Chapter Nine
Jill
Let me tell you a little bit about my roommate,
Jill. She was once, just a couple of
years ago, rich. Ran the family
business, did quite well for herself.
She took care of her dad with dementia, 24/7, worked, did it all. Then, she lost it all. Her dad went into an assisted-living home,
they took the house she lived in, and the business she worked at, to pay for it
all. She tried to start over; and attempted
to build a trans refuge colony in the South of France. People shit themselves, funding fell through,
real estate issues, immigration issues, a bout of pneumonia, and the next thing
you know, she was back in the states, spending the few days before eviction at
her dad’s house, trying to figure something out. She took the one offer from Jackie for her to
come to Albany. They had a new apartment
now; Jill had a decent enough job as an assistant manager at an auto parts store. Sometimes, I would zip into her job and hyper-sonically
put parts away for her. Once, when I was
pissed at her, I put the parts back on the carts, forcing her to put them away
again. What can I say? Sometimes, I’m a dick.
Jill was also a science fiction novelist, whose star
looked promising at first, but whose bad publishing luck, with a measure of bad
agents, soured her on the whole deal.
Before that she was the lead guitarist in a modestly successful rock
band, which she quit to transition. She
is pretty cool, and a fun person to talk too.
She really has helped me get a handle on some of this time travel
stuff. So has Jackie, and we’ll get to
her as well in upcoming chapters.
“Look, Alex, if you’re going to stay here for a while,
we’re going to have to establish some rules:
You can’t kill anyone. Jackie
would freak the fuck out if you’re murdering people and crashing on our couch.”
Jill was laying down the law. It didn’t seem like a problem to me, as I
couldn’t imagine killing anybody. But
then again, I couldn’t imagine I was a supervillain either. But Jackie, Jill, and Clarity were all telling
me that I was.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,
honestly,” I replied. Little did any of
us know…
(c) Copyright 2019 Diana Hignutt
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