Free The Art of Becoming Homeless by Sara Alexi

if she doesn’t make it to the meeting, it could result in her pulling the short straw. Then what? Unthinkable. How would she be able to pay the bills, keep the house heated or dehumidified, to stop it crumbling? The place would dissolve.
    She peeks out of the door, no sign of the doctor. The nurse is typing.
    ‘I really need to go,’ Michelle calls. Twelve forty-five.
    ‘ I will phone him again,’ the nurse replies, but she does not pick up the phone.
    ‘ Could you do it now please?’ At her age, fifty this year, she would be sunk if the firm lets her go. Who would employ her? She would be the last in the line of employable lawyers, behind the eager young things and the self-assured forty-year-old men. Even if there were jobs, no one would touch her. Then what? The law is all she knows.
    ‘ Now?’ Michelle cringes at her own tone of voice, but it does the trick; the nurse picks up the phone. Nearly one. ‘How long to the port?’
    ‘ A minute, down here.’ She points with her pen as she dials. ‘Or straight and left.’
    The house. How could she let the house decay? It is her safety, her symbol of success, her impenetrable fortress.
    Her mouth drops open. What if she has to get rid of the house? What if they take it from her? Homeless. She would be homeless and unemployed.
    ‘ I have to go. Tell the doctor I waited.’
    ‘ No …’ The nurse stands.
    ‘ Ah, good morning, is the patient better today?’ The doctor from yesterday walks through the main door into the hall, casually, no hurry.

    She runs lightly and quickly down the hospital steps. They could not have discharged her more slowly if they ’d tried. Turning toward the port, the way is blocked where a handcart full of bottled water has tried to pass a second handcart of breezeblocks, and their wheels have become interlocked.
    An old woman in slippers, laden with shopping bags, points an alternative way. Michelle marches in the new direction. The ship ’s horn vibrates across the blue sky, calling all aboard. If she can keep up the pace she will catch it. Down the narrow alley, left toward the port a corner and . . . into someone’s backyard.
    ‘ No!’ Michelle retraces her steps twice as fast.
    Back to the alley farther along, each turn left to the port could be another dead end. She tries another, a whitewashed alley that ends at a solid wooden door, a single round brass handle in the middle.
    Perspiration is running into her eyes, the ripped edge of her dust-encrusted t-shirt is rubbing her slightly sunburned shoulder, and her linen trousers, creased, stained and torn, are hot and clinging. Turning another left, she can see the sea. Her feet break into a trot. She wipes the sweat from her eyes, down the widening path, shops on either side.
    A man is pulling the mooring rope off the bollard.
    ‘Wait!’ Michelle cries, but he is too far away to hear. Another man is dragging the landing steps away from the ship on the harbour wall. Michelle waves at him. He stops and waves back.
    She slows her pace, her heart pounding, relieved he has seen her. She keeps her gaze fixed steadfast on him. He leans against the steps and lights a cigarette.
    But the ship begins to draw away. They have not stopped the departure. Michelle begins to run again, shouting and waving. She rushes along the quay. The ship is two feet from shore, four feet, six. Michelle bends double to breathe, staggering the last few feet to the man at the boarding steps.
    ‘ Please stop them, I must board.’ She takes hold of his smoking arm.
    ‘ She is gone.’ He gently pulls free to take a drag.
    ‘ I have to be on her, please!’

Chapter 6

    Her chest caves in, her shoulders droop. She is conscious of someone watching her. The man leaning against the ship’s boarding steps inspects her clothes, head to toe. She half glances down at herself to see what he sees: the results of yesterday’s disaster. But it is a minor detail. The boat’s propellers spin, the water churns: