The Norma Gene by M. E. Roufa

Author:M. E. Roufa
Language: ara
Format: azw3
Publisher: Bitingduck Press
Published: 2015-07-18T07:00:00+00:00

29

The air was damp, but the rain had ended for the night, so the voicemail recording said the meeting would go on as scheduled. Apparently Normalyn meetings never met on rainy nights, at least not in Florida, because too many of the Marilyns had shoe issues. Norma hated that she understood this and hated even more that she was secretly grateful for it. She wanted to wear a pair of beat-up sandals in defiance, just to show how little she was one of them, but she didn’t own a pair of beat-up sandals. She didn’t own a pair of beat-up anything. Even her flip-flops were well maintained.

And the truth was, she wanted to look good for whoever would be there. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go, or whether she belonged there, and she was perfectly ready to turn around and go home if nothing sparked for her in the first five minutes. But she couldn’t just show up looking like she didn’t care. Not when she knew that by definition every other woman in the room was going to be drop dead gorgeous. She needed to make as good of an impression as possible, just for her own sense of self-worth. She had chosen another of her mother’s castoff vintage sundresses, a pair of open toed slingbacks with kitten heels, and put her hair back in a loose ponytail, gathered at the base of her neck. It was a lovely, old-fashioned style that she knew she looked good in, but that Marilyn Monroe would never have been seen in, in any of her incarnations, having been born several decades too soon. She was willing to let every single woman there tell her she looked nothing like the blonde bombshell. She just hoped that someone else there would tell her that she was prettier the way she was. Wasn’t that the point of support groups?

The Orlando meetings were held in a dance studio in an out-of-the-way strip mall, surrounded by a collection of non-touristy shops and closed storefronts: a computer repair company, an Indian restaurant, a business that made signs for other businesses. Despite the presence of this neighbor, the space itself had no sign at all, so Norma had to check the address twice to make sure she had the right place. She leaned against the glass doors, enjoying the feel of the cool metal of the handle where it made contact with her skin. The door wouldn’t budge. She leaned harder, putting her full weight against the door, but still it wouldn’t move. She knew she had the right day, the right time, the right address… she pressed her face against the glass, but the windows were tinted and she couldn’t see a thing. Stepping back, puzzled, she finally noticed a small button to the left of the door and pressed it. A buzzer sounded.

Confident, she pushed the door again. Again, it refused to move. As the electronic lock on the door continued to buzz, she heard a faint crackling noise as an intercom speaker came to life to her left.

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