Work smarter, not harder. That's the difference between the people who get what they want and those who watch others get what they want from their 9-5 desks. I would never be trapped in a cubicle; hell, you could never trap me anywhere. Even in kindergarten, when I got sent to the timeout chair, the teacher couldn't get me in the chair. She'd chase me around the classroom until I wore her out. It was the first and last time I'd be sent to the timeout chair. Like I said, work smarter, not harder.

I felt bad for people with normal jobs, sitting down all day, living the same day over and over again for twenty to thirty years before they retire and die or whatever comes first. Being a P.I. was the loophole of all loopholes. No boring meetings, no passive-aggressive coworkers who pretend they didn't steal the lunch you left in the office fridge, and no two days were alike. I am not saying every day was like an episode of Law and Order, but some action was better than no action.

Most clients were former model-turned-yoga housewives who suspected their borderline geriatric husbands of cheating. 9 out of 10 times, they were. I didn't understand why these beautiful women were so upset. If I were them, I'd be celebrating my freedom. It must be Stockholm Syndrome. Or those old wall street geezers must remind them of their fathers in some twisted Freudian way. I don't know. Whatever it is, it's always weird, which is better than boring.

Sometimes I had clients come to me whose husbands were having affairs with other clients. You'd think those cases would be awkward, but it couldn't be further from the truth. Those were my favorite cases because going to work during those weeks was like having a front-row seat on a juicy soap opera.

Of course, I had to play the part of a caring confidant; in my faux leather crossbody bag, I have a box of tissues for each betrayed botoxed beauty, a notepad, and my tape recorder. The only thing missing; a big bowl of popcorn.

That was as interesting as it got for me. I was satisfied.

Blue always seemed to think I wasn't, though. She came over after the stampedes in the streets died down. No one has found an Emerson ticket yet; we wouldn't know if anyone has anyways. Not until all ten are found. I wasn't going to look until the hysteria died down.

Back to Blue, it's not that I wasn't satisfied, but Blue would insist that I should be out there solving murders like a real female Sherlock Holmes. I'd roll my eyes and tell her for the thousandth time that the big boys at the police station didn't want to play nice. They disliked sharing the sandbox, so they kicked me out and made it a boys club. Typical.

They blackballed me from any missing persons cases without ever giving me a shot to prove myself. They assumed I couldn't handle those cases because of my menstrual cycle. Well, they didn't say that to my face, but that's the kind of thing I guarantee you'd hear them say if you were a fly on the wall.

The only missing "persons" cases they allowed were missing animals. Which was embarrassing. But money is money. In the beginning, I was furious, and so was Blue. Blue pushed me to prove myself as a valuable asset to the Police by solving a missing person's case submitted to the Police faster than them.

The problem is the Police have friends everywhere. They can take credit for all your work and threaten to throw you in jail and end your entire career. I found out the hard way, and thank god I did my research on the Chief of Police, their lead detective, the mayor, and, just in case, the district attorney. People say keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer, but I say keep your friends close and keep incriminating information on your enemies closer.

If not working missing persons and murder cases meant I'd make more money than those misogynistic pigs, I was more than okay with that. I followed Blue's brown eyes, scanned the four small corners of my dirty motel room, and saw her disbelief form in real-time.

I continued to dig myself into a hole.

"Every time I check my bank account and see that number, a number I earned all on my own, it is like I am telling every man who has doubted me to suck it."

She laughed, and her freckled button nose crinkled; I leaned over and kissed her strawberry lip-smacker-covered lips. She pulled away and sat up in my unstable, squeaking bed, crossing her arms and pouting. She only gets like this when I am not taking her seriously.

"When are you going to wake up?" she said.

"What are you talking about?". I asked like I was shocked, but I wasn't.

"You let these guys push you around, steal business from you, waste your potential. And you think you're doing well? Look around, Rem; you're living in a shithole. If you were making money, you could afford your own place but won't do anything about it. You're the only person I know who has a chance of finding a ticket, but yet you haven't even started looking; no, you've been sitting here doing nothing, wasting your chance at 50 million dollars. Wasting your chance to get out of here, to change. Not just for you, but for us..".

She reached over to the mildew-smelling wooden nightstand, grabbed her clothes, and rushed to put them on. I'd never seen a Blue dress that fast, but she was in her low-rise skinny jeans and a tight, hardy tee shirt in two minutes. Even her Black high-top Chuck Taylors were laced up and double-knotted.

"Where are you going?" I knew, but I couldn't say it out loud. She stared at me one last time from the door frame and sighed.

"The Remmy I fell in love with wouldn't sit around and wait for something to happen to her; she'd get out there and take it. But maybe the Remmy I fell in love with was all talk. Maybe that's all she ever was. Maybe one day, if you find that Remmy, tell her to give me a call."

And as she shut the door to my motel room, she closed the door on us.

*******

She's right; I hate that she's right. I hate that it took her leaving for me to see that. But it's too late; she's gone. It's been three days of Mcdonalds, Chinese Takeout, and Seinfeld reruns. Three days of wallowing in this crusty motel room. Having nothing to do other than think about how much I hated my job, no one took me seriously, and I lost the love of my life. I need to wake up, not for me, but for Blue. Through hurting myself, I hurt her. I need to get my shit together now. Work smarter, not harder. What's the fastest way to change my entire life? Oh, I know, win 50 million dollars.

I need to find one of these goddamn tickets fast, and the clock is ticking. For all I know, there could only be one ticket left. I look through my clients, and I see a Mrs. Ashley Roberts, married to Steven Roberts, also known as the former chief financial officer for Emerson Co.

Let the games begin.