8 Mile

The cops are a different issue. And there are two ways to look at it. On one hand, the way they saw you and the way they see homeless people is wrong. But it's partially because they don't know any better and partially because they don't make the laws Betty, they just enforce them.

But you also have to realize that they're good at their jobs. And they did save you and Jerri from God knows what could have happened to you. And while we're on that subject, there's this woman I know who is going to get her bare ass spanked the next time she crosses Eight Mile without me there to protect her.

"Ooh, she might do it just to get spanked," I cooed. He rolled his eyes at me.

"Bettttttieeeeeeee ..." he groaned. "The other problem... We can't solve alone. The way I see it... You have your block club. Maybe you should get them involved. Maybe it's time for them to do something other than bake sales and street parties. Get them to do some things for the homeless. Maybe a picnic in the park where they can come and eat. You could get the hospital to do free medical checkups. You could pass out little survival kits of things they need.

You could also get signatures on a petition to get rid of the vagrancy ordinances ..." I had tears in my eyes listening to him. He made me realize that I could do something to make things better for people like me.

"I'm gonna do it Alan," I said seriously. "I'm gonna make things better for us!"

He shook his head. "Betty... Honey... I'm not sure you see it," he said.

"See what?" I smiled. He had me all fired up.

"What did you start out doing today?" he asked.

"I went out to buy some shorts for the backyard," I smiled. He looked puzzled.

"Not to change the subject," he said. "But didn't we buy you shorts when we bought your summer clothes."

"Those are old lady shorts," I said. "I need some shorts for you."

"I'm not wearing any shorts, unless I'm out running," he said.

"No, Alan," I sighed. "I needed shorts to wear for you, Dummy." He looked confused. I looked around to make sure no one could hear me.

"I wanted some shorts that were really tight and really high so my ass would hang out of them," I said. "And don't get mad, I was only going to wear them around you. I know how much you like staring at my ass. I figured we'd be working in the yard and..." I swear a bead of sweat broke out on his forehead. He gulped down his drink.

"But see Betty, that's my point," he said. "You keep saying, 'US,' when you talk about the homeless. You're not one of them anymore. You don't have the same struggle anymore. WE can do our best to help them, but as long as I'm alive you'll never be one of them again."

I almost cried then. What he'd just said was so close to telling me what I wanted to hear more than anything else in the world.

"Even when you leave me, you'll always have a place you can come back to in an emergency," he said.

What a way to fuck things up, I thought. What he'd just said made me realized that Alan had a problem too. He really believed that I was like his wife. He believed that someday I would leave him too.

"I'm not leaving you until something better comes along," I said. As soon as it was out of my mouth, I regretted it. I'd meant it as a joke, but I could see that he took it seriously.

Since we'd both fucked up a good conversation, I tried to change the subject back to something safer.

"What time do you have to be home?" I asked, smiling at him.

"We have plenty of time," he said. "I have to take care of you."

He took me down by the river, and we walked along the Riverwalk. We watched the huge tankers and freighters moving slowly up and down the Detroit river.

It just seemed bizarre to me that we could look across the river and see into a different country; we could drive there as easily as driving down the street, and no one would care. The people in that country would be welcoming and friendly. They would treat us kindly, and if they came across the bridge or through the tunnel, we'd treat them the same.

But we couldn't say the same in our own fucking neighborhood. At that moment, the bridge across a mile-wide river into a different nation seemed easier to cross and much less of a barrier than Eight Mile road.

He bought me ice cream, and we held hands and walked while we ate it.

It was a magical night, and the game had changed.

When we got into our bed, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him. I loved the feeling of being safe and protected and cherished. I was even more sure that Jerri was full of shit.

Alan didn't see me as just live in pussy. He cared about me. He showed me that during the entire time that we'd been together, but never so much as that night.

He could have pretended to listen to me rant and then said, "whoa; that's rough, Betty. Take your clothes off."

But he had never treated me that way. He treated me as if he loved me even though he had never said it verbally.

I needed to figure out what that bitch had done to him to make him so emotionally stunted. But it was time to up the game.

"Alaaaaaaan ..." I cooed. "You know how I told you what to say to let me know when you wanted some?"

"Unh huh," he said.

"Does that work pretty well?" I asked.

"Uh huh," he said.

"Does it work both ways?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Alan... I want," I said.

The next morning when Alan went to work, I went next door to Martha's for coffee. That wasn't unusual, but our conversation was.

Instead of talking about cooking, or our gardens, or block club issues, I pumped her for all of the information she knew about Alan's wife.

It wasn't pretty. She was his first love. He'd been devoted to her. He'd also been totally oblivious to the fact that she was both a gold digger and a notorious hose beast.

Martha was pretty sure that even if Alan HAD somehow discovered that his precious Sharon had been screwing everything that wasn't nailed down behind his back, he'd have found a way to forgive her. Men are pretty stupid when it comes to their first love.

"I guess someone should have told him," she said. "But none of us wanted to hurt him."

Sharon had supposedly gotten bored with sitting at home, at least that was what she told Alan. She'd met a guy and took a job as a secretary to be closer to him.

The funny part about it was that he wasn't as handsome as Alan was, nor did he make as much money, but he somehow convinced her that he was on his way up.

Actually, the only thing he was on his way up, was Sharon. They'd been at it for a couple of weeks apparently when Alan stumbled into the office, intent on taking his wife to lunch. He was devastated, but that doesn't say anything about what he did to lover boy.

Alan had nothing to lose; he figured he'd lost it all already. He mopped up the floor with Sharon's lover. It wasn't even a fight. Alan didn't care if he got hit. He was just intent on hurting the man who had hurt him. Alan beat the man senseless and kept pummeling him. If the security guards hadn't arrived, Alan would probably have gone to prison for murder.

When it all came out in the wash. No charges were filed against Alan. The company that Sharon and her lover worked for, paid Alan a settlement of some sort to keep things quiet, and fired both of them.

Both were given extremely negative reviews in their personnel files and not given any sort of severance packages. Her lover's replacements were instructed to tell their customers the truth about why he was no longer with the company and word spread rapidly throughout the industry about the kind of man he was. It made it next to impossible for him to get a job in his field in this region.

The kicker was that Sharon was able to, after a few weeks, talk herself back into the house with Alan. He had been miserable without her; he'd loved her since his early college days after all. They were going to go through some sort of marriage counseling in the hopes of finding out exactly what was wrong with their marriage.

"You've lived with Alan for nearly a year now," she said. "So... What's wrong with him?"

"Absolutely nothing," I smiled.

"Oh he had a serious flaw," she smiled back. "He loved too hard and he picked the wrong God damned woman to waste all of that love on. But back to the story."

As it turned out, Sharon's lover was also married and had two small children. His wife decided to divorce him. She was given custody of the children, the house, slightly more than half of their other assets and alimony based upon what her husband had been earning.

The problem was that he couldn't find a job. The amount of money he owed her quickly resulted in him burning through whatever money he had, and he began selling things like his car, just to be able to give his ex SOME money.

He did, however, see a way out of his problems, before the divorce was even finalized he ran off. And since he had no car of his own, he took Sharon with him.

While Alan was at work, they ransacked the house. They even took some of Alan's personal things. They took Sharon's car, which was still in Alan's name. And a bunch of other things that they hoped to sell to keep them afloat until he found a job, wherever they ended up.

Alan was devastated. He withdrew into a shell and became pretty much a hermit until you came along. There were flashes of the nice guy he always was. He always did my snow and cut my grass and did the same for any of our neighbors who couldn't do their own. But other than that, he never came out of the house.

Several women in the area went after him unsuccessfully, including that bitch across the street. The funny thing about it is that she knew what had happened long before anyone else did. When Alan caught Sharon, she knew about it and Sharon stayed with her until Alan let her back in the house.

The day that Sharon left Alan, that bitch was waiting for him when he got home. And she started making passes and flashing those big old titties at him almost immediately. It was as if Sharon had left Alan, to her. I've never told Alan this, but I'm pretty sure that she could get in touch with Sharon if she needed to.

That's why you have to tread really carefully around him, Betty. That bitch broke his heart twice in rapid succession. He's always sworn there would be no more women in his life. And until you just popped in out of the woodwork, like some kind of miracle, there haven't been.

That was when I broke down and told her exactly how Alan, and I met. She was shocked. She laughed her ass off. She'd never had a clue that I'd been homeless.

"You have nothing to worry about," she said.

"But what if I do something stupid?" I asked.

"From what I see the two of you are fated to be together," she said. "You ran into him three separate times on the day you got together. It was like something was pushing you two together. Just be careful and take it slowly. Alan clearly loves you, but he doesn't know it yet. And he's fighting it with everything he has. That's why he keeps telling you that things between you are strictly financial."

As spring moved into summer and the weather got hotter, Alan and I had another brief spat. I loved working on my flower bed in our yard. Michigan is a strange state when it comes to weather. We get nearly arctic conditions in the winter, but it gets ridiculously warm and steamy during the summer.

He came home for lunch one day to surprise me. I was in the back, of course, on my knees weeding the area around my Hasta plants.

He came up behind me, and I turned to look at him.

"Why are you wearing those granny shorts?" he asked.

"One of the girls might come over to visit," I said. "Besides, I only wear my booty hanging out shorts for you." He reached out to hug me and all I felt was severe pain where he touched me.

I screamed, and he reacted like lightning. He grabbed me, touching me only where I was covered and carried me into the house. He ran a bath of cool water for me, and it eased the ache.

"Betty, how long were you outside?" He asked.

"I don't know," I said, "maybe an hour or so."

He showed me my face in a mirror. I was sunburned and badly. He went out and got me all kinds of sunburn creams and ointments and took the rest of the day off to stay with me.

Martha's words came back. There was clearly more than finances keeping us together whether Alan wanted to admit it or not.

It took nearly three weeks for my skin to blister, peel, and heal. Alan treated me as if I was some sort of precious jewel during the entire time. Our spat came when he told me that I was forbidden to go outside for any reason when the sun was out.

That forbidden thing got my redheaded temper up. But the problem was that as angry as I was, I loved him too much to go against him. I worked on my flowers after the sun went down and early in the mornings.

That weekend a bunch of guys showed up and Alan took me out to lunch and shopping. He made me wear a big sun hat and sunglasses. It made me look mysterious. I couldn't help smiling. I kind of liked being cared about that much.

When we got home, Alan called and invited Martha over to have a snack in our yard with us. I was sure he wanted to test my stupid hat and glasses.

We sat down, and Alan handed me something that looked like a TV remote control. I pushed the button and heard what sounded like motors working. The next thing I knew, a tent-like structure that was attached to the house moved forward and completely shaded us from the sun.

"Retractable awning," he smirked, "the redhead's best friend in the summer."

"No, Alan," I said with tears forming. "You're my best friend... Year round."

Needless to say the sex that night was off the charts. It was about a week later that I felt a disturbance in the force.

As Alan drove up the driveway, I noticed the whore across the street running out to meet him. I got up and went out into our driveway to see what was going on.

The bitch was tanned so darkly that she could have been black. She had tan lines across her back where her bra straps would have been if she was wearing one. I got a picture in my mind of how awful she must've looked naked with all of that bronzed skin and two huge, pale, white titties.

Alan smiled at me. "Hey, Honey," even after almost a year I still got butterflies in my tummy when he called me, "Honey,"

"Marilyn, came over to see you," he said. And he went into the house, leaving me standing there with her. She was grinning like a fucking Cheshire cat.

"So... the block club is having some kind of barbecue for the homeless, huh?" she said.

"Yep," I said.

"It'll probably be canceled when you're gone," she said.

"Look Aunt Jemimah," I said. "I'm not going anywhere and ..."

"Whoa," she said. "So it's not just my tits you're jealous of is it? That's right... pale redheads don't tan. You have to look all pasty-faced all year long don't you?"

I was so pissed that I couldn't come up with a reply. She saved me the trouble. "Look Ghost Girl, I just came by to warn you. Get your shit together, because in two days, it's all gonna change."

And she walked back across the street without saying anything.

Martha laughed about it when I told her.

"It's either a diet, an outfit, or a surgery," she guffawed. I looked at her like she was crazy.

"Betty, remember how I told you that Marilyn went after Alan as soon as Sharon left him. Well, she pretty much made a doofus of herself doing it. She started out by flashing her boobs at him. Then she tried rubbing them on him. Then she bought several outfits that were so slutty a prostitute wouldn't wear them. When that failed, she had lipo done a couple of times. She even went on a diet or two that was supposed to reshape her body. I'm not sure, but someone said she'd even tried witchcraft. You have nothing to worry about."

"But why now," I asked, "and why two days?"

"I think now is because in Marilyn's mind, She failed before because Alan was still hurting over Sharon. She thinks that since he's taken up with you, he's over Sharon and ready to move on. So now the competition is between you and her. And she thinks that she can beat YOU." She laughed again. "And she probably ordered some slinky outfit or a girdle to tuck her stomach in and make her boobs look even bigger. If she paid for rush shipping it could be here in two days."

We had a good laugh about it over a cup of tea. I guess I was pretty smug because I didn't think that Marilyn, even with her giant boobs, could take Alan from me.

Unfortunately, Martha was wrong. The day started out, like any other day. I had breakfast with Alan, before he headed off to work after extorting me into promising him that I would stay out of the sun.

I cleaned the house while trying to decide what to make for dinner. Shortly after eleven, someone rang the doorbell.

I looked through the peephole and saw Marilyn standing there. Even through the peephole, she seemed to have an even more supercilious than normal grin on her face.

I opened the door and noticed that there was someone standing behind her.

"I just got back from the airport," she smirked. "Guess who I brought with me?"

A woman who could have been Marilyn's sister stepped out from behind her.

"I like what you've done with the front yard," she said. "I've heard from Lynn here that the back yard is even better. Thanks, I'll keep it up after you're gone. And thanks for taking care of MY husband too. Lynn says that you really helped him get over ..." I slammed the door in her face and stood there in shock.

All of Martha's words came back to me. She was his FIRST LOVE. He would forgive HER for ANYTHING. Even after she'd cheated on him, he'd taken her back. It had actually been her who left him. He had never kicked her out. Even after she'd betrayed him TWICE, it had taken him more than two years to get over her. She's stolen from him... Nearly cleaned out the house, and he still cried over her. I had no chance.

I spent the rest of the day crying and packing. I had to pack my stuff three times.

Over the eight months that I'd been with Alan, I had grown soft. I had to remember to pack mostly things that would be important to my survival. No matter how much Alan like my booty shorts, there would be no need for them on the road.

I had another thought though. Alan was always slipping money into my backpack. Maybe I could rent an apartment for a month and try to find a job. I now had lots of nice clothes to wear to an interview.

My time with Alan had also allowed me to brush up my people skills. I could also stretch my money out by looking for a roommate arrangement instead of directly renting by myself.

No matter what I did, the one thing I would miss the most was Alan. Maybe if I got a job somewhere in the neighborhood, I could still see him sometimes.

That would actually be worse. Seeing the man that I wanted to be with... Okay, I might as well be honest... The man I loved...with that overblown slut would kill me.

My plan was to ambush him. I would attack him as soon as he came through the door. I would fuck his brains out just one more time before the bitch realized that he was home and came over to get him back.

But of course Murphy's law rendered my plan inert. As soon as Alan's Mustang rumbled into the driveway, the titty twins marched across the street.

Watching through the window, I saw the smile on Alan's face. He couldn't look away from her. I heard the sound of his key in the lock, and he opened the door. I hated the conversation they were having.

"I'm so glad you're finally back," he told her.

"Back in my right mind is more like it," she gushed. "Baby, I'm cured. I know how stupid I was and how special what we have is. I will never forget that again."