Free Jaine Austen 1 - This Pen for Hire by Laura Levine

microwave popcorn for myself.
    It was dark out when I finally finished. I read over what I had written, feeling quite proud of myself. Here I’d taken a very boring subject and, in a mere nine hours, turned it into a much less boring subject. If they gave out Pulitzers for corporate brochures, I’d be a sure-fire winner.
    It was with great pleasure that I faxed my client my opus. It was with even greater pleasure that I faxed him my invoice.
    As if sensing my good mood, Prozac ambled over, rubbing her body against my ankles. It was just her way of saying, “Who cares about your silly brochure? Get your priorities straight. It’s time to rub my belly.”
    I was in the middle of giving Prozac a vigorous belly rub when I realized that, aside from my Banana Blast and microwave popcorn and an old Altoid I’d found next to my keyboard, I hadn’t eaten anything all day. Suddenly I was hungry. Too hungry to wait for the pizza delivery guy.
    I fixed myself a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and a glass of milk, and hunkered down at my kitchen table with my favorite part of the newspaper—the obituaries.
    I don’t know why I’m so fascinated with obituaries. I think it was George Burns who once said he read the obituaries every morning just to make sure his name wasn’t there. I’m not at that stage of life yet, but I still like to read them. I like reading about women with names like Alma and Gladys who moved out to Los Angeles back when L.A. was still a backwater town. They came here from places like Nebraska and Iowa and married their first husbands, had a bunch of kids, and maybe a job, too, and then the Second World War broke out, and they started working for the Red Cross, and eventually their first husbands died, and they met husband Number Two and possibly Number Three at their bridge clubs, and after their second and third honeymoons, they went back to work, not retiring till at least seventy and not dying till at least eighty-five, leaving a whole passel of loving kids and grandkids and great-grandkids behind.
    I read those obits and think to myself, My God, what full lives those women led. And they did it without microwaves or Dustbusters or bikini waxes.
    Sometimes when I’m reading about Alma or Gladys, I think about my own life, what gaping holes there are. I ask myself: Do I really want to spend the rest of my life with Prozac as my significant other? Without a husband? Without kids? Without stretch marks? When I die, who’ll visit my grave? Whose eyes will mist with tears and remember what a nice person and lousy cook I was?
    I tell myself it’s The Blob’s fault. That he’s soured me on men forever. But that isn’t true. The truth is I’m a coward. Afraid of taking a chance. Of getting hurt. It’s easier to curl up with Prozac and read the obituaries.
    And so I sat there that night, scanning the death notices between bites of peanut butter and jelly, looking for long happy lives.
    Instead, I found Stacy Lawrence.
    There she was, between Morton Landers, Beloved Father and Grandfather, and Frieda Lipman, Cherished Aunt.
    If Stacy had been beloved and cherished by anyone, it wasn’t mentioned in her obituary. The announcement was short and to the point. Stacy had passed away on the fourteenth. Funeral services would be held on the nineteenth.
    The nineteenth was tomorrow, I realized, swallowing a particularly chunky mouthful of peanut butter.
    I made up my mind to be there.
     
    Stacy was laid to rest in The Vale of Peace, a sylvan glade dotted with oak trees, floral hedges, and a lovely view of the Hollywood Freeway. The minister conducting the service had to shout to be heard over the roar of the cars whizzing by.
    I’d driven over from Beverly Hills and joined the small knot of mourners at Stacy’s gravesite, hoping none of them would question my right to be there.
    As the minister droned on about how the Lord works in mysterious ways, I studied my fellow mourners.
    A middle-aged couple, clearly