Rebuilding Sabrina, part 1

I stood for a moment outside of Sabrina’s place. Took one last drag from my cigarette, and then stubbed it in the vase of the potted plant by the door. I blew the smoke out as I rang the doorbell.
It took her a couple of minutes. Then Sabrina opened the door and stood there, staring at me.
“What the fuck happened?” I asked.
She was a mess. Her bleached blond curls were a tangle, pulled back in a sort of bundle with a fuzzy rubber band. She was wearing a baggy sweatshirt and baggier trainer pants, both a sickly green color that reflected in her face, giving her the waxy complexion of a zombie.
Reddened eyes, the obvious result of an intense crying session.
“Come in,” she whispered.
We went through her small hall, and into her obsessively neat parlor. I sat on the couch, crossing my legs, and Sabrina perched on the edge of a stuffed chair.
The sweatshirt sleeves came down over her hands, but I could still see the reddened tips of her fingers, her rough bitten fingernails.
“What the hell happened, Sabrina?” I asked again.

We had known each other for over thirty years. BBF since high school, long hours spent gossiping, bitching, shopping and all that. Then we lost sight of each other, after I left school “to pursue other interests”, as I said on my CV. We heard from each other for Christmas, or for birthdays. And one every three or four years Sabrina would resurface, her life in shambles, and scream for help.
Just like now.
She took a long breath. “Bruno left me,” she said.
Bingo.
“Good riddance,” I said. “He was a prick, and you are better off alone.”
She stared at me, reddened eyes wide, mouth open. “Rose!”
“What?”
“I love him!”
I chuckled. “Then you are stupid,” I said. I took the cigarettes from my handbag and put one between my lips. I offered her the pack.
“I’d rather you wouldn’t,” she said, shaking her head.
I turned and I blew smoke away from her. “C’mon.”
She had been a social smoker back in high school, but had later gone all anti- in the following years.
“And anyway,” I went on, “Bruno is a cunt. He treated you like dirt, he bossed you around and he has the intellectual appeal of a box of spam.”
I had often wondered how an intelligent woman like Sabrina could always end up paired off with some brain-dead macho ape. She had collected a string through the years, and it had always ended in grief.
”And I bet he wasn’t even a good lay,” I said. I looked around for an ashtray, and finding none, I took my portable one from the bag, and placed it on the coffee table in front of me.
“Bruno was the man of my life,” she hiccuped.
I had met him only once. He kept staring at my tits and had treated Sabrina like he was not there. “Then it’s time you changed your life, sister.”
She looked down on her hands, twisting her fingers.
“You are nasty!” she said. “Why are you so nasty to me?”
“Because I hate to see you in this state,” I said. How many times had we had this conversation in the last thirty years? “This is not you. This is not my old friend. I can’t stand to see you like this. And I hate the idea that you are crying your eyes out when you should have a party instead.”
“Bruno is a very successful businessman,” she said. “He is solid and comfortable—”
“Like a bungalow. Christ, sis, listen to yourself! Are you telling me that you fell for his money and his lifestyle? What are you, a trophy wife? The man can’t walk and chew gum at the same time or he’d stumble—”
She chuckled, despite herself. She forced herself to go back to her grieving expression.
“Or bite his tongue,” I finished.
We sat in silence for two minutes. I squashed my cigarette in the bowl of the portable ashtray and shifted closer to her.
“What the hell happened to you, sister?” I asked.
We had been sisters back in high school. Having fun, dancing and taking days off to go sunbathe, or gatecrash some poolside party in the neighborhood.
She just shook her head.
“You hate me,” she said.
“I don’t hate you!”
She shrugged, and sort of crumpled, her back bent, her arms falling along her sides. “Everybody does. Everybody gossips, and tells lies and—”
This was crazier than usual.
I placed my hand on her knee. She jerked away.
“What lies?”
“Like you didn’t know,” she said morosely.
“Hello? It’s me, Rose. You remember? Rose on the Run, you called me. What the fuck are you talking about?”
She shrugged again.
I leaned closer. “Tell me what happened.”

[written and posted without revision ... what the fuck, I'm back in busines]