The Quest For Perfection (Is A Damn Fine Thing)

Part I: The Strangeness of Fredrick Street - Chapter 7

7

With the school run over and done with, Sarah's day opened up ahead of her like a California highway (or at least the way she pictured it due to the movies), but without the relative freedom that journey provides. She had much more menial tasks causing her a pit stop every half hour or so on her imaginary road trip down the coast. Driving into town, her To Do list for the day pinned to the dashboard in front of her, Dry Cleaners, Doctors, Butchers and Snacks - not listed in order of importance. Sarah permitted herself a few moments to bask in the intermittent silence afforded the car now that she'd dropped off the kids before the basking would turn to wallowing in the quiet and eventually the surge of guilt that she was enjoying a few moments alone of peace and quiet without the kids or her husband. Sarah was a creature of habit, who liked the idea of alone time more than actually being alone from her loved ones and whenever she was left in silence for too long her mind began to spiral, attempting to open doors to doomsday thinking. Quickly (trained in the art of quick distraction) she flicked on the radio and let the songs of the day fill the sullen and silent atmosphere of the car and push her thoughts of loneliness from her mind.

Now that she'd planned the day, she was looking forward to the night's event more than she had been that morning. Maybe it was just over-exhaustion, her mental faculties and positive attitude run down with the lack of sleep and busy lifestyle. Despite her commitment to the early morning rise and run, she had found herself of recent nights tossing and turning, waking from strange dreams, the odd disturbing one, that ranged from round rooms, drowning in a tank of water and one particularly horrible nightmare wherein she seemed to be catching sight of her reflection in the bottom of glasses and in bar windows – the reflection a haggard, skeleton thin woman with skin the color of yellow pastel. It was perhaps this particular nightmare that made her push even further into her early morning routine and commitment to her self imposed healthy eating programme – the fear of becoming that woman gripped her all too strong. Although why the fear felt so prescient, she didn't know. She had no cause to worry that she was on that path or indeed ever had been. She never drank. She didn't do drugs. She didn't even eat fast food. But no matter how many times she told herself this, reassured herself about how fit and healthy she was, she couldn't shake that image she saw when she closed her eyes. And to make this fear even worse, the strangest thing had happened the day before which she had pushed to the back of her mind until now.

Coming back from her morning run, there was a large delivery truck parked outside her house. Jogging toward the driver, leaning against the wheel wearing a fedora and a duster jacket (in this impossible heat no less), she unplugged her earphones and waited as he pushed himself away from the truck and moved toward her, breaking into a smile and taking off the hat. If it hadn't been for the slightly greying hair she would have sworn it was Idris Elba straight off the set of filming The Dark Tower (a fact she only knew because her son was such a huge fan of both King and Elba) complete with Gunslinger costume. He had a friendly face, startling blue eyes looking out from his dark skin. He took his hat off and checked his clipboard, still with that smile.

"Sarah Barr?" he said, looking up at her from his clipboard.

"That's me. What's all this?" Sarah asked, taking a swig of her water.

"Looks to me like one hell of a party is what it is," he said, taking out a pen and passing over the clipboard. "Just give me a signature here and here and I'll get unloading all this party juice."

Sarah didn't take the pen, instead looked past him into the truck, confused. "Party juice?"

"My little word for it. Booze. Drink. Moonshine. You must be having the whole neighbourhood round."