When Angela’s divorce was final, she invited the ladies from the insurance office to meet her at Las Padres for margaritas, but only Hilda could go. They wore Burger King paper crowns she’d saved from lunch and smoked Virginia Slims. “I’m glad he’s finally gone,” Angela said. “You deserve someone better,” Hilda told her. “Took me a couple of times to find the best apple in the barrel.” “He and his trash girlfriends can take their goings on somewhere else,” she said. “The city ain’t got a trash truck big enough for all his,” Hilda said. “You got that right,” Angela said, knocking back another margarita on the rocks. Not understanding the piped in Mexican music, Hilda and Angela sang along a while, smoked, and laughed. After happy hour, they stumbled out, and headed home. Hilda, used to driving after happy hour, swerved a little and turned too quickly in her driveway, running over the border grass. Angela wasn’t used to driving after happy hour and hit a light pole. She kept blaming her ex the entire time she was in the emergency room as they sewed stitches in her forehead and even later at the police station where she was booked for driving under the influence. “It’s all his fault,” she screamed. “He’s a trash son of a bitch.” “Honey, they all are. Best thing you can do is get revenge. I stabbed my man, but he won’t press charges and I’ll stab him again when I get out,” said Angela’s cell mate. Angela wasn’t quite sure how to respond to her cell mate, and when they let her use the phone, her call to Hilda for bail went unanswered because Hilda was sleeping her tequila off in a recliner, her cat at her puffy feet. Angela fell asleep on the cot and when she didn’t show for work, her no nonsense boss decided to end her employment. With DUI and termination now in her background, she’d have a tough time finding work at another insurance agency and feared a return to minimum wage in fast food or a convenience store, all because of her ex. She planned to take the cellmate’s advice and would figure out a way to get revenge.
Niles Reddick is author of the novel Drifting too far from the Shore, a collection Road Kill Art and Other Oddities, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in over a hundred and fifty literary magazines all over the world including Drunk Monkeys, Spelk, The Arkansas Review: a Journal of Delta Studies, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Slice of Life, Faircloth Review, among many others. His new collection Reading the Coffee Grounds will debut in spring 2018. His website is www.nilesreddick.com