Mayor of Houston: Mollie Desirae

(continued from https://community.simtropolis.com/journals/entry/30209-hend-garth-ilene/ )
 

Houston has a lively nightlife, and the festive season had swelled the ranks of thrill seekers more than usual. Even the desperate backwater which housed The Railway Cutter Man’s Green Arms saw staggering groups of laughing revellers banging taxi doors, falling into gutters and generally making a nuisance of themselves.
A few even rattled the handle of the bar door, hoping for a last snort of cheap ale to extend their celebrations.

At last all was quiet, and we could concentrate fully on the pressing matter of trying to stay warm, amongst the dust and mess of the half completed remodel.
Myrtle found a woolly hat which had been left by the builders, and added to the thermal insulation it provided with a plastic rain hood, found in the recesses of her coat pocket.

I concentrated on collecting together a pile of dust-covers and old curtains, from which we constructed a make-shift tent and sleeping bag, balanced on the largest of the pub’s velour sofas.
My friend and I arranged ourselves like tinned sardines, with heads at either end.

After a great deal of adjustment and wriggling around, we were able to settle. So it was very annoying to hear a light tapping at the door. We tried to ignore it but the knocking got louder, and more insistent.

‘I can see you!’, a sing-song voice lilted through the open letter box, ‘let me in’.
‘We don’t need any, go away!’, Myrtle lilted right back.
‘It’s very cold out here, please open the door,’ the dulcet tones persuaded.
 

Myrtle made a sound, not unlike that of an annoyed hippopotamus being disturbed at its mud path, then slid out of the ‘tent’. I grabbed at the sheets to stop the whole thing falling apart.
Peeping between the notices on the window, my friend tutted to herself.
‘Silly woman looks frozen, who wears a crop top in this weather?’
‘Don’t open the d…’, I started, but it was useless. Myrtle alternated in her attitude towards fellow human beings, they were either obstacles to be overcome, or lame ducks who required her attention. In this case, it seemed, we had entered waterfowl sanctuary territory.
 

Pushing my friend aside, the invading wraith ran across the floor in a cloud of billowing snowflakes, as Myrtle battled against the wind to reclose the door. Meanwhile the wild looking woman forced open the cellar hatch and disappeared down the stone steps. An icy blast of air rushed up from the basement, and I shivered in my dismantling tent.

‘They’ve moved all the drink out!’ Myrtle yelled, ‘you won’t find anything down there.’
The interloper contradicted her by reappearing with a spider-web coated crate of clinking bottles, then expertly opened one against the newly fitted bar counter, knocking a great chip out of the faux marble in the process.

Throwing her head back, the woman attempted to glug down the contents of the bottle, but no liquid ran out of the inverted vessel. She started stabbing inside with a blunt screwdriver that had been lying beside a rusty toolbox.
‘Effing stuff is frozen solid.’ she complained.

Somewhat flustered, Myrtle squeezed around the upturned furniture. My friend returned carrying a concrete splattered electric kettle, obviously belonging to the builders, and poured steaming water into an equally unsavoury looking mug.

‘There you go, have this instead, it will warm you up, and do you more good than Houston’s Old Peculiar. That stuff is alcoholic treacle.’

The dazed brunette grabbed at the mug, and dunked the beer bottle into it happily, leaving it to defrost.

‘I didn’t mean that!’ Myrtle sighed.

‘I was an astronaut!’, the woman confided suddenly, then paused to poke around hopefully in the beer bottle.
‘When I was in space,’ she continued.

‘Which planet was that I wonder?’ Myrtle muttered under her breath.

‘It was a lot more boring than I thought it would be. We just went round, and round,’. Our visitor illustrated this action with the beery screwdriver. ‘Round and round, and it was the same boring view, and the same aggravating people nagging at me every single day,’

The distant sound of a police siren caught the storyteller’s attention for a moment.

‘trying to force me to talk to the psychiatrist on the video link. I said get him to come up here, see what it’s really like, then we can have a good chat about things.’ Our new friend nodded in self approval.

‘Then it was all, it’s your turn for the spacewalk Mollie, sort out the nuclear fuel rods Mollie, I saw through all their plots to get rid of me.’
Our visitor swung around to shake her fist angrily at the night sky.
‘So I cut holes in all their space suits, and peed in the dehydrated beef cobbler, and they cut short the mission and blamed it on asteroids.’

Exhausted by the effort of relating this tale, the alleged astronaut fell into a chair, knocking over the beer bottle in the process. A single drop of sticky liquid oozed onto the grimy table top. She lapped it up smiling.
 

The room was suddenly lit by red and blue flashing lights, as a patrol car pulled up outside. I worked my way round the mess to let the officer inside, and he led our unwelcome guest away, gently enough.

‘Houston’s gone downhill since I used to live here,’ was my first comment.
‘Yes,’ admitted Myrtle. ‘And do you want the bad news first, or the even worser one?’
I didn’t challenge the grammar of my friend’s sentence, this wasn’t the moment.

‘Number one,’ she was telling me anyway, ‘ that was the Mayor,’
I swivelled around and goggled after the retreating patrol car.
‘Number two, she stole our gold travel pass.’

As we gathered ourselves together, it became obvious that the kleptomaniac Mayor had taken more than just the pass. My handbag was almost emptied, Myrtle’s pockets had been rifled through, the remaining beer bottles had disappeared. Even the revolting breakfast tray had lost its dried up white bread with mould in the corners.

The only thing we had left was the flask, which I had left to soak in the sink behind the bar.
We filled it up with boiling water from the builder’s kettle, and decided to head for the railway station, to see if anything could be done.

Houston Central was populated by frustrated travellers who had been caught out like us by the cancelled late train. It wasn’t a happy atmosphere.

The Sunday morning 6:10am from Houston to Ballina Central arrived on time, but without a buffet car, so even if we’d had any money, breakfast was not an option. Myrtle found a child’s packet of jelly sweets under a seat, but I couldn’t face them, despite feeling faint with hunger. Hot, slightly Ovaltiney, flask water is a poor substitute for porridge with honey and a slice of buttered toast, my usual fare.



The construction cranes outside Ballina never stop moving, and they took on a sinister, robotic look as the train finally approached our home.
When we reached the station, any available staff were distracted dealing with the complaints of disembarking passengers, which thankfully allowed us to sneak past the barriers unchallenged. 

Staggering towards our portacabin, my stomach growled more loudly than the breaker’s yard dog. I fantasised about the box of mince pies I’d left balanced on the non-functioning boiler.

Once inside the office it took me a good five minutes to realise something wasn’t as expected. Why was my third mince pie warm? Had the portacabin tilted over, or were all the cupboard doors straight now?

‘There’s no hole in the toilet room wall!’, Myrtle shouted deliriously, over the strains of Fur Elise, emanating from our musical toilet roll holder.
Looking through the strangely transparent and unmisted window, our old faithful car had an odd sheen.

‘It’s clean,’ said Myrtle, wonderingly, ‘polished even.’

A note under the wipers flapped in the wind, we rushed outside to read it.
‘You have been an inspiration to me, I was going to give up, then I saw you, two old ladies pushing that car, and I thought, if they can fight back so can I. Hope you like the improvements, Merry Christmas Bill’.

The car started with a luxurious purring sound. Music danced out of the replaced stereo, even Myrtle’s seat had been returned to the correct position.
I wasn’t sure whether to cry with relief, or grump about being called an old lady, so I did both.
‘Who is Bill?’, I looked at Myrtle.
She pointed to the sign over our neighbour’s plot, W. Clintons Est 1974.
‘He must be a William.’



‘The tyre guy? You know what this means don’t you?
‘Well I’m not going to sleep with him if that’s what he thinks!’ Myrtle folded her arms.
I was momentarily confused by my friend’s train of thought.

‘No, it means somebody is actually reading the Ballina Files and supports our work!’
‘Don’t get carried away,’ returned Myrtle, ‘he probably wants to stop any more tenants leaving the industrial estate, otherwise Fairbanks will leap in and build shoddy apartments on the land.’

I had to agree, that did seem a likely scenario.

‘Of course we’ll have to change the locks now’, I suggested.
‘Absolutely,’ Myrtle mumbled through the crumbs of mince pie number five, ‘we can’t have just anyone poking round the Portacabin.’
So we brewed up the Ovaltine, but I was so tired that I fell asleep in my office chair before I could even drink it.