A Note for My Head Asking What My Heart Said

Life’s a bitch, and then you die. Of course Life is hard—it’s a bitch; if Life were easy it’d be a slut. It’s an unwritten, but much-complained, rule that Life is tragedy. From childbirth until the moment your heart gives out and your brain shuts off the lights, it was full of chaos, misery, and pain.

This was something Marizella Kolston knew very well—from experience. It was her philosophy and it was how she dealt with things. As many of her generation she was overly cynical and jaded about society and the world around her, but unlike most, she had perfectly legitimate reasons for her impassable mask of ice.

But leaning against the counter and letting her mind go where it would, Zel was a million miles away from the diner on Thames in Baltimore, Maryland. She was thinking about the movie she’d seen the week before, enviously imagining herself as the heroine, getting swept off her feet by the handsome, rich, famous stranger who traipsed in town.

“Kolston!” Zel jumped and nearly knocked over the pot of coffee beside her. Her manager, a short round man with a bad comb-over and worse taste in ties, glared at her sternly, podgy fist set on a hip. “I’m not paying you to stand around and look wistful! Table five’s been waiting for their food for ten minutes!”

“Sorry, Mister Thurston,” she apologised, trying to sound sincere as she picked up a tray piled with plates. “Won’t happen again.” She had to get a hold of herself; she couldn’t afford to lose this job.

“Make sure it doesn’t,” Thurston said, patting her hip as she passed him.

Shuddering Zel hurried away from the counter, thankful to get away from the man. Perverted creep, she thought to herself. That was probably why he kept her on, despite the multiple times she’d been late and had to get other workers to switch shifts with her. But, of course, she had good reasons for all those times as well.

“About time,” one of the guys at table five complained when she stopped beside them.

Her plastic smile wavered, and Zel gritted her teeth to keep it on. “Sorry, we’re awfully busy today.” That wasn’t a lie; the diner was even fuller for the dinner crowd than usual, and most of the patrons were around Zel’s age.

“’Sokay,” another of them excused with a slight smile as she doled out plates. “We don’t mind waiting around for a pretty girl to feed us.”

Zel’s smile didn’t move. She was used to getting hit on, at this job and others. With murky green eyes standing out from her smooth Italian face, not to mention dark waves and an athletic figure, Marizella was bound to get attention.

Despite how god-awful the shapeless neon purple uniform shirt was. Or how skimpy the women’s shorts were. Thurston the Perv again.

“Well, this pretty girl’s shift is over,” she informed him. “So you’ll have to make nice with Adam for the check.” A smirk glimmered across her lips. “But don’t worry, he’s into self-assured guys.”

With a wink Zel crossed the diner into the employee lounge. Well, “lounge” was a bit of a stretch. It was more a musty locker room with a lumpy couch pushed against one wall. She yanked her uniform shirt over her head and chucked it into her locker before swinging her bag onto her shoulder and hopping into her jeans.

“You’re not working Monday’s tonight, are you, Zel?” Adam asked in disbelief as she strode back into the diner. She glanced down at the low, low rise jeans and clinging beater she wore. “Honey, you work way too hard, and that is no place for a girl like you.”

“Got to pay the bills, Adam,” she sighed, clocking out. “But I have to pick Lu up from hockey practice and Stephania from day-care. If I’m not exhausted, I’ll call you later.” She pecked his cheek and gunned for the door.

Slamming the door of her car—a banged-up, two door metal coffin on wheels that was someone’s pride and joy in the fifties—she murmured at the engine, willing it to start. When it finally did, Zel jetted onto Thames and did her best to race across town without getting stopped by the cops. She didn’t get a ticket, but when she pulled into the parking lot of the ice rink, her brother was sitting on the sidewalk, still adorned in pads.

“You’re ten minutes late,” he observed, not moving from his place.

Zel sighed as she stuck her head out the window. “I know, and I’m sorry. I got caught in traffic.” The twelve-year-old merely stared at her with expressionless brown eyes. “Just get in the car, Luciano. I’m going to be late for work.”

After turning around in the lot and heading back in the opposite direction, the car was silent. The stereo had croaked months ago, and they had to make due with a boom box, now sitting in the back. “I don’t like you working at that place,” Lu said quietly as they stopped at a light. Zel turned her head toward him and caught the light of sadness in his face before it froze. He had the mask too. “It’s illegal anyway, and it’s full of alcoholics and losers who want to get their rocks off.”

“Where’d you learn to talk like that?” she reproached, shooting him a dark look. “Mama hear you say that, she’d have your head.”

“But she won’t.” Zel’s heart wrenched at the coldness in his tone. “Besides, I’m twelve. I’m not stupid.”

She let a chuckle escape. “Okay, fratellino, no one’s refuting your genius.”

After retrieving her sister—a bouncing bundle of brunette bubbliness—and dropping her siblings off with the next-door neighbour, Zel raced back across town to Monday’s, a bar that occasionally hosted small-time bands and other entertainment. Sneaking in through the back door, she stowed her bag in yet another locker and finished changing.

“Marty’s looking for you,” a voice announced. Zel looked up from applying mascara to find her co-worker and friend Katrina leaning in the doorway.

“I know,” she replied, checking herself in the mirror again, “I hope he doesn’t fire me. I--”

“Really need this job to keep things together, I know,” Kat finished, nodding. “And Marty knows that. But, honey, if you keep this up, you’re going to run yourself into the ground from exhaustion.”

Zel knocked her bangs back and lifted her chin. “Can’t worry about that now,” she declared loftily after a moment. “I have a bar full of people to serve.” Katrina sighed as she followed Marizella’s swaying hips down the hall. The girl was going to break herself one day, and that day was coming soon.