Malpractice Makes Perfect

Chapter 3

          After a long day of serving coffee to college students and having fake marital spats at the gym I was beat. Alice called around closing to try and alleviate her Friday night boredom, but I wasn't in the mood to go out. Instead we decided on a girl's night in. I text Manny, but in a stroke of luck he had plans with his own friends.

          While I had lived in the same cheap apartment I'd rented since graduation, Alice tended to get restless. She also had a much larger bank account to ease that restlessness. The townhouse she lived in now was modern and new, so new in fact it had been built on a patch of land that had been nothing but miles of trees until a couple years ago. That meant every installation in her house was practically factory fresh...but the neighborhood itself was on an undeveloped patch of earth off the interstate where it took thirty minutes to get to anything interesting, including her job. She hated it.

          We sat in the living room; relaxing on her nice pristine furniture and sipping homemade cocktails.

          She took a sip of daiquiri and melted into her plush leather sofa. "I got to get away from all these damn kids."

          "They aren't doing anything." I smiled and watched children running and dancing on the other-side of her big sliding glass doors. Outside in a world of quick-built homes that wrapped around the landscape, some of her neighbors congregated near a murky retention pond advertised as a lake.

          "You hear all that damn screaming?"

          "It's Friday night. Let the kids enjoy their weekend."

          The exfoliating mask she wore made her look like some sort of sad deflated creature as her eyes rolled to the back of her head. "Why can't children enjoy themselves quietly?"

          "Aw, how cute!" I turned to watch a couple of cute two-year olds toddling toward lakes edge. "They're feeding the ducks. So sweet."

          She picked up the remote and started flipping through categories. "Their parents are morons."

          "...Is one of them trying to swim in that dirty ass water?"

          She kissed her teeth. "A two-year old almost drowned in that pond a few months ago."

          I couldn't look away. "Didn't anyone teach them not to swim in stagnant Florida waters?"

          "That baby's probably gonna get got by a gator, so stand-by for this evening's entertainment."

          "Probably snakes in that bitch too."

          "In the daytime there's a turtle. My uncle Bobby was over once when he came out. Talked about catching him and making a turtle stew. Can't take that country fucker nowhere."

          "I've never had turtle before. Had deer, rabbit, and gator but no turtle."

          "It's a'ight."

          "You know, the meat market on Forsyth has kangaroo too."

          "They can keep that shit."

          I laughed and grabbed a handful of popcorn and shoved it into my mouth. "Oh! I've had bison and shark jerky. That counts."

          "I've had goat."

          "That's not exotic."

          "It is to me."

          I munched popcorn from behind pursed lips. "You're really harshing my Friday night vibe. Fix that stank attitude or I'm putting on a musical."