Rich

Shellie was driving down the palm tree lined drive of some neighborhood in Beverly Hills, marveling at the mansions, wondering to herself where does all this money come from? She hasn’t met that many rich people even though she lives in Los Angeles. She craned her neck to look at the replica of a Venus de Milo at one home’s front door. While at some level she found all this opulence wasteful and disgusting, she knew this is what she wanted. Shellie didn’t think her corporate job would pay enough ever to achieve this, unless she dedicated herself to the cause. She needed to be a vice president, at least. An innate goal started forming in the back of her mind that she would one day drive a car, far better than her Toyota, up the driveway of one of these mansions. Her mansion. She’d comment to her neighbor about how his new Mercedes looked like a Jeep and how Jeep owners would never understand the difference between that and a Mercedes. Her head cocked back, as if she would cackle about her socially inappropriate joke, unconsciously caught up in the vision of this conversation between two future rich people.

Then a squirrel landed on her car, fully splayed out, cracking her windshield. Their eyes met. She felt its clear disdain.