Free Relapse: A Novel by Nikki Turner

anything arises.”
    After they agreed to stay in touch and ended the odd call, Beijing looked down at the dash for the time
    “Okay. Thanks again for thinking of me,” Beijing said in a mystified tone.
    The digital clock in the car glowed
7:03
. Time was slipping through Beijing’s fingers.
    As if it had a mind of its own, her right foot pressed down on the accelerator a little harder. She was about to make a right off Lennox when her cell phone rang. The Lexus rounded the corner with ease as she pulled up in front of the building.
    Beijing’s bladder was begging to be relieved. She jumped out, slamming the car door with one hand and clutching two bags of Chinese food in the other, rushing to the condo. She put her key in the front door lock, walked in, and immediately realized that something just wasn’t right. She sniffed the air.
    Smoke … and when there was smoke, there was always fire!
    Beijing dropped the Chinese food, not caring the least bit where it landed, and rushed down the hall toward the bedroom where the foul odor seemed to be lurking from. The freshly buffed hardwood floors caused her to lose her balance and slip.
    Bam!
She hit the floor hard. Face-first.
    “Shit!” she screamed.
    As she rose quickly, her balance was off, causing her to twist her ankle and break the heel on one of her new to-die-for Giuseppe Zanotti shoes in the process. Her ankle throbbed as she held on to the wall.
    At first she thought the wastebasket was responsible for the stench. Then she looked and realized that it was the comforter on the side of the bed closest to the wall.
    “Oh my God!” she yelled, but neither her high-pitched scream nor the fire disturbed the slumbering Don. “Don! Don! Don!” she called out to him, but he was oblivious.
I will deal with
this motherfucker later
, she thought. First she had to deal with the emergency at hand.
    She needed to get the fire out before it spread to other parts of the house. There was no time to try to locate a fire extinguisher, but thank God there was a vase filled with roses on a table next to the television. Beijing grabbed the vase, throwing the flowers to the side as she hopped over to the trash can. She emptied some of the water from the vase on the small fire and then got more water from the sink, along with a towel, to extinguish the rest of the fire on the comforter.
    After conquering the potentially disasterous situation at hand, a tightening in her bladder reminded her about the other emergency that had her racing into the house in the first place. Just as she started running like a track star toward the bathroom, knocking down any-and everything in her path, her body chose not to cooperate. She could not control her bladder anymore.
    She screamed in momentary defeat, “Fuck me! Will you just fuck me all over please! This is some damn bullshit.” She peeled off her soaking-wet panties along with the rest of her clothes and got some clean towels from under the sink, where she noticed the fire extinguisher box sitting all the way in the back. She took one of the towels and wiped up the mess she’d made, then placed one on the edge of the tub for when she got out of the shower and the other on the sink for just in case. The entire time she lathered up and rinsed off under the hot water pellets shooting from the showerhead, with tears in her eyes she cursed Don out.
    All of it was his fault: the condo almost burning down, her breaking her heel of the shoes that she just had to have—and only got to wear one time, the food landing all over the place, her urinating on herself and on the floor … hell, in her mind the list could go on forever.
    Beijing stepped out of the shower feeling better than she had before she got in, but not a lot better. At least her ankle didn’t seem to be damaged too bad; it just hurt like hell. She reached forthe lavender-scented baby oil, squirted a substantial amount on her washcloth, and began to use it to dry off and moisturize her