At Least You're Not Bert: A Girl for Jack

By G.H. Marielle

Bert is a larger than life protagonist who lives in a universe that is out to get him. He is a loser at love and a failure in life, who decides to garner good luck for himself by finding a girlfriend for his perfect yet lonely best friend, Jack. While on the hunt for good luck, Bert suffers dark and shocking hardships. His life is threatened, he gets kidnapped, he falls into a coma, and wakes up in serious trouble. During Bert's good luck journey, he explores the meaning of love, envy, human desperation, and the existence of good luck.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781475907018

G.H. Marielle

I moved to the United States from Germany at the age of four. I was born into a family of writers and always wrote my own stories for fun. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t write. Writing has always been my world. According to my friends and family, I have a bizarre sense of humor that finds its way into all of my novels. I strongly believe that laughter is an important part of life and I usually say that laughter makes the unthinkable bearable. When I wrote At Least You’re Not Bert, I thought about misery and the way that people cope with terrible or disturbing situations that are beyond their control. In my experience, people handle life’s sucker punches through laughter. It’s especially fun to laugh at someone who is worse off than you are. They say that misery loves company and Bert makes any miserable person feel better about themselves, because he’s worse off than everyone. So, Bert brings a dose of laughter and I think laughter makes life’s difficulties more bearable. I spend the majority of my time writing when I’m not on work related travel. I’m passionate about animal rescue and support many causes. I hope you enjoy At Least You’re Not Bert.

Book preview

AT LEAST

YOU’RE NOT BERT

A Girl for Jack

G.H. MARIELLE

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

At Least You’re Not Bert

A Girl for Jack

Copyright © 2007, 2012 by G.H. Marielle.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4759-0700-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-0701-8 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 05/09/2012

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter One

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You know, only a fool would think that they can get exactly what they want in life. Sometimes you get what you get and like it because what you had was far worse. Sometimes you take what you can get to avoid making bad matters worse. And as usual, bad matters are always made worse for me. So get some snacks, sit back and take a breather because you are going to feel a lot better about yourself after you read this book.

And as you read, I know you’re going to say, I am many things but at least I am not Bert. Thank goodness I’m not that pathetic, loser, Bert.

So, let me take you through a day in my life. I’m going to put you right in the middle of it. Scene one: my reality. A big guy just tore out of his car, slammed the door and now he’s gritting his teeth and walking towards me with two, giant, raised fists. You can be pretty sure I’ve done something that has provoked this rage.

I’m going to kill you! He’s screaming in my face so I fall into character because this is my world. Be glad you’re watching it and not living it.

P… p… please sir! I stutter and try to plead for my life.

The huge guy flares his nostrils and towers over me, making me feel gnat sized instead of my ordinary, five-foot-five shortness.

Man, you kept me behind you for thirty minutes! You knew I couldn’t go around you without slamming into a train of eighteen wheelers head on!

Watch me grovel. Hold your breath and pray. But please listen, I couldn’t drive any faster. My car—

You wanna drive slow disrespecting me! Is that how you get your jollies punk?!

Captain Road Rage lifts me up by the scruff of my neck and almost tears the shrunken, defunct, cartoon character, T-shirt off of my back. He shakes me back and forth then throws me on the ground. That’s when he crouches over me, presses his knee into my chest and of course he draws the fist back. I’m about to get the pounding of my life and the worst part is that I keep worrying about how the police will find me. Who wants to die in lint covered, black, sweatpants and a disgustingly tight t-shirt with scorch marks and holes in it? The cops would just laugh at my dead body and my corpse’s picture would somehow wind up in the paper with the headline: Bert, walking punch line, punched to death.

Don’t hit, I sputter even though I should really be passing out from lack of oxygen. This knee digging into my chest is so heavy that I can barely breathe but I know if I could just get one extra breath in I could whisper, or hiss my reason for driving so slowly and blocking traffic. Please sir… pl… please, I couldn’t drive any faster. My smashed windshield would fall in… . please look at it.

Captain Road Rage knits his eyebrows, lowers his fist, and looks towards my car, aka the boot brown mini cooper with the dents, ex wife key scratches, and missing hubcaps. I know he sees the layers of duct tape that hold my shabby windshield in place. He has to see that I couldn’t drive any faster without my cracked and busted windshield falling in.

See, I wasn’t driving slowly on purpose. I have to drive twenty miles an hour. It’s not like I want to.

Don’t you move cockroach. He points his meaty finger in my face and stands up. I stay there on my back as ordered, like a huge roach, with my head firmly seated in a puddle on the ground. From my lowly spot on the ground, I can see Captain Road Rage walk over to my car and I just watch in total silence as he fingers my windshield. And he does just what I thought he would do. The guy pushes my entire windshield in. I can hear it crumble onto my dashboard.

This is pathetic, he snorts the obvious and comes over to me. Since I’m still on my back I can’t help but notice him grinding the heel of his boot into the ground.

Would it be okay if I got up now? I figure now is as good a time as any to ask for permission. Instead of answering me Captain Road Rage lifts his leg and tears a huge wad of crud from the bottom of his boot. Then of course, to make bad matters worse he drops that wet clod of smelly, dark, crud onto my face.

You’re more pathetic than the day old dog poop I just dropped on your face, he says and shakes his head. As soon as I see him climb back into his car and speed off I stand up, dust my face off, and head to work which just happens to be three feet away, inside of Pixie’s Flower Shop.

As soon as I step into the white, stucco, building I see Nora slumped over the counter with a wad of tissue crammed in her nose. She busily clips the dead ends off of a pile of roses and tries to pretend that she didn’t even see me come in.

You saw what happened didn’t you? It’s better to get the shame and humiliation out in the open.

Nora slings one of her two, red, waist length, chick of the mountaintop braids over her shoulder. She never looks up at me but she does nod. It’s as if looking me in the eye would be too painful for her.

When a woman like Nora feels sorry for you, you know you’re in bad shape. See, Nora is anything but a winner. The girl is a plain Jane and has worn the same hairstyle since I first met her thirty something years ago in kinder. Then to make bad matters worse, she always wears these long, shapeless, pastel, trash bag dresses that my grandmother would have laughed at. And she lives at home with her centenarian parents who had a freak pregnancy in their late sixties or something. And she sleeps in the same pink and purple, toy filled, bedroom she grew up in.

Nora is the woman that time forgot and that’s exactly why Nora is single at thirty-seven and has never had a boyfriend or date of any kind. So the fact that she feels sorry for me—well that makes me want to get hit by a bus and go to the other side quickly.

So you saw it, I sigh and sit on a stool beside the counter.

Yep. Nora gives another nod and pretends that I’m not in front of her.

Such is the life I lead. Now get this Nora. The insurance isn’t going to fix my windshield and my washer machine caught fire last night, I explain as Nora continues to trim her roses. The flames from the washer machine totally charred the few pieces of clothes I have in the world.

Nora glances at my burned shirt and wipes her watery eyes with a tissue, sneezes half a dozen times and blows her nose. Bert, what do you want me to do about it? I can’t build a time machine, go into the past and stop ex-wife number two from hurling a brick through your windshield. I can’t go back in time and stop your clothes from burning up. If I could, maybe I would, she mumbles and hacks a clump of something thick somewhat discreetly into her tissue. She rests her head on the counter. Allergies… she groans.

I have to tell you my plight, Nora. There’s more! Someone stole my wallet that contained one dollar and eight cents, and now I’m officially flat broke. I mean broke as in can’t afford my Ramen Noodles broke. Nora doesn’t know this but I can’t help but think about stealing every bit of cash out of that register on the counter. But then I’d probably only walk away with about twenty-one dollars and that wouldn’t cover any of my bills. This flower business was a huge joke. Maybe if I sell some plasma I could get some cash, I say loudly in the hope that Nora will lend me some spending money, since she gets a weekly allowance of $50.00 from her parents.

Instead of acknowledging my desperate need for money, and lending a helping hand Nora points towards the dingy penny loafers that hug my sock-less feet. Bert, I took a new extra potent allergy pill this morning, and my nose is still dripping like a faucet. So I don’t want to hear the saga of Bert of the d’Urbervilles. But, are those two smashed sugar babies in your shoes, instead of pennies?

Ah yes, another layer of shame, another disgraceful bit of information that someone could one day scribble on my tombstone. I should have just told Nora that what I did with my candy was none of her business but I did just the opposite. Nora I’m so poor. Those sugar babies are for lunch. I couldn’t carry them in my pockets, thanks to all the holes. I’m just doing the best I can!

Nora grimaces and looks me over with sheer disbelief. Bert, that is so pathetic. She turns her back to me and faces a tall shelf that reaches the top of a vaulted ceiling. She points to a stack of baskets that sit on the top shelf. Hey, I need you to get those baskets down for me. I’m using them for the orchids, she demands.

No, I hiss under my breath and do not budge to help her. I want to think about my good friend Jack. I want to be Jack and live in his world, right now. I just wish I could have this explosion of cosmic good luck… you know be truly awesome for once, like Jack. Do you know that I dreamt about Jack last night? I ask Nora. Yep, I made that confession. I had finally graduated from thinking about Jack every minute of the day to dreaming about Jack at night.

What? What are you doing dreaming about Jack? Nora’s question comes down from the top of that tall ladder.

Nora, I don’t really want to do this but I can’t help it and I know that I look like a fool behaving this way. But I can’t help it Nora! The Jack dream that I had was so wonderful that I can’t sit still. As I tell her this I find myself spinning around and clutching my chest like some Broadway performer. I want to stop this nonsense, but the energy coursing through my veins keeps me on my toes and in a constant state of motion. Nora, in this dream, I was Jack. And I was living the life of a champ. I felt so alive and amazing and powerful and tall. My waist was blubber free and my legs were long and I was handsome and drenched in boatloads of cash.

Nora clutches a basket and looks down at me. Bert you need to get a grip. You’re starting to sound scary.

Like I said, I know that I shouldn’t be having these dreams about Jack but I can’t help it, I tell her, my face sweaty and red with shame. As much as I try to stop myself from bouncing around I pounce and bounce with fury. With cat like stealth, I spring onto the counter and reach for the ceiling. With a twirl and a jump I’m pretty sure I felt something pop in my right knee; but I just ignore it and coast on my Jack euphoria. Nora, I was on top of the world last night. I was Jack, God’s most favorite person. Then I woke up to this car wreck, called me, aka grotesque Bert and just like that, the high is gone and I sink like a stone into the depths of the sea.

Slowly but surely I climb off of the counter and run a hand over my blotchy face, and of course I have to look down at my super chubby stomach that burdens my now aching knee. How on earth did I allow myself to become such a chunktastic fatty? Wait a minute, I’ve been on the chunktastic side since kindergarten. Then why on earth haven’t I made a change in all this time?

Such a shame, I mutter in my head and stumble as I brush past Nora’s ladder. I may or may not have bumped into the ladder. Whether or not I bumped into the ladder, it starts wobbling back and forth.

Whoa, Bert, could you brace the bottom of this ladder? I’m about to fall! A bunch of baskets tumble down and miss me by a few inches. I dive out of the way and rest against the cash register.

From the corner of my eye I can see Nora struggling to keep her balance at the top of that shaky ladder. She teeters backwards on one leg, spins around on the other and nearly falls. She quickly clutches and holds onto the ladder with desperate hands. She is suspended there in mid-air trying not to move too fast, overstep and miss the step of the rocking ladder—and fall to severe injuries or maybe even death if she strikes her head against the jagged shelves as she plummets past them.

Believe me! I know that I should help Nora but my heart is so heavy with thoughts of Jack’s world that literally, I just feel too miserable to budge.

Bert! Nora’s scream filters into the distant regions of my pathetic mind.

I wish I could be rich like Jack, I mumble. I know that I had decided not to steal money from the cash register but I open the register anyway, just to see exactly what’s there. According to my quick glance I count about eight bucks. When am I gonna get paid with something other than out of season plants and mulch?! I need money! Not mule food! The sight of these sparse bits of money turn my stomach so I close the register and think about Jack again and I can’t help but wonder, How can one person have it all? Since kindergarten Jack’s been the man. Now he’s 38, still the man and the world keeps giving him more.

Ouch! Nora bangs her way down the steps of the ladder. It breaks and folds on her. She slowly pulls the ladder off of herself showing that she is fine, just as I knew she would be. Even though she didn’t hit the floor too hard she walks over to me and narrows her eyes. Bert, I nearly broke my neck!

I wish I could fall and break my neck.

Bert, do you care about anyone other than yourself?

Nora! I’m worried about myself. Look at me. I’m 39 with nothing but a whole lot of flabby flab… I tug on my jumbo spare tire to prove a point. I have fat heart-muscle killing flab, a lousy job, no money, too many ugly ex-wives and a whole lot of misery! When am I going to get some good luck? I need some good luck in my life.

Nora sighs. She is angry with me over her fall and can’t pass up an opportunity to criticize me and be superior. A wise man once said that the people with the most awesome lives spend their time helping others. And really, you never help anyone. You’re selfish. Nora raises her eyebrow in that pious, judgmental, know it all, way that she has perfected over the years. I mean, I just saw your selfishness first hand. She winces and rubs her side.

My stomach growls and I have no choice but to take action. I pull my loafer off, put it on the counter, and pick the candy out of it. The sweet sugar baby tastes pretty good—I can detect the faint taste of motor oil and gasoline but my early lunch is still edible.

Nora cringes and looks away from me. Bert, that is the most disgusting thing that I have ever seen anyone do. Those candies have all kinds of germs on them. She quickly wipes her runny eyes with her hand.

Nora, like I said earlier, this is just the life I lead. I’m a deprived, aging, pudgy, poor, mistreated, social outcast. And I’m always going to be that way unless I magically turn into Jack. As soon as I mention Jack’s name I see his beautiful smiling face in my head.

In my mind he waves at me and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a huge wad of cash and fans himself with it. Then of course I hear giggling and in seconds a team of hot girls surround him. They massage his shoulders, sit on his lap and dance around for him. I can’t help but laugh and feel happy for Jack but