Susan was shocked to see her ex-boyfriend, Dusty, at the golf course. His scruffy appearance seemed so out of place among the nicely dressed golfers in the clubhouse. The look on Dusty’s face told her that something was wrong. He wouldn’t dare come to her work unless there was a problem--they hadn’t spoken in over six months. She had noticed some missed calls from him recently on her cell, but she didn’t return them. She was afraid that it might create problems in her new up-scale lifestyle if she reconnected with someone like Dusty.
“Why haven’t you been returning my calls, Suzie?”
Susan felt warm under her arms; her voice was jittery. “Well…uh, maybe my voice mailbox is full. I…uh don’t check it like I should.”
Dusty chuckled sarcastically, “I’ll bet you’re getting the messages from that rich guy in Sunset Ridge.
Jolted, Susan glared daggers at Dusty.
“It’s my new job, Suzie, I repair sprinkler heads and that man’s got a lot of sprinkler heads. I’ve been to his house several times. I saw ya get out of that big Mercedes the other day.”
Susan felt a tap on her shoulder; she spun around quickly.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Harris, I didn’t mean to frighten you.” A nicely tanned young girl wearing snug white shorts beamed at her.
“Oh no, no, Tabby. Everything is all set. I’ve counted my drawer and filled in my timecard. It’s all yours.” She gave the teenager a quick hug and walked out from behind the counter just as two golfers approached the counter.
She turned toward Dusty. “Let’s go outside; we can talk out there.”
“Lead the way.”
Susan, obviously upset by the unexpected visit of her troubled ex-boyfriend, walked briskly toward the door to the parking lot with Dusty in close pursuit. Once outside, she picked up the pace trying to put some distance between her and Dusty. “My car is in the back corner of the lot,” she said curtly.
“I saw your car and parked right next to it. This place is a little too nice for me and my old car, so I bailed over to the corner and parked where the employees park.”
Susan was beside herself. She rued the day she ever got involved with him. She thought back to that day, some ten years ago. At that time he had a fairly good job at a local semi-conductor plant near Pine Lakes and she was a shift manager at a Seven/Eleven. He looked much different then--he was clean-shaven and dressed very nicely. They were at a Super Bowl party that day and a mutual friend introduced them. She thought he was nice and kind of cute. He had a certain edge to him, but she liked that in a man. He asked her out the next day and they soon became a couple.
It was good at first. He was fun and a good dancer. They spent their days working hard and they spent their evenings perusing the many night spots in the greater Pine Lakes area. Many of their evenings were capped off with a visit to one or the other’s mobile homes for a lengthy session of aggressive and erotic lovemaking. Many of the sexual techniques that she was using on Joe now, had been learned during her many hot nights with Dusty. Unfortunately, at the height of their exhilarating sex life, Susan mistook sex for love and made a tragic mistake--a mistake that is still haunting her to this day.
One night after some particularly acrobatic lovemaking in Dusty’s spongy waterbed, Dusty lit a cigarette and brought up the subject of the two of them possibly buying a house together. The suggestion got Susan’s attention right away. Tired of living in one beat up mobile home after another, the idea of owning her own home sounded intriguing to Susan. She listened intently as Dusty went on to explain that his Aunt Brenda had just gone in a nursing home and she was trying to sell her small, but nice, three-bedroom house located just outside of Pine Lakes. “It’s a steal, we can grab that baby for just a nickel on the dime” he exclaimed with his half-smoked cigarette flapping as he spoke.
A little naïve, to say the least, in the ways of real estate ownership, they both agreed to jump in with both feet. After being rejected several times by local banks because of poor credit, especially Dusty’s, they were finally able to secure a loan. The final sales price was $70,000. “We got that house for half of what it is worth!” Dusty bragged. Susan wasn’t so sure--the house needed quite a bit of work. Maybe seven cents on the dime. she thought at the time. Before she knew it, Susan was in a title company signing mortgage papers and closing documents and on the fast track to becoming a homeowner. Little did she know of the long term consequences of this innocent decision, made in the heat of passion while lying naked in a waterbed.
Dusty paused near the trunk of Susan’s car. “The bank’s on my ass big time.”
Susan brushed past him and started for the driver’s door. “That’s not my problem.” She felt his hand slide under her arm. He grabbed her and swung her around.
“The hell it’s not!” he shouted.
She shook free from his grip, her eyes were on fire, “Keep your hands off me, you son-of-a-bitch!”
“We’re both going down, Suzie! You’re still on that mortgage and your credit’s being ruined just like mine! We are over twelve months delinquent and the bank’s ready to foreclose, but they’re dragging their feet because they don’t want the piece of shit back either. If they do foreclose, we’ll both have to declare bankruptcy to get out from under the debt.” Suddenly Dusty paused, rubbing his chin with a wisp of a smile on his face, “I don’t think your rich boyfriend would like it if his new girlfriend’s name showed up in the newspaper as bankrupt, would he?”
The feisty Susan spun around and stuck her chin right next to an astonished Dusty’s face. “I asked you to take me off that mortgage a long time ago and you wouldn’t do it! I can’t even make my rent payments! How am I supposed to help you make any mortgage payments? If you were half a man, you’d take me off that mortgage and leave me alone!”
Dusty grinned an ugly grin and stepped back from Susan. His eyes studied Susan’s red angry face. “You looked awfully good getting out of that rich bastard’s car the other day. Things seem to be looking up for you and I’m sure you’d like to keep it that way.”
“You low-life!” she mumbled. “I rue the day I ever met you!”
“Listen Suzie, we agreed to buy that house together. Nobody put a gun to your head. Just because my life’s turned to shit, that doesn’t take you off the hook.”
Susan shook her head angrily. “What’s it going to take to stop the bank from proceeding any further?”
“We have to bring the loan current.”
“How much is that?”
“With past due interest, late charges, liens, etc., the bank says we owe them just over $44,000, so you owe me twenty-two thousand.”
Susan’s heart sank--there was no way in the world she could come up with $22,000. She could barely scrape up enough money to buy her favorite make-up. Confused and upset, she shot back at her old boyfriend, “How could we possibly owe them forty some thousand dollars? That dump isn’t worth much more than that! And, where is a loser like you going to get the money to pay your half?’
“Don’t you remember, bitch? I’ve got a nice sister who loves me very much. She’s going to sell some stock and loan me the cash.”
“Why do we have liens against the property?”
Dusty chuckled mockingly, “How about the new roof we had to put on? It was twelve thousand, and then we had to replace all the electrical, that was eight thousand. We didn’t pay them, so the builders ran to the courthouse and slapped liens against the property. That’s what happens when you don’t pay your bills, Suzie.”
“I didn’t approve of all that.”
“The hell you didn’t! That roof was leaking like a sieve and you were screamin’ your fool head off every day. You demanded that I get it fixed. Same way with the electrical. We were blowing circuits right and left and you told me to get it fixed and pronto.”
“I didn’t agree to spend that kind of money. I had no idea.”
Dusty paused. He looked away from Susan in disgust and shook his head, then he turned toward her again with fierce eyes. “That’s bullshit, Suzie, but I’m not going to stand here and argue with you all day. I’ve got things to do. The truth is, we both owe this money and it has to be paid--end of story!” Once again, shaking his head in disgust and not wanting to discuss the matter any further, he quickly opened the rusted driver’s side door on his old truck and slid into the seat. The engine belched to a start. He stuck his head part way out of the window and shouted over the engine noise, “Good seeing you again, Suzie, you’re lookin’ good.” A nasty grin crossed his face.
Feeling angry and defeated, a stunned Susan stood speechless as the old truck rolled across the parking lot and disappeared over a small hill next to the clubhouse.