[ story warnings ; hard drugs, blood, and unsettling childhood implications. ]
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Her first check is nearly 200 dollars.
197 even and it's just enough to force her to make the weekly decision on whether or not a roof over her head is more important than food. The rain pounds harshly down onto the motel room rooftop, leaving Kat Darling to wonder when it all got so bad.
She supposes it was her birth, and subsequent childhood being raised by a wannabe actress who never made it past anyone's thoughts with her lilting trans-atlantic accent and peculiar name. Sugar Darling; a legal first name change in an attempt to seem like the Hollywood starlets of old. Kat loved her last name as a child, and would tell every person she came across with an air of pride that disappeared in full by her 23rd birthday. There's nothing like the sneer of the word darling from a drunk bar patron that kills a pleasant word association.
There's a knock on the door, short and sweet, and Kat knows who it is before she even moves to her feet. The slightly inebriated call of, "Payday!!!" confirms it.
Waiting behind the door is Mary, the only other bartender at The Landing Strip, some raggedy dive bar tucked into the rougher part of town. It houses the cheapest of overpriced booze and the most washed out strippers this side of the interstate. Kat's sure all but one of them is getting Social Security by now. The other, is one dropped nipple tassel away from a knee replacement.
Mary stumbles in, tripping on the clunky heels on the floor with a scowl and a loud admonishment about not properly storing footwear before Kat has to remind her that she's not exactly dripping in storage space. Mary looks around in the dimly lit room, humming to herself at the torn pieces of notepad paper on the table and the messy sheets that do nothing but keep Kat awake day and night. The tv is on, free HBO, but the volume is turned so low all that can be heard is the rain. And it brings up an important question as Mary flops down at the foot of the bed. Her frizzy black hair is yanked back into a ponytail and all that remains of her red lipstick is smudged on her chin.
"Why aren't you wet?" Kat asks, putting the chain back on the door. "It's pouring outside."
"More like why aren't you wet," is Mary's 'clever' reply. "You left that guy waiting at the bar for you. 'Gotta change out of my work clothes first,' remember? "
Kat hums, turning around to face the smudged mirror and observe her once bleached hair beginning to show the black roots of her natural color. The guy was nice, stupid, but nice with a plain enough face that she'd decided was decent enough to try and warm her bed for a few minutes. Getting warm and staying warm always seemed to elude her but she'd decided she'd rather be cold than entertain a guy who had to drunkenly admit he'd never been with a 'black chick' before.
But, y'know, it's not like there's anything wrong with that!
"Hm," repeats Mary, standing up. She's still wearing her white tank top and denim cut offs, a ballpoint pen sticking out of her back pocket. "I'm sure he's stumbling around outside somewhere. Maybe you can catch him."
"And maybe I can sit here and not do that. They've got Cinemax, too, y'know!"
This gets Kat a laugh as she vainly pats the pockets of her shorts for a pack of cigarettes that she doesn't have. It's probably going to be a long night and the thought of not cruising through it without some sort of buzz sounds like it'll just kill her, so she turns to find an umbrella. The whole time Mary just watches her, huffing and puffing like she always does whenever it's payday and she doesn't want to do anything. Ever since Kat started work at the terrible place she'd been assaulted by Mary's often annoying curiosity about where she came from. Truthfully it's hard to say she came from anywhere, as she's been drifting so long it's easier to wonder about where she's going.
And if she could get to her mother's bank account, she could be going somewhere far from here.
But for now all she has is a shitty paycheck from a shitty job and no savings, being berated by a coworker with entirely too much of an appetite for recklessness than she has the taste for. And she's tried just about everything worth trying; but drugs cost money and money could be spent on something that won't have her panicked or passed out.
The umbrella is broken but it works well enough, and as the two women step out onto the night Kat wonders if it's as warm as they're dressed for. She has on a jacket but it's hardly making a difference in the chill that runs through her body, and Mary is wearing leather cowboy boots.
"Nice shoes," Kat says sarcastically, only now paying attention to them. "Who's are they?"
"The Bossman's," she replies, huddling closer to keep out the rain. "He let me borrow them since that hag Carol took my gym shoes. You know that saggy-titted bimbo has been stealing my shit for months and everyone lets it go because she 'can't see that well'? If her eyesight's so damn bad maybe she needs to use her tips to go get a pair of bifocals."
And she's off, rambling about the women that Kat herself doesn't get in the way of, thinking instead to the one she can't escape. The Bossman, a skeevy wannabe druglord type that Kat is sure is trying to be just that. He always wears his greasy hair in a bun at the base of his neck, and smells faintly of sweat and drugstore cologne that reminds her of cat piss. It repulses her, just like his cheap silk shirts and tendency to stare at her whenever she's reaching across the bar to hand someone a beer or bending down to fix the strap on her heels. He pays entirely too low to be legal and she's sure he's sleeping with half the girls on staff. She doesn't need money that bad; not from him anyway.
Mary seems to be reading her mind as they cross the empty street.
"Y'know, you could just get a sugar-"
Kat cuts her off, "If you can find me one that isn't a beer-bellied redneck or some guy who'd lock me in a trunk i'll gladly oblige. You know anyone worth sugarin' for isn't living in this dump."
If anything, Kat is used to living in dumps, and the one she currently resides in is no different than anything she's been in before. Homeless shelters, squatting in vacant homes, singing to herself on the porch of her mother's favorite drug-addled depravity dens; she's seen it all. And even now, as she's leered at by some guy waiting outside the Liquor store, she's too tired to be wary of the implications of his gaze. He should be wary of her, but she won't engage if he won't.
"Can you cash this for me, Pete?" she asks at the counter, handing her check to the old Italian man standing behind the bulletproof glass. It's her weekly ritual; cash check, cigarettes, poor man's groceries and another week at the motel. There's nothing she wants more than to catch a bus out of town to the city; somewhere she can see more people like her in more ways than one. Somewhere that if she had to, she could actually make money selling the things that the men around here often beg her for. With the childhood she'd had, there isn't much else she knows how to do and God knows there's only so many things for a homeless, black mutant to do without a dime to her name or a bank account to put it in.
As if being a poor black woman wasn't hard enough.
The thought depresses her, and she lights the first cigarette right in the store.
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