A Bitch Named Karma. Stephanie Haefner

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      Mom jumped up out of her seat with tears flowing down her cheeks. “I just knew it!” she exclaimed and hugged Abby, then Daniel.

      Abby showed off her gargantuan diamond. From the looks of it, Daniel was making up for some sort of shortcoming.

      “Are you happy for me, Lexi?” Abby stared at me, her smile wide as a Cinderella-style wedding gown skirt.

      “Oh, uh, yeah, of course. Congrats.” I raised my glass and chugged the rest of my wine.

      “A wedding to plan! How exciting!” Mom squealed like a five-year-old. She’d been waiting for this day since the doctor spanked my ass and yelled, “It’s a girl!”

      I liked the spanking part of that deal, not the girly things that usually came with owning a vagina.

      Even though I despised the gaiety of wedding hoopla, I did want to get married some day. I wanted the security of a penis at my beck and call and to know I’d never be alone. That is what scared me most of all, growing old and gray and ugly and having no one to be miserable with. I’d thought Zak would be the crotchety old fart rocking next to me in fifty years. Apparently, he had other thoughts on whom he wanted to grow old with. I bet those tattoos will look spectacular when her skin’s all wrinkly.

      I grabbed the half-empty bottle of wine, took it to my room, chugged from it and plopped onto the bed. A vision of Zak’s face burst into my brain. Maybe I could forgive him and we could go on like it never happened. So he’d slept with my friend, lied to me for months. What’s a little infidelity between friends? There wasn’t anything wrong with being insecure, timid, a doormat of a woman. Except for the fact that I hated those women—the ones afraid to stand up to their man for fear of losing him. I wasn’t that desperate, was I?

      I grabbed the phone and dialed Zak’s cell number. I needed answers and the wine had given me the courage to ask the questions.

      “Why Brenda?” I spat before he had a chance to say anything beside a hesitant, “Hello?”

      “Lex, is that you?”

      “Answer me,” I demanded, but stayed calm.

      “Dammit, I don’t know. She was something different.”

      “Couldn’t you find something different in a girl I didn’t know?”

      “It just happened,” he answered. “We never meant to hurt you.”

      “A one night stand just happens. A two month affair is bullshit.”

      “I know. It never should have gone on as long as it did.”

      “Zak, it never should have gone on at all!” My face heated and my voice rose. “You can’t tell me I didn’t make things spicy enough for you. I came to your office and fucked you in your desk chair! How’s that for something different?”

      Suddenly a thought bounced into my head. He’d said Ruth left the nail file on his desk that day. Her idea of a manicure was making sure each nail was gnawed to the same length as the others. No possible way did she own a professional grade file and buffer.

      “Brenda was there, wasn’t she?”

      Zak’s silence answered my question.

      “You bastard!”

      “Lexi, what did you want me to do? Have Ruth tell you not to come in? I didn’t know you were going to be naked underneath your jacket.”

      “Where was she hiding?”

      “In the bathroom.”

      “Perfect place for a piece of shit, I suppose.”

      “Can’t we be civil?”

      “Civility went out the door when you fucked another woman in my bed and burned my apartment to the ground. Oh, and once I tally it up, I’ll be sending you a bill for the damages.” I pressed End on my phone, wishing I’d called him on the ancient rotary in my parents’ basement. When you slammed the receiver of one of those down, it made an impression.

      I’d thought reaming Zak out would make me feel better, but it didn’t. I wanted another bottle of wine and maybe a whole package of Oreos, double stuffed and covered in chocolate. Instead, I made my way down the hall to Andy’s room for something a bit stronger and less likely to add inches to my thighs.

      “What?” he growled after I knocked on his door several times.

      “Open the damn door, asshole.”

      He opened it a mere six inches. Even when we were kids, he allowed no one the privilege or misery of entering his private domain. “What?”

      “Gimme some of your shit. I know you got it.”

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said and tried to close the door in my face. Having anticipated this reaction, I’d wedged my foot between the door and its frame.

      “Now, asshole. You don’t want to fuck with me.”

      Maybe I saw a glimpse of brotherly love or maybe he knew the problems I could cause for him. Either way, he gave me what I wanted. I walked back to my room and locked the door.

      I pressed the Open button on the old bookshelf stereo I’d used as a teen. Nirvana’s Nevermind CD stared at me. I pushed it back in and pressed the play button. The opening chords of Smells Like Teen Spirit thundered into my chest as I opened the window and squished into my hot pink pleather beanbag chair.

      I inhaled a long drag. Were smoking a joint and listening to the songs of a man who’d committed suicide in my best interest? My sanity balanced on the edge of my window sill, its vulnerability increasing with each puff as it teetered closer to the autumn air. But it had been ages since I got high, and it felt damn good. I reminisced about college, when I didn’t care about much besides the next party. But as mature adults, we get to a point where drug use seems like such a loser thing to do. Did this mean I thought myself a loser?

      * * * *

      The light of day blasted my hung-over face as my body still lay sprawled across my beanbag chair. I stumbled down the stairs in search of nourishment. My mother stood preparing her roast for dinner and informed me of the get-together she’d planned. Apparently my stay with them was “a wonderful opportunity” to catch up with my distant kin. I had no desire to make small talk across the dinner table with people I saw every five years at funerals or weddings. And like most things in my life, my mother didn’t get it and made the phone calls anyway. She said she knew “just what I needed,” a night to relax and forget about my problems. If she really wanted to give me what I needed, she would hand me a pair of dull rusty scissors and Zak’s penis.

      At six sharp the next evening, the doorbell rang and in trudged my cousin Wendy, her husband Randy and their three brats.

      “Wendy СКАЧАТЬ