The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag by Jennifer L. Hart

in the flickering candlelight, I thought she might be wearing flannel pajamas. When she looked up, the wild emotion on her face almost made me take a step back. Happiness, confusion, fear, relief, it was all there, in the span of one heartbeat.
    “Maggie!” She smiled, and raised the bottle to her lips in a half-assed toast to my presence. “You got a light?”
    I glanced at the burning tapers. “No, I don’t.”
    “Damn. I really need a light.” Her deliberate tone and enunciation pointed at heavy intoxication.
    I kicked a pile of stuff off to one side and sat down next to her. “Why’s it so cold and dark in here?”
    She giggled and took another slug from her bottle. “I got fired.”
    Unsure of whether I should bring up my meeting with Eric, I said nothing, just nodded.
    “My husband was cheating on me at our mutual place of employment and I get fired. Where’s the frigging cosmic balance in that?” Sylvia snarled and sloshed the liquid around in her bottle in time to her wild gesticulations.
    “Um…, there isn’t any?” I guessed. I’d never seen her drink as much as a sip of champagne, her body being a temple and all. Now, drunk off her ass and disheveled, she reminded me of, well, me.
    She pointed at me and laughed. “You called it, Maggie. Mag-gie, hag-gie, the Laundry Hag.” More giggling.
    “What’s with the sticks?” I gestured at her handful and she blinked as though she’d forgotten what she held.
    “It’s sage, not sticks. I planned on smudging the house, particularly the bedroom.”
    “What’s smudging?” Where did she come across all this stuff?
    “Spiritual house cleansing,” She answered. “To exorcise Eric from the room and purify the house.”
    “Sylvia, why is the power turned off?” I took the bottle from her so she couldn’t hide behind it. She’d only been fired a few days ago, so I was pretty sure she wasn’t destitute. Yet.
    “No one paid the bill. I thought Eric paid it, like he always does. And I guess he was gone before I saw it with my own eyes.” The eyes in question filled with tears. “It wasn’t the first time.”
    I sat up straighter. “What do you mean?”
    “Once a cheater, always a cheater,” Sylvia’s voice sing-songed as she waggled her finger at me. “They’re all alike, Maggie. Every Y-chromosome carrier, deep down at a molecular level. Doesn’t matter what you do for ‘em, how much you give, they still have that roving eye.”
    I swallowed. “I don’t believe that, Sylvie.”
    Sylvia snatched her bottle back. “Some things are true no matter what you believe.”

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    Chapter Nine
    “Why is Sylvia sleeping on our air mattress?” I jumped at Neil’s question, bashing my funny bone on the open medicine cabinet as I spun around. The running water in the bathtub had masked the sound of his approach.
    “Lord, you scared ten years off my life.” I caught my breath; I studied my husband, wondering where he’d been this morning. He didn’t appear any different than he had last night, other than the fatigue lines around his deep-set green eyes. Arms folded across his chest, he stared me down and I turned to shut off the water in the tub.
    “How was your day?” I asked, glancing at him out of the corner of my eye.
    “Shitty. We had more problems than the engineers anticipated and I have to be back in at six tomorrow. Now, I’m tired and I want nothing more than six hours of uninterrupted sleep, but it seems that your girlfriend is camped out on the living room floor.”
    Passed out was more like it. I swallowed at the news he was going to disappear again and knowing he wasn’t going to be at work, that he’d just lied to my face, got my back up.
    “It’s only for one night. Eric didn’t pay the bills on time and Sylvia’s without power and heat until she can settle her accounts during business hours tomorrow. I’ll get her straightened out first thing.”
    “And where did you plan on us sleeping tonight?”
    “Marty’s