FICTION - First Place

       It was providence.  Things like that happened to Kit.  Like finding a $20 bill in the gutter or an ATM card carelessly left in the bank slot or perfectly good food discarded on a café table.
She’d been sitting there on a bench, watching the waves, minding her own business.  It was dusk, and the beach was almost empty except for a few die-hards who swam without lifeguards.  The ocean was rough and gray all the way to the horizon. Late summer tourists swarmed the boardwalk, hanging on to the last shred of the weekend.
She couldn’t help overhearing their conversation. It wasn’t like she was spying on purpose.  If the two couples were loud and standing right next to her, that wasn’t her problem.
      The business card fluttered out of his wallet when he handed one to the other man.
“We’ll be gone for a month.  I’ll call you when we get back.” He didn’t notice the card that landed on the boardwalk, so Kit scooped it up and palmed it as the couples walked away.  She went back to staring at the water until she was sure they were gone.
     Gone for a month.  Imagine just falling into her lap like that.  It was hard to believe her luck.  She figured it was in her ancestry, in her Irish blood.  Her Gran came from County Clare.  Kit, Katherine, was named after the old woman.  She’d lived with her after her mother left.  Old Katherine’s luck was well known in the community.  She picked winning lottery numbers, knew the best horses at the track, and found four leafed clovers everywhere.  If the omens were bad, she warned the neighbors not to travel. She sold her homemade lucky charm bags to the tourists.
      Kit looked to her for tricks, but there didn’t seem to be any.  Either you had the luck or you didn’t.
      After she died, three years ago, Kit was able to stay in the apartment for a few months before the money ran out.  Then she was on her own.
      Grifting was easier than she expected.  There were always marks in a beach town.  She pulled the short count on shop girls employed for the summer, picked pockets and, if she was really low on cash, begged.  Her stories varied.  Sometimes she had been separated from her parents and needed money to call them.  Other times she needed money for gas so she could get back home.  Her Irish luck stayed with her.  Once in a while she got pulled in by an over zealous cop, but the ones who knew her mostly left her alone.She read the card under a street lamp.  The address was out over the route 50 bridge, away from the ocean.  The name on the card listed ARTIST next to it.
      Kit spent the night in a cabana under the boardwalk, and in the morning hitched a ride from a trucker going to Ocean City.  She walked along the highway until she came to the tall old trees, then took the side road. The clay along the road was muddy, so she cut through the undergrowth.  She figured there were deer living there and rabbits and squirrels.  A creek branched out from the bay through a salt marsh.  Her hair tangled in branches and her sweatshirt caught on wild rose thorns.  Ahead of her she saw a house in the pale sunshine.
      It was one story, spread out, hugging the ground.  She could see a circle of driveway, with no cars, a low roofline and a covered porch.  There were flowers everywhere, birdhouses and a little garden shed.  Nobody seemed to be there.  She checked the address on the card and on the mailbox to be sure, then went around the back to the deck.  Big windows with a sliding door overlooked the creek. 
Kit shaded her eyes and peered through the window.  A kitchen opened up to a cozy room with a fireplace.  The lock was easy to pick and she walked inside.
She moved through the rooms, opening cupboards, taking a beer from the refrigerator, popping the top as she walked.  The beds were smoothed and quiet.  She looked at figurines, furniture, the tiled bathrooms, the dim closets. She found a studio, set up with an easel and canvases stacked along the walls. 
      The first thing she did was strip off her clothes and take a bath.  She scrubbed the sand off her scalp and dried with a soft white towel.  
     Living in the house was bliss.  The birds woke her, she ate on the deck, drank coffee while watching herons land on the creek and painted in the afternoons.  She’d never known she could paint.  There were art books everywhere; brushes, watercolors, basic instructions.  She looked at the changing light and captured what she could in the soft greens, yellows and blues.  At first the paintings were crude and awkward.  But as she concentrated and kept working, they became more delicate.
     One day she walked around to the front of the house and almost skidded to a stop.  A car stood in the driveway.  It wasn’t often she panicked, but she figured the owners had come back and all her possessions were in the house.  Her clothes, her backpack and her cache of money.  She didn’t fancy being slapped into a jail cell.
     But the woman stood at the front door, ringing the bell.  Kit braced herself to keep her knees from shaking.
     “Hello”, she called.
     “I’m looking for an artist who was recommended to me.  A painter.  I wonder if I have the right address?”
     Kit had set up the easel so she could sketch the house.  She wanted the drawing for herself, for when she left, as a keepsake.  The woman saw it and picked it up before Kit could stop her.
      “Obviously I do.”  She smiled at Kit.  “Do you have more?  I want it for my living room and the colors have to be just right.”
      She sold two paintings.  It was another stroke of luck, that woman thinking she was the artist who lived there.  She laughed out loud as she counted the money.  That night she celebrated with a bottle of the owner’s best wine.
     He broke in during the night.  She never even heard him.  The wine really knocked her out and she’d slept in her clothes, sprawled on the bed, only to be jolted awake by his hand clamped over her mouth.
     “If you don’t scream, I’ll let you go.”
      Kit’s eyes flew open and for a few seconds she couldn’t breathe.  He looked about her age, skinny, with long dark hair.  The smell of him was like the marshes, damp and mildewed.
     Somehow she managed to nod and he took his hand away.  She gasped for air.
     “All I want is some food and money.”
     She backed up to the head of the bed.  It didn’t appear he had a weapon. “Okay, okay.  There’s food in the kitchen.” 
     He spotted her money from the paintings on the bedside table. “This will do.”  He grabbed it.  “Now get the food.”
     In the kitchen, she threw together whatever she could find into a plastic bag.  The owners had left the cupboards and the freezer stocked.  When the man spotted eggs, he ordered her to cook them for him and while he ate, she made coffee.  She needed to stop shaking.
      “You rich girls don’t have a care in the world, do you?”He shoved the plate away and pulled out a cigarette.  “Plenty of food and money thrown around your bedroom.  No clue, no fucking clue how most people struggle.”
    Kit just nodded. In all her years alone, she’d never been raped or molested.  “My parents are due home anytime.  You’d better go.”
    He eyed her sideways, like a wolf.  “Wait a minute. I know you.  Yeah, I’ve seen you before.” He circled her, checking out his prey. Then he grabbed her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “You’re on the take.  You’re that Irish chick.  I was there when you got busted in Rehoboth.”
     She pulled away from him.  “Just get out.  I don’t want any trouble.”
     He sat back down at the table and grinned. “You broke in, right?  What a sweet ride.”
He laughed so hard he started coughing. “And I thought you lived here!”
     She picked up the bag of food and tossed it at him. “Get the hell out.”
     “Or what?  You’ll call the cops?” He laughed again and this time Kit came at him with fists flying.  She punched him and kicked his shins. He was stronger than she was and he pushed her against the wall. “A real tiger.  I might have known, with that red hair.”
     She struggled but he held her arms and finally she relaxed and he let her go. “You don’t have to be such a shit!” She rubbed her wrists.  “The owners will be back soon and I have to split. Take whatever you want.  I don’t care.”
      In a way she did care.  She’d grown fond of the furniture, the soft towels, the clean beds.  And of the paintings she’d done.  It was as if she really did live there, like a normal person with a normal life. 
     He took a shower while she stuffed food and her clothes  into her backpack.  She found cord and tied up her paintings and took the watercolors and some brushes then walked through the house one last time, imprinting it in her mind so she wouldn’t forget how it looked, how it smelled and the view of the creek and the back yard.  Tears filled her eyes and she angrily swiped them away.  Kit prided herself on the fact that she didn’t cry.  She wasn’t about to start now.
     He came into the kitchen rubbing his hair.
     “I’m going.”  Kit swallowed hard.  The words stuck in her throat.
     “What’s the hurry?  Have a beer before you go.”
      They sat on the deck.  Kit sipped the beer slowly reluctant to leave.  She had no real plan as to where to go next.  Back to Ocean City, maybe, at least for the night.
    “You wanna hook up for a while?” he asked.
     “With you?  What for?”
      “Ya know, look out for each other.  That kinda thing.”
     Kit shook her head.  “I take care of myself.  I’m not lookin for a partner.”
    “You have a room?  No, I didn’t think so.  Well I do and you can stay there.”
     She considered the offer, remembering what it was like trying to find a dry place in the rain.  And it would soon be winter.
     “What’s in it for you?  I’m not interested in a boyfriend.”
     “Nothin like that.  Just friends. Wadda ya say?”  He reached in his pocket.  “Here’s your cash.  I won’t ask where it came from.”
      Kit took the money.  She wondered how her paintings looked in that woman’s house, hanging on a wall where people would see them.  People with money and jobs and families.
     She forced herself to stand up, to walk down the steps, to not look back.  She heard his footsteps behind her, but she didn’t answer when he called to her.  The path she took when she came to the house led her back into the undergrowth, away from the highway, deeper into the thicket of trees.  She heard him calling but she didn’t answer and when it got dark she curled up in a nest of her clothes.
      She fell asleep hearing Gran’s voice warning her that men took the luck from women, drained it away until there was nothing left. Her father had done that to her mother when Kit was a little girl.  No man was going to do that to her.
      The next day she thumbed a ride and rode with the trucker as far as he would take her.  It didn’t really matter where.

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