Adding a modest, becoming pair of small gold earrings to her pierced lobes, and a broad brown belt cinched tightly about her trim waist so as to highlight the undulating curves of her womanly hips and buttocks, Marge tripped lightly from the apartment with high hopes of finding that suitable, ladylike job which she wanted and needed so badly.
CHAPTER THREE
But this was Marge's first day of serious job hunting, and she was fooling no one except herself. Had she been snowing some horny guy in a dimly-lit cocktail lounge, she could've gotten away with knocking ten years off her age. To the trained eye of a prospective employer, however, she came across as exactly what she was – a rather desperate woman in her early forties.
At the beginning, as she applied for sales and office jobs in the downtown district, the help-wanted ads carefully folded and tucked away out of sight in her purse, she had herself psyched up to the point where she felt twenty-three and almost believed her own lie when she said she was thirty-three.
Her make-up, while not exactly garish, was a bit on the heavy side to all but the most casual of observers. Actually it called attention to her age rather than hiding it, making her appear somewhat pathetic to the very people she hoped to impress in precisely the opposite manner.
Without realizing that her tits were fake, several male interviewers ogled her shape, a couple of them literally drooling over her long, nylon-encased legs and the compelling curves of her alluring, womanly hips and butt. Unfortunately, since she had no work experience, they were each forced to regretfully turn down her job application and wish her better luck elsewhere.
It was all very disillusioning to Marge, but she wouldn't give up. She needed a job! So she kept plugging away, trudging about here and there, her appearance becoming more and more wilted as the day wore on. Finally deciding she was getting nowhere on her own, Marge went to an employment agency, where she was interviewed by a hard-nosed woman of perhaps fifty with the build of a man and a voice to match.
"Look, honey, why don't you cut out the bullshit?" the woman told Marge in a blunt but not unkindly manner. "You're forty if you're a day, and you may as well admit it. You've got no experience at anything except being a wife and mother. In case you didn't know, that doesn't qualify you for anything but more of the same. Nowadays, the economy being in the mess it is, a man your age is in a helluva fix when he gets out of work, even if he's got a trade, so where do you think that leaves you? Up the creek, that's where. You come in here asking me to place you in a 'dignified, ladylike position'. I'm sorry, but I've got no magic wand. Now, if you want to come down to earth, there's a new pants factory opening up next week. They need sewing machine operators bad enough to train some, and I believe I can get you on there. Minimum wage to start and a dime raise a month for six months. Think you can hack it?"
"I didn't come in here to be insulted!" Marge huffed as she got to her feet.
"Sorry, I didn't mean it that way. In my business, time is money. I was only giving it to you straight in as few words as possible. If you change your mind, give me a call. Now if you'll excuse me, good day and good luck to you."
Hurt and angry, Marge stomped from the employment agency onto a sidewalk teeming with people hurrying toward buses and parking lots. It was ten after five. The workaday world was over until tomorrow, and she had gone down in ignominious failure.
Bone-weary and thoroughly disheartened, Marge began making her way along the crowded city sidewalk, plodding toward the dinky, walkup apartment which she now realized might be her home for a good deal longer than she'd hoped she would have to put up with it. Her stomach rumbled from lack of food; she'd had no breakfast and had forgotten to eat lunch. The muscles in her legs ached from walking all day. Her feet were swollen, painfully cramped inside her fashionable high-heeled shoes. She wanted a cigarette in the worst way but was too much of a lady to light one and smoke it while she was walking down the public street.
When she climbed the narrow stairs in her stocking feet, carrying her shoes in one hand and her purse in the other, she found Kenny sitting morosely outside the apartment door.
"For heaven's sake, Son, why are you sitting out here?" she asked, and then answered her own question in a high-pitched whine: "Good grief, I didn't get a key made for you yet, did I? And I completely forgot to meet you at school! Oh, precious, Mother's so sor…"
Kenny, leaped up shaking his fists and screaming with rage. "You said you'd be there! You promised! I waited and waited and you never did come! Why didn't you come get me?! Where were you?! What were you doing all…?"
This was too much. In frustration she flung down her purse and shoes and lashed out at the slender boy. She slapped his delicately featured face then grabbed him by the upper arms and shook him till his teeth rattled.
"Don't you yell at me!" she shrieked. "Goddamn it, don't you ever yell at me like that again! I'm your mother! And I'll have the respect due me… do you hear?"
Kenny nodded, his eyes as big as saucers. He pissed his pants. Marge didn't know whether she scared it out of him or shook it out of him. But she was sorely ashamed of the childish way she'd matched his tantrum with an even worse one of her own.
"Mama, I c-couldn't help it!" the nine-year-old whimpered, looking down in horror at his soiled pants. "I been sittin' out here… about to b-bust… for a long time!"
Tears welled up in Marge's eyes when her young son broke down and started bawling helplessly. Contritely she made over him as only a guilt-stricken mother can, drying his tears as she assured him that his humiliating predicament was her fault, not his. She explained why she hadn't called for him at school and apologized profusely. Then she took him into the apartment and sent him to the bathroom to shower and change his clothes. Bobo had been locked up in the apartment all day, so she had a dog mess to clean up, too.
Christ, what a miserable day! She felt like screaming. She could barely resist the urge to beat her head against the wall.
CHAPTER FOUR
Marge was washing her hands in the bathroom when Frank, still wearing his paint-speckled work clothes, came in roaring like a playful lion, a fifth of whiskey in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other.
"Hey, Marge! Where are you? Finished that job and I got a pocketful'a money!"
"In here, Frank," she called, and examined her face in the mirror as she dried her hands. She wished she'd had time to freshen her make-up before he saw her.
The big redhead stuck his head in through the open bathroom door. A shit-eating grin came over his face as he glanced from mother to son. Kenny was in the bathtub. "Well, now, ain't this cozy. Does Mama wipe your butt for you too, kid?"
"Frank, please!" Marge whined. "Do you have to talk that way? Kenny doesn't know what to make of you yet."
"That so, boy?" Frank walked up beside the bathtub and grinned down at Kenny. "You scared of me, are you?"
"No!" Kenny shouted, glaring up at him.
"No, sir," Frank said, and laughed as he clouted the boy on the head with the brown paper bag.
"Ouch!" Kenny yelped. Whatever was inside the bag felt hard and soft at the same time. It had wrapped around the back of his head, the end of it slapping against his ear.
"You had no call to hit him!" Marge protested.
Ignoring her, Frank tapped the top of Kenny's head with the bag-concealed object. "Say sir when you answer your elders, boy. Didn't your mama teach you no manners?"