Deja Vu of Love San Francisco: Deja Vu of Love, #2

By Carol Cadoo

Jazz Kelly woke up one morning to find herself the unwitting butt of a morning show punch line, on local radio. It was the beginning a journey, she never expected. Before the radio show, she was living, life on training wheels. But when she got hired with a powerhouse Public Relations Firm the wheels came off.
Come to the world of Jazzeline Kelly the Deja Vu Series follows two decades of her life's journey. Jazzeline Kelly didn't expect to be on her own at sixteen but, sometimes life throws a curve ball. Now her only goal to catch the first train out of town and start fresh. Leaving the town that created so much misery in her life was the easy part. The hardest part was Packing For The Journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Plein Air Publishing
• Release date: Nov 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540194862

Carol Cadoo

Carol Cadoo is a Chick Lit writer who resides in the middle of nowhere, well actually about fifteen miles East of nowhere. She lives with her two dogs Hazel and Harry penning novels that reflect her penchant for Happily Ever After. Carol is left handed and a card carrying Aquarian who has not gone under the knife or had anything implanted. Her wrinkles and deep facial lines are part of living a lifestyle that is great on antidote bad in reality. She wishes for you all the bad boys of romance with none of the pain. Believing the only way to achieve that is to read her books and pretend.

Book preview

Chapter Seven

Seven-Thirty A.M. Pacific

Hey bitches, it’s time to crack your asses out of bed, rise and shine, grab your java and let’s get this day rolling. We bring the sugar for your coffee and the whiskey for your tea enjoy a brand new cycle of life downtown by the Bay.

The voice bellowed into the room disrupting the tranquil environment. It created an echo reverberating through the meager space. With considerable fanfare, the noise started with a slow rumble. Then gained volume as the announcer continued.

We’ll start your morning off with all the bells and whistles and those bad boys of the airwaves. Every morning they bring their foolish, engaging personalities into your bedrooms. The guys you love to wake-up next to at Bay102 on the bay, Bubba, and Beefcake.

What the heck is happening? Half asleep, she realized it was the clock radio. She hit the snooze button and nestled back under the covers.

Five short minutes later the alarm sounded again. This time the space filled, with the most intense, brain-numbing sound she’d ever heard. This cornucopia of music definitely not her usual morning radio station fare. Her first clue came as the disturbing lead-in, read by the devil himself. Jazz had no one but herself to blame for the oversight.

She favored waking to slow, gentle, quiet elevator music mixed with oldies. Versus this style of a wake-up call getting assaulted by heavy metal music. This all before coffee, it sucked. The trick would be to show more care next time she set her alarm no replay of this horror story preferred.

She’d have to stick her arm out from under the blanket exposing her bare skin to the frigid temperature to turn off the noise. The menaces of her morning, Bubba, and Beefcake blared music at maximum volume. The small speaker of her clock radio turned the music into static. Making her head spin in circles; she became a prisoner of the pulsating beat. She stretched her arm and fingers to their limit to gain more reach, it backfired.

Her hand ended up knocking the radio off the table onto the tile floor. It created a tremendous clatter. She experienced a rush of disappointment when the music continued playing. The damn thing stayed plugged in the socket, to reach beyond the protective cover of the blanket. Held no appeal the noise became difficult to tolerate. But the alternative of freezing this early made her cry.

Plus, it put her in a rotten mood before she had her coffee and worst of all she had a morning headache. The best relief to hope for a long blacked out rest. She stayed in the fetal position with no possibility of going back to dreamland. The singer screamed out his passion for rock music and his hatred for the establishment. His whining and complaining annoyed her. Heavy metal musicians had reputations for being tough, not this guy he projected the image of a wimp.

When the singer had finished, the morning DJ’s got back on the air. They were announcing the daily call to viewers coming up in the next hour. She moaned in misery before smashing the pillow into her face to resolve the noise problem. Her motivation didn’t exist to listen to the music and banter already in motion. The daily call had no chance of being the dangling carrot.

Even though she didn’t listen to their show, everyone else in town did, daily. She saw their faces on the side of buses and billboards throughout the city. Their antics got discussed and dissected around the water coolers of the city. Her arm reached out to grab a second pillow to buffer the shrill voices, but it did little good. Her efforts had the same results of filling a spaghetti strainer with sand. After several minutes she found it difficult to breathe. She ended up having to pull both pillows away from her face.

She slid off the edge of her bed head first, keeping half her body under the blanket. She crawled on her elbows towards the clock radio and once she got close enough. Jazz grabbed the cord and jerked it out of the socket. At last, silence descended. From her prone position, she glanced around the room and realized today she had to deep clean. Stuff scattered in every corner, trash needed to get taken out, and the kitchen scrubbed. Yeah, she had reached dump status.

Her use of dumpster dives and, side of the road finds in decorating, far from glamorous. But she had created a BOHO chic living space. She yearned for an elegant living space, one fit for a queen. She stole the story line from her most beloved childhood movie memories.

The reality of her world became living in a gloomy place with a poor outlook for her survival. How sad for someone so young to face defeat. Whatever decision she made, to slice the pie it overflowed with money problems. In thirty days her rent was due again yesterday. She deposited her final unemployment check.

She chided herself for whitewashing the calamity for months. Her commitment to herself was to move forward walking her path of wreck and ruin. With her eyes, wide open her descent into impoverishment happened at an alarming speed. Jazz refused to wait for total destitution to knock on her door. Her experience with poverty confirmed it held no allure. She admitted the mistakes she made had begun her descent on the express elevator to homelessness. Now perched in the gateway to hell she expected a quick fall over the abyss into hopelessness. Her life played out like a Greek tragedy.

Who didn’t enjoy a morning of leisure? Despite her less than stellar wake-up, her mind found a little peace over the next few hours. Jazz dozed off and on, and in her waking moments. She appreciated her simple space despite the air and heating issues. Tucked away from civilization, in her urban box she was usually safe. This morning it turned into a freezer overnight. The chill meant only one thing during the night her heat had stopped working.

The heat worked; in sporadic intervals, and the air conditioning was non-existent. Jazz lived in a space no larger than a crow’s nest atop the building. No warm air got to her on its best day. She realized her desire for a new unit to get installed was a pipe dream. Once when she brought it up to him, her landlord explained the boiler had gotten installed eighty years ago. It was straight from the factory. She cranked up the thermostat on the electric blanket. She thanked the heavens she made that investment. Jazz closed her eyes she sank deeper into the pile of blankets and quilts.

An hour later she poked her nose into the chill. She resembled a groundhog checking for spring. She did a double take at the sight of her west-facing windows. Did she see what she thought, or did her eyes play a trick on her? No, she spotted a thin layer of ice coating the glass and the sun danced across the walls. It created a room full of rainbows reflecting off the frozen panes as if a bunch of little diamonds sparkled.

When she graduated number four in her class, she quit waiting on tables. She did so in the belief her confidence needed to increase during first impressions. The training worked, but it had no glitz and glamor associated with it. But was a perfect place to learn how to hold her ground.

Due to Rose’s life insurance, she sneaked by the last four years. She subsidized it through part-time jobs running the gamut of crazy things to do for money. She did everything from promoting a fast-food restaurant, dressed up as a hot dog. She had a brief assignment of changing out bedpans in a convalescent home. Her least favorite selling vacuums door to door.

When she realized how difficult her survival had become, she called Chris Pangborn. But he didn’t offer her any help, the trust being set up airtight so it couldn’t get changed. Her last hope had gotten dashed she had to wait until her twenty-ninth birthday to access the funds. She’d grown accustomed to counting pennies and eating takeout from Stella’s Coffee Shop. The upscale home-style menu satisfied her need for comfort food. To-go boxes with their distinct logo lined her fridge.

She knew it was her bad luck because if the economy stayed on track. Or the market didn’t take a huge dive things may have turned out different. But California experienced the highest unemployment in recent record. Jazz had thought the perfect job waited for her to claim it. She miscalculated ten months ago and had yet to find it. So her career took longer than having a baby.

During the search, she never got a nibble in any position above the living wage which didn’t get her bills paid. She had a degree her assumption was that success wasn’t far from her future. But that was before the humbling experience of no one wanting her. In her naivety, she categorized herself as the cream of the crop from the pool of talent available.

She set high standards people might not appreciate her work if she didn’t. Confident she’d catch the world on fire she put everything into the search. Jazz got a real sick laugh at the optimism months later while still waiting. Forget the bonfire she hadn’t been able to a match, after a slew of unsuccessful interviews. Boy oh boy, reality led to a huge change in her tune the goal now became to support the Status Quo.

Sabrina jumped on her thighs and then heard her hit the floor. The cat flicked her tail and walked away towards the water bowl meowing in outrage over the empty food bowl. Okay, Sabrina, I’ll get your breakfast. Before anything got done, she’d have to get out of bed, so she swung her legs over the bed. The sense of being out of sorts persisted, she blamed it on the high-stress lifestyle.

Questionable judgment and arrogant choices had cost her plenty. It wasn't a small screw-up here, it became life altering. She had to admit when she quit her job in hindsight, it was a serious gaffe. There didn’t seem to be any going back it had been another error to stay up late last night. But she got busy reviewing her bank statement and bills during her financial marathon. She drank too much coffee and ate too many donuts. Her sugar hangover had to be worse than any created by liquor she had a headache, nausea, and the shakes.

Her pledge was to move forward full tilt boogie and fly by the seat of her pants. Most important, never again would she drink a six pack of soda in one sitting again. She stood up and traversed across the room thinking the tile a frozen pond under her bare feet. She muttered through chattering teeth while she shivered with uncontrolled spasms. Her hands shook making it difficult to strike a match.

She had confidence in the small stove flame heating the room given enough time. Besides, it was her only hope of getting warm. It spurred her on, as she spun the handles blowing and coaxing the flames to life. Her experience made her more confident, but today it didn’t happen. Do gasses freeze? She dropped the matchstick right on top of it and bingo the fire jumped into action.

The heat generated immediate relief as she held her hands over the burners. She rubbed them together and encouraged a return of dexterity in her fingertips. It worked, she had her grip back. She grabbed her socks out of the drawer, and once she slipped into them, she felt sweet relief on her feet.

She used the storage most people used for kitchen supplies as a convenient dresser. Since the drawers served no other purpose. From the first day she lived there, Jazz thought the oven looked dangerous. Even to her untrained eye between the disabled door, and the frayed electrical cord it was a hazard. Besides, she didn’t need to use it beyond the basics as she had no talent with culinary skills.

She believed the oven had the potential of being a vehicle to her demise. It was a fire hazard or worse, a carbon monoxide creator. Her imagination always ran wild looking at it. She had these horrible visions of a tasteless, odorless gas killing her as she slept. That’s why she became the queen of microwave cooking and ordering to go from Stella’s the restaurant below her apartment on the street level.

Jazz had no room for clutter in her tiny place. Everything to make a meal, she owned one fork, knife, spoon, plate, and coffee cup. Plus three old jam jars substituted, for beverage glasses. Sure the dream of a well-appointed home always played in her mind. But jam jars and limited dishware had become her lot for now. When entertaining became a fun, exciting experience, and not an embarrassment, then she’d invest.

The Land Barons robbed her on the first of every month for nine hundred plus the cost of her utilities. They threw in an elevator at no extra charge but with no guarantee it worked with any regularity. Jazz remembered what the ad said; cozy studio allows you the joy of oceanfront living with an ocean view.

Her foster mom Rose had highlighted parts of the ad. No mention of the fact to enjoy the view you’d have to move the refrigerator and stand on tiptoe. An apartment at this price in the heart of the city translated into a deal of the decade. It didn’t make it any more affordable. Even though she and her landlord enjoyed a great relationship for five years, she had a few issues but never voiced them for fear he’d raise the rent.

She knotted her robe and began the morning ritual of coffee. While she waited for the water to boil, she tackled her door. To get the door open for the first time in the winter proved challenging. It’s dreadful to have to take part in a battle before coffee. But wood always expanded and contracted due to the damp weather.

It proved a difficult task to open the door if it swelled up the previous night. It had been her experience to become trapped inside the apartment. Until the atmosphere warmed and she could break free.

To grab the newspaper she had to get the damn door opened before the water is boiled. She grunted and groaned, using every bit of strength she had to muster. The damn thing didn’t budge swearing under her breath; she tried one more time. This round she put her foot on the adjoining wall and tugged. It vibrated and shook the jamb because of the force she used then the door broke free.

Paranoid someone might spot her on this mission she tiptoed into the hall. She scooped up the paper of the apartment across and down two doors. She ripped it apart and grabbed the classifieds then put it back together. With her experience of delivering newspapers, it looked undisturbed. As if she had never been there except for the section she kept.

She tucked the evidence of her crime in her waistband, the stealth ninja slunk to her apartment. Had she sunk to this level of stealing the classifieds out of her neighbors’ paper? Did she have no shame? Sabrina, I’m a sad individual, but in defense of me, survival for both of us dictates such thievery.

Her hands performed the soothing ritual of making coffee in her French Press. She needed to find her happy place and stay with positive thoughts. Relaxed and content, she allowed herself a moment to appreciate the good in life.

With a sense of gratitude, while sipping her morning beverage. With a roof over her head, she opened the paper. No more procrastination by avoiding the want ads, taking a drink from her coffee mug made her grimace. To her consternation, it had become ice cold. Instead of pouring it in the sink she warmed it back up by shoving it in the microwave and hoped for the best.

Once the microwaves bell sounded, she took her coffee and slumped over the rickety breakfast bar. Her interest in a particular ad caught her attention. She once again ignored the brew steaming at her elbow. She became engrossed in the mind-numbing task of circling positions.

It didn't matter to her if she had the skill set or not. There were a few that stretch the boundaries of a fit. Her concentration had a laser focus on the want ads so, much so, she didn’t hear the phone ring.

Until the jarring sound penetrated her consciousness and startled her causing a knee-jerk reaction the unstable counter jumped. It rattled the cup spilling the contents and sending a river of coffee across the surface.

She created a mess she created, there’s no towel,