June, 2011
Katherine once was an insufferable shrew of a wife married to a two-timing cheating wimp of a man for almost 16 years.
Jim is a wrecking yard owner and scrap dealer. He comes from a long line of lawyers, doctors, and family members in the diplomatic corps. He has three brothers and one sister in those professions. Jim absolutely loves his work, especially the hard physical labor involved.
Jim is a plain man bordering on homely. He is also built like a fireplug wrapped in muscles and is as strong as an ox. Jim's intellect is as sharp as a virgin scalpel. He plays it down to his advantage so that people will underestimate him. He finds their lack of insight amusing.
Jim and Katherine were neighbors for almost ten years when unforeseen events devastated Katherine's life. She is a very pretty woman with shoulder blade-length copper red hair and green eyes. Katherine has freckles that decorate her lithe and trim figure which she used to hate them.
Jim started calling her Kate to annoy her, the reference being the Kate from Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew".
At first, Katherine had no idea of the inference, or the fact Jim attended private schools, followed by college to earn a six year degree. Kate was a pretty thorn in his side, while Jim was a thorn in hers until she moved in with him.
Kate has nothing to go back to because she came from nothing, growing up in a shabby trailer court in an immaculately clean rundown trailer in central Florida. Kate lived in that tiny abode with her mother, grandmother and grandfather, Kate's father leaving when she was five. Her grandpa Jack taught her the fine sport of billiards in the recreation hall of the trailer court.
Grandpa Jack was a scoundrel in his younger days, making a living as pool shark; he taught Katherine well. Katherine's grandpa Jack loved Kate more than anything in the world and died when Kate was thirteen followed by Kate's mother who was killed by a bus walking to work when Kate was fifteen.
An honor student, Kate dropped out of school to work full time so that she could care for her grandmother. At nineteen, Kate married a man almost twenty years her senior and moved with him to New York.
Kate's ex-husband, the passive aggressive wimp, ruined her finances and reputation. He left her nothing but the clothes on her back when the house from the divorce settlement literally burned to the ground destroying all of the contents.
The fire marshal deemed the suspicious fire as arson. Katherine was the prime suspect in the ensuing police investigation that led to a grand jury hearing and subsequent bench trial culminating in a plea deal out of desperation.
Kate's husband, Thomas, is no doubt laughing his proverbial ass off in his Villa in Costa Rica with his new young bride who would be Thomas's age of 55 subtract 40.
Thomas planned everything with the precision of an atomic clock. He took three mortgages plus several loans against the house forging Kate's name. He opened and charged to the max on multiple credit cards letting the balances accumulate interest and late payments ruining her credit.
To make matters worse, the home owners insurance was canceled without her knowledge a week before the fire was deliberately set. Katherine was in Florida on a bi-yearly trip visiting with her Grandmother in the nursing home.
Kate's bank accounts were frozen shortly after the fire by the Internal Revenue Service as were her credit cards. To compound her problems, Kate received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service demanding payment for 7 years of unpaid joint taxes; her husband is untouchable in Costa Rica or so he thought.
Their story begins in Jim's driveway the day after Katherine was sentenced to five years probation.
Jim was rebuilding the engine of his restored 1969 Plymouth Road Runner and the silence of no Kate to complain was bliss to his ears.
Kate or Katherine, whatever you prefer was in one dandy of a mess. Jim saw an opportunity to have a clean house not to mention a piece of ass on the side.
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"So let me get this straight, Kate, as a condition of your probation you are required to have a place to live with valid mailing address."
"We have been neighbors for 10 years, Jim. I know we have our differences but I have always thought of you as a good man. Your business sponsors several youth sport teams and you coach your own little league team. You have such a big house and it is just you living here."
"Why should I, Kate? You and I never got along, but assuming I agreed. I will wash your mouth out with soap if you talk to me the way you did to your husband.
Afterward you wouldn't be able to sit for a week when I finished spanking your tight little ass. You are hard on the ears but nice on the eyes, pretty Kate.
How many times have you complained to me for working on my cars on my own property, or because the leaves from my oak trees blew in your yard, an act of nature; or because I threw snow on your yard with my snow blower....ridiculous nonsense like that? Your bull shit list of complaints over the years has been endless."
"I know I went a little overboard as a neighborhood activist but if you don't agree the alternative for me is prison. I can't find a job yet to suit my station. I promise you won't even know I'm around."
"Suit your station? That's a good one, Kate" Jim said laughing. You could tell from the look on her face that Katherine wasn't accustomed to being laughed at.
"I'll be dipped, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha," Jim continued to laugh at her, "Suits your station, ha, ha, ha, ha...make yourself useful your Eminence. Please hand me the 3/4" open end box wrench in the third drawer from the top of the tool chest behind you."
Kate was thinking, 'You are a homely unfeeling crude beast, Jim Brady. I paid you a compliment about youth sports and you basically being a good man and I meant it.....if I were your wife indeed; fat chance of that ever happening.
Just try washing my mouth out with soap and spanking my bottom you brutish ogre. You are nothing but a junk man trying to live above your station in life with the biggest house on the street and it's not fair.
I never graduated high school but neither did you Mr. Junk Man.' (a wrong assumption on Kate's part) 'To think I have sunk so low that I have to come begging to you for a place to live.'
But in the end what could she do. Kate swallowed her pride and said, "You have to believe me Jim I didn't do it. I'm not that kind of person."
"I listened to you talk for the past hour. Are you done?"
"Yes, I..." Jim interrupted, "Good, now shut your yap and listen for a change.
I believe you pretty Kate," Jim said wiping his hands on a shop towel as he walked over to her, "It is an election year and the district attorney saw a slam dunk case when he brought your case quickly to trial. You were distraught having lost everything and took a plea deal.
You can be a first class bitch do you know that Ms. self-appointed neighborhood activist. I often got the impression you think your shit doesn't stink.
Don't mistake for a minute I don't know you look down on me. I'm just a common uneducated junk man to you with dirty hands who has his junk cars cluttering up an otherwise compliant neighborhood.
At times you can be an insufferable shrew. That being said I do not doubt your veracity or misguided good intentions.
I don't believe you did it. I believe you are basically a good person who likes to put on airs.
I also think it is a shame your so called friends and compliant neighbors, the one's you managed to bully, turned their backs on you the way they did.
But lucky me; I'm your last choice. How sad is that.
In your defense your husband did you wrong. Thomas wasn't much of a man to begin with so there is no great loss there. Why an obviously intelligent woman like you would marry a man who was so much older is beyond me. You have every legal right to divorce him, however, Thomas has no moral right to do what he did to you.
Like it or not the courts decide divorce settlements no matter the outcome. You didn't do too badly there until your ex-husband got his revenge. I believe he is behind everything.
It is said that women marry men thinking that they can change them. That is why I never married.
