Dirty dishes filled the sink to overflowing. The moist remains of milk and cereal clung to bowls and spoons on the counter top. Dried tomato sauce, a few brittle loops of spaghetti, the remnants of chicken drumsticks, and flaccid pieces of spongy broccoli stuck to the saucers and plates piled on the dinette. Two plastic trash bags, both filled beyond capacity with kitchen waste, teetered dangerously against the end of a row of yellowing cabinets that once had been white.
When the apartment’s stench of rancid milk and rotting meat finally exceeded Strum Preston’s tolerance for squalor, he began cleaning. He raised the blinds for the first time in three weeks, opened the windows, filled the sink with soapy water, and let the dishes soak long enough to soften the caked-on food before rinsing them under a stream of hot water. Then, he emptied the sink, filled it again with fresh water and soap, and washed the sink full of dishes. He had to repeat the process four times to clean every dish littering the kitchen. He hauled the trash bags downstairs to the dumpster and then climbed back up to his third-story apartment.
Leaving the windows open while cleaning the place helped with the stench, but did not eliminate it, so he poked around under the sink until he found a can of Lysol Nutra air freshener. Myla would have gone nuts with this smell, Strum thought. The thought of his wife’s fastidiousness about the slightest offensive odor was a knife slicing into a fresh wound. Strum winced and tears welled in his eyes. He put the can on the counter and walked to the postage-stamp bathroom to get a tissue to blot his eyes. As he looked in the mirror, he flinched at seeing the dark circles under his eyes and the three-week growth of thin, patchy grey and white beard. Goddamn, I look like shit!
Myla’s decision to leave him three weeks earlier after twenty-four years of marriage for a man he’d never known about ripped Strum’s world in half. Her decision was a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky. When she told him the affair was in its eighth year, his legs buckled beneath him.
Strum thought she had seemed cold and deliberate when she announced that she was leaving. Not brutal, not purposely causing him pain, but emotionless.
“I don’t need anything but a few clothes and personal effects,” Myla had said as she prepared to leave. “Steve has plenty of money to buy whatever we’ll need.”
After four months of unemployment, Strum did not have all the money he might need. Three weeks after Myla’s leaving, he awoke to the importance of finding a job.
Ach, I don’t know whether the story will end, much less whether it will end well. 😉 But if it ends, I suspect it will end well, at least it will end with valuable lessons learned, pearls of wisdom replacing the moist remains of milk and cereal. 😉
Will this story end well? I can handle the horrible stuff as long as there is a turn to the positive. My first question should be. When are you writing more on this blossoming book?