NINE TIME MACHINES: Do you want to undo your entire life on planet earth?

CHAPTER 12

When the entire ordeal is over, I follow her to the sitting room like a programmed robot. It's an oval-shaped room with benches attached to the walls, four dark wooden single chairs in the middle with a solid coffee table and pictures of past matrons on the weathered green walls, each trying to see who can outdo the other by following us wherever we go. I plonk down on the burgundy leather cushion and dredge my mind anew, flipping pictures behind the windows of my eyes, stopping only to examine potential saviours. One album down; nothing to show for it. A flurry of emotions take turns trampling my face. Sorrow, anger, fear, despair. There's really no one left to call, no friend, relative or lover.

"You look like two wrestlers are about to execute a tag team in your head."

"Zero." I flash a weak smile. "Just got some bad news, that's all."

Hazel leans forward, a strained look on her red face, her pink floral dress exploding with colour.

"How bad is it?"

I dig into my pocket and hand her the red slip of paper. I've been carrying it around with me to make sure it was real, that, like everyone else I knew, Matron Malika Caine had finally had enough and wants me gone.

Hazel narrows her grey eyes as she reads. The marked triangles around them change form.

"Twenty-one days? Why not until the end of the month?"

"Don't say it so loud. It might start to make sense."

"How much?"

"Four months I think."

"Jesus! When's the last time you paid?"

"April maybe."

"It's May for me," Hazel says, then sinks into the realization that she is next. "That's three months at a hundred a month."

"Damn! We're in the same boat. Two blind mice. All we need is a third loser to join up."

"Says who? I'm no loser. I'm not the one who threw away five jobs in two years."

"You of all people should know better."

"What? You're still on that immigrant woman? She's probably dead for all we know."

"She should've died when it mattered, her and that asshole bank manager she put under a spell."

"Mary, forget about them."

"I can't! I can't, all right. I was doing great for the first time in my life and they destroyed that."

"I know what happened. But right now you've got to leave their old, dead asses in the past and focus on paying this rent."

"How? I've got no real money left."

"That's just for now. Between us, you're the lucky one. A job's bound to find you. Just keep it."

Suddenly I realize who's giving me advice.