New Life

by

Bonnie Dee

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SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Bonnie Dee on Smashwords

New LifeCopyright © 2013

All rights reserved. Without limiting the
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may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic,
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prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above
publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the
author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author
acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various
products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used
without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not
authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark
owners.

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Chapter One

The first thing you need to know about me is
I’m not retarded. Or mentally handicapped I guess is the polite
term these days. But whatever you call it, I’m not that. I have a
mental disability, but I wasn’t born this way. It took extra
stupidity for me to get this way—driving drunk, shooting through
the windshield, landing on my noggin, and scrambling my brains
permanently. I don’t babble and I don’t drool, except sometimes on
my pillow when I’m sleeping, but everybody does that.

Anyway, that’s not the story I want to tell.
Who really needs to hear about comas and thousands of hours of
rehab? My story begins the night I was cleaning black shoe marks
off the floor, which could be any night since my life became all
about industrial cleaners and swabbing toilets. This particular
night, I was buffing the corridor floor of the office building
where I clean. I remember the Naked Farmers blasting through my
headphones, when I saw a woman sitting in the stairwell, head down,
shoulders hunched and shaking.

My first thought was to pass by, concentrate
on polishing the floor, and leave her in peace to cry. Everybody
deserves privacy. But after I’d polished a few more feet, wall to
wall, I turned off the machine.

I don’t like interrupting my routine. If I
stray from my list of tasks, I tend to get confused. Memory lapses
and trouble with organization—a couple of party favors I took home
from a college kegger one night. But people are supposed to be kind
to each another, right? So I paused the Naked Farmers in the middle
of the line about “pray to Jesus but keep a shotgun handy when the
Four Horsemen come to call” and pulled out my earbuds. I could hear
the woman’s sobs echoing in the stairwell.

When I got close and she lifted her head, I
recognized her face. At first I thought it was from a long time
ago, like back in high school, or maybe during my time in the
hospital. I suck at placing people since my memory’s shaky and time
kind of shifts on me sometimes. Then I remembered I’d seen her here
in the law offices on the second floor as she was leaving work and
I was arriving. She’d passed me in the hall and smiled like people
do at janitors, polite but barely making eye contact. I remember
thinking she was really pretty. Now tear tracks were blazing
mascara trails down her cheeks.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yes, fine. Thank you.” She rubbed her eyes,
grabbed the banister, and rose.

I could almost see her moment of weakness
being covered like someone protecting broken windows with plywood.
She picked up her purse and briefcase and started to walk past
me.

Fine. I needed to get back to work anyway.
But as she passed, her perfume tickled my nose, and I suddenly
wanted her to stick around a little longer. Cleaning an empty
office building is boring and lonely. Nothing but hours of me, the
floor buffer, and the tunes on my MP3 player.

“Try counting sheep,” I blurted.

She stopped and turned, blonde-streaked brown
hair flipping over one shoulder. “Pardon me?”

“It helps…when you’re having a hard day.”

I knew she thought I was simpleminded by the
way her eyes went all soft and pitying. “I think that’s for falling
asleep.”

“It works for other things too. It’s a
technique. Like a—what do you call it—mantra. Helps you calm
down…when you’re anxious and…focuses your thoughts.”

I could parrot therapist-speak, and I
definitely wanted this chick to know I wasn’t dumb.

Her eyes went wide, and she smiled. “Is that
so? Maybe I could use a mantra. Tell me more.”

I felt suddenly nervous. The way my life was
at the time, I could go days hardly talking to anybody, and I’d
sort of lost the knack.

“When people are emotional, their minds are
all over the place. Counting something helps slow your heart rate
and breathing. It’s like meditation.”

At least, that’s what I meant to say. The way
it came out was less concise, with a lot of pauses while I searched
for the right word. She waited patiently for me to finish
formulating my thoughts, which was cool. A lot of people want to
finish my thoughts for me, and nothing’s more apt to make me clam
up.

“Counting sheep, eh? Well, hell, I can get
rid of my Xanax prescription and save a bundle.” She smiled.

I tried to think of something else to say so
she wouldn’t walk away. “Another good technique is to draw the
thing that’s upsetting you. Your boss, maybe,” I guessed. “And work
through your shit that way.”

She shifted her purse strap to the other
shoulder and set down the briefcase like maybe she was going to
stay awhile. “You taking psych classes? It sounds like you’re
gearing up for a career as a therapist.”

“No. I had to drop out of college.” I tapped
my head. “Brain injury.”

She nodded. “I’m Anna, by the way.”

“Jason.” I wondered if I should offer my hand
to shake. But Anna hadn’t held out hers, so I didn’t either.

“Do you like your job here?”

I glanced at the abandoned buffer, then back
at her. “Cleaning is my life.”

Her laughter rang down the empty corridor.
“Point taken.”

“I wasn’t being”—I searched my scrambled
brain before coming up with the right word—“ironic.
Unfortunately.”

“You’re funny,” she said.

“Funny looking or funny hah-hah?”

Anna’s gaze swept over me from head to toe,
leaving me heated. “Not at all funny looking.”

It was a pretty kind compliment. I can see in
the mirror every day that the scar on my face is still red.
Supposedly it’ll fade over time, but I’ll never be my former
handsome self. I could feel Anna wanting to ask about the scar, but
she didn’t. People are too polite. Except for little kids, who’ll
say anything that crosses their minds. I appreciate that
honesty.

“So, is it your boss who made you cry?” I
asked.

She shook her head. “I did it to myself.
Thought I was prepared for court, but I wasn’t, and I made a fool
of myself.”

“You a paralegal?” I asked, because she
looked too young to do anything else in a law office.

“I’m a lawyer.” She gave a little snort. “I
worked hard to be able to say that, so why do I have the feeling I
drove down a road a long way in the wrong direction?”

“You don’t like it.”

“I didn’t today. My first day in court and I
crashed and burned.”

“Public speaking is hard for most
people.”

“It’s not just about today. The longer I’ve
been here, the more I wonder why. I never stopped to think about
what career I wanted, just kept moving to the next level, because
in my family there wasn’t any choice but law school.”

“You come from liars…lawyers?” I corrected,
and it wasn’t an intentional joke. Sometimes the wrong word just
comes out.

“My dad and mom both, plus some other family
members. But I chose it. I earned it, and now I’m stuck with
it.”

I clicked my tongue. “When you could be doing
really important work like this.” I jerked a thumb at the
buffer.

She smiled again, a dimple flashing in her
left cheek. “Smart-ass. I know I’ve got nothing to complain about,
but a girl’s got a right to cry when she thinks she’s all alone.
Don’t judge.”

“Not judging, just trying to make you feel
better about your job. Do you?”

Her brown eyes crinkled at the corners,
stirring things in me that hadn’t been stirred in quite a while,
and I don’t mean my cock, although she was doing a fair job of
waking it too.

“Thanks for listening.” She stooped to pick
up her briefcase and purse, and my giddy joy deflated. Our
conversation was over. “And thanks for the sheep-counting tip. I’ll
try that next time I’m upset.”

I pressed my palms together, guru-style.
“Find your center and remain there.”

She returned my bow. “Yes,
sensai
.”

Man, I liked this woman who got my sense of
humor.

“See you around,” she added before heading
down the hall.

I watched her out of sight, then pictured her
leaving the building, going to her car, putting her key in the
ignition, starting up, and driving away. I would’ve gone on to
imagine her arriving home at some apartment building and going
inside but shook myself out of the fantasy. Reviewing the order of
things was how I made it through my days. Therapists call it
“sequencing,” and it saved me from getting scattered and
accomplishing nothing.

But imagining Anna’s timeline was not going
to help me complete my own tasks for the night. Time to return to
reality.

I tucked in the earbuds and turned on the
Naked Farmers, then switched on the buffer. One sweep, two, side to
side until the corridor was a glossy sheet. Tomorrow, new shoe
marks and scuffs would ruin the surface, but for tonight it was
flawless. Perfect.

****

When did I first meet Jason? I’m not sure how
to answer that. I saw him a few times before the night we met, but
our paths rarely crossed. He was the night janitor who usually
arrived after I’d left the building, unless I was working very
late. He was just some guy who emptied trash and cleaned things.
Some people don’t have much of a function in your life, so you
don’t see them—until something happens to draw your attention to
them in a new way. The night of the Paulik case was the night I
actually
met
Jason.

I’d stayed late, preparing briefs and
reliving my horrible performance in court earlier that day.
Although my preparation for the Paulik case had been meticulous, my
presentation was disastrous. I ended up losing track of what I was
saying and babbling. A recurring nightmare I’d had during my years
of law school coming to horrible, vivid life.

My mentor, Jules Arden, had stopped by my
office before he left. “Live to fight another day, Ms. Stevens. You
have one night to sulk, then you’ve got to get back on the
horse.”

Usually I appreciated Arden’s support, but
that evening his kindness only brought me closer to the edge of
breaking down. As soon as I was alone in the office at last, I
packed up my briefcase and made it halfway downstairs before I lost
it. All the humiliation and the fear that I would always be
terrible at my job came to a head. I sat on the stairs and cried
like a two-year-old.

I was hardly aware of the quiet drone of the
buffing machine even after the motor cut off. But the sound of
approaching footsteps brought my head up with a jerk. Hastily, I
wiped my cheeks and steeled myself for unwanted sympathy. I
snatched up my things so I could make a quick exit.

Then Jason took me by surprise.

Although from the scar on his face he’d
obviously suffered some sort of trauma, he wasn’t mentally impaired
like I’d first thought. He was unexpectedly clever and funny and
made me laugh on a night I really needed to. We talked for only a
few minutes, but his words stuck with me all the way home. He
offered a cocktail of therapy advice served in such a dry tone it
made my mouth pucker. Breathe slowly. Herd my scattered thoughts
into a rhythmic line of leaping sheep. Draw a picture of what
frightened me and banish it. Psych 101 suggestions, but also good
advice. By the time I reached my apartment and several hundred
sheep had jumped over my mental fence, I did feel more relaxed.

“Find your center and remain there,” I said
as I watched my frozen dinner spin around in the microwave.

I thought about Jason for a long time after I
lay down in bed that night. He was hot in an unkempt slacker kind
of way that I’d always secretly been attracted to but had never
dated. Shaggy black hair curled around his ears and fell like a
crow’s wing over his forehead. Equally dark eyes had looked into
mine as if he really
saw
me. Intense. Intent. He was
anything but slow, despite his halting speech pattern. His sharp
features would’ve been almost too conventionally handsome without
the jagged scar that ran from temple to jaw on the right side. It
gave the impression of trial by fire. This man had been through
something heavy duty and emerged on the other side. I’d wanted to
know what caused the scars, the fragmented speech, and the stiff
gait when he walked, but of course I hadn’t asked. It wasn’t my
business. Besides, it wasn’t as if I was going to see him again and
become his BFF.