Free Randall #01 - The Best Revenge by Anne R. Allen Page A

She’d had a couple of beers by then. But she did remember Mike taking off after them, in a growling Camaro, threatening everyone in his path with an untimely demise.
    Wave and Jimmy the garbage man probably didn’t even know how badly things ended, since they took off in Jimmy’s car soon after that. They’d spent several hours on the couch looking like they were going to ravish each other then and there, so Camilla had been glad to see them go, even though it meant she was left on her own to evict the stragglers and clean up the mess.
    Cleaning up had probably been the most enjoyable part of the whole night. She found herself flying around the house, picking up cigarette butts and beer cans, sweeping chips out of the carpet, washing dishes and even mopping beer off the kitchen floor, as if she’d been cleaning houses all her life. By the first light of morning, the house looked more presentable than it had in weeks, and her strange energy had waned enough for her to sleep.
    So now why was she overwhelmed with unnamed guilt as she lay in her tidy bed, not even particularly hung over? When she rolled over and looked at the clock, she was shocked to see it was almost five in the afternoon. Half the weekend was shot. She pried herself out of bed, although she could have slept for days. Having a job had made her relish her time off. She hated to waste it.
    Wave and Jennifer weren’t back, and the living room and kitchen were just as tidy as she left them. She settled onto the nearly clean couch with a cup of coffee and the TV Guide. She turned to channel six, which was supposed to be showing “Gilligan’s Island,” and was irritated to see a smiling man talking about bombs in Lebanon and welcoming viewers to his Friday newscast.
    She switched off the set and counted the days on her fingers. With horror, she realized that it quite possibly could be Friday, not Saturday. This would mean she had missed work altogether. She hadn’t even called in sick. Not that it would have done any good. Her supervisor said that if she made one more mistake she was out. And this certainly was a mistake. How could she face the woman and say she thought it was Saturday? How could she face the woman and say anything? What good would it do?
    She was out of a job.
    She stared at the blank television set for several minutes. She could think of no reason to move. Finally, a calm, soothing vision appeared in her brain…
    Chocolate pudding.
    When she was small, her nanny, Mrs. Ritchie, gave her chocolate pudding when she had skinned her knee, or got a cold, or had cried a long time after her parents left on one of their trips. What Camilla really wanted right now was Mrs. Ritchie, who had been smiley and soft and ready with an answer for everything, but Mrs. Ritchie had died when she was nine. Chocolate pudding would have to do.
    ~
    Camilla decided to walk the three blocks to the local supermarket, which had the unlikely name of the Big Bear, although she knew that Jennifer would laugh at her for not driving. Jennifer got her exercise at an expensive gym where she could wear her shiny leotards and Wave got her exercise playing volleyball on the beach, and neither of them ever walked anywhere. This seemed to be a kind of religion with them. But Camilla liked to walk, and today she thought she would be safe practicing the unfashionable habit.
    She had only been to a supermarket a few times in her life, and the bright lights and crowds and syrupy music made her head hurt. She walked down endless aisles displaying almost everything but chocolate pudding, as her cart, which seemed to have a mind of its own, kept rolling sideways and bumping into displays of toilet tissue and slow-moving elderly ladies. Finally she found the pudding aisle and took five boxes of the chocolate. She also picked up milk; a package of Oreos and some butter almond ice cream.
    She felt quite proud, if exhausted, when she finally escaped the Big Bear, heavy paper grocery bag