From Riches to Rags Read Free Page B

alcoholic.
    She had money of her own and burned through as if it grew on trees. And when the hotel where she was staying, cut up her credit card right in front of her, because her father had stopped credit on it, she didn’t bat an eye. She kept drinking.
    I watched her that morning, when she woke up in the gutter, lying next to an unconscious drunk. She was broke. She was terrified. She was sober.
    Her mother called me daily the first couple of months. The woman was distraught, but hopeful that she was doing the right thing. It wouldn’t have taken much for her to have changed her mind and demand that I bring her daughter home. But each time she got close to doing just that, her husband talked her out of it. It was he who asked me to give only positive reports to Mrs. Livingston, telling her what she wanted to hear, to shield her from the depths their daughter had sunk to. But he wanted the complete details, including my analyses that I thought Chris was acting out in order to punish them. He agreed with me and said that with all things considered, it seemed the normal thing for her to do.
    With absolutely no money left, Chris wandered into a restaurant one day, hoping for food and landed a job instead. I sent up a silent prayer of thanks for that restaurant manager, because he had probably saved her life that day. Unfortunately, I was also in the restaurant when Chris got herself fired. It might be biased on my part, having witnessed her struggle to pull herself up by her bootstraps, but Chris was totally justified in standing up to the insufferable Melinda Blackstone. I know Melinda by reputation only, and she is not even in the same league as Chris.
    When I report to the Livingston’s that Chris was fired from her first job, I will temper it with the kindness Chris showed a beggar just an hour before she was let go. The man was dirty, grungy, and reeked of alcohol so bad that I could smell him from my table back in the corner. He was quickly shown the door. Chris told the manager that she was going to break for supper, and then offered her meal to the homeless man instead. When she came back in, I saw a tear in her eye, as if she knew how close she had come to being just like that man. How close she still is.
     
     
     

Chapter Two
     
    The Haunting ‒ Melinda aka Blackie Blackstone
     
    “Leave me alone!” I heard myself scream, and then realized I had been dreaming.
    “What is it, Blackie?”
    I looked at the stranger in my arms, asking me something I couldn’t answer, even to myself. “I think you’d better go now. There’s some cash on the nightstand, take what you need.”
    “I’m not a prostitute. Did you think I was?”
    “No, don’t be silly” I said, as I sat up and waited for my head to stop pounding, “I’ve got a bitch of a hangover and just want to be alone now. The money is to make sure you get home all right.”
    “Oh, well, um, thanks.”
    She got up and dressed, then grabbed up the wad of bills I had lying on the nightstand and left. She’s going to piss in her pants when she counts it , I thought. But even thinking made my hurt head, so I laid back down and pull the blankets over my burning eyes. “I’m not having any fun,” I said out loud to my empty hotel room. I must be doing something wrong, because it use to be all about the fun. I didn’t have fun getting drunk and I didn’t have fun screwing that girl, not even when she brought me to climax. “What is wrong with me?”
    I closed my eyes, adding to the darkness under the blanket, and instantly that waitress came to mind. It was her that I had been dreaming about, and she haunts me still in my consciousness. Ah, there’s the problem, I’m conscious. I tried to empty my mind, so that I could sleep, but she wouldn’t let me. Why did you let her get to you like that? George had asked me, but I couldn’t answer him. Why did I let her get to me? Was it her sad celadon green eyes that pierced my very soul with their depth,