- Text Size +
Story Notes:

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

 

 


There’s whiny indie rock playing in her car as Karen drives into Utica, duffel bags shuffled hastily in the trunk and a lamp obscuring her rearview mirror as it protrudes from a precarious position in the back seat. She turns the music down when she passes the “welcome to” sign, sighing heavily as her last chance of escape hovers faintly in her rear view mirror and disappears. She’s already taken the job, but before there was still miles of open road, an answering machine message telling her mom not to worry and that idealized road trip she never took after college.

 

Her hands grip the wheel, not exactly steady, but she prides herself in the ability to still her faint tremors there, and suddenly Arcade Fire is really getting on her nerves.

 

Jim had burned this mix for her while they’d been dating, with its broken chords and feminine male vocals, but it’s all wrong. Because at this point in her life she needs reflective, not melancholy. The fact that this is the music that Jim listened to, about broken hearts and frosty silences and the death of irony, is just starting to make sense with all she knows about him now and that’s really the most depressing part of it all; the fact that she didn’t realize he’d left too much of his soul with someone else for her to claim any for herself.

 

There’s a CD that catches her eye in the visor and she slips it into the dashboard player as she purses her lips.

 

Jim never knew she liked jazz.

 

She’d always hid it behind that Bob Marley disk that she’d impulse bought at the quickie mart on her first drive into Scranton, because it was easier to hear him ridicule that than risk he’d make fun of her Louis Armstrong, her Benny Goodman, her Miles Davis. It was the music that had gotten her through her parent’s divorce, the suicide of her brother. She didn’t think he’d understand and she’s glad now that she’d never shared that part of her life with the dick that dumped her as the fountain beat a piano-like melody in the background.

 

So she slides into Utica with the tap of her fingers on the smooth voice and brassy instruments of Billie Holiday.  

 

Yes the strong survive

While the weak ones fade

Empty pockets don’t ever make the grade

Mama may have, Papa may have

But God bless the child that’s got his own

That’s got his own

 

Karen pretends her corporate parking spot is one of the ebony keys and she’s tapping C-sharp, and the spin of the world swallows down easier for a moment.

 

 

 

 

Chapter End Notes:
Review please. You know you want to.


bebitched is the author of 66 other stories.



You must login (register) to review or leave jellybeans