Splinter Effect

With the Dawn - Part 2

Maryn quickly got her bearings on the busy city streets; commuters rushing off to their jobs on the other side of the valley from where they could afford to live. Horns honking and the sun glaring down through the humid morning air did nothing to help her headache. Once she was able to track down a cab she tried to call Ryan. His phone went straight to voicemail and she left him a quick message telling him to call as soon as possible. Her head thumped again and she counted the minutes before the cab dropped her off just over a block from her apartment building and gratefully just in front of her favorite coffee house.

The Baked Bean Café was a hole in the wall, a small café that served dishes named after different strains of marijuana. Items like the "ganja smoothie" and the "reefer parfait" were among her favorites. Not that they actually contained any illicit substances, but it always amused her to order the "Acapulco Gold" with a side of "White Widow." This morning though, she bypassed the food counter and presented herself, bleary eyed and desperate, to the world's most gifted barista.

"Girl, you look like you've been three rounds with a wildcat," Jeremy, complete with green apron and hairnet greeted her in a playful voice which had more than just a dash of gay to it.

"Nope, just a burly Italian and his brothers." She joked and felt slightly unnerved that the words rang true. She reached for the memory but the effort just made her head pound harder.

"Ooh, someone had a little fun last night." He teased but Maryn just gave him a glare clearly telling him not to go there.

He smiled at her and deftly set to work on his signature "Train Wreck Tea," which contained 16 ounces of his own special blend chai, a triple shot of espresso, steamed milk and just a touch of nutmeg. Maryn accepted the concoction gratefully, quickly downing as much as she could, allowing the warm sweetness and caffeine to suffuse her system.

"Jeremy. You are a lifesaver," she offered, once she had sufficiently worshiped the warm beverage.

"Do I even want to know?" he asked, indicating the nasty state of her night-before clothing.

The question was the perfect bartender opening, allowing her to take the opportunity to spill her soul or make some joke to indicate she didn't want to talk about it. Maryn chose somewhere in between.

"Ryan wanted to talk last night. I was supposed to meet a date at a club. But that didn't really work out, with Ryan making me his own personal Doctor Laura."

"Ooh, so you were with dreamy McSexy last night?" Maryn smiled at Jeremy's latest name for one of her friends; he tended to come up with new names every time he saw one of them, leaving the more creative references to the ones he found spank-worthy. Obviously, Ryan had been in more recently than her friend Brock, as Jeremy's crushes tended to alternate between the two.

"Yeah, he wanted some advice on what to do about a girl he was busy playing white knight for." Jeremy looked a tad disappointed at the hetero revelation but kept his smile.

"So, were you able to help?"

"I don't know. I don't remember much about last night. I must have gotten more drunk than I remember."

"Girl, if that's the kind of fun you have, be sure you invite me along next time," he teased.

Maryn returned the young man's smile. "As soon as you're old enough to drink, Jeremy." She teased him back, reached out and gave his hair a friendly ruffle.

"You're just afraid I'll steal all the men," he said, with a sassy flip of his head, putting his hair back into place.

"If last night is anything to go on." She pondered the flashes of memory from the previous night, the face of a sarcastic smiling asshole popping to mind. She couldn't quite place where or when she'd run into him, but the sense of distrust and dislike was strong. " You're welcome to them." She added ruefully. She drank down the last of the drink in her cup, handing it back to him with twenty dollars cash, gesturing, as always, that he should keep the tip. In return, he handed her a fresh to-go cup, loaded with a full second dose of his special blend.

Maryn walked the block and a half back to her apartment nursing her coffee and beginning to feel somewhat human again. The building was old, nearly a hundred years, she guessed, and still had a wrought iron elevator with a caged shaft. It was rickety and everyone told her she was crazy to live there, but the rent was reasonable and the old place had personality. Unfortunately the other thing it had was Mavis Schlotzky, the woman in apartment 6b who believed she was God's gift to the tenant HOA.

She could hear Mrs. Schlotzky's voice loud and clear as she entered the front lobby. The older woman was rapping her cane on a door and shouting to the apartment's tenant.

"Ms Cain! I can hear your dog from my bedroom, Ms Cain. I find the incessant whining and scratching very disturbing. Ms Cain!" Maryn entered the elevator and pressed the button for her destination.

"I find it very disrespectful, Ms Cain, that you would allow your animal to disturb the few precious hours of sleep that I manage to get. I should think anyone would be more considerate of their neighbor's need for peace and quiet." Maryn braced for the inevitable as she passed the third floor.

"I have a mind to have dogs banned from the building Ms Cain, if you can't keep yours under control," she continued shouting at the blameless door.

The elevator finally opened to the sixth floor and Maryn exited just behind Mrs Schlotzky and her mad ranting at apartment 6c. Maryn removed her keys from her pocket and stepped around the startled woman to open her door.

"You've been out all this time? What have you been doing? Getting drunk and up to all sorts from the looks of you," called out an offended Ms Schlotsky. After her personal castigation of Maryn, Ms Schlotsky returned to her verbal assault on the barking dog. "Have you no shame Ms Cain? Have you no human decency? And neglect! That poor animal in there all alone all this time? That's the problem with dogs in the building Ms Cain, they're not self-sufficient. You can't leave them alone like that Ms Cain."

Maryn listened patiently. She knew from past experience yelling back at the woman would only lead to the police showing up--again. "You're absolutely right Mrs Schlotsky," said Maryn, wearily. "I'll make sure to take him out right away."

Ms Schlotsky didn't stop her ranting, but at least she had the decency to lower her tone to a mutter as she shuffled back in the direction of her own apartment.

Inside the door, Maryn set down her treasured latte and reached down to pet Rascal. The dachshund was jumping as high a he could manage in excitement at the arrival of his person. His patience was rewarded with a vigorous scratch behind the ears.

"Did you have to put up with mean Mrs Schlotzky yelling at you," she said in a low voice. It was unlikely that Mavis could hear Maryn through the walls, over her own ranting, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

After a moment of scratching Rascal, Maryn cleaned out the litter box; getting Rascal to use one had been difficult, but persistence had paid off. She picked up her mail from beside the door. There were bills, a few ads, a letter from her mother's lawyers and a letter penned in a rough scrawl which had the name BrookHaven Sanitarium in the letterhead, an obvious attempt at getting a donation for something or other. Maryn dismissed all of this, threw the mail down on the coffee table and pulled out her phone to call the office. It was dead.

"Shit" she exclaimed, making Rascal look at her curiously.

"It's okay buddy. I'm just a mess this morning." She reached down to give him loves and put her phone on its charger. Then despite her body's protestations, forced herself to do a minimum of one of  her normal six miles on the treadmill; . By the end of that, her body ached, her head pounded and she was more desperate than ever to be immersed in a hot bath.

Maryn went to the bathroom and locked the door, a habit that couldn't be broken after years of bouncing around foster homes that left little room for privacy let alone room to avoid the many unwanted attentions that came with being a developing young woman in those houses.

She ran the bath as hot as she could stand it and sank gratefully into the hot steaming water and used her toe to turn the massage jets to high. Allowing the heat and pressure to work the tension from her body, she sighed, relaxed and fell asleep.

**** Author's note ****

Thank you so much for giving me a chance to share this with you.

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