Chapter Three

That night Tina treated herself to a warm bath. Eucalyptus and cucumber was her favorite scent it helped her think, right now she needed to do some serious thinking on how to come up with a plan to keep her job. The day she’d had couldn’t have been weirder if she had seen flying pigs.

Tina chuckled to herself. “Flying pigs and a witch, all in one day. I deserve a raise for all this bullshit, Peggy”

But as life would have it she was nowhere closer to the perfect article she had had in mind when she’d started. The frustration was growing as she threw the glass of wine into wall watching it smash into pieces. The red wine appeared like blood on the floor. Nausea took over, the sight of blood always made her queasy.

“Fuck” she shouted. Getting out of the bathtub took a good deal of an effort since the suds had made it slippery. Once out she hurried to the kitchen to get some paper towels then returning to the bathroom. When everything was cleaned and it was safe to walk barefoot in the bathroom. She went to her bedroom to change.

Tina got into favorite pair of SpongeBob pajama bottoms and a matching T-shirt. She curled up on the couch.

The two bedroom condo was beautiful with the painted white walls and balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Tina had worked hard to get where she was. She’d left home at the age of eighteen or more appropriate she’d been kicked out after refusing so called treatment for her homosexuality from her father.

Her father had driven her to the bus station and given her a one hundred dollar bill and told her to leave and never comeback, unless she wanted to be cured.  She’d bought a bus ticket to L.A. and never looked back.

Upon reaching L.A. from a small town in North Carolina had made her feel like a kid in a big room surrounded by strangers. She didn’t who to trust, it was scary until she’d met Alice at a coffee shop where she worked at as a waitress. Then Tina had been rooming with a woman who worked together with her at the coffee shop. They lived in a small studio above a crack house.