A Quarter of My Life
written by: Tori Chambers
Hiya. My name is Thea Cornwall. I’m a young, modern woman, living in the wilds of Los Angeles. It’s a long way from home, in Bangor, Maine. That’s where Mom and Dad live. Trust me, a whole continent isn’t nearly enough distance from them for me. My sister Lacy won’t even talk to them anymore. She calls them Gary and Arlene these days, or the Parental Units. It’s a strained relationship, to say the least.
Lacy is persona non grata with them over her career choice. That is, if you can consider exotic dancing a career. Once Dad threw me out over one of my boyfriends, it was just a hop, skip, and a three thousand mile flight to Lacy’s apartment.
Lacy holds down two jobs: dancing and detective work. Well, it’s kind of a detective agency. Sort of. Maybe. She works for the erudite Professor Quentin Broomfield as an operative, and so do I.
Not that Lacy and I are in sync on everything, and while I have your attention, I just have to get this off my chest:
LACY CORNWALL IS A DOPE
There, I said it. I didn’t want to say it, but my sister pissed me off way too much yesterday.
We went out for ice cream, see? It was a hot day and the A/C broke in the apartment. While we were waiting for this hunky repairman to fix the problem, we decided ice cream is always the solution for too much heat. So we wanted to go get some. We flipped a coin and ended up taking my Honda Civic instead of Lacy’s Jaguar. She was noticeably relieved.
You have to understand how Lacy feels about that car. She calls it “Licious.” Some women name their breasts, Lacy names her car. (Well, she names her breasts too, but that’s another story. You don’t want to know what she calls her vagina.)
If every man in her life left her, all at once, as long as she still had that car, she’d survive. She’d play a drama queen to the hilt (‘I can’t live without ______. He’s the only man for me.’), but secretly she’d be thinking, Better him than Licious. So it was important to her we take my five year old, second-hand Honda with the cracked headlight instead of her 6-month old Jaguar XJ with all the options. God forbid one drop of ice cream should hit the carefully Scotchguarded fabric of her Holy Bucket Seats.
If we had to drive my car, I insisted she pay for the ice cream. Seems only fair to me. Besides, Quentin pays her twice what I make (“She’s been here longer,” he insists) and she’s not exactly making chump-change at the topless bar, either.
Some nights, I suspect, she slips away from the apartment and goes to her secret money bin where she loves to dive around in her money like a porpoise, and burrow through it like a gopher, and toss it up and let it hit her on the head.
But I digress…
Lacy agreed to pay for the ice cream and we ended up choosing from among 31 very cool, cold, frosty flavors. I was a happy camper and we were bringing home a couple of pints, plus an extra one for the hunky repairman, in case he wanted to stick around and test out the A/C. Just a thought.
Anyway, we were about halfway home when Lacy suddenly yelled “Thea, stop!”
I hit the brakes like there’s an adorable two-year-old playing in the road. We were on a subdivision street, so thank God no one was behind us. After peeling ourselves and three pints of now ruined ice cream off my windshield, I looked at my sister like the evil woman she is. I love ice cream, but I’m not going to lick it off my dashboard.
“What was that for?” I demanded.
Lacy was panicked. “My quarter. I used my quarter to pay for this.”
“What quarter?”
“My two-headed quarter.”
I’m not stupid. I immediately knew what was going on. “You have a two-headed quarter?”
“Yeah.”
“How many times,” I asked, “do you use that two-headed quarter when we flip to choose vehicles?”
“Sometimes.”
“Like when?”
“Like about half the time.”
I’m pissed. “Only half?”
“Sometimes you insist on heads,” Lacy explained, “so I have a two-tailed quarter, too.”
“How much does a two-headed quarter cost?” That’s not germane to the subject at hand, but even though I’m pissed, I’m still curious.
“That one cost me $7.99 at a magic shop. The two-tailed one was $9.99.”
“Why is a two-tailed quarter worth more than a two-headed one?”
“How the hell should I know?” Lacy yelled. “Do I look like the freakin’ San Francisco Mint?”
“Okay,” I said, my anger just beneath the surface, “this is what we’re going to do… We’re going back to the ice cream parlor.”
“Check.”
“We’re going to get your stupid quarter.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you’re going to replace every freakin’ drop of the ice cream now leaking into my defroster vents.”
“Ye – Hey, wait a minute. Why am I paying for ice cream twice? You’re the one who slammed on the brakes.”
“Well, you’re the one who yelled like I was about to run smack into a wall.”
“I said ‘stop’. I didn’t say ‘pump on your brakes as hard as you can and see if you can make the tires squeal’.”
I twisted my hands around the steering wheel like it was her neck. “Lacy, ice cream has just officially screwed up the ventilation system in my car. Be thankful I don’t stuff you down into the vents to go after it.”
“Gee, touchy much?”
“It’s a four-mile walk home from here,” I said. “In this heat and those heels, you’re not gonna make it.”
“All right, I’ll buy some more ice cream.”
“Thank you!”
“You’re welcome!”
So it was back to the ice cream parlor. Lacy tried flirting with the young guy behind the counter, but he was obviously intimidated by the slutty blonde in Daisy Dukes and 6-inch heels. So I had to spend five minutes of my life flirting with a nerdy seventeen year old so he’d agree to open the register and look through his quarters. We didn’t find it. As I said, it was a hot day and there had been a lot of people in the place. Chances are, someone got it with their change.
We headed toward home quarter-less. The first batch of ice cream did a number on my car’s A/C, so it was a very hot ride home. The ice cream melted on the way.
Lacy was more upset over that freakin’ quarter than she was over the ice cream. I was pissed about my car and the fact the hunky repairman would probably be finished and gone by the time we got back. This meant I wouldn’t get a chance to flirt with someone more worthwhile than some pimply-faced high school kid whose claim to fame was a summer job scooping frozen yogurt.
Just sayin’.
Well, when we got home, the apartment was cool, Mr. Repairman was gone, the bill was on the kitchen counter, and lying in the candy dish on the coffee table was Lacy’s freakin’ two-headed quarter. I was pissed!
“Look at the bright side,” Lacy said, handing me my pint of now-melted ice cream.
I grabbed it and dug into the container, pulling up a soupy spoonful of rocky road. “What’s the bright side?”
“That means I used a real quarter for the toss. I won, fair and square.”
LACY CORNWALL IS A DOPE!
Regards,
Thea
- A Quarter of My Life - May 28, 2025
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