Published in Pusuit Magazine: Toilet Woman

    When I got the divorce papers for service on the eighty year old wife, I could see drama spelled out on the pages like
    a sarcastic soap opera, featuring the kind of characters you’d see in a film like Raising Arizona. The real-life setting
    was just as disturbing — a rural double-wide trailer, someone on medication and an angry son protecting his elderly
    mother. This was going to be a long day.

    At this point in my life, I had been serving papers for over twelve years and knew what I was in for. The client would
    have to write a bigger check. Otherwise, I wasn’t doing the job. Fortunately, they agreed and off I went to find the
    trailer, marked only on a map with a circle along some dirt road near the freeway. Yeah right. Even my topographically
    programmed GPS wasn’t going to help me with this one.

    Armed with the divorce papers, my legally concealed handgun, a fully charged cell phone and a piece of spearmint
    gum — I began driving up and down a major U.S. Highway in a very rural part of an un-named California county.

    “Where is this place?” I peered through my truck’s passenger window for an unmarked dirt trail which would lead into
    the scrub of the high desert and wondered why I had an ache in the pit of my stomach.

    “And why am I doing this again?”