Alyssa
The grim lighting of the diner made everyone look like a ghost. Sitting in the uncomfortable hard booth of dingy red pleather, I poked listlessly at my meal. I rolled the sausage links around like little logs; I dipped my fork into the goopy yellow of the egg yolk; and I made shapes with the overcooked strips of bacon, crossing them into an “X,” putting them into little equals signs, and stacking them on top of one another. Most of all, however, I sipped my coffee. It was an oily mud of a brew, but refills were free.
But I took my time, because after I finished this meal and gave the surly waitress the money for my check, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. As of that morning, I, Alyssa Culverton, was homeless. And as soon as this check got paid, I’d be broke too.
“More coffee?” asked the waitress, a frumpy middle-aged woman with bottle-blonde hair and watery blue eyes outlined with far too much makeup.
She put an emphasis on the “more,” making it clear that she wasn’t appreciating my lingering in her booth. It was late in the night, but she probably could’ve had a few more tables since I’d sat down. I felt bad, but walking out that door, knowing I didn’t have a home to go back to, well, was something I wanted to put off for as long as possible.
I took a sip of the fresh pour of coffee, letting the caffeine wake me up. My eyes darted around the diner, moving from patron to patron. Now was the time of the evening when the weirdos came out, and this diner seemed to be doing a pretty good job of attracting them. Then again, as of this morning, when I’d left my asshole of a boyfriend for good, I suppose I had made the decision to become one of them.
My legs suddenly felt tight and tense, and I got up to stretch them. Walking to the bathroom, I felt the hot glare of the waitress on my skin, my neck going hot. But I was soon in the shelter of the bathroom and, thankfully, alone for the time being. I went over to the mirror and checked my makeup, confirming that bruising around my eye was still covered by the heavy application that I’d been touching up whenever I could. I felt terrible enough being a homeless woman; I didn’t want the added attention that my black eye might bring.
And as I stared into the mirror, I felt myself go back to a few nights ago, the night that my life had taken a turn that I never imagined it would.
# # #
“Hey, Alyssa!”
Logan, my boyfriend—well, ex-boyfriend now, I suppose—called out as soon as he walked in the front door, his voice causing my stomach to tighten up by instinct. I didn’t say a word, knowing that if he had to come find me, well, that was at least an extra minute or two that I was free of him.
“Where the fuck you at?”
He walked slowly through the apartment, his steps uneven. His voice was slurred, and I knew exactly what that meant—another night out with his goddamn lowlife friends. He was drunk, no doubt about that, and when he was drunk that meant he was on a hair-trigger. He could be sweet as candy one moment and a raging beast the next. And there was never any way for me to know what would make him shift from one way to the other. Either way, he’d want me to … please him, and by this point there wasn’t anything that I wanted to do less.
“There you are, sweet thing,” he said, his voice now close behind me.
I turned from where I stood by the window overlooking Manhattan from across the river where we lived in Brooklyn. I wanted to enjoy the quiet of the view for one more moment before Logan ruined it.
“Hey, baby,” I said, barely able to fake the enthusiasm.
“Been thinking about you all night,” he said as he walked towards me.
I turned and looked him over. Sure enough, he was drunk as could be. His tall, sturdy frame was leaned against the dresser in our bedroom, and his normally slicked-back black hair was loose, thick strands curving over his forehead. His tie was undone, and his dress shirt, the white one I’d made sure was crisp and pressed for work today, had a thumb-sized splatter of what looked to be whiskey on it. And sure enough, the smell of some floozy’s cheap perfume wafted off of him like a skunk’s stink.
It ’hadn’t always been like this. When Logan and I’d met in college, he had been sweet as could be. I still look back on the night we met at that senior mixer, when he’d charmed me liked I’d never been charmed before. Soon, we were an inseparable couple. My friends had all told me to watch out for him, telling me that he was no good, that he was all charm up front with nothing underneath but scum. They had told me that he had a reputation for using women and tossing them aside when he got bored. They had told me that he got … strange, when he drank.
But I didn’t care, of course. As far as I could tell, he was handsome, charming, and ambitious. So when he told me a few months into our relationship that I didn’t need to finish school, that he’d gotten some high-paying job in New York waiting for him that would provide for the both of us, I was all too eager to get swept up in everything.
Little did I know what I was getting into.
It was a few weeks after moving into this fancy apartment in Williamsburg overlooking the city that he started to change. He became more possessive, telling me that I couldn’t go anywhere without running it by him first, and that I wasn’t allowed to have any male friends, gay or not. This rule didn’t apply to him, of course, he was free to do what he wanted with whomever he wanted. His drinking started getting out of control too. It started with him going out for happy hour with his work friends and soon became day-long benders. Whenever I’d take him to task about it, he just told me that work was stressful, and that if he was going to be paying the bills I didn’t have a damn bit of say in how he spent his free time afterwards.
It went on like this for months, and the walls of my life seemed to be closing in on me. It got to the point where I could hardly leave the apartment for anything but a thing or two from the grocery store at the end of the block. Logan never came out and said it directly, but he made it clear that he didn’t trust me to not cheat on him the first chance I got. And just like all sexually paranoid men, his concerns were rooted in his own behavior, I’d found more than a few smears of tacky lipstick on those dress shirts of his. I didn’t think it could get any worse.
Then, he hit me.
The first time it happened it felt like a dream. It didn’t even hurt, really. I just remember the blur of his open palm followed by the fleshy cracking sound of his hand against my cheek. I fell backward onto the bed like I’d been pushed by a big gust of wind. Only when I touched my cheek with my fingertips and felt the heat of his slap did I realize what had happened.
And, of course, once the line of physical abuse was crossed, there was no going back. The next time he hit me, I wasn’t lucky enough to be too shocked to feel anything; I felt all the pain.
This was something I wouldn’t stand for. I began to think more and more about leaving. But everything was in his name; I didn’t have a dollar to call my own aside from a little bit of mad money I had socked away. If I left, I’d be totally on my own. And Logan must’ve been suspecting this—he made it clear that if I ever left, he’d track me down and bring me right back.
“That’s … sweet of you,” I said to him, knowing that even the slightest perceived insult could send him over the edge.
He sat down behind me and started rubbing my shoulders. He was drunk, so he didn’t realize how hard he was doing it. The pain too much, I squirmed out of his hands.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” he slurred.
“Just … hurts, is all,” I said.
I should’ve known better.
“I swear to fucking God,” he said, shooting up and off the bed, nearly stumbling over in the process. “I work all goddamn day for you, for this …”
He made a sweeping gesture towards the spacious, well-appointed bedroom.
“… and I’m not even allowed to touch my own goddamn girlfriend when I get home?”
“No, no,” I said, trying to do damage control, “it’s not like that.”
“Then just what the fuck is it like?” he asked.
His brown eyes burned like coals and his mouth was twisted into a tight little curl of anger.
“I mean, why the fuck wouldn’t you want me to touch you. Unless …”
And that was it.
He threw the usual unfounded accusations of cheating at me, his tone growing more and more severe as he went on. And I just took it. Not like there was anything I could have done. When he was done, he capped off his tirade with his usual move of grabbing me by my shoulders, shaking me hard, accusing me of being an ungrateful whore, and slapping me hard across the face. When he was done, he lay down on the bed and was a snoring, drunken mess within seconds.
Normally, I would’ve gone to the kitchen, applied some ice, and cried my eyes out until I fell asleep on the couch.
But that night, for reasons I couldn’t quite understand, I felt different. I felt a resolve that I’d never felt before. Right then and there, I decided that I was done, that I was gonna leave for good. Carefully, I stuck my hand into the back pocket of Logan’s slacks and withdrew his wallet carefully, like I was playing a game of Operation. I took out the cash he had and slipped the wallet back in. I knew he was out like a light, but I didn’t want to risk waking him. I found a small bag and packed a few essentials, making sure to take the little bit of cash I had. I should’ve planned things out a little better, but I knew the longer I waited the more likely it was I’d lose my nerve.
So, bag in hand, a little bit of cash in my pocket, I grabbed the keys to my old beat-up Honda Civic and got the hell out of there. I didn’t even take my phone, figuring Logan would find some way to track me down using it.
Stepping out into the cool night air, I felt finally free. I was free from the drunken tyrant who’d made my life a living hell. As I put my keys in the ignition of my car, I felt lighter than air.
The feeling didn’t last. As soon as I drove a few blocks from the apartment I realized that I didn’t have anywhere to go. I could find a place to stay in town, but New York hotels weren’t exactly the cheapest places to rent. So I drove out deep into Long Island and found some cheap flophouse near Levittown. I rented a couple nights, figuring that this would be more than enough time to figure something out.
And as I stood in the mirror of that shitty little diner, looking at my reflection, the color all but drained from my face and my auburn hair matted and frizzy, I felt just about as hopeless as I could. I had no idea what to do with myself—I’d gone from living at home to living in the dorms to living with Logan; I’d never been on my own. All I had now were a few items of clothes, some toiletries, and my crappy little car—a car that was where I’d be sleeping tonight now that I couldn’t afford a hotel.
I splashed my face with some water and reapplied my makeup, taking care to make sure that my black eye was good and covered. Then I headed back to my table, the waitress staring at me just as hard as she’d done on my way to the bathroom. Taking my seat, I forced myself to eat a few pieces of bacon, the food now lukewarm.
I needed to figure out something, and fast.
“How’s that food?” asked the waitress, returning with her coffee pot and topping me up. “Just more coffee?”
She didn’t even wait around for me to answer.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the cheap pay-as-you-go phone that I’d bought with the little bit of cash that I had. I pulled open Craigslist and searched it for something, anything, I could do for some extra money, maybe even a place to stay.
But for a girl like me, a girl with no options and no place to go, I knew exactly what that meant.