All Good Things Die in L.A.

Anhoni Patel

Copyright Anhoni Patel 2009

Published at Smashwords

CHAPTER 1

The one and only bathroom at Mama’s had been occupied for nearly thirty minutes. Suzanne Kim checked her watch. She needed to throw up her breakfast and she needed to do it now.

She could envision the calories from her meal (four buttermilk pancakes, a side of bacon, two biscuits covered in gravy, a heaping mound of grits and a Danish) rushing into her body like a S.W.A.T team trying to find little crevices in which to set up camp. They would have riot gear, they would have shields, and she would never be able to get them out. She squeezed the tops of her thighs like bags of white bread hoping nothing was getting absorbed.

She turned in her seat to see if the bathroom was still occupied. It was. A line was starting to form outside the door.

She had been a steady regular for the last three years and had heard about Mama’s from a friend whose parents had a liquor store down the street. Suzanne had been born and bred in L.A. and even though she had been to this particular part of Hollywood many times, she had never noticed the restaurant. When she was first brought here for lunch, her initial instinct was to turn around and walk out. It looked liked a complete dump; there were bars on all the windows and the décor could best be described as dingy. But after only one forkful of the garlic-mashed potatoes, all of her concerns had fled. From that moment on, she could not resist anything on the menu. Three years later and she still felt right at home.