At least the trip up the three flights of stairs leading to Shirley Dixon's current apartment felt somewhat safer than any she'd made at all her previous residences.
Thirty-Eight, Shirley had spent her entire life in some of the rougher neighborhoods Philadelphia had to offer. Thankfully, through a heaping helping of hard work and more than little luck, Shirley had got her finances to the point where she could afford to move her and her only son, Caleb, to a nicer neighborhood out in the suburbs. While they weren't exactly kicking their heels up at night in the Hamptons, the fact that Shirley didn't have to dodge puddles of urine, and the occasional bullet, on her trip to her front door made for a much more fulfilling existence.
Having worked for Philly's transit system for the previous 15 years, Shirley had been able to squirrel away a nice little nest egg. Part of the reason had been how lucky she'd been with her health over the years, she'd only had to call in once since she'd started. Today, sadly, was about to be day #2.
She'd woke up around 4am feeling queasy, but still thought between a good hot shower and the bus ride into work, she'd get her juices flowing. By the time she'd got to the office however, the telltale signs of the flu were glaring. Considering two of her other employees had already called in sick, Shirley's boss, Ines, was torn whether to send Shirley home but knew having her there might just contaminate the entire office. Forty-Five minutes after arriving, Shirley Dixon was on her way back home.
Getting off the bus a little after 10 that morning, Shirley wrapped her scarf tight around her neck and face to gird herself for the two block walk home to her apartment building. Vacillating between making herself some chicken soup or jumping straight into bed, Shirley had no clue she'd face a much more daunting decision in very short order.
She'd been bugging Caleb for a few days about getting off his butt and put a few applications in at some jobs in the area, but the 19 year old had many of the same traits as the father he hadn't seen since he was 9. Chief among them, while he could be a hard worker, he definitely needed a fire lit beneath him to pull it off.
When Shirley didn't hear the God-awful bass thump of Caleb's hiphop coming from her apartment once she'd exited the elevator, she took it as a good sign that he wasn't home.
"That, or he's still be in bed," she snidely reminded herself of the more likely option.
Shirley had just extended the key towards the lock when the first strains of sound started filtering through the door.
"SHHEEESSHH," she muttered bitterly under her breath, knowing from the faint echo her son wasn't alone.
The nausea Shirley had been fighting was suddenly replaced by the anger now stirring in her craw.
While Caleb was technically an adult, he was still living under her roof and eating the food in her fridge. She'd made it clear to him from the day he could walk that she wasn't going to be responsible for the fallout from any lapses of judgment. She'd seen the way some of the girls in the apartment complex looked at him, especially some of the white and Hispanic girls, as if Caleb was some sort of exotic, taboo prize to piss off their own parents.
Holding the key in her right hand as she balled her left open and shut, Shirley tried to decide whether she should barge in, or simply take a cool down lap around the block then call her son to tell him she was on her way home, giving him time to ferry the girl out with some shred of dignity.
"This is your house, Dammitt....get in there before he goes and knocks her up," Shirley finally decided, wasting no time shoving the key in the lock and turning it.
The tell-tale trail of clothing was the first thing Shirley noticed when she walked in, winding from the living room towards the hall that led back to the bedrooms. If it wasn't for the flames firing in her eyes, she may have noted something odd about the discarded clothing dotting the floor. Stalking down the hall, realizing the unmistakable sounds of sex were actually coming from the bathroom down to her left, if it wasn't for that singular, lasor focus, Shirley would have also detected something unique about the perfume wafting in the air.
If Shirley thought the local hoes were out for something taboo and forbidden by hanging with her son, what she saw when she rounded that corner and stormed in didn't do those two terms justice.
___________________________________
Maria Lombardi had known Caleb Dixon since he was in pre-school. Having just turned 45 herself, Maria had met Shirley Dixon when she started at the transit office 15 years earlier. Maria was relatively new as well, and the two women quickly bonded.
She'd been there through Shirley's ups and downs, and more than anyone else, Shirley had been there for Maria when her husband died in a car accident six years earlier. All that combined to make what she was currently doing with Shirley's only son a very shameful pill to swallow.
Its human nature when you meet a child, especially when it belongs to someone you know, to sort of always see them as a child, even as they inch towards adulthood. This was no different for Maria in the way she saw Caleb grow into a man. For that 'view of perpetual youth' to be altered, it often takes something of graphic proportion. Sadly for Maria, that occurred early one Saturday morning about six months earlier.
The two women had been out on the town that Friday night the previous Summer. While they hadn't exactly painted the town red, they shared a nice dinner then hit a couple of clubs and drank more than they probably should before taking a cab back to Shirley's new place a little after midnight. They'd done something similar a handful of times over the years, but normally they'd gone back to Maria's for the night, this was the first time Maria had crashed at Shirley's. The ritual usually consisted of waking up late the next morning, downing a couple of Bloody Marys to ward off the hangovers, then go out for brunch with Shirley before going their separate ways.
Those were the simple expectations for Maria as she put her drunken head down on the pillow that night. All that changed when she was stirred awake a few hours before dawn.
Under normal circumstances, falling asleep in a strange house can be a tedious task. Between the odd and unexpected sounds one might hear, along with need to adjust to the different surroundings, sometimes sleep can be awhile in coming. Maria had no such problems that night. Given the amount of mixed drinks in her system combined with the exhaustion she felt from her long week, she was dead to the world within minutes of snuggling beneath the covers. It took an act of God, in fact, to wake her up a little after four just before her bladder let loose all over Shirley's clean sheets.
"URRGGG," she groaned, still clearly inebriated as she struggled to her feet to make her way across to the door so she could stagger to the bathroom.
Thankfully Shirley had left the light on in the hall just in case Maria had to get up in the middle of the night. Just as she turned the knob of the door however, and the first sliver of light spread across her haggard face, Maria stopped cold in her tracks when the sound of the front door of the apartment opened. Swaying on her significantly woozy knees as an icy chill rippled down her spine, Maria braced her left hand out against the doorframe as the echo of heavy footsteps drifted through the living room.
