Member-only story
Girlie — Part 1 of 4
My one and only dog-sitting gig
It was the early Eighties. I had spent the better part of the previous year hitchhiking around the country. I was starting to get tired of that and wanted to stay in one place for awhile. There was a two-inch thick manuscript in my backpack that wasn’t getting any thicker on the road. I needed some stability so I could finish that novel.
One day I found myself in Palm Springs, California. I happened to notice an old motel that rented rooms by the week. I didn’t have much money but I had enough to pay for having a roof over my head for three weeks. When I hitchhiked out of southern Florida my general goal was to head to the Pacific Ocean. I almost made it. I was close. The important thing, though, was getting back to work on that damn novel.
I figured that if I could find a job I could extend those three weeks into a long enough time to finish the novel then head the rest of the way to the ocean. So I spent most of my first week walking around Palm Springs looking for work but no one would hire me. Then I blew off job hunting for a day and sat in a reclining lawn chair at the motel rereading my novel. I thought that if I reread from the beginning I would get back in the flow of it and then just continue where I left off.
