Chapter 11
Emails
From: Marissa Johnson
To: Randy Hawkins
Subject: Checking in
Dear Hawk… or should I say Randy?!?!?! :D :D
LOL sorry!
Your name caught me off guard. You’re this mean-looking bald biker… I see why you didn’t wanna tell me.
Squid came to see me and DJ and he told me all about the rescue mission and I was so relieved to hear you were okay (apart from the damage B it just is.
I apologize in advance, I’m typing this cause I need to vent. I fought with Dylan today, well, yesterday technically. He came by, allegedly wanting to see his son (for the first time in almost a week, by the way).
He KNOWS Junior’s bedtime is at 7, or at least he should know. That man shows up at 6:30. It’s Saturday. He was free the whole damn day, and that’s when he thinks it’s smart to show up to see his baby?!?!?! >:(
Club business kept him busy, he said. To which I might have had a snarky response along the lines of, we all know what kind of “business” kept him from his family all these months, and boy, did we get into it then.
All the yelling woke DJ, Dylan stormed out angrily, and I couldn’t fall asleep because of how upset I was, so I’m furiously typing this as if I’m trying to break his laptop.
I’m just so… I don’t even know. :/
LOL, I never even connected my awful teen email with the bird. Would you look at that :D
M.
P.S. What is Rat Park, and why were you missing it? I’ve been wondering for a while now.
From: Randy Hawkins
To: Marissa Johnson
Date: 08:40 AM, January 16, 2011
Subject: RE:RE:RE: Checking in
Hey
I’m sorry to hear that your asshole ex has got you so upset. That sucks. If it makes you feel any better, I guess you got him good, too.
Mushroom called to let me know that, after storming out, Dylan started harassing her.
He asked why they kept hanging around “his house” and “his ol’ lady”.
She told him, “From what we heard, she’s no longer your ol’ lady,” and explained that you were part of our club now.
After throwing a few more insults at her, he got on his bike and left.
There’s nothing he can do, since they’re technically standing on the street and not trespassing. I think deep down he knows we’re looking out for you and DJ when his own club won’t.
Speaking of our club. Rat Park is the name of our clubhouse/compound. Squid chose the name, and I’m sure he’d like to talk your ear off about it, but I’ll give you the Cliff Notes.
There were these psychologists in Canada who did a series of experiments related to drug addiction in the 70s or 80s. They would put a rat in a cage, give it one bowl of clean water and one bowl of water laced with morphine, and the rat would usually prefer the morphine water. Duh.
But then one of the psychologists created a living area called Rat Park: a large, engaging place where a group of both male and female rats was kept. They had food, toys, entertainment, and the opportunity to… romance each other :)
The rats who lived together and had a beautiful living area were less likely to consume the morphine water, and those who were alone in the cage drank something like twenty times more morphine.
Of course, this is an oversimplification, and the results were never successfully replicated, but Squid had this idea in mind when building a place for our club. I can’t wait for you to see it.
I hope your mood’s better today.
H.
From: Marissa Johnson
To: Randy Hawkins
Date: 04:45 PM, January 20, 2011
Subject: Hobbies
Hey Hawk,
I hope you’re doing well. Did you find any new hobbies to pass the time? I need all the tips I can get, since I’m now officially unemployed and have a lot of time on my hands.
Turns out, there’s only so many sick days your employer is willing to give you and they don’t care that your hair is falling out in big clumps from the stress you feel whenever you think about leaving your house :/
So here we are.
But it’s fine. The fridge is full, DJ has gotten a lot of clothes for Xmas so he’s set for the next two sizes, and the pantry is overflowing with formula cans (looks like Dylan thought I was never coming back.
He must have loved the idea, ha!) so that’s gonna last us a while, and I have some money in the bank to tide us over while I look into jobs I can do from home.
Or until I snap out of whatever this is.
In an ideal world, I’d be unpacking all of this with a shrink, but in the real world, I can’t afford the copay, so I watch every episode of Oprah and the Steve Harvey Show that comes on and call it therapy instead. :D
All my “progress” is undone whenever Slim comes over.
I try to hand DJ to him and leave to do my own thing, but he drags me into these arguments, like last time he felt the need to accuse me of doing “the same boring shit every day” when we were together.
Completely and utterly unprovoked, I might add.
I broke my back setting up that routine for our family to thrive! I asked him what the fuck he thought life with a baby was gonna be like?