"Take your silver spoon...dig your grave," one of the most prophetic lyrics ever spoken rolled from Stevie Nicks' lips and out the speakers of Leslie Carmen's portable stereo as she piddled around her kitchen listening to the oldies station one hot, June Saturday afternoon.
Considering the amount of money her Husband, Lyle, had literally inhaled over the past two decades on his Coke habit, it made Leslie want to spit on the pile of bills and past due notices weighing down a large portion of the desk to her right. Knowing where he kept his stash of nose candy down in his man-cave, Leslie was often tempted to go down there and flush it, but she knew he would just waste that much more of the family's already limited funds buying some more.
Stepping up to the sink so she could see her Husband and their two daughters lounging out by the backyard pool through the small kitchen window, Leslie sighed in a deep and bitter breath knowing her Husband's affinity for blow was sadly far from the most depressing thing going on in her life.
"Fiddling while Rome burns!!" she couldn't help but think as she watched Lyle sit half asleep in one of the beach chairs, a scotch on the rocks in his hand, looking like a sunburned reject from a Vegas mob movie under the withering midday Sun.
Under normal circumstances, the image Leslie could see out of her kitchen window would have made a perfect family picture postcard. Rich and successful Husband sitting completely content by his luxurious swimming pool, flanked by his two beautiful daughters as the Vegas skyline radiated off in the distance.
"Oh, if the people looking at that postcard only looked a little closer," Leslie cringed under her breath, rubbing the dish towel in her right hand anxiously across the edge of the sink even though there wasn't a drop of moisture there to pick up.
Lyle Carmen had made a great deal of money early on in their marriage through several business deals (some shady and some legit). Through the late 90's and 2000's he'd really dove headlong into the house-flipping craze and had made a killing. That was until the recession hit, and in Nevada it hit with super, extra ferocity right between the eyes.
To be frank, money had been so easy for Lyle to make, it had really stripped him of much of his work ethic, and add in several lawsuits several business partners had on him and the occasional inquiry from the IRS, and the family's financial reservoir was draining quickly. Add in one daughter in college and one getting ready to start, along with her Husband's drug habit, and it was no wonder the past year had played fits on Leslie's sanity.
A 19 year old waitress on the strip when she'd met Lyle, Leslie had every reason to believe she'd never have to work another day in her life when he married her. Now she had to bide her time between trying to run the household, raise her two girls and work full time as a shift manager at a buffet restaurant in town.
The job was a piss stream on an inferno when it came to catching up on the family's bills, but it did at least get Leslie out of the house, and her mind away from the deteriorating situation at home a couple of hours each day.
Leslie could live with her Husband's increasingly apathetic state. He was a grown man, 11 years her senior and even though they were still bonded together legally, she'd given up the ghost of living happily ever after. Going broke and having to move out of her house didn't frighten Leslie either. She'd grown up in a single parent home, and knew what it was like to have to struggle to make due, so unlike many lifelong affluent women in her spot, that element didn't scare her.
The one constant that kept Leslie Carmen focused on trying to make things work out were her two daughters. Unfortunately, the spoiled apathy they'd inherited from their Father was a much stronger pull than the common sense Leslie tried to preach.
Twenty-two year old Candace was sitting by the pool to Lyle's right as Leslie stared with dreary reflection out the window. The girl was also seven months pregnant and wouldn't be going back to UNLV in the Fall to finish her Senior year because of some of the choices she'd made.
To Lyle's left sat Courtney, who'd just turned 18. The typical entitled youngest daughter, Courtney was going to have to take the local junior college route if she wanted to go to a four year school. With several black marks on her juvenile record, Leslie really thought by the time the girl turned 18 and got a fresh start, things would be alright. Unfortunately, there was a natural rebellion that bled from the girl because the princess she'd been raised to be as a pre-teen struggled to find her niche in a world where Mom and Dad suddenly didn't have an endless checkbook to fund her vanity.
Being attractive and emotionally needy attracted a fair amount of attention in a town like Vegas, and Leslie lived in mortal fear that her two Daughters were going to self destruct before they really got a fair shot as adults. Candace was pregnant and Courtney had just gotten her second DUI since turning 18, forcing both to live at home. The Carmen house was already a powder keg, and with each passing day Leslie cowered, waiting for the final match to be struck. Little did she know that the knock on the front door that mercifully stirred her from that miserable, kitchen window daydream would be the flint.
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Tossing the dish towel she'd been using to absorb her nervous energy on the counter before turning to go and answer the door, Leslie racked her brain trying to figure out who it might be.
"It's Saturday, so it better not be a bill collector," she snapped to herself as she made her way through the living room.
It most likely wasn't one of her neighbors either given the fact that most of the people Leslie had grown close to on the block had already moved for the same reasons the Carmen's were on the verge of.