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3WW: brash; lubricate; saint: You’re such a disappointment: fiction

April 15, 2010 By pia

“You’re such a disappointment.”

Who the hell are you, I thought but didn’t say.  Oh I knew her well.  One of the biggest bitches in the city, and the woman people thought was one of my closest of close friends.

She was beautiful.  The woman who had borne a rock star his last and favorite child.  She didn’t have to do anything but be beautiful.  Her life work was decorating his life with color and wit.  She wasn’t brash.  No, her style was more hit them with kindness.  Everybody but me, of course.  I saw through her faux kindness.  She would bring soup to sick people.  Visit everybody’s old aunt.  Everybody’s but mine.  My relatives weren’t even supposed to be seen by me.  I was supposed to accompany her on her mercy missions.

I was supposed to be famous.  I was so bright.  Such a good writer.  Pretty too.  The brilliantly wrapped package had a carpenter’s ant or bee hole in one corner causing it to be imperfect.  The sparkle was ruined.

My motto had always been, “I live to make your life easier.”  As long as I was solving other peoples problems and had no issues of my own I was much desired as a dinner guest, movie to travel companion.  But once I brought up any problems or couldn’t fix others I was damaged goods.  It was easier to play the saint role.

“You’re such a disappointment,” rings through my head at the oddest times.  I wonder how many other people thought or think it but have a bit more class than she does.  I walked out of her life the night she said those words.

She contacted me several times.  I couldn’t help but think she was trying to lubricate her way back into my life.  Not push; not shove nor be nice about it but she acted like a snake that was pretending its venom was harmless.

A lot happened in the ten years since she berated me.  My life once again began to belong to me.  I wrote a book.

We ran into each other at a Christmas party.  The rock star looked old and tired.  She had too much work.

My fiancee began to introduce us.  I laughed: This is Shelby, my college roommate.  I guess I forgot to mention that she lives with Nick.

To Shelby I said I only tell stories about us in college.  Everything else is too boring.

If her face could have moved she would have looked at me with horror.

A friend, not at all like Shelby, who I first met at 12 began a blog this week.  ChictoChick

Filed Under: 3WW, 90's new york, Fiction, New York Stories Tagged With: 3WW, New York Stories

« Miss Frances
3WW: ebb; negotiate; random: Being Jewish in The Bible Belt »

Comments

  1. ThomG says

    April 15, 2010 at 5:21 pm

    Not exactly a character sketch, but a look into the mind of a person, with great feeling. And you were very deft with three very hard words.

    Welcome back. Visit 3WW any old time. You bring much craved spark to it, with your solid writing.

  2. sage says

    April 15, 2010 at 8:20 pm

    Those are interesting words and that line is poweful-you could write a book using it! Tonight, I heard Wally Lamb speak (author of She’s Come Undone, The Hour I First Believed, etc). He talked about having a phrase or two and how it works its way into his novels (which are long) as he tries to find out about the person who said the line.

  3. Doug says

    April 16, 2010 at 4:15 am

    There are harder things than to disappoint a stranger you’ve known all your life.

  4. cooper says

    April 18, 2010 at 2:16 pm

    lubricating her way back in to your life…that is the most creative sentence I’ve seen in a long time…

    Cool that your friend started a blog. You obviously didn’t tell her the albatross it can turn into. 😉

  5. Andy Sewina says

    April 18, 2010 at 2:56 pm

    Yeah, cool! I love the bottom line, ouch!!

  6. Bone says

    April 18, 2010 at 10:20 pm

    It’s sometimes quite difficult but always liberating to cut the venom out of one’s life.

    You know how I am about last lines 🙂 And I really liked the “brilliantly wrapped package” line, too.

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About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

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