Quarter City

Chapter 31: i.e.

Her apartment was stale, the air lacking circulation or refreshment.  She had taken up smoking again, despite rational thinking and a complete revulsion to the cancer stick.  Each soothing drag made her sick to her stomach as clouds of guilt poisoned her lungs.  She was smoking her way to an ulcer.  The filtered, mockery-of-mint flavored slims added more of the stress that it was supposed to be relieving. 

Judy Hansen was miserable, and she avoided rationalizing why.

Quarter City was hard to wring from her mind, seeing as it was everywhere.  You couldn’t pass by a newspaper or magazine without seeing the name on the front cover.  She was complicit herself in that realm herself.  Television was an impossible escape; news updates about Quarter City were constantly showing up on commercial breaks between ads for vegetables featuring animated characters and overly saccharine feminine hygiene pitches.  Seemingly every other network featured either news coverage of recent events or current events programs with over-analyses from the overly-educated and overly-pedantic.  And during the day, there was an incessant glut of talk shows gleaning the human, personal, and individual toll the past year’s events had taken on citizens, not just in Quarter City, but from around the world.

Judy reverted to watching favorite old movies where the men did everything right to sweep the protagonist off her feet.  She would envision herself in the lead role, morosely fantasizing about how her own self-admitted neuroses would botch the storyline and the relationship up. 

She was nowhere near capable of emulating the epically unreal icons and idols these films created, nor did it seem any man was capable of being rugged, dashing, charming, handsome, sweet, masculine, and intelligent all at once… she would even settle for any combination of two.  Judy’s expectations were impossible for herself, and equally impossible for someone else to live up to.

Judy had taken to adding a shot of rum or vodka to every drink she had at home, and would often contemplate carrying a reserve flask for when she was out.  The warmth of two or three Screwdrivers would sit in her belly for a while before methodically spreading throughout her system, loosening her muscles, weighing her eyelids, and putting her to sleep on the couch before she could even think about sluggishly dragging herself to bed.  She had, since her return to Chicago, fallen asleep more often on her couch, fully dressed, instead of naked -- as she preferred to sleep -- in her expansive, empty-even-with-her-in-it, king-sized pillow top mattress. 

Judy was nodding off, as on screen the love-triangle storyline reached its apex.  A cigarette was left fuming on the ridge of the glass ashtray, a red ring encircling an ever-lengthening tube of grey dust.  She had a port glass still cradled in her right hand, her grip loosening, threatening to tilt the goblet and empty its contents on her lap, but never quite doing so. 

The phone rang, pulling her away from unconsciousness.

She clasped the drink in her hand as the rest of her body shook, disturbed by the sudden noise.  The room was dark with the television providing the only light.

The phone rattled again. 

Judy looked around for a clock to tell her the time, but her imbibed vision refused to focus on anything.  She struggled for the phone as it wailed at her once more.  She relieved the cordless handset from its cradle - trading for it her drink - flicked the button and dimly greeted her caller.

“Yuh?”

“Ms. Hansen?”  The voice was squirrelly, high and youthful… not that Judy noticed at first.

“Mmmm,” she groaned in response, dragging a hand through her bangs then further back over her head.

“Ms. Hansen…”