Free A Passing Curse (2011) by C R Trolson Page B

philosophically, sounding eerily like Clark, “I’ve been expecting this call for some time, dear.”
    In London, she’d thought about taking the train to Cornwall, their house on the coast, but she’d never found the guts or the energy. What would she have said to them? Could she have handled Clark’s father, the future version of Clark. Similar gestures and voice. And would they have blamed her for Clark’s death? Like everyone else?
    Some days she blamed herself.
    She sat on the couch, suddenly very tired, weeks of dust collecting on the wood floors and furniture. Home, and if she owned a hat this is where she’d hang it.
    She stripped off her London clothes and showered until the water turned cold.
    She toweled her hair and combed it straight back. A dozen bruises, now turning yellow, striped her legs and arms. Several elliptical welts, faint gray, lingered on her breasts from the chain links.
    She put on loose-fitting cotton pants and an oversize Stanford sweatshirt, house clothes. She called a chicken joint that delivered, ordered half a rotisserie chicken, plus potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob and cornbread.
    She emptied the nylon pockets of the blue parka. She had 950 dollars left from Ajax’s Visa card. Added to that she had maybe two thousand in savings and still two months rent pre-paid. She had a five year old Nissan pick-up in the carport with ten thousand miles on it that she could get four thousand for if she had to. Not much cushion, but she was not worried. She had twenty different resumes circling to various private schools where she could teach anything from French, German, or Latin to World History, though she preferred archeology if they had it. She’d started sending the resume’s the day she returned from Syria.
    The deal with Ajax had been five hundred dollars a day plus expenses. Would Ajax pay for her time in the coma? And the month recuperating in London? Plus expenses? You bet your ass he would. About twenty thousand, she figured. She’d get her money and that would be the last of Mister Ajax Rasmussen.
    She noticed the answering machine blinking and hit the play button. Ajax’s voice came at her in a series of short messages. “I deeply apologize for any inconvenience.” Inconvenience? That was a good way to put it. In the last messages, his voice sounded formal and urgent. “Please, please, please call me.” Like a demented suitor.
    If you overlooked the soldiers almost raping her and Bugazi, that son of a bitch, trying to execute her, Ajax was a plum of a sponsor. He had more money than sense, and he didn’t mind spending it. But working for Ajax was now history.
    Tomorrow she would continue sending out resumes. Twenty might not be enough. If she had a hundred circulating, she might get a hit, a nibble at least. She’d get a job. She’d stay afloat until she could get out in the field again.
    After she paid the chicken guy and ate one leg and half the cornbread, someone knocked. The mailman stood there, his sun hat too big for him, hiding his eyes. “Your box is full,” he said.
    It took her a second to understand what he was saying. He thrust forward a wad of mail. She took it in both hands and dumped the letters, mostly advertisements, onto the kitchen table. When she turned around, the mailman held out a single letter. “You got registered mail,” he said.
    “From?”
    “You gotta sign for it,” he said, ignoring the question. She did, closed the door, and took the scarlet business letter inside and opened it.
    “Dear Miss Webber, I was sorry to hear about your recent difficulties.” She stopped reading and looked at the cashier’s check. The twenty-five thousand dollar cashier’s check. “Please accept this as a bonus above and beyond all your expenses and your agreed-upon salary, plus one month salary for your recuperation, which I will be sending shortly.”
    She thought it damned strange that Ajax had perfectly timed the arrival of the check with her own