Turn Back Time

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Oh, it's all over the hotel about you firing poor Bertie," smirked Dulce.

I didn't even justify her comment with a response. I watched, getting even angrier, as Lupe came back out of the kitchen with Den's coffee and what looked like a cinnamon roll and some kind of breakfast meat. He also had some cut up fruit. But what pissed me off was that the little bitch had unbuttoned her shirt at least two more buttons.

Of course, she'd have had to unbutton her top all the way to the waist in order for him to see anything. Lupe's saggy tits could be covered by one of those tiny band aids that you use for shaving cuts. First Bertie and now this shit with Lupe. I began to wonder if all of the members of the itty bitty titty committee were trying to gang up on me and ruin my life.

"Okay, she's asking for it," said Dulce. "If you don't fuck that little bitch up, I'm going to."

"Shhh Dulce, watch," I said. Lupe took a pen from her order pad and wrote something down on it. She smiled at Denton and folded it up and stuck it in his breast pocket. Denton smiled back at her and I felt heat. Lupe probably didn't have long to live. But then as she turned to walk away, swinging her hips with so much amplitude that I was sure she need to have both of the joints replaced before she was thirty, Denton surprised me again. He reached into his pocket and took out the folded piece of paper and without even looking at it, dropped it into flower pot on the table beside his.

Seeing what he did caused another temperature change in me. I went from being hot allover to just being warm, especially in the regions of my heart and between my legs.

"I told you he was a good guy," hissed Dulce. "He must have a built in skank detector."

"Why does he keep looking up?" she asked.

"How the fuck would I know?" I hissed. "We've been apart for eight years." A few minutes later Denton called Lupe back over. He paid his check and apparently gave her a really nice tip as well. She went as far as to pat his breast pocket reminding him of her little note. He pointed upwards and they exchanged a few words and then he left.

As soon as Denton cleared the room, I grabbed Dulce's hand and dragged her into the cafeteria. We immediately grabbed Lupe and frog marched the little bitch into the kitchen away from the guests.

Dulce fortunately had the presence of mind to place herself between Lupe and me. "What the fuck were you doing?" I yelled. "And why is your uniform unbuttoned?" My face was so distorted that no one would have been surprised if my next line had been, "Is that a Twisted Sister pin on your uniform?"

Dulce, who naturally was the voice of reason, tried to defuse the situation. "Lupe, the man you were just trying to flash your two tiny tatas at is Blanche's husband."

Lupe jumped back and seemed to deflate. "I didn't know," she said. "Sorry, please don't fire me."

God damn it, I thought. I've worked in this pit for seven fucking years. In all of that time I'd fired one person and now everybody I ran into thought I was going to fire them.

Lupe was a study in contrasts. Her eyes were bottomless pits of sorrow written so deeply that her children were probably sad at that moment. I felt really bad about the way I was treating her until I noticed that the bitch was still smiling. At that moment I hated her. I hated her and her fucking dentist enough to just slap those fucking pearly white teeth out of her mouth.

"What was he asking you about?" asked Dulce, shattering the moment and probably saving Lupe's dental health.

"He asked about those decorations near the ceiling," she smiled. "He said he'd love to have some of those to decorate his garage."

Dulce grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the kitchen while I was still mean-mugging Lupe. "Button up your God damned shirt," I screamed as we left.

"Blanche this is it!" whispered Dulce excitedly.

"This is what?" I asked.

"This is your first chance to do something to help you get back into his good graces," she said. "The cafeteria closes when the restaurants open right?" I nodded my head.

"Well, we'll be back here at lunchtime," she said with a crazy smile.

"But Dulce, they don't serve lunch at the cafeteria," I said.

"Just be here and bring a fucking ladder," she hissed.

"Is this another one of those Mexican proverbs?" I asked.

"Well...no," she said. "Okay it's actually the same one, but I can't explain it to you because you'll just fuck it up."

That morning I cleaned three rooms and settled two disputes among the maids. Both of the disputes involved Anya. The first one had Anya coming to me to report that at least three of my twelve maids were fucking the guests. She thought it was shameful and they should be fired immediately. I had to sit down and have a talk with Anya. I tried to explain the Paul McCartney principle to her. I told her it was, "Live and let live," until they did something to hurt you. Once they'd pissed you off you switched to, "Live and let die." She was going nuclear way too early.

"But you haven't fired anybody yet today," she said.

An hour later, four of the maids cornered me in the room I was attempting to clean. These four maids were not among the ones who were fucking the guests. They wanted to complain about Anya. The maids, including me, all received a small base salary and made more money based on the number of rooms we cleaned. Anya was cleaning almost twice as many rooms as any other maid on the crew. They were worried that their bonus money might not be as much as it had been.

I tried again to explain the Paul McCartney principle. It seemed to fit well in both places. Leslie, one of the more outspoken members of the group, told me to put Anya at the top of my list of people to consider when I fired someone that day.

Finally it was lunch time. I got one of the maintenance men to loan me a ladder. He carried it to the cafeteria for me and agreed to pick it up later. He'd have it out of there long before the cafeteria opened for late night and early morning service.

"You should have seen the way that guy was looking at your ass," quipped Dulce. "I bet he'd like to bury his face and something else in it."

"Well the only thing going near my ass is toilet paper," I said.

"What about Denton?" she smirked.

"Okay, him too," I said sheepishly. "Now what are we doing here?"

"The cafeteria staff left hours ago," she said. "They work ten hour shifts from midnight until ten a.m."

"I know that but thanks for the information Sally schedule," I said. "They only work when the restaurants are closed. That still doesn't tell me why I'm wasting my fucking lunch hour here."

"We're going to steal some of the decorations," she said. I looked up. "Remember the song," she said. I smiled and nodded my head. But I was thinking about how desperate I must seem. Here Denton was worried about decorating his fucking garage, for what? Did he want to impress his fucking car? Like the Mustang would care about what was on the garage.

The only person who thought their car could see or think or had any feelings was Denton. Okay maybe him and all of those other Mustang people. So here I was dragging my nearly forty year old, broken hearted ass up a ladder in a probably vain attempt to make him see me in a better light. I needed help, and I wasn't talking about Dulce holding the ladder.

Thirty eight minutes later, sputtering and covered in dust, we'd taken five of them down. We'd done it in a pattern so no one would notice that they were missing, as if anyone would care anyway. Besides we'd only taken the star shaped ones. I used my pass key to go into Denton's room to clean it and left them on his bed. I was sure he'd notice them right away because his was the room from before that was so fucking neat.

I ran all kinds of little scenarios through my mind about how he'd react to my gift. In some of them he reacted badly, as in calling the front desk and complaining. In others he called and tried to get me fired. There were also scenarios where he either didn't notice or pretended he didn't notice and simply left them there. My favorites, of course were the ones where he came and found me and thanked me. He even asked me to go out to dinner with him and took me home and fucked my brains out in one of them.

Of course my depressing mind even managed to twist that one. After we'd had sex, Denton gave me three dollars and called me a cab. As I left his room I heard him speaking his thoughts out loud. "Shit, after being a whore for eight years, I expected better."

None of those things happened, of course, because in the real world Denton was at his convention until long after I went home. So I didn't actually get to see him. And even more naturally, the next morning he didn't go to the cafeteria for breakfast.

Dulce and I had gone out to lunch along with Anya. We took Anya with us to keep her from cleaning any God damned rooms on her lunch hour. I was going to have to talk to her. Anyway, we had a few minutes left so Dulce and I were sitting on a bench with Anya standing in front of us she was facing us and talking about her baby.

I think Dulce had reached her limit to the amount of cutesy baby shit she could handle so she changed the subject.

She asked me about what had happened with the decorations and whether I'd heard anything from Denton. I hadn't and I was so frustrated that I let go again.

"He probably didn't like them," I snapped. "Either that or he probably did, but then he realized that they were from me so he just threw them away. Maybe he pissed all over them and set them on fire too."

"Blanche, I never told you this," said Dulce. "But the other day, after your performance, he was smiling."

"He was probably laughing at me," I said.

"No, Honey," she said. "It wasn't like that at all. It was a really nice smile. Remember what he told Claudine about not having uhm...you know in eight years. I think he feels the same way about you that you do about him. I think this is going to be far easier than you think. We just need to find a way to get you guys together to talk."

"Then why didn't he try to find me, yet?" I asked. "I'm here. I've been here all fucking day. I think this is like one of those stories that guys read on the internet. You know the ones they call, "Burn the bitch stories."

Dulce looked at me like I was crazy and Anya was making a crazy face too. "You know those stories," I continued. "Some woman cheats on her husband. He finds out about it and divorces her and gets some kind of over the top revenge where she spends the rest of her life living in a crate under a bridge eating tuna fish until she dies. No one ever loves her again or has anything to do with her. It's like God gives her the fecal touch and everything she touches turns to shit, forever."

Dulce was smiling stupidly at me.

"At the end of the story, the hero recovers his self-esteem, buys a Mustang and drives off into the sunset with a new, better woman who may or may not have big tits, while the old wife, aka the bitch, goes down in flames and continues to burn."

"I guess maybe my life is like that," I said. I was beginning to cry and Dulce shifting into best friend mode reached out and hugged me. "Dulce, I know it was my fault. I deserved everything that happened to me after what I'd done. I lost everything too Dulce. I lost my home, I lost my job, and I lost my career too. I lost my family. My parents still haven't forgiven me. And my fucking sister looks down her nose at me every time I see her. She treats me like a turd that she stepped in and she can't scrape off of her shoe."

"But most of all Dulce, I lost Denton. That's what hurts me the most. I know you keep telling me to move on and get over it but I can't. He's the only one I want. My whole fucking life is one big burn the bitch story and I'll probably have to burn forever. I wonder sometimes whether or not he has any forgiveness in his heart Dulce? Maybe all of the love he had for me filled his heart so much that it just left no room for any forgiveness or compassion. And now that all of the love has been replaced by hate, there's still just no room for him to ever see that I've changed or even think about forgiving me. I can't move on Dulce. I don't want to move on, so I just have to burn forever. Maybe I should get a tattoo of a burning bitch." Anya was now wildly gesticulating and waving while Dulce and I hugged. Anya does tend to have kind of a puritanical stick up her ass. Maybe Dulce and I hugging in public had tweaked her anti-lesbo switch or something.

"What Anya?" I snapped. "You don't think I should get a tattoo?"

"I think you should get a Q tip," she said. "And use it to clean out your ears. So you can hear people when they're talking to you. I've been trying to get you to turn around."

By this point in the story, most of you realize that if luck was dynamite, I don't have enough to blow my nose. So yep when I turned around Denton was standing there again. This time I didn't turn red, but all of the blood rushed out of my head and I turned as white as a sheet. He really didn't look happy this time. Unlike the previous time when it was just Dulce there, he wasn't smiling.

"Uhm, sorry," he said. "I tried to find you to thank you for the stars that you left on my bed. I figured it was you from your speech the other day about the song and everything. But uhm...you don't seem to be in the mood to talk so...I'll leave you alone." He was shaking his head and he just walked away.

"Who was that?" asked Anya.

"God Blanche," said Dulce. "You talk too fucking much. Is there anything you can't fuck up? He liked the stars. He even understood what we were trying to do. This was really good. If you hadn't gone off on another of your little rants this would have worked. You could have possibly had him back. Jeezus you don't have to share every fucking thought in your head in public. Most people would have learned the first time. Shit, now I have to come up with ANOTHER plan."

Unfortunately, there wouldn't be time for another plan. We found out from one of the women at the front desk that today was the last day of the convention. Denton was checking out early the next morning. Dulce came back and told me that she was sorry for her outburst earlier.

She was just upset because the whole plan with the stars had been perfect. She was mostly upset for me because she wanted me to be happy and she sensed that without Denton back in my life, I probably never would be.

"Duh, when did you figure that out?" I asked her, trying to blink the tears out of my eyes.

"When that cute maintenance man was running around the building carrying ladders and shit for you and you never even noticed him," she said. "That was a bad sign because the poor guy kept walking into walls trying to get a glimpse of your body parts and he never even entered your consciousness. That told me that you have a one track mind and there's only one train on it."

"Honey," she said, as we got to my car. "Life is a motherfucker. Sometimes without trying to we stumble onto things that we simply didn't earn and probably don't deserve. Other times we work our asses off trying to find a small shred of happiness and it just seems to elude us no matter how deserving we may be. You won the lottery, your first time out. But like you've already admitted, it was your fault you pissed it away. We have to look at this realistically. That was probably your only shot at the fairy tale."

"But Blanche, not every woman gets to be Cinderella. Not all of us get to marry the prince. Shit, we both know that I married a frog. But God damn it he's my frog and HE loves me. He may not be as attractive and perfect as you think Denton is, but he'll be there beside me doing the best he can, no matter how fat my ass gets. That has to count for something. So think about that cute maintenance guy, okay?"

"Dulce, I love you," I said. "I know you only want me to be happy. But if I did hook up with one of the maintenance guys, or some guy I meet tomorrow, or president Obama or George fucking Clooney, I'd still spend the rest of my life imagining that he was Denton. I know Denton isn't perfect, but he's perfect for me. So there's no one else."

"Hey, this isn't over," she said. "We just have to be ready next time he comes to one of these conventions. So we'll start planning tomorrow and next time he comes to town, we'll get him."

I smiled at her as I drove off. I didn't say anything because I knew that my voice was going to break and I'd start crying before I got home.

Surprisingly when I got home, I got into my huge comfy sweatshirt and grabbed my cup of tea. As I thought about it, I realized that Dulce had been right. She'd given me two chances to get Denton and I'd fucked them both up with my big ass mouth. In fact, it had been my big ass mouth that had cost me Denton in the first place.

Denton had been ready to forgive me in the first God damned place until I let Bryant into my head and said all of those terrible things to really drive us apart. When we were married, Denton and I never really talked about our problems. I know it sounds terrible in modern day terms because all of the fucking experts like Oprah and Dr. Phil always talk about how couples should talk about their problems. Denton and I never did. When there was something going on we just went to bed and made love and the next morning there simply weren't any fucking problems. He'd just say, "Honey, I love you. We'll try it your way."

How could I have forgotten that? Even now I was still learning how stupid I'd been and what a horse's ass Bryant had been. I fell asleep knowing that my world would be a little bit...make that a hell of a lot darker tomorrow.

I woke up wondering why the hell my alarm hadn't gone off. I looked at the clock on my cable box because I had fallen asleep on the fucking couch yet again. Why did I even own a bed?

The clock told me why the alarm hadn't gone off. It was only two a.m.

I don't know why I was doing it but I got up and showered. I put my clothes on and just a dab of perfume in a few areas. I got into my car and drove to work. All of the workers on the night shift looked at me as I walked in. There were very few of my maids who worked at night. I heard whispers as I walked through the halls heading for my office. "She came in to fire somebody," said a voice. Long before I got to my office I got on the elevator. My feet seemed to know where I was going, even if I didn't.

I used my pass key and slipped into the darkened room. As I pulled my sweater over my head I got it tangled in my hair. It took me a few moments to get it untangled and I almost fell on my ass, but luckily I could still hear Denton's rhythmic breathing. I pulled my pants down and shucked out of both them and my panties. I dropped my bra onto the puddle of clothing on the floor. I stepped cautiously over to the bed. I had a weird thought as I stepped cautiously over to the bed. Wouldn't it be ironic if I'd come into the wrong room and was getting ready to fuck a complete stranger? The guy would wake up and start complaining or asking who the hell I was. I'd run out into the hallway to get away from him and run right into Denton, who was just getting in. He'd look at me and shake his head. "Still a whore, after all this time," he'd think.

That wasn't to be the case this time though. I caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight and almost swooned. I pulled the sheet back and lay down on top of him. His arms moved and enfolded me. I could tell though that it was only a reflex. His eyes popped open and he was beginning to wake up as I started to trail hundreds of tiny kissing along the stubble of his jawline. When I reached his neck with my lips, I felt the strange combination of hard/soft that was his erection pressing against my stomach.