn’t even pick up the phone if she saw it was Reina’s number, and she didn’t want to think about what Derek would ask for in return for driving out here in the rain. They’d probably end up at the bar together, anyway. Plus it was nearly 10 pm and he would most likely be drunk already. Derek didn’t like going to AA meetings, either.
There was no way she was calling her sister. Just not happening. She hadn’t seen Peggy in nearly three years. Their last phone conversation, after Jimmy passed, ended in rage screaming on both sides and Reina had ended it by throwing her phone into a pitcher of Long Island iced tea. Tonight, though, Reina was desperate.
“Maybe this is a sign,” she thought. “A sign that I am a total loser and cannot get my shit together.” She sighed and started down the stairs toward 7th street. Peggy only lived five blocks away. She would walk it, and figure it out once she got there. Reina vaguely remembered Peggy’s old Victorian house having a covered back porch. She had slept off a few on the wooden floorboards, using Peggy’s old ginger cat Rooster as a pillow.
Reina walked out of the BART station had headed south. At least the rain had slowed to a cool drizzle. She kept her eyes down, stepping over cracks in the sidewalk and avoiding thoughts of her sister. “This too shall pass,” she whispered to herself.
She would figure it out once she got there.
Originally published at stasiland.blogspot.com.
