You Dropped a Blonde on Me (2 page)
To the real ladies of Leisure Village East—Mary DeWitt, Gail Kniffen, Gail Hammond, and Mary S. Or the Gail-Marys, as I lovingly once called them. You are treasured and priceless to me—
always.
always.
My agent, Elaine Spencer, who believed in this project and helped me flesh it out in a grocery store while we bought roast chicken. You da bomb diggity, chica!
Most especially to Rob—you were unexpected, and I was unprepared, but it’s been unbelievable. I’m so glad you didn’t give up. I love you.
Also, for anyone who has experienced or is experiencing the heartbreak of divorce, the fear and the anxiety this journey may have brought: Hold on. Don’t lose hope—even if you’re clinging to the last thread in a rope that’s frayed and worn. I know where you are. I also know where you can go if you don’t let go.
Don’t. Let. Go.
Don’t. Let. Go.
And last, but so definitely not least, this is for the very patient but firm night manager at the 7-Eleven in Jersey who, on a rainy, dismal night told me he wouldn’t hire me for the midnight shift—which led to my mini-nervous breakdown of public, desperate sobbing and begging whilst I shared my tale of unemployable woe and divorce doom.
Dude, turning me down for that job (like my eleventy-billionth rejection. Surely you can see how that led me to public displays of histrionics, yes?) was the best thing you could have ever done for me. It was humiliation and degradation at its finest—but you handled me like an amateur psychologist who had a minor in soothing “broke divorcing women gone wild.” That night was a major turning point for me. The one where I realized if I didn’t grab the wheel of this runaway freight train, I’d lose control forever. Or become a pathetic candy-ass with a backbone made of Jell-O. It was my first lesson in the “suck it up” theory. I’m glad I opted to go Jell-O free.
So thanks—and thanks for the free cold Pepsi, too. All that crying and pleading makes for a dry mouth and sore throat.
Dakota Cassidy ☺
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The town of Riverbend is purely fictional, just in case you folks off the Jersey Turnpike take exception to me messing with your exits. But booyah to the fine people of Brick—exit 91 off the Garden State. You rule! And a quick note about New Jersey state laws on divorce. I’ve taken a smidge of artistic license, but not nearly as much as you’d think. In keeping with the idea that this is fiction, do note, any and all mistakes are mine.
PROLOGUE
The first rule of the Ex-Princess Club? Suck. It. Up.
What a difference one year, six months, eight hours, four minutes, ten seconds, and total empowerment makes. Today is the anniversary and a half of the official end of my trophy-wife days. Well, they didn’t officially end that day, but it was the catalyst to a slew of things that helped make the end. It’s when “Suck it up, Princess” found a whole new meaning for me, and the defining moment when I decided it was high time I traded in my frilly girl panties for a set of steel clangers.
And Jesus, it was butt ugly.
I was in the Cluck-Cluck Palace (yeah, that’s right. Fast food chicken, ladies), and my mouth was moving a mile a millisecond while I applied—okay, begged—the day manager for a job, accosted a teenager, and ran into someone who reminded me I hadn’t always been candy for someone’s sweet tooth.
Ironically, eight months prior to that day I could’ve owned the Cluck-Cluck Palace and everything in it. Okay, maybe I personally couldn’t have, but my soon to be ex-husband, Finley Cambridge, and all his lovely money could. But on that particular day, I had zilch. No money, no job, and no hope for future employment because I’d been nothing more than someone’s pretty toy for over twenty years. That is, until I wasn’t so pretty anymore. My ass was sagging, and so were the “girls” (which, if you ask me, should be called boys. If they were girls, they’d be team players and stay where they belong.), and I was visiting my swanky salon a whole lot more for touch-ups than ever before. Total harsh to my life buzz.
Anyway, it was on this day I realized I’d fallen and had forgotten to get the hell back up. There’s nothing like humiliating clarity, stark and in your face, to spur you into action. Or make you want to slink back to your dark, dank hole of depression.
It’s a choice.
Oh, and Christ, did I ever slink for a while after I was downsized from my cushy position as Mistress Of All Things Arranged In Glass Vases And Decorated In Silk. I cried. I didn’t shower. (I know. I know. Don’t judge.) I wore gray sweats. If you knew me, you’d understand the true depth of my despair when I resorted to the color gray. I moped. I whined. I cursed men with my fist raised to the sky. I cursed the universe with
two
fists. I listened to crappy love songs and boozed it up. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep much either. I, in general, behaved like a candy-ass.
two
fists. I listened to crappy love songs and boozed it up. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep much either. I, in general, behaved like a candy-ass.
And then one day, I didn’t slink or whine anymore. That kind of sissified crap wasn’t going to pay the bills—or support my son—or give me a reason to get up in the morning.
Because here’s the thing—if you’re anything remotely like me, you are where you are because you held the hand of your sugar daddy who skipped
with
you down the path of the totally sheltered, and you did squat to stop it. He wasn’t alone, friend, and you obviously weren’t paying close enough attention to where that path was going, ’cause it left you high and dry.
with
you down the path of the totally sheltered, and you did squat to stop it. He wasn’t alone, friend, and you obviously weren’t paying close enough attention to where that path was going, ’cause it left you high and dry.
But I’m here to tell you, you can turn this mutha around. I did.
Though a word of caution—gird your loins.
CHAPTER ONE
Note from Maxine Cambridge to all ex-trophy wives on the art of sucking it up and how
not
to get a job after never having been in the workplace to begin with: Sometimes less really is more. While you, the unemployed, may find it therapeutic to spill your guts, or even foolishly believe rambling your woes to your potential employer will create sympathy and help you nab that much-needed job, news flash, sistah. In your quest for gainful employment, shut up. A lot.
“Welcome to the Cluck-Cluck Palace, where we speak beak. May I take your order?”
Leaning over the service counter, Maxine Cambridge kept her voice low. “I need to see the manager, please.” She gave a covert glance around the fast food restaurant’s dining area, checking to see if anyone she knew was maybe having a secret liaison with a double Cluck-Cluck combo meal. As humiliating as it would be to be discovered here, it wouldn’t be nearly as horrific as being caught eating in a batter-dipped Nirvana, all up in a Cluck-Cluck Palace’s triple chicken-nator’s business.
The all-natural juice bar this was not.
A worried frown formed on the young boy’s forehead, as yet smooth and unwrinkled by life’s little travesties. Hah. What did a kid like him know about worry? Worrying was filled with shameful events like digging for change in your mother’s old Jennifer Convertibles sofa so your kid could have frickin’ milk for breakfast. Or selling every pricey designer outfit you owned to an upper-end thrift store for a shitty twenty bucks, then walking away feeling like you’d just renegotiated the Geneva Conventions single-handedly and had come up a winner.
Worrying was being forced to move back to your small hometown in New Jersey, and seeing the people you’d known all your life look at you with pity.
Worrying was eyeball-rolling dissertations on a division of assets, losing your sole form of transportation, i.e., your snazzy red sports car, and being beaten weekly with glee to a frothy frenzy by an opposing divorce attorney who loved nothing more than to watch you while your panties wadded as you sifted through so much paper a tree had surely lost its life for the endeavor.
Worry was the pending end of your connubial bliss—a bliss you had no idea wouldn’t always be connubial. How could this sweet, sweet young boy know the half of what worrying was all about?
“Is there a problem?” he croaked, interrupting her favorite mental game of “stare poverty in the face.”
Maxine shot him a reassuring smile and kept her response light, even though her intestines were tied up in knots and her head throbbed. “Oh, no. No problem. I filled out an application here a week ago, and I’m just doing a quick follow-up.”
You know, before I head to the pawn shop to see if they’ll take my breast implants for cash.
You know, before I head to the pawn shop to see if they’ll take my breast implants for cash.
“You
filled out an application?” he asked, his fresh, alert eyes scanning her from head to toe, taking in the only pair of designer shoes she hadn’t sold to the thrift store. Yet.
filled out an application?” he asked, his fresh, alert eyes scanning her from head to toe, taking in the only pair of designer shoes she hadn’t sold to the thrift store. Yet.
A deep breath later, she said with a smile, “Yep. So can I see the manager?”
“To work
here
? Why?”
here
? Why?”
Apparently, incredulous was the name of the game today. “Well, yeah. Because there’s nothing I want more than to wear that red gingham-checked apron and a hat with a big yellow beak. I probably don’t want to breathe as much as I want to wear that outfit. It’s a longing I can’t quite describe, but one that I absolutely have to pursue in order to find total fulfillment.”
The look he gave her was blank. Astonished, too, but mostly blank. “I’ll see if Mr. Herrera’s in.”
“Thanks,” she looked at his name tag, “Carlo. I’ll wait over by the condiments.”
Ducking out of the short line, Maxine backed away from the counter to give herself a good view of the private offices through the kitchen. Mr. Herrera wasn’t getting away today. Not if she had to tie him down with the strings of his gingham apron and make him hire her.
By all that was minimum wage, come the time when she left this fast food joint of batter-dipped sin and fried iniquity, she’d have a job, and she’d wear the ridiculous uniform, hat and all, with pride—because she needed the money.
Needed
.
.
From the corner of her eye, Maxine caught Mr. Herrera, day manager of the Cluck-Cluck Palace in small-town Riverbend, New Jersey, exit 98 off the Garden State Parkway, attempting escape via the rear door. Silly man. He’d never be quick enough for her and her desperation, not even with her in three-inch stilettos. The clack of her frantic heels resonated on the tiled floor when she made a break through the lunch crowd to head him off at the pass.
She caught him just as he was about to push his way out the door and into the humid heat of the day by placing a non-confrontational hand on his bicep. “Mr. Herrera. I’m so disappointed. All I want to do is make nice with you so you’ll hire me, and you run away at every opportunity like I’m the reincarnation of Jeffrey Dahmer. Why is that?”
He winced, toying with his gingham-checked necktie. “Because you’ve been in here every day for the last week, and if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times—your application has to be processed through headquarters.”
Maxine gave him a glossy-lipped pout. That used to work on almost everyone who had testosterone and walked upright. Or it had. Okay, so it wasn’t the glossy-lipped pout of twenty, but these lips, the forty-year-old ones, still totally untouched by Botox, were in damn fine shape for their age.
Thus, she willed them to bedazzle her prey. “Oh, c’mon. You know that’s not true. Gabriella over there filled out an application on the same day I did. I know she did because she liked my bracelet and I told her if she had some cold hard cash,
any
cash, I’d fork it over free and clear. All this while she was in the process of filling out the same application I did. You hired her. Now look, she’s a chicken-frying engineer, and I still haven’t been called for an interview.”
any
cash, I’d fork it over free and clear. All this while she was in the process of filling out the same application I did. You hired her. Now look, she’s a chicken-frying engineer, and I still haven’t been called for an interview.”
He grunted with a grimace.
“So did she have to go through the same process as I do, or am I being discriminated against because I’m
forty
and you don’t think I’d be willing to work the hours these poor kids do for minimum wage?” She played the “forty” card extra loud, making several heads in the dining area turn. “Because you’d be wrong.” Way wrong.
forty
and you don’t think I’d be willing to work the hours these poor kids do for minimum wage?” She played the “forty” card extra loud, making several heads in the dining area turn. “Because you’d be wrong.” Way wrong.
He blustered, frowning so that his bushy eyebrows scrunched together. “That’s not it at all, Ms. Cambridge.”
Max fought for a centered calm. Her hysteria would only incite anxiousness that, in turn, would evoke rambling sentences she couldn’t control once she got wound up. “Then what
is
it? Look, I’m willing to work any hours you’ll give me. I’m willing to do all the dirty work you need done. I’ll scrub toilets, sinks, refill ketchup bottles, shred lettuce—”
is
it? Look, I’m willing to work any hours you’ll give me. I’m willing to do all the dirty work you need done. I’ll scrub toilets, sinks, refill ketchup bottles, shred lettuce—”
“Our lettuce comes already shredded.”
How helpful. “Whatever. The point is, I’m all in. Just give me a chance,” she begged, her hand suddenly around his arm. Before she knew it, what was originally planned as a subtle, dignified nudge for employment became a hostage situation, if the way she was gripping his arm with firm fingers was any indication. Desperation had its blatant nuances. “
Please
.”
Please
.”
Rolling his shoulders in discomfort, he pulled away from her grip like she was The Claw. “I can’t help you. We don’t have a position available right now.” He stood his ground, for which she’d show admiration by way of a polite golf clap if it wasn’t for the fact that she and Connor would end up drinking her mother’s till dry very shortly if she didn’t find some kind of steady paycheck.
One deep cleansing breath later, Max’s eyes searched his behind his oval frames. She could do this. Whatever it took. “Please. Look, I’m begging you, okay? I need a job. I’m sure you hear a hundred sob stories a day with the economy in the shitty state it’s in, but I’m not kidding when I tell you I just need one person to give me a chance. Just a little break. I know I’m not sixteen anymore, and if I needed reminding, I’d just have to ask the hundred other places like this that I’ve applied to to tell me so. I get it. I know I have no experience in fast food. Believe me,
I know
. I have no experience in selling condoms either, but you can bet I’d do it if it meant I could earn a buck hawking ribbed ticklers. Well, that is, if the manager at Condoms on the Go-Go would have let me. But he said I had no
experience
in condoms. I say, hah! What does he know? I know condoms. I’ve used them plenty in my time. But that’s beside the point. So tell me something, because you seem like a guy who’s in the know—how the flip can I get some of this experience if no one will hire me?” Her voice had risen, pitchy and anxious, and her hand was right back at desperation, clinging to poor deer-in-the-headlights Mr. Herrera.
I know
. I have no experience in selling condoms either, but you can bet I’d do it if it meant I could earn a buck hawking ribbed ticklers. Well, that is, if the manager at Condoms on the Go-Go would have let me. But he said I had no
experience
in condoms. I say, hah! What does he know? I know condoms. I’ve used them plenty in my time. But that’s beside the point. So tell me something, because you seem like a guy who’s in the know—how the flip can I get some of this experience if no one will hire me?” Her voice had risen, pitchy and anxious, and her hand was right back at desperation, clinging to poor deer-in-the-headlights Mr. Herrera.
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