What a Wreck

A A A Comments (0) By Joe Donnelly Wednesday, Nov 8 2006

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“Whatcha doing?” I ask.

“Putting a cover on my AA book,” she tells me. Her hair is matted, and her two front teeth may be implants suffering from extreme neglect. Her clothes are dirty, but her figure’s kind of held up.

“Remember how you used to do that in elementary school?” she asks.

She tells me she likes to put covers on all her books and produces the one she’s going to do next, a dime-store romance novel by the looks of it.

“I got these from the Burbank Library,” she says, and starts digging through her purse until she finds her wallet. “See, here’s my library card. I just got that the other day. And here’s my Ralphs card, and here’s my . . .” She shows me every card in her wallet.

“What are you doing all the way over here if your library is in Burbank?” I ask.

“I had my anger-management class,” she says. “I’m also taking physics. My professor is really good. I’m good at physics.”

I ask how AA is going.

“Really good, bro’. I used to do a lot of dope. But I’ve been off it for three years. Except for three relapses.”

I wonder if this is one of them. “That’s great,” I say, smiling through the fence.

“I’ve seen you before,” she says, while carefully folding what appears to be a blond wig and placing it in some kind of mesh bag. “I noticed you over there. You looked calm and I knew you’d come over here.”

She pulls a brush from her bag and starts brushing her real hair, which is short and dark. She’s sort of attractive, in a tough-luck, dual-diagnosed kind of way. Once, though, she must have been somebody’s baby.

“Hey,” she says, “if you ever want to get out of here, I know when the spaceships are coming.”

Up ahead, the emergency vehicles start moving out.

“Thanks,” I said. “I gotta get back to my car. You take care.”

“You too, bro’.”

Traffic begins to move. The future is wide open.