Forevermore

Author's Note: Everyone in this story is over 18.

I have to give some credit to the book, "Mrs. Poe" by Lynn Cullen. If that ending hadn't been so disappointing, I wouldn't have felt the need. I definitely have a bit of a thing for Edgar Allan Poe.

"But I was never really trying to kill myself," Belinda's voice had gone up a few decibels. Stuart gave her that deadpan look, like take your quasi crazy and shove it up your ass, lady. We got real problems to deal with here. "This was all just a big mistake," she continued after she'd quieted down.

There was no reason to get the nutcases all riled up. After all, phrases like "kill myself" were taken real fucking seriously at places like the Mountain Manor Treatment Center. Belinda had learned that no one in rehab had the slightest fucking bit of a sense of humor. She'd gotten zero laughs in the last thirty days. This Stuart, the fucking head of the rehab, hadn't ever cracked one smile in all of their conversations. Not one.

Stuart nodded as if he understood but he kept at it, in that same monotone. "I understand that you may think it wasn't a suicide attempt, Belinda. Plenty of addicts die from unintentional overdoses. I'm sure that you can see why a bottle of vodka and a handful of Xanax is going to be viewed as a serious attempt. That's not just a few beers after work."

"Well I am a writer," Belinda cracked a grin and continued in her sarcastic tone. "A bottle of vodka after a day of writing sounds about right. I mean all the greats were drunks."

Again, not even a smile. No trace of laughter, nothing in the eyes, Stuart just didn't think she was funny. Belinda was used to men that liked either her wits or her tits, and Stuart didn't seem to be impressed with either. Belinda was in new, uncomfortable territory.

At least she was leaving. Yes sir, after this exit interview, she signed on the dotted line. Yup, Belinda Roberts is a-okay, totally cured, absolutely no suicidal thoughts for this girl. She'd never see them again. Not Stuart or anyone else from this mental ward that had cost her fifty grand for a month of bullshit like "let go and let God" and "one day at a time." Who wrote this shit?

"I hope you've learned some alternative coping mechanisms during your time here," Stuart added. He handed her the heavy pen with Mountain Manor Treatment Center written in blue on the side.

Belinda wanted to make wisecrack about how she'd spent fifty grand and all she got was this shitty pen. According to the therapy group leader, Belinda used humor to sidestep talking about her feelings.

That would lead right into the next inappropriate joke. Something about how she could use this pen to punch a hole in her throat and bleed out right here at his desk. All the crimson rivulets of pissed off and bitter would drip down his files and encyclopedias and medical textbooks. She stopped herself though. See, she had learned something from her stay. Belinda took the pen and nodded like a dutiful child.

"Here, you need to sign here," Stuart indicated one line highlighted in yellow.

"And initial here."

"Another signature," Stuart pointed to another section that was written in red. It seemed to scream at her in a voice that only Belinda heard. It yelled, "You need help. You faked your way through rehab. You'll really die next time."

Blah blah blah.

Belinda signed quickly and sloppily and then, it hit her. It hit her like a ton of bricks right in the gut and her hand trembled and the pen was far too heavy all of a sudden. She'd signed Belinda White. Her goddamn right hand hadn't gotten the news that her husband had dumped her for a newer, blonder, sluttier, skinnier model.

That was the reason for the bottle of vodka and the Xanax that had started this whole roller coaster. Belinda's chest hurt, right at the center, right in the middle of her broken heart.

God she needed a drink.

"Is that all?" she asked, her voice on the ragged edge of tears that her eyes wouldn't let her have.

"Well, and this." Stuart handed her the white square of paper.

It was a prescription for lithium, 600 milligrams twice a day; to be taken with food, not vodka. Lithium was to even out the rough edges, to take the bumps out of the ride. Belinda had tried to tell them all since day one that the roller coaster was part of the creative personality. Where would Van Gogh be if he hadn't occasionally wanted to cut off an ear? If all great artists were on Prozac or Lithium, would art even exist? Poetry? Sculpture? The culture of the entire human race would be boiled down to the sudoku puzzles and finger paint.

"Okay," Belinda nodded and took the prescription like a sheep. That's what they wanted, for everyone to get along and be joiners.

"And find a meeting close by. Our graduates who attend thirty meetings in thirty days have the highest rate of sustained sobriety."

"Sure," Belinda gave him the flat smile. The closed mouth smile. The I'm just agreeing with you so that you'll fuck off smile. The one that all women had perfected by a certain time in their lives. Because women can't just say fuck off or men will say that they're crazy, Belinda thought to herself. Just like right now.

Stuart straightened the paperwork and closed the file. Belinda imagined that her file would live somewhere in a dark cabinet and get shifted to a box in the basement at some point. It would live and gather dust and crumble. One day, no one would be able to make out the words that said Belinda Roberts went a little bit insane when the man she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with pulled the rug out from underneath her.

"Let's go get your things," Stuart said as he rose from the desk and gestured toward the door.

"Okay," Belinda nodded. Her things. Her things were in a few storage containers on the other side of the country. What she'd brought here was the basics for a nutcase to check in. Everything had fit inside a duffel bag. Seven pants, seven shirts. No underwear because what was the point? Deodorant that she didn't wear because again, what was the point?

As they went through the bag, Belinda nodded. Check to all the above and finally, the gray haired nurse with the stern face and the kitty cat shirt handed over her cell phone that they'd confiscated that first night.

And with the phone, Belinda Roberts had come back to life.

She took the cell phone and slipped it into the back pocket of her True Religion jeans. All the notifications, the bells and whistles vibrated on her ass now. All the shit that she'd missed the last thirty days of hugs and Lorazepam. All the Pink Floyd "Comfortably Numb" and orange Jello and that fucking latch hook rug that she'd made. All the while, life had still gone on.

No one waved goodbye so Belinda took her duffel bag and trudged outside. The sky was intensely blue, that deep, crisp blue that was a breathtaking backdrop to the very beginning of fall. The leaves hadn't begun to turn yet the week after Labor Day but they were just gold on the edges. It was a beautiful day for leaving rehab, she said to herself in italics. Belinda saw the words typed across the blank page in her brain.

See, she narrated like a writer, Belinda thought with a wry smile as the cab pulled up and the driver popped the trunk. Now if she could just write. The last two books; the last two fucking books and then she'd be free.

***

"I thought you quit smoking," Shelly Tolliver, the agent, chirped in Belinda's ear. Damn, she forgot to do that whole click, inhale, exhale thing with her mouth away from the phone.

"Didn't take," Belinda said in a downtrodden voice. It was a lie. She loved smoking and she never intended to quit. She glanced over at her hotel mini fridge bourbon bottles and was fairly certain that she could guzzle those down unbeknownst to Shelly. She'd get drunk quietly.

"Where are you staying?" her agent wanted to know.

"The Ivy," Belinda told her. She looked out the window and watched the happy couples three stories down eat lunch on the veranda under the white awnings. Fuckers. She hated them. Ever since she'd come home to Steven and that tramp in her hot tub, she grit her teeth and growled a little when she saw people paired off.

"When are you coming back, hun?"

She meant back to California, back to La La Land. "I don't know," Belinda told her agent as she turned the cap on the miniature bourbon. "Steven wanted the house. He bought me out, so," Belinda ended it with a long, exhausted sigh. So he could move the aspiring actress yoga instructor in right away. So that they could get started immediately on impregnating her while her almost teenage eggs were still full of baby juice.

"Aw, well, hey you don't need that much room now, right? You need a bachelorette pad. Something with a doorman and one of those infinity pools," Shelly tried to make it all sunshine and lollipops.

Belinda finished her starter bottle and puffed her cigarette down to the filter. She tried not to be cynical. She tried not to think about how Shelly had about four hundred thousand reasons to keep Belinda in a positive frame of mind. That would be the commission next year that Shelly would be out if Belinda really offed herself.

"Right? Just a hoe down on the low down," Belinda cracked up at her own joke and fished a new cigarette out of her pack. She'd already fucked it up and smoked in the room. She had smoked right under the sign that said there was a $200 charge for smoking in the room. There, Belinda puffed out a cloud of smoke on the actual sign. That's what I think about your rules, she grinned. "Actually, I was thinking about just getting a place here," Belinda said with a long stretch like a contented, half tipsy cat.

She wasn't from California. As little as she had to do with her family, she was from here. The family had all left the city. They had seeped into the suburbs like makeup into wrinkles but they were around. Not like she'd ever call them.

"In Baltimore?" Shelly's voice rose, incredulous. Of course, the agent only considered New York as an occasional place to be if not in L.A. Nothing else mattered so it didn't exist. "Well, if it helps you write, sweetie, then you just do you."

"Yeah definitely," Belinda said and flicked her ash. "I'm actually going to look at a couple of places tomorrow. Hopefully get settled here pretty quick." She left that purposefully vague. She might need a few excuses from the writer's excuse handbook considering that right now, she had diddly squat.

Bupkis.

"Keep me posted. Oh, and I need to go over the schedule with you for some media appearances, so we should talk later this week."

Media appearances, Belinda rolled her eyes and puffed. "Um hmm, hey, I have another call coming in," Belinda lied and pressed the red button. She tossed the cell phone on the square ottoman that she used for a desk slash drink station. Shelly didn't want to crack the whip, given Belinda's fragile state. But media appearances meant hurry the fuck up and write something worth talking about. Something that they could turn into a movie quickly would be even better.

A trilogy. That would give Shelly wet panties.

She didn't need Belinda for media appearances though, she needed Fantasia Fox.

Fucking Fantasia. If Belinda had been honest at rehab, she really wasn't trying to commit suicide. As fucked up as her life was, Belinda puffed like a dragon through her nostrils, she actually had a blast for almost all of it. Ex-husband not included.

She had, however. been trying to murder Fantasia Fox. That was the god's honest truth but if she'd gotten into that whole debate, someone would have stuck her in the loony bin for sure. Fantasia had to go. Just thinking about her made Belinda all sweaty and anxious.

A nice, hot bath, that's what she needed.

Belinda put out her cigarette and headed to the bathroom. She pushed the lever down in the tub and dumped the little sample bottle of shampoo into the running water. She pulled her tee shirt off and tossed it to the floor and followed suit with her black stretch pants. Belinda was still commando and she liked this whole no underwear routine. She had put on a bra because her breasts bounced too much in the tee shirt. Belinda was scared that they'd sag even more than they had. Her poor, neglected tits.

Belinda reached around her back and flicked open the hooks. She watched in the mirror as the underwire shifted and her breasts broke free. Yikes. She looked like shit, Belinda decided and shook her head. Her black hair was greasy and tangled and hung almost to her waist like a thicket of thorny vines. She needed a haircut. Her girl in Beverly Hills would whip her into shape but if her hair looked fabulous and the rest of her looked like a ghoul, that didn't help.

She had gotten skinny in rehab and that was nice. Skinny but skinny fat, Belinda decided as she grabbed a loose hunk of thigh and wiggled it. Of course, exercise had never been her thing and getting dumped and going to rehab had been perfectly legitimate excuses not to.

She was even more pale. Her skin was the color of chalk except for the obvious blue, sometimes purple, twisted lines of veins that marked her body like a treasure map.

Belinda pushed the skin on her forehead up, her fingers magically erased the worry lines. She moved down to cup her full breasts into her hands. She pushed them up, where they used to reside when she was a girl. That was back when she'd first become Fantasia Fox. It was only a decade, right? Then why did Belinda feel like Fantasia had been around longer than Belinda herself sometimes?

She dipped her toes in the tub and then sank down underneath the bubbles. It wasn't her six person party tub at what was now the new Mrs. White's house but it sure beat the communal showers at rehab. The bubbles covered her body and Belinda appreciated that she didn't have to look at herself. Right now that was just one more problem she didn't want to think about.

She really should be grateful, Belinda told herself, as she closed her eyes and felt the bubbles intrude into every crease. Fantasia had made her rich and being rich was great. It paid for things like drugs. And rehab. But then again, if she could kill off Fantasia and be done with her once and for all, then would she really need the drugs? Or rehab?

Fantasia Fox had been born innocently enough. Belinda had been a starving artist. She had been a new graduate; wet behind the ears and desperate to get a writing job instead of the steady stream of waitressing jobs that she'd had. Someone had told her that new romance writers could make up to fifty thousand dollars a book. One book. At that time, fifty thousand dollars had sounded like a million to struggling Belinda Roberts. She had to succeed. She'd been the first of her family to graduate from college

So one book had turned into two and two had turned into a series. After the series, Belinda had proposed something a little more realistic. She had wanted her romance novels to have spicy sex and strong heroines who didn't want to chuck it all away for a husband.

Mr. Morse, her old publisher, had told her how stupid she was. He'd growled at her with his cigar clamped between his teeth. "That's not Fantasia's audience. You'll kill the golden goose."

"But women don't just want to read this blather!" Belinda had tossed her hands up in the air. "They want to run the show. They want to be independent. They care about other things than just landing a husband. And sometimes," Belinda had added with a smirk, "they just want to fuck."

Mr. Morse had chuckled. "Dearie, you have no idea what you're talking about. Women don't want reality. Your readers want the thrill of the chase. The perfect man. The elusive man of their dreams. The man that will make everything perfect. They don't want a real man or real life. Or real sex," he'd glared at her.

Belinda remembered that she'd pouted about it but she'd resigned herself over to it just the same. The money was too good. Okay, more date raping, misogynistic, selfish, handsome, rich assholes. Fine. She had kept at it and after fifteen books, Paramount had bought the movie rights to one. She had gone from upper middle class to rich overnight. Nouveau riche but Belinda had discovered it was the riche part that opened all the doors.

That was when she'd met a movie producer named Steven White. The real life kind of date raping, misogynistic, selfish, handsome, rich asshole that made Belinda weak in the knees, just like one of Fantasia's stupid fluffer characters.

She'd simultaneously proven Mr. Morse right and totally fucked herself in one move. After the movie, Fantasia sold even more books. By then she had a whole machine built up around her. Belinda was a person but Fantasia was a brand. She had an agent, a publicist, someone did her social media accounts and someone else handled her book signings. She had lawyers and a graphic design team and someone ran Fantasia's website; a site that Belinda had never been on but apparently was a huge hit with her fans.

It was a machine that ate nonstop, morning, noon and night. It sucked the life out of her and now all Belinda wanted to do was to kill Fantasia Fox. She wanted to burn it all to the ground and in her best pyrotechnic fantasies, she watched it burn and danced in the shadows. She wanted to dance and cavort naked by the light of the fire.

And then, when there was nothing left but ashes, she'd go off somewhere where she was just a girl again, a nobody. A nerdy, pale girl with big blue eyes and unruly, jet black hair. Belinda would wear her hair in a bun and she'd have her nerd glasses on once more. She just wanted to be that girl who wore cardigans and corduroy pants and sat in a cubicle at the back of the library. She wanted to get lost in fantasy books from another world. In those books, girls were on adventures. They rode dragons and cast spells and summoned demons and looked for buried treasures. They didn't care about men. They didn't even like boys, they liked quests.

Most of all, she wanted to write something with heart while she still had one.

The only problem now was that she hadn't written a word, not one word, since before rehab. Two more Fantasia Fox books and she was out. Her contract would be fulfilled and then they could send her checks to Timbuktu, or Baltimore. Or wherever. But she had to write the two books before she got her freedom and so far, Belinda couldn't even write a thank you note.

That was why she wanted to murder Fantasia.

***

"So is it just you, or are you going to have roommates?" the girl from the property management company asked as she checked off boxes on the form.

Belinda felt free to roll her eyes because she wore sunglasses. She wore sunglasses inside on an overcast day because she was terribly hungover. She had drank all of the booze in her mini fridge and popped a couple of last minute lithiums. Apparently, thirty days of being clean and sober had made her liver all hoity toity, like it didn't need to play along anymore. Additionally, lithium wasn't a hangover cure. The little, white pills were not so great at smoothing out the rough edges of a shitty, drum beating through your skull headache.

But beer was.

"No, no roommates. Just me." She shrugged to the leasing agent.

"Any cats or dogs?"

"Nope."

"Any exotic pets?"

Fuck, no, she was thirty-six, going to be thirty-seven without one goddamn attachment in the world. No husband, no kids, not even a fucking chinchilla. She was a total loser, alright? Belinda just smiled and shook her head no.

They saw the first condo and Belinda said no on principle. Everything was shades of gray. It had no soul. Sure, it came furnished but it was Ikea bullshit furniture. Belinda would rather just stay at the Ivy and argue with the manager about the definition of smoking.