Page 6 of Crossroads Magic
“I’ve cooked three meals a day and endless snacks for four people for over twenty years,” I told him. “If that’s not enough experience, you’re not going to find a cook anywhere in L.A. with more.”
Sosa licked his lips.
“Give me a week,” I told him. “If I don’t have enoughenergy, you can fire me. No hard feelings.”
Sosa still hesitated. “Look, lady…you don’t seem to be the type who would…fit in, here.”
I was wearing the last Armani suit I’d ever get to buy, and Louboutins. “This is L.A.,” I told him. “Everyone disguises themselves here. I’m a jeans girl. Really.”
Sosa wiped his hands on his dirty apron. “Well, I really do need a cook,” he admitted. “One week. Starting tomorrow at five.”
“PM?” I asked, surprised.
“Morning,” he replied grimly. “We do breakfast all day here, but six is our rush hour.”
I’d found a job. And I kept it by gritting my teeth, tying my hair in a tight knot at the back of my head, and sweating through kitchen scrubs as I figured out how to plate a dozen meals in three minutes. I mastered the massive griddle inside the week. And I swore I would never eat another slice of bacon again, after the pounds of it I cooked each day. The smell got in my hair and clothes.
But I was employed.
I gave up the hotel, when I realized it was going to take a while to find a real job, and moved into the apartment block where Ghaliya found me three years later.
Jasper, in the meantime, found a Great White shark to handle his side of the divorce proceedings. I scraped up the cash I could to hire my own and the two squared off, minnow to supreme hunter.
My minnow lawyer did the best she could, but six months ago, Jasper and his predator had found the big bat to beat us with. Lucinda, my lawyer, had a bad case of the shakes as she explained it to me. “You were supporting your husband, while he pursued his artistic career. Under the law, he can seek to find compensation for the life that he lost when the marriage broke down.”
“What are you talking about, Lucinda?” I was developing a case of the shakes, myself.
“Alimony,” she breathed. “They want you to pay alimony.”
I stared at her across the coffee table—she paid for my lunches when we met, even though the cost came out of the fees I was paying her. “I can’t afford alimony,” I said slowly. “I can barely afford rent.”
Lucinda’s mouth squeezed down into a thin line.
“What?” I demanded.
“Alimony isn’t based upon what you earn now,” she said gently.
I pressed my hand against my chest as my heart did a sick little flutter. I thought I might throw up. “It’s based upon what I was earning when we split…”
“So that his lifestyle is preserved as much as possible.” Even Lucinda’s tone was sour.
It took only five days to arrive at a compromise, the only compromise I could afford. I signed over my half of the house to Jasper, and agreed to pay the taxes on it each year. In dollar value, Jasper wasn’t getting as much as he had wanted, but it would leave me close to destitute.
Jasper had stood at the plate glass windows of the high-rise office building where we signed the papers, and stared out at downtown L.A. and the smog hanging over the sea, which was a blue strip on the horizon. He was a tall man, with blond hair that was still thick and wavy, and blue eyes that had melted my knees the first time I had met him. It was hard to remember how he had once turned my insides to jelly, while I signed the divorce agreement.
His shark and Lucinda had batted social niceties at each other, but Jasper hadn’t said a word. That was fair, because I hadn’t spoken, either. It was all over in ten minutes, then I rushed to catch a bus that would get me to work before the lunch crowd arrived. I had burritos to make, and taxes to save for.
Two months ago, Jasper had sold the house. He bought another one, with a million-point five price tag, for which I was still on the hook to pay the taxes, rated at 12.5% of the value of the house.
?
While my breath returned to normal and my heart slowed, I rested my head against the cool paintwork of the frame around my apartment door, and thought about the savings account where I had been socking away a dollar here, ten dollars there…. I hadjustcovered the November 1sttax payment. There would be another one due on February 1st, and at the rate I was saving right now, I wouldn’t have enough.
I could get a better paying job…if I could get the time off to go find one. But I couldn’t afford to take the time off. Lucinda’s demands and the time I’d taken to deal with the divorce had left Ashwin Sosa muttering about unreliable staff. I had spent the last six months trying to be a model employee so the danger of being fired would back off.
I wouldhaveto get a better paying job. I had no choice. I would have to find a way. Somehow. Or maybe a second job. No one would hire a pregnant woman, and Ghaliya wasn’t healthy enough to work. And I didn’t need a medical textbook to tell me that her pregnancy was a high risk one. She should be kept on pillows and hand fed for the next six months.
The tightness began to form in my chest once more. I used controlled deep breathing until it passed. While I was exhaling through my mouth, the actor from across the hall passed by. He didn’t even look at me.
