A Triple Shot of Karma & Platinum Fury Focus

Part 3: Three of Swords

Stormy weather for the emotions, loss, woe, emotional pain. Upsetting changes, stress, darkness before the dawn. You may need to let go of a relationship or situation that only brings anguish. Reversed- Recovery, the worst is over. You have been involved in a painful situation that is in its final stages.

FIXING A SHREDDED LIFE , huh?  Putting Eddie's style of injecting personal history and facts into his stories with his serious presentation in handing this novella over, projecting him as the Quentin LeSharpe character was automatic. 

The overweight woman in pastel orange and green jogging suit swiped an already damp sleeve over an accumulation of sweat on her forehead and neck, slowly advancing towards the counter in a stanky heat generated by the throbbing masses that always jammed Price's Chicken Coop on Fridays.

She wouldn't normally abide the press of excessively noisy black men all around, but while she didn't eat much, her sweet Terri would demand Price's chicken when she came home this weekend. Since those earliest frightening days as Momma Maggie, she'd always promised to pay whatever price necessary to salvage a single extra minute of joy for that beautiful but mistreated child, so fondling the cigarette in her left pocket, swearing again she'd only take three or four small hits, she continued shuffling forward and waiting.

Arriving at the counter brought her arms-length close to the rotund boss-man's volume, barking orders over one brawny shoulder, jazzing the individual efforts of a dozen workers cooking or scrambling to package combinations of wings, breasts, legs, and fixings, adjusting a rubber-banded slab of blue sponge on his glistening forehead, and passing completed bags of food to waiting customers. 

Scribbling abbreviated figures on a small pad, he made change for a crumpled twenty Maggie dropped on the counter, wished her a blessed weekend in a low, South Carolina drawl, and handed her order gently over the worn countertop before commenting loudly, "Sampson's pretty sneakers wuz a waste of money, 'cuz they sure don't make him move no faster."

Bags clutched in one hand, fingers grasping the now earned cigarette in her jumpsuits left pocket, Maggie wove around groups of sweaty men with unbuttoned short-sleeve shirts over tank tees talking sports, work, or sex, and women wearing garish muumuus, barely-there shorts and sagging tube tops. 

Pausing to allow a batch of skinny teenagers in matching red Chicago Bulls shorts and black hats tilted at a ludicrous angle to enter, she planted it between her lips, knowing Doc Geoffrey's assistant hadn't pulled any punches about a half-dozen crucial health issues - specifically smoking - just two days before.

Fumbling with her lucky tortoise shell tan-brown bingo lighter, she pushed the grungy glass door outward, just as a massive jolt of pain blazed down her left arm, signaling a long inefficient heart had ceased to function at all. 

Karma of an exceptionally high order caused beaten-to-the-max Quentin LeSharpe's helpful chest to be directly in the path of her stricken stumbling.

She spastically thrust the bags into Quentin's chest as he broke her collapse onto sizzling concrete, accepted Charlotte's clear blue and cloudless sky as an impressive match for his baby blues. Unblinking eyes registered a final click! of close-up concern in LeSharpe's shaken-to-the-core stare as he staggered against her dead weight limpness, 

A final flash brought concerns regarding what sixty-seven years of dedicated church-going had promised. Would it become glorious Final Reward, or would she be remanded to eternal flames and eons of massive regret for her part in destroying Quentin LeSharpe's trust and life?