Girl Trouble Five Shorts by Francine Saint Marie

Author:Francine Saint Marie
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Smashwords
Published: 2011-09-17T17:45:03+00:00

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“Survive” and “survivor” are pretty potent words, but they suffer from overuse today. Now they’ve been reduced to mere sound bytes. Yet there still remain in our lexicon some equally powerful words and phrases that aren’t spoken often enough. “You’re in remission,” is most assuredly one of them.

“You’re in remission,” Joan’s doctors had informed her, and once she’d heard those three words uttered, she found herself contemplating living again. There was more to life, she suddenly realized, in the midst of all that euphoria, so much more to being alive than merely casting a shadow.

Remission made it possible for her then to leave the catacomb of her apartment and, if only for a few hours at a time in the beginning, to walk gingerly into the light once more. Her friends and family were relieved to see her emerge alive and kicking. Pale and a little puffy-eyed, perhaps, and a trifle more timid than they had known her to be before, but still, there she was, alive and kicking nonetheless. They hadn’t been so sure she would make it.

And then meeting a woman named Annette helped to speed things along considerably.

Joan had first spied Annette Martineau at an art opening close to the apartment. The gallery director happened to be a friend of Joan’s and Joan was providing the music that afternoon, strumming away serenely in the corner. A blue-eyed out-of-towner had wandered in because she thought she had heard music playing and was curious to see if it was live. Joan took one look at her and it was love at first sight, “love” being another one of those powerful words and phrases.

“I’ve never gone out with anyone my own age,” she recalled telling her later that evening.

Ms. Martineau hadn’t seemed the slightest bit surprised by that revelation. Or impressed. She was more inclined to swoon over Joan’s six-string guitar playing and her funky, cool flamenco.

Dexterous Joan, at this moment driving with one hand on the steering wheel, the other tapping away madly on her cell phone. “You have voice mail,” was all she could think to text. Not her cleverest. (Send: Annette.)

I’ve never gone out with anyone my own age. What a terrible pickup line! Joan grinned now with embarrassment at the recollection and took her foot off the gas. Seventy miles per hour in a cherry red sedan. She was really pushing it.

It was true, though. Before Annette, all of the others had been at least ten years younger than Joan. Girls more than women, she had to admit, after her year of truly brutal introspection and soul searching, after sleeping with Annette. What on earth could she have been thinking, she had mused then with chagrin, dating toddlers? What could twenty-somethings with all their glorious perfection possibly have in common with her anyway? How could they even begin to comprehend at such a blissful age the scope of fate’s imperfect plans for them? The possibility of waking up one day with a bruise or a scratch

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