Not Enough

By Sarah Mitchelson

Caitlin Post knew she shouldn't have taken it, but things were so bad and the proposition was so good, that even the voice of reason, doings its respectful job, did so only in a whisper. She also knew that by accepting the proposition she might change her life irreversibly. But she held her breath, hoped for something better, grabbed the cash, and ran.

 

What would you do if a handsome stranger rear-ended your car, and offered you $10,000 in cash to simply forget about it and drive away? What if he came back the next day and offer you a simple job of delivering a very private note to a friend of his for a few thousand dollars? Just deliver the note, he says, with the most delicious smile you have ever seen.

 

Well Caitlin did it. That spontaneous decision, to take the money, becomes the tipping point in her life. Sending her down a path of love, greed and deceit, making her realize having money is "Not Enough."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings ePress, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781597051248

Book preview

One

On the Lower East Side of New York, in my cramped six hundred square foot apartment, I had been getting ready to leave. I made a final check of my pony-tail, which is about all I am capable of accomplishing on Sunday mornings, and opened the tiny bathroom door.

I was immediately assaulted by the familiar stale scent that had been lingering in my apartment. I carefully stepped over a pile of dirty clothes, around a cascading stack of newspapers and eased past Nick, who was lying on the couch.

In a desperate attempt to get some fresh air, I reached for a window. Struggling with the paint-crusted pane, I let out a grunt and noted that Nick didn’t even bother looking up at me.

After six months of dating, Nick had grown so lazy I wouldn’t have believed he was capable of cleaning a toilet if given an entire day to complete the task. But apparently all the hours he spent lying on the couch, hand hanging off the side with a remote in it, was just an Oscar winning performance disguising that when given the right type of motivation he could move mountains in a matter of hours. Well, maybe not mountains, but specifically in two hours, he proved he could move everything out of my apartment.

I’m going to yoga class, then to pick up your dry cleaning that has been there for more than a month. They called again yesterday. Then grocery shopping for the week, I said, choosing not to look directly at him, but rather glanced back into our bedroom. The cheap white sheets lay tangled in a heap. I tried to remember the last time they had been cleaned, two months ago? Letting out a sigh I asked. Do you want anything from the store?

Ah, no I’ll eat whatever you get, he said, not even looking up from the football game that was blaring from the world’s tiniest TV.

I stared down at him. Who was this man living in my apartment? I was embarrassed. How had I allowed things to deteriorate to this level without doing something about it?

I would find myself lying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, listening to his loud snores trying to deny to myself that this guy hadn’t turned into a flake. In the darkness I would talk quietly to God, praying that Nick was just going through a phase. That he would find a job soon and feel motivated enough to move beyond the couch on a daily basis. There was always that little thing called love, too. I still loved his lazy ass and wanted to help him through his slump.

When we first met, after two weeks of dating, I had been naïve enough to believe I’d met the man of my dreams. At the age of twenty-five, I thought that all my years of praying for Mister Right to come my way had finally paid off. Nick arrived in New York attempting to escape a broken heart that stemmed from Seattle. The Big City, he said, made him feel more alone than ever. In the Laundromat we had exchanged similar stories of almost non-existent families, few friends, and heartaches.

I had moved to New York the year before for a job at Dwight and Howard, a high-tech firm developing business software. Nick had moved to New York with no job and nowhere to live. On our third date I had offered to let him stay at my place, temporarily.

At a local coffee shop on the weekends we would wrestle over the newspaper. We used to have quiet dinners at home on a tight budget, drinking cheap red wine, giggling over the fact that it was our third night in a row eating spaghetti. At night in bed we talked about a better life we would one day be living together.

Nick moved in and started looking for a job. He made a few calls and sent out a couple of résumés. With each rejection, he spent more time on the couch, eating food from a bag and consuming dark liquids, and less time looking for a job. He slowly deteriorated to not even a shadow of the man I had fallen in love with month ago.

I would soon find out that the person I had fallen in love with was not really a person at all. He was a well-crafted act.

Oh, hey, he said, finally looking up at me, Don’t bother with the dry cleaning. I’ll get that this afternoon.

Why? I was so stunned it was all I could think of to say.

Just because, his answer being as lame as the question.

Okay, I said, shaking my head and grabbing my purse from the table. I moved toward the door and slid the dead bolt off.

Bye, Caitlin, he said.

The fact that he had taken the time to say goodbye should have tripped a panic alarm in my brain. After all, saying goodbye takes consideration, and this goodbye was coming from a guy who thought brushing his teeth should be an annual event, because it takes too much effort to do on a daily basis.

I opened the door and stepped over the threshold into the quiet cool enclosed corridor. I reached back to swing the door shut, but just before it closed I glanced back inside. Nick had sat up on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees, his forearms hanging between his legs. He was staring right at me. His face was completely blank. The door clicked shut.

When I got home two hours, yes—just two hours later—the place was empty.

Two

He had taken everything : every piece of furniture, every appliance, every item in every single cupboard. He had taken the garbage can with the garbage still in it, the toilet paper from the metal rod on the wall, the wet soap from the shower, the soggy door mat, even the plug-in air freshener. The only things he left behind were my clothes, and they lay in a pile in the bottom of the closet. He had taken the hangers.

I would spend countless hours trying to figure out how he had done it. There must have been a moving van just around the corner of the apartment complex with an arsenal of moving men waiting for his cue. I could just imagine my car pulling from the parking lot and him rushing to the phone.

Red Shadow, this is Black Hawk, the hen has flown the coop, let’s move.

When I walked through the door, I had actually been scared, scared for Nick. I thought the place had been robbed. Had it happened while he was there? Maybe the burglars had tied him up. I ran from room to room searching for him, calling out his name.

Of course, he was nowhere in the apartment. I ran to the phone, only to find it gone. I grabbed my cell phone from my purse and called his cell. I still wonder where he was when he took that call. He obviously knew it was coming and had been waiting.

It rang only once. He picked up.

Nick! Oh my God! Are you all right? Where are you? You are never going to believe what happened.

There was silence.

Nick? I don’t know what made it all connect, but in that moment of silence, the vision came through very clear.

Kate, I am sorry. I had to go. It was time, he said in a quiet voice.

What the hell are you talking about? Are you sick? I knew I was reaching, hoping there was a better explanation for this than the dark plot that was developing in my mind.

No, Kate, I’m fine. But I’m leaving. Please don’t try to find me. We just need to break things clean.

Break things clean? You took everything. The only thing that is clean about this is the apartment, because there is nothing left in it!

I took what I thought was mine. We bought that couch and dining room set together; you gave me some stuff as a gift. The point is, you can buy all those things again. I don’t even have a job. You know I can’t buy those things myself. You have been so good to me, Kate. You have always taken care of me. Please just help me this one last time by letting me go.

Let you go? You’re right, I have been damn good and now you’re leaving me? With all my things? the phone was shaking in my hand.

Kate, I am going to hang-up now. This is the last time I will ever use this phone, so don’t call it again. And, Kate, please don’t come looking for me, okay? Goodbye.

Before I could say another word, the phone went dead. I paced the bare hardwood floors ranting to myself, finally throwing the phone against the bare wall. I looked up at my empty living room and then the empty kitchen. The walls began to spin. I dialed his cell number back. No answer and no voice mail. I glanced out the window at the wet concrete parking lot and the bare trees. My brain felt like it was pressurizing in my skull. I felt the cells in my body begin to move too rapidly for their own good. A wave of nausea caused my mouth to water and my throat to tighten.

After taking a few deep breaths and counting backward from ten, I walked through the entire apartment again, much slower this time. I tried to remember what had been where. The gently-used Pottery Barn chair I had found at a tag sale was missing from the corner. The cheap rug from my college days swiped from the floor, causing my steps to echo.

I checked the heat register. It was on. I pulled my jacket tighter around my waist. I slid down the wall and felt the coldness of the hardwoods move up through my body. I just sat there.

I pulled the ponytail out and let my brown hair fall down around shoulders. Stretching my legs out in front of me, I wondered what was wrong with me. I worked hard to keep my body in shape. I had been blessed with those good athletic genes. I was a little taller than the average girl at 5’6, which I happened to like and I never experienced a shortage of compliments on my dark green eyes. So what was the problem? Why couldn’t I find a decent guy? I was twenty-five. I was starting to feel like a spinster.

When the light outside began to fade, I realized I had nothing to sleep on, nor a lamp to light the apartment. I wandered out the door to my car and drove to Target. I bought a blowup camping mattress, an army green sleeping bag and a pillow. I realized I didn’t have anything to cook in or eat off, but didn’t care. I knew it would be several days before I would want to eat. My credit card was almost at its limit, but I headed to the warm glow of the red Circuit City sign to buy a TV. There was no way in hell I was going to sit in that apartment, staring at the wall, thinking about what had happened over and over again.

That night I slept on the living room floor by the glow of my TV set. Apparently my old TV hadn’t been the worlds smallest. I didn’t call anyone because I really didn’t have any close friends. I had almost no family. My mother lived in Montana, and I hadn’t spoken to her in years. I decided to save my humiliation for the few co-workers on Monday that I considered friends. Before dozing off I smirked and shook my head. He certainly had fooled me. The execution had been perfect, like I said, Oscar winning.

Three

Monday, eight a.m. with mocha in hand, accessorized with huge puffy eyes, I set off to work. As much as I hated Mondays, I was thankful to actually have something to occupy my mind.

On the car ride home, one hour later, I was making deals with God to strike me dead with lightning. Turns out, Monday was the day Dwight and Howard evoked massive layoffs. Senior management gathered two hundred of its employees in the cafeteria for a layoff cattle call. There would be severance packages based on seniority. I got three weeks pay for my one year of work.

I spoke to no one on my way out. Packed a box, deleted things I knew management would want, and made a point of slamming my office door. Management generously offered us thirty minutes to get packed up, hand in our keys and leave the premises, I took only five. I drove home with my hands clutching the steering wheel so intensely that my knuckles turned white and began to ache. I wove through traffic using my horn freely. I was headed home to a completely empty apartment, I had no job and no money, then I suddenly remembered rent was due in two days: rent I couldn’t pay on my own. I would even have to pay a phone bill for a socket in the wall that didn’t have a phone plugged into it.

I felt my foot sink into the gas pedal forcing it into the floor only to be countered by slamming the brakes abruptly when necessary. There was not a single rational thought in my head. Maybe that is why what happened, happened next.

I tore off the freeway ramp to my place at about eighty-miles per hour. I applied the brakes rapidly as I approached the intersection. I felt a force slam into me from behind.

My whole body shot forward. My forehead slammed into the steering wheel. My body ricocheted back into the seat. I grabbed my neck as the car came to a rolling stop. I peered up into the rearview mirror to see a Black Escalade embedded in the trunk of my car. I couldn’t see anyone inside the other vehicle because the windows were tinted.

I pulled off to the side of the ramp, as did the driver of the monstrous SUV Cadillac after dislodging his car from mine.

With aches and pains beginning to spread through my body, I crawled out of the car. I walked to the back of my gray, battered, ten-year-old Honda Civic. The trunk area was crinkled like a thin pop can. Splinters of paint and red taillight littered the ground. I looked down at it expressionlessly. I just didn’t care. My car was a piece of shit, which was equal to my life at that moment.

My neck was throbbing; I pinched my eyes shut to try to block out the pain. The sound of the rushing freeway voided out all other sounds. I felt completely defeated.

When you’re in a mood like that, when all your ducks have been shot down, when there is seemingly nothing left, you too might be surprised at