Garden of The Humbled Gods

A House Full of Strangers

A House Full of Strangers

Mark has to park on the street when he gets home. Ellen's best friend Jillian is parked in his spot in the driveway. That's the sort of person Jillian is— she parks in your spot, even though she knowsthat you come home from work at the same goddamn time every night— what's worse, is that Ellen lets her do it. Last month she parked in the drive, and somebody scratched his driver's side door. It cost him $1,200 at the Infiniti dealership to get it fixed.

He walks through the door to find Jillian and Ellen three Vodka Adderall's deep on the couch. He sets his full grain leather messenger bag down on their reclaimed oak and white marble end-table. Mark makes $217,943 a year, and they're damn near living paycheck to paycheck. Looking up to greet him, Ellen covers her mouth with her hand to suppress her laughter, "Hey, you're home early."

Apparently, Jillian said something funny, "It's almost 6:30."

"Yeah, but you're usually not home until after seven on Wednesdays."

"I'm tired, so I ducked out a little early."

"Well, dinner will be here soon. We ordered Thai food— I ordered you green curry. I hope that's okay."

She hasn't cooked in over a month, "Yeah, it's fine. Thanks."

And with that, the two women go back to gossiping, "So anyway, as I was saying—"

As I was saying infers the same idea as, before I was interrupted.

Just drop it, it's not worth it.

Ellen orders from the same five restaurants damn near every night— Thai Palace, Pho-Nominal, Garden Table Farm to Kitchen, Deli-Hawk Soup and Salad, Green Planet Pizza. It's all fine, but that's also the problem. If she would only put herself out there a little bit and risk failure— he'd rather eat a hundred burnt and bland casseroles made with love than another meal from a trendy hipster takeout joint. When they first started dating, they would take road trips to the everglades to go camping. They survived on hot dogs and oatmeal. One of those campfire meals in a metal mug was better than all of the $75.00 brunches put together. She used to joke on their trips, "You better not be taking me down here to kill me and dump my body."

Now he doubts she trusts him enough to go camping with him at all.

Mark lets out a deep sigh that nobody pays attention to— walking into the kitchen, he finds Ashley leaning over the counter, flipping through her phone, "Hey, sweetie."

"Hi, dad."

"Whatcha doing?"

"Not much, just chatting with people."

"Like who?"

"People."

"Do these people have names?"

"Madison and some others."

"Do these others have names as well or are they just random orphans running the streets of Hyde Park? If so, I should know, because I'll want to call the authorities— I'd hate to have these nameless feral children ruin my property value."

Annoyed, Ashley looks up from her phone, "You're so lame— of course, they have names."

Mark smiles at his wittiness, "What are they?"

Sigh, "Sarah G., Bella, Morgan, Sarah A., Kimmy, and Marcus."

"Marcus— who's Marcus?"