Page 5 of Crossroads Magic
Sometimes, it made it worse.
The dizziness was also lack of oxygen and restricted blood flow. That was why I gripped the door frame and leaned against it. I put my arm up over my mouth, so that my exhaled air could accumulate in the crook of my elbow and I’d breath it back in. It was a makeshift paper bag.
When my breathing slowed, the pressure in my head receded and my pulse calmed. That just left the headache.
I turned and leaned against the doorframe, my head back against the wood. My legs were trembling, but they were holding me up, for now. There was no way I was going to sit on the filthy carpet in the hallway.
How the hell could I afford to care for my pregnant daughter? And what if, miracle of miracles, Ghaliya managed to bear a child? How could I support both of them? I could barely support myself.
I wasn’t living in this shitty apartment by choice. I had commitments. Legal commitments. I’d signed away any hope of a decent life, six months ago.
?
Eighteen months before Jasper told me our marriage was over, he had gone through what I can only call a midlife crisis. I think what kicked it off was selling his plumbing business to a deep-pocketed investor. Royston Harrish had been a casual friend for years. He’d made an outrageous proposal to buy the business, which Jasper had accepted.
And suddenly, Jasper was out of work, after working twelve-hour days for years. It had set off…I don’t know. An introspection about his life, so far? And even though he didn’t tell me, in hindsight I can guess that he found his life lacking and his future uninspiring.
Instead of finding work, or even starting another business, Jasper had…changed. He bought a new car, turning in his perfectly good Ford Explorer for a screamingly bright red Tesla Roadster.
He bought two thousand dollars worth of art supplies and spent his days in one of the spare bedrooms, smearing paint on canvases. He didn’t paint landscapes or portraits. He embraced abstract art, that, when I looked at it, I was never sure if I should praise it or carefully disparage it.
Most of the time, Jasper was unhappy with what he produced. But he seemed driven to put something of himself on the canvas, so I let him be.
Honestly, I was too busy with my own job. I had started at Finesse Films as a badly paid receptionist when Ghaliya had started school. Now I was vice president of client relations, which was a fancy way of saying that I still greeted and looked after investors. I just did it for more money, because I could keep them in the room and talking even after Danny Ortiza, the owner, pissed them off. Investors came with money, so smoothing things over was how we got movies produced.
So I left Jasper alone and focused on my own career, and figured he’d work it out. Or he could talk to me when he was ready.
But we never got to talk it out, because Jasper decided that he didn’t want to go on with the marriage.
I suppose the separation had been inevitable. His midlife crisis and my focus on my career were both blunt weapons that would kill any relationship when put together.
The kids, Oscar and Ghaliya, had been devastated. It had come out of the blue, for them.
The painful practicalities only made the kids resent us more. Jasper didn’t have a job, but the house was paid for, plus there were the proceeds from the sale of the business, so it made sense that he would stay in the house.
I had a well-paying job, so I agreed to move out and find a house of my own, where the kids could have their own rooms. Only neither of them wanted to move out with me. Ghaliya was finishing high school, and didn’t want to move schools and lose all her friends. Oscar was interning at an alternative power company, and talking about opening his own business. He was saving to underwrite that business and didn’t want to move, either, as he could bike to work from the house.
I found a temporary hostel to live in while I hunted for the ideal house. I suppose the silver lining in that was that I didn’t have time to buy a house and wasn’t tied up in mortgage and tax payments when Danny Ortiza fired me.
Danny’s explanation was shallow. My attitude toward investors had changed. I wasn’t as effective at dealing with them anymore. And he needed my high salary for other budget items.
When I saw the twenty-year-old former model he’d hired, I understood. I’d grown too old. Too invisible. I couldn’t deal with investors effectively anymore, because I had wrinkles beside my mouth and eyes and a pot stomach that had grown overnight when my metabolism had slowed down—one of the delightful side effects of menopause.
I wanted to go on a three-day bender, and throw darts at Danny’s photo on the wall, but I suddenly couldn’t afford the booze or the time. I had to find another job.Fast.
Only, no one wanted to hire a fifty-year-old woman with nothing but a high school diploma. My years of experience didn’t mean a damn thing. Everyone wanted nimble people who could think creatively. I could read that code. They wanted someone much younger than me. A degree was the bare minimum for any job that wasn’t paid by the hour, and was a way of eliminating me from the running.
I found myself in a diner where the coffee was cheap, after the latest failed job interview. I drank endless coffee and re-readDeath to the Shadows, Harry the Hobgoblin’s second venture, where he learned he could cast spells, as long as he spoke them backwards. It stopped me from thinking very hard.
Then I spotted the hand-written sign on the back wall of the diner.Short order cook wanted. Aply within.
I ignored the spelling mistake and asked the waitress about the job. She went away and the short, fat man I would come to know as Ashwin Sosa came up to my table.
“I need someone with energy,” he told me. “It’s a fast-paced job.”
“I know what a short order cook is,” I told him. “Youdon’tknow that I don’t have the energy.”
He looked me up and down. “You got any experience?’ he said, in a tone that said he didn’t think I did, and that would give him a way to tell me ‘no’.
