Chapter One

Hi Y’all,

Thanks again for all the condolences about Milo. I’m slowly resurfacing over here. For the last six months I’ve been working on a novel. It’s called Athol. Inspired by my work as a docent at the O. Henry Museum, it looks at Austin in the 1890’s, the 1990’s and current times. Athol Estes was the long-suffering, short-lived first wife of William Sydney Porter who, after Athol’s death, went on to become the world famous O. Henry.

I’m closing in on a final draft, which feels good—I love finishing! It also feels bad—I hate the part where I need to either shop a manuscript around (and face endless rejection) or publish it myself (and then have to hustle to sell copies). For today I’m going to not worry about that. I’m just going to share the first chapter with y’all. I hope you dig it.

CHAPTER ONE

Bunny Fisher squinted through the windshield of her pickup truck, up at the words on the street sign just beyond her front bumper: Pay Here to Park.

Pay Here to Park, she thought, surely that means I can park here.

And yet, she wasn’t sure at all. She sat there and thought some more, allotting far more time than she should have to wondering if there was some restriction not mentioned on the sign but somehow known to all but her. No Capricorn Parking on Wednesdays. Women Over 50 Must Park on Southbound One-Way Streets Only. She literally could not afford to make a parking error, not one that landed her a ticket and certainly not one that might result in being towed.

Bunny Fisher had $74 in her bank account, which she found to be equal parts nerve wracking, confusing, incredibly sad, less motivating than it should have been, and—despite having recently completed a month’s worth of morning meditation sessions focused on self-compassion and letting go of shame—somehow still shameful. In turn, she couldn’t help but feel still more shame, this about the shame itself, her inability to eradicate its existence from her life, about how she clearly was not meditating right. If there was one thing Bunny was an expert at, it was beating herself up in general and then beating herself up for beating herself up.

Not that she needed further proof of her failed meditation efforts but there it was anyway in that sickly account balance, no matter that she had also, on several occasions in the past few weeks, spent a decent amount of time seated on a makeshift cushion fashioned from the bed of the last dog she’d loved, ambitiously, hopefully chanting: Money comes to me freely and easily.

Seventy-four dollars would accomplish nothing at an impound lot, she thought. Seventy-four dollars would probably not even afford me an Uber ride to that nasty place, full of nasty predatory jerks.

Catching herself about to have an imaginary argument with one of these imaginary nasty people at the imaginary tow yard, Bunny said, aloud, “STOP!”

She felt silly and self-conscious speaking to herself out loud like that, but it was a technique she had picked up from some YouTube video during lockdown. For yes, Bunny had been one of those lockdown types, the ones who, upon realizing confinement wasn’t ending anytime soon, decided they must use their time wisely, learn new things, find inner peace and life balance, attain enlightenment (or at least become enlightenment adjacent), and emerge better for this “gift of time.”

The STOP advice had been delivered in the third episode of a series called Personal Boundaries and You, hosted by Serenity Buchanan, an uncredentialed, self-declared expert on dealing with ADHD. Bunny had discovered Serenity after diagnosing herself with the disorder, also during lockdown, delighted (if subconsciously) to have a new goal (Bunny very much loved setting goals, if not actually striving toward them). Now that she had discovered a syndrome that finally explained everything— the serial shit relationships with narcissists, the crap skills with money, the mounds of clothes on the bathroom floor, how the Peanuts character she most resembled was Pigpen as she stepped out of her truck and bits of trash and cigarette butts and hay fell out all around her—it was up to her to hunt down and apply strategies to help her tame the undesirable traits and cultivate the positive possibilities. 

“Can I help you?”

Bunny turned toward the voice. A slightly disheveled man sat against a wall. Homeless Bunny thought. Then another thought. Wait, not homeless. What is the new word I’m supposed to use now? Street dweller? She paused. Unhoused. That’s it. UNHOUSED person.

“I’m sorry, I can’t.” Bunny said.

“Can’t what?” The man asked.

“Can’t help you. I’m broke.”

“I asked if I could help you.”

“Help me what?”

“I don’t know. You said, ‘Stop,’ and it sounded like…”

“Oh,” Bunny said. “Sorry. I was talking to myself. No, I don’t need help. But thank you.”

She looked down at her red pants, bright vintage Levi’s cords, acquired on eBay. Cruising the site for vintage sartorial scores had been another of her lockdown hobbies, one that eventually led her to realize the boxes of old concert t-shirts and milk crates of vinyl in her garage were, essentially, the savings account she’d never gotten around to opening and filling in her youth. Selling many of the items in her precious collection had tided her over financially during pandemic days. And she was still waiting for one last payout to hit her bank, enough to help her eke through another month or two. But she’d reached the part of the inventory she wasn’t ready to part with, not yet, possibly not ever.

Bunny had no interest in trying to rebuild the catering business that had sustained her for the twenty years preceding lockdown. Of the few clients she’d worked with in 2020 and 2021– backyard weddings mostly—too many had been mean, impatient, and so fussy that she’d sworn off food service entirely. She knew the frustration they aimed at her was really always about something else—a new strain of Covid or a bad weather day left many brides furious as the reality of a suddenly dwindled guest list dawned. She understood that, unable to tell the rain to fuck itself or punch a virus in the face, these women needed a target, a scapegoat, something (or someone) over which to exert control.

Bunny took it until she could take it no more, the final straw being Kim the bride who, the day before her wedding, decided she was entitled to a fifty percent refund, given an ice storm had shut down the airport, halving the number of expected attendees, while the sudden arrival of the Omicron variant had scared off at least half of the invitees who lived nearby. Voices had been raised on both sides of that phone call with Bunny ultimately prevailing, demanding (rhetorically and at volume) to know Who the hell plans an outdoor wedding in February during covid restrictions?

Emotional battle won, financial war lost, she shut down Bunny’s Yummies after that conversation, swearing to herself and anyone who would listen that she would rather starve on the streets than deal with another wicked bride. She focused on her eBay site then, glad for the break from high strung clients, pleased with how, initially, her sales were brisk. That safety net having worn through as her limited inventory dwindled, Bunny understood she needed a new source of income.

Perusing job search websites left her feeling as she had the few times—now thankfully long past—she had joined online dating sites. She did not have standard qualifications to facilitate success in either. Nor was she willing to hide her Freak Flag from view of potential mate or manager. Her dating profiles featured candid photos of Bunny, heavy on the denim and flannels, never a trace of makeup or a flash of cleavage. Her “resume” was actually a letter explaining that at sixty, even with tight editing, any CV would run ten pages and, further, that the best way to understand how qualified she was, was to meet with her in person.

These searches—for men, for jobs—were always short-lived as Bunny allowed her visceral disdain to end them swiftly, snapping shut her iPad upon seeing yet another promise of fifteen dollars per hour to start or photo of some ancient wannabe Marlboro man in a cowboy hat resting his hand on his dick and leaning on a Tesla (likely not his). Feeding the untimely demises of her quests was something deeper down in Bunny’s root system. It was true being sixty brought with it the joy of giving far fewer shits. About pretty much everything. And yet it was still very much in Bunny’s emotional repertoire to feel stung by any rejection, great or small. Ultimately, more than anything else, these websites purporting to offer love and financial security were, she thought, guises for their truer, darker sides. Rejection Factories.

So when she got the email inviting her to an interview, she nearly deleted it, mistaking it at first for spam. She read it twice. She remembered. Weeks before, she had seen one job that had actually sounded interesting and started to fill in the application. But the clunky website hiccuped when she clicked on “submit” and, Bunny thought, sent her submission not to Human Resources but rather the ether. She gave up then, chalked up the malfunction to fate, resigned herself to the fact she would never find work. But here now was proof otherwise.

Bunny’s reply was immediate. She was so excited to have been selected for an interview, so elated by the absence of rejection in the email that she let her enthusiasm shine. She would love an interview! (She debated for ten minutes over whether or not to punctuate her affirmative response with an exclamation point, googling to try to ascertain where that punctuation mark currently stood in popularity rankings, having watched it wax and wane over the years as it grew to compete with an ever expanding offering of emojis. Ultimately, she included the !, limiting herself to just the one, lest she be wrongly categorized as too eager.)

But in the four days between jubilantly accepting the invitation and the dawning of the morning of the interview, chilly grew her feet. She told herself all she was doing was setting herself up for in person rejection. They would take one look at her and know she was far too feral to ever safely face the public. She would be an idiot to show up and expose herself to such humiliation. Only a notification from her bank informing her that her balance had dipped below the hundred dollar mark inspired her to rise from her bed and follow through.

She’d meditated for a solid twenty minutes, talking herself out of talking herself out of showing up, repeating over and over I think I can, I think I can, visualizing her own face on the front of that little engine chugging up the hill. And now, here she was, and it was time.

She worried the Levi’s were too bright, would give the wrong impression to her interviewers. She tried to brush away the ash and goat hair and bits of hay that only wedged further in the fabric’s grooves.

“Lint roller?” The man asked. He pulled open his canvas military duffle bag and rummaged around, eventually pulling out a roller and waving it at her like an ebullient symphony conductor. “Here,” he said.

“I don’t have any money,” she said.

“Did I ask you for money?”

“No, but…”

“Just take it,” he said. “Get yourself squared away. Where you going anyway?”

“Interview,” she said. She took the roller and began working it over her pants.

“Where?”

“A little museum over there,” she said

“Well good luck, then,” he said.

“Um, thanks,” she said, offering back the lint roller.

“Missed a spot,” he said, pointing to a smear of fuzz near her right hip.

She got the spot. “Thanks,” she said, reaching back out to him. This time, he took the roller and tucked it into his bag.

“Break a leg,” he said.

“Thanks,” Bunny said, then turned her attention back to the parking situation.

In the nearly three years she’d stayed home, Bunny had forgotten a lot. She had nearly forgotten how to drive, and the morning’s trip downtown had heaped a large serving of traffic panic on top of the mound of interview anxiety already working in her gut. Now, looking at the high tech parking meter, she forgot if she’d even seen these devices in the Before Times. If so, she had forgotten how to use them.

Bunny slid her debit card into the slot. The machine beeped at her and an illustration appeared on the screen, a flashing arrow trying to explain something. She flipped the card around and tried again. More beeping. She flipped it over and stuck it in. More beeping. She rotated it again and then once more.

Victory.

”Finally,” she said. “Jesus. Fifth time’s a charm.”

Her feeling of triumph was short-lived. Bunny fumbled with the keypad attempting to decipher how to add time. In her frustration and impatience she pressed the plus sign repeatedly, as if she were waiting for an elevator too slow coming. There was a difference however, a considerable one. While everyone knows punching an elevator button repeatedly does nothing at all except give the impatient a diversion, Bunny soon discovered that interacting with the parking meter button did come with consequences.

Please Take Your Card. The words flashed on the screen while a robotic AI voice spoke them aloud. Bunny, relieved that the ordeal was over, slid out her card. New words on the screen now: Thank You. Do You Want a Receipt for $36?

“THIRTY-SIX DOLLARS? What the everloving…”

Again, the seated man spoke. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Bunny said. She wanted to cry.

“Well, it will be,” he said gently. “Now go on. You don’t want to be late for your interview.”

NOTES:

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