The Leftover Club Read Online Free Page A

be.
    Sometimes I thought I’d never feel truly safe again.
    “Is there anything else?” she added.
    The strident ringtone of my phone answered her question for me. She rolled her eyes and brushed past me toward the bathroom.
    It was ironic. All the nasty teen girls I had escaped from high school had been resurrected in the teen daughter I lived with and – most times – loved. My own mother had just given me that knowing look with a benevolent smile when I cried on her shoulder about it. “This, too, shall pass,” she said. “One day you’ll even be friends. Of course, that’ll probably happen around the time she becomes a mother, but, it’s something to look forward to.”
    My mother. She always had a great sense of humor.
    I didn’t even bother with makeup as I pulled my hair back into a functional ponytail. Clunky black-rimmed glasses framed, or rather disguised, my face. I stepped into a comfortable pair of stretch pants and slipped an oversized tunic over my head, and then I was out the door.
    I would leave the hour-long makeup ritual to the younger girls who had men to impress. Those days were long over for me. As a plump, near-40 divorcee, the only fish left in my sea were mutated or rotten. I had no one left to attract, and no stamina left to pretend otherwise. I had showered and my hair and face were clean. That was just going to have to be good enough. I had long ago given up polishing the turd. I was a thirty-seven-year-old single mom, which is just about as invisible as you can get in a town like L.A.
    That suited me fine.
    I got into my second-hand car and turned it north toward downtown, easing into the farthest lane I could legally drive all by my onesies. I hopped all over the radio dial to find something to entertain me as I inched along with all the other cars crawling toward the city, stopping when I heard the familiar sounds of the J. Geils Band, with the aptly titled, “ Love Stinks .”
    I sang along at the top of my lungs. I didn’t even care that other people could see me as I bopped along to the 80s classic. Within my car, for two hours a day, I was a queen. I could be who I was without fear of reprisal from my daughter, from my ex, and from society in general. Other people will tell you commutes in L.A. are hell, but to me it was always a vacation. It was therapy and meditation all rolled into one. I often dreaded pulling off the 134 onto Hollywood Way as I neared my office on the edge of Burbank and Toluca Lake.
    I stopped by Fed-Ex to pick up the packages waiting for my boss, likely a dozen scripts for his famous clientele. I also grabbed his coffee and a low-fat muffin, all of which I hand-delivered to his office as he worked out on the fancy treadmill facing the picturesque window that framed the Verdugo Hills. Tony Rinaldi was predictably barking into his cell phone, which teetered precariously on the shelf in front of him. “I told you we wouldn’t even consider looking at it for less than six figures. Did you fall and hit your head on something, Sid? How could you insult me with that lowball offer?”
    He spotted me slinking toward his desk, where I deposited his mail. Tony grabbed a towel before he turned off the machine. He disconnected his call with, “Give me a buzz when you want to get serious.” He wiped the sweat from his brow as he approached. “Fucking studios. They’ll spend billions on some reboot of a stupid piece of shit from ten years ago, but won’t open up their purse strings for a Pulitzer-prize-winning author. Explain that to me.”
    “I can’t,” I offered with a helpless shrug as I handed him his coffee and his muffin.
    “See? And that’s what makes you too good for this industry, Roni,” he said as he rounded his desk to sit. “If I had any sense at all, I’d fire you so you don’t end up a soulless automaton like the rest of us.”
    I had to suppress a smile. It was a threat he repeated at least once a week. But both of us knew that he