Reality Sucks Read online

restaurant, was an hour of crime and violence reports. It was just plain sickening. Then half an hour of national news that was a lot like back ... not home! Not any more! What a great job Obama was doing on one station, what a no-good traitorous bum he was on another. Election year coming up, so a lot of negative crap. We have to get stronger anti-terrorist laws! We have to get rid of those unconstitutional national security laws! We have to get guns out of the hands of the public! We have to follow the constitution and make all guns legal! Gays should have the right to marry! Gays should be stoned to death!

  Not one of them was anywhere near the truth about anything. It was all BS from a certain political perspective.

  He did know one thing. Atlanta was not a place he wanted to stay.

  A very attractive woman saw him sitting at the bar, having a beer, and came to sit next to him. She said her name was Miki. He seemed far too handsome a man to be there alone. Was he waiting for some lucky girl or was he married?

  He bought her a champagne cocktail and chatted. He said he’d never been anywhere anything like Atlanta. He didn’t much like it. He wanted a place to stay where people were more friendly and there was less crime and noise.

  She was getting a bit too close. She put her hand on his leg and said she didn’t have much to do tonight, and she was also looking for someone who was more friendly than so many here were.

  He was feeling lucky that any woman as good-looking as her, so much younger – she couldn’t be over twenty three or four – was attracted to him. Maybe he should have run away years ago! Maybe he could actually have his dreams!

  A big black man in a purple (!) suit came to say Mr. Norman had tonight. Don’t try to do any side jobs or she’d learn just how smart that act was, bitch! He told Harry he had several other girls who weren’t booked for tonight. Two fifty for two hours. Miki was looking disgusted.

  She was a prostitute! Reality sucks.

  He told the black, “I don’t think any of them are worth a dollar and a quarter an hour.”

  The bartender was right there. He laughed and said, “Well, maybe Wanda. Spike, you take your girls outside. You’ve been warned not to work inside this place.”

  The black and Miki left. The bartender told Harry to watch his back around that bunch.

  He finished the beer and looked around. No one there he wanted to talk to, so he left.

  He saw a flash of purple just at the corner, so was ready when he was grabbed by the big black man and pulled toward the alley. He saw that kind of thing on TV a lot, so suddenly moved toward the man, who was surprised enough to try to back away and found his head smashed against the brick wall. He dropped to the pavement and got a shoe in the face, then the mud wiped from the shoe on his fancy purple suit.

  Miki was standing there with her hand to her mouth, wide-eyed.

  “Now comes the part where you take your little twenty five from your purse and I take it away from you and shove it up your ass and pull the trigger, right?” Harry asked.

  She put her hands up and backed away. Harry went on to his hotel. He would try the bar there and go to bed early. He wanted to get out of Atlanta as early in the morning as he could.

  Reality sucks.

  He always thought that stuff on TV was just movies, but here it was, and he was caught up in it. He was just lucky he and Gene horsed around with those moves they saw on TV until they were both pretty good.

  In the morning, he went to the airport to find a place to try. He was headed to Mobile, Alabama, in three hours. He got a newspaper and sat in a restaurant at the airport to wait. The local news was on the TV, listing the crimes of the day. It was all one paragraph stories. A fight in a pool hall, four injured. Suspects in custody. Known mobster Cambierte was being questioned about two gangland murders. A local pimp, Spike Anderson, was found beaten and shot through the heart and robbed of an undetermined amount of cash and more than six thousand dollars worth of gold chains and rings off Apple Street in an alley. (Bet Miki saw a chance! I’ll buy her another champagne if I ever see her again!) Two teenagers were killed execution style...

  It would be damned good to get away from Atlanta!

  The ride in the plane was fair. It was his first time, and he was surprised he wasn’t a bit more afraid, but he relaxed and enjoyed talking with the Japanese man who owned a small food store in Mobile.

  It was drizzling rain when he got off the plane. He got a cab and found a reasonable hotel.

  He’d already decided Mobile wasn’t going to be the place. North? South? West?

  He bought a cell phone, a Blackberry, actually. His daughter spent eight hours a day on a Smart Phone, so he got an idea. He registered on Twitter, which she spent most of her time on, as urxdadthnx2gd and punched a message to lakesirensxy1: tell ur mthr 2 dvrc & tk frm nada ls n no contest. f no, yrs trly dvrc hr w/DNA n u.

  He sent it and waited for the answer. Four minutes: ????!!! U gt bck!!! ur crzy!!!!

  He sent: tk r lv. 1 wk. answr nw

  He waited. He knew her: bnk acct?

  prt f frm nvr hr frm u agn. deal?

  OK

  Now for the new life. Florida. South. On gulf. Get a job or start something.

  Bradenton, Florida, is a nice little laid-back town. It also had plenty of jobs he was able to handle. He worked for a farm supply depot for three months, which paid the bills plus a little. He rented a large old but solid estate house on a canal off the river a couple of miles out of town when he made a deal with the owner, an old woman who had no heirs she would leave a thin dime to. He would pay the back taxes, because she was about to lose it anyway for that. It was a little over twelve thousand dollars. The property was worth well over a million dollars, and he would get it when she died. She made out a right of survivor title with him as minor stockholder. He wouldn’t have to pay taxes when she died.

  He then decided to fix it up to its former elegance. It really was well-designed, and it really was elegant, in a Southern Plantation Mansion way. It was structurally a lot stronger and better than modern crap.

  He got a job offer from the main supplier to the fertilizer depot. Area representative. Double his present salary and commission plus bonus. Things were looking up! Two days per week going to all the outlets and helping with inventory control. He had the sense to spend a third day one week of the month to go to all the places that didn’t buy from the depot to see what the competition was like. He was able to offer most of them good deals with his company on some items to where they would all make out.

  He met Louise and Charlie Gordon, from Shoreville, at one of the stores. They knew each other from a year ago, when they moved to Florida. They kept in touch with the people there on the net. They asked about Madge and the daughter. He said they had issues and were divorced. At least, Madge had filed, according to what he knew.

  He told him about how much better things were here than in Shoreville. They agreed that things had gone from the bottom up to where they were doing very well since they left. Leaving Shoreville was probably the best decision they had ever made. It was nowhere, on the road to nowhere.

  He bought a lot of material to work on his house and spent the next two days refurbishing some of it. When he went to the office on the third morning there was a legal certified letter waiting for him. It seemed that Madge had, just yesterday, modified the divorce agreement. He would have to give her half of everything he had.

  It seemed that Louise Gordon had told Eileen Fabers about his good fortune, and that Eileen had told her daughter, Sara, who was a friend of his own daughter on Twitter. Madge had immediately gone to her lawyer.

  Reality sucks. Try to be a friend to someone, this is what happens.

  He then grinned at the letter and turned on the comp, went to Twitter and sent a PM to lakesirensxy1: This voids the agreement. Tell Madge that there will be a DNA comparison with you and me. She will then get exactly half of the farm and half of the bank account. The half of the bank account will pay for my half of the farm, so she can ge
t what she had minus the bank account. No shorthand here. I have your DNA chart from the test for genetic disease when you were born. Thank her for me. She can probably sell the place for enough to get by for awhile, but she’ll have to lose about a hundred thirty pounds and clean herself up to be able to get a job.

  He sent it. He sat back to wait for the answer. It didn’t come before lunch, but was there when he got back. It was from a lawyer. It asked that he call a number in Shoreville to discuss the litigation procedure concerning his wife and daughter.

  He sent back that he wasn’t about to spend money calling some hick lawyer who was trying to rip him off.

  That got a quick answer!

  Mr. Twilterwaller: If you wish to enter into a bitter court battle that you will surely lose, so be it. I merely wished to moderate the difficulties such processes engender. You will receive a summons, should you not cooperate in a civil manner. I am only trying to lessen the negative aspects of such confrontations.

  He smirked and replied:

  Mr. Thrasher: I would recommend not paying a courier to place a summons from a local court in Missouri into my hands here in Florida, personally, as it would end up with me laughing in his/her face. The most Madge could get was by dropping the case and keeping the farm and bank account. One look at her, along with the DNA charts that prove Brenda is not my daughter and she’ll be lucky if the court doesn’t