August, 1986
Everything seemed to be happening to someone else. Linda was spending the last few weeks at the hilltop row house apartment she'd called home for over five years. She still rode the bus to work, but now she'd managed to land in one of the more desirable four day flex shifts during the week. Most important of all, on September 18, she would marry Stephen Herron.
The day he'd proposed, he held her face in her hands and said "You're the most pure, most decent, most kind woman I ever met."
Were it not for Seth, she truly would have been pure.
Ever since Seth's drunken, ridiculous proposal, he'd called her exactly twice and had come by to see her once. They walked up the street to the tavern with the view of the city, yet he started in on a familiar old refrain: "I can't believe you still live in this tiny-ass apartment and drive that fallen-apart VW."
Linda said "Seth, fuck off," and he reeled back away from her in shock.
"Wow!" he exclaimed. "Where did you learn that? From some old man, pissed that his body's all rotting away?"
She got up from her bar stool, turned to him and said "I'm going home now. You are not to come with me. You are not to call, ever again. You can just forget I ever existed."
When she was almost halfway home she heard heavy footsteps running up behind her. "But I thought we had something special!" he said, trying to spin her around, to face him. She steeled up her will and continued walking forward, like a horse with blinders on.
"You're pathetic," she said, over her shoulder. "Go home and sleep it off."
On that August morning before work, she took a long look at herself in the mirror. As much as ever, she thought her shape resembled a bowling pin. Her weight would go up and down, usually between one hundred thirty-five and one hundred forty-five. She wore camisole pajamas with tap pants that revealed about three inches of her midriff and the pesky, jiggly little shelf that lingered above her hips. No matter whether she dieted or worked out, the jiggly little roll around her middle remained, like a mischievous old friend.
She would be twenty-eight by the time she and Stephen walked down the aisle. Her mother had gained crows feet and a dropped chin as she progressed further and further into her fifties. Would the same thing happen to her? Every now and then faint circles showed up beneath her eyes and she was starting to get a little crease around her dimples, but that was it. Her skin was staying taut against her face. "I might not ever win any beauty contests," she told herself, "but I look pretty damned decent." People still complimented her on her sun-kissed, multi-hued, lush blond hair.