Saturday, March 24, 2012

Hctib Afonos!

2. 

First of all, the size of my breasts is of no concern to anyone reading my story.  That being said, I should second that my ass is indeed fantastic.  

(Oh, so you can talk about your ass, but I can't?  You know, I said it was nice, not fantastic.  That's not fair, that's just - ow! Hctib afonos!

You've really got to learn how to swear properly if you're going to try to do so.

The thing I should mention is I don't know how to tell a good story.  I'm great at the beginning and end bits, but the meat of it is where I lose my way.  Details.  They turn fuzzy.  So if I get this wrong, I'm sure that someone will interject with corrections.  Or opinions.  Some of which will be embellished or just plain stupid.

(Pffffffffttttt!)

Oh sure, scratch yourself while you're at it, why don't you?  Animal.  

(Obvious statement.  Tiny human.)

Flea-ridden dog.

(You should bathe me more often.)

Pervert.

(This isn't going anywhere, you know.  You're just putting off telling them the truth.  Go on.  Tell them.)

Alright, alright.  Fine.  The reason we're telling you our story is because, well, someone needs to know what we've done.  It's not every day that you get to save the world.  Let alone two of them.  Since we might not succeed, someone needs to know what happened.  Then maybe you can get us out of the mess we're in.  And it's all his fault, by the way, if we screw it up.  

(Oh, thanks a lot, lady.)

You're welcome.

You should know that he's gotten most of it right so far.  I am bored.  I love what I do for a living.  I recruit managers for hotels around the country, but the office where I work is toxic and bland.  Adam, the boss, and founder of the company, is an ancient man who thinks that the 1970s was our peak decade.  Anything that has happened after 1979 is unimportant.  He wears plaid suits, pointed leather shoes, and has no idea how to use 'the Google.'  He treats the office like its his kingdom.  We've caught him referencing himself as Adam the Great, but I have another name for him.  Adam the Perv.  He spends most of his days in the office shining his shoes until he swears that he can see his face reflecting back at him.  I think it's so he can look up our blouses, as opposed to down them, you know, to keep things fresh.  

The Office Manager, Alice, sounds like Darth Vader.  She smokes five packs a day.  Alice decorates her desk with pictures of her overfed pet rats.  She has six of them and has named them all after Russian politicians.  Ironically, Putin is the largest of them.

Richard is another one of the recruiters.  We should be on the same team, but we're not.  Richard is one of those office mates who greets you with a smile if he wants something from you and otherwise ignores you as though you were a potted plant.  He sings Broadway tunes at an alarmingly constant rate.  He has a fantastic voice, but is bitter because his musical career has not garnered much attention.  Apart from a Huggies commercial, where he played the chubby balding father, his career consists mostly of community musicals and plays.  He's in rehearsals for The Music Man now.  It's the eighth time he's performed it.  This time it's in Wilmette.  If I have to hear him sing "Seventy-Six Trombones" one more time, I really am going to burn the building down.

(Me too.  I've caught her singing it to herself.  Richard may have a handsome voice, but this lady cannot carry a tune.  Trust me.  She goes from sounding pretty to croaking and squeaking in zero to five.)

Thanks.  The only saving grace, aside from loving my clients, is Anne.  She's the other recruiter in our office.  She just moved to Minnesota and is working out of her home.  Which mostly translates to her porch from May - September and her study during the colder months.  Anne is nurturing.  Holistic.  If doctors opened her up, they'd find she has a heart too big to fit in her chest.  Her backbone is larger than you think it would be when you first meet her.  She has the kind of courage that creeps up on you slowly, and doesn't melt away at the first sign of trouble.  Anne and my clients are the only reasons why I am still working for Adam the Perv.

Brian, on the other hand, is a very sweet, very kind man.  He's an Accountant for one of the Big Four companies and works in an office in a shiny glass building downtown in Chicago's Loop.  He loves it.  Numbers are his crack.  We met at a coffee shop and have been politely dating each other for a few months now.  Wait, make that six months.  Brian is safe.  I guess that's why I was initially attracted to him.  Predictable.  It's not fair though.  I can't date a man just because I know when he'll call me.  I plan on ending it with him this weekend.  Really, I mean it.

(Hmph, you know, I bet you've planned on dumping him for the last 10 weekends.  Really.)

But this weekend I am recommitted to doing so.  Tomorrow.  Tomorrow I will be the evil dumper.  Tonight I will have wine.

(And meet me.  Don't forget about me.)

Right.  I guess we should move this along.  Back to the garage.  Where did you leave off?

(Will you just let them watch what happens, already?)


Right, got it.

"What the fuck?"










Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Let Me Tell You A Story

1.

Rory rolls her shoulders to ease the tension.  Shit, this traffic sucks.  A common thought during her daily commute to and from the office.  24.4 miles each way.  Or 25.4, depending on the route she takes.  This is a superfluous detail.  She's full of them.  

6.8 miles left.  Bruce Springsteen croons out a song via her cell phone.  Brian.  She lets him go to voicemail.

Her hair is neither blonde nor brown, neither short nor long and is often stuck in a ponytail, if it's not worn down.  She never took the time to figure out how to do more than a ponytail, bun or braid.  Much to her regret, she does not live next to a fabulous neighbor who happens to be a stylist.  Apparently life is not a rom-com full of convenient characters and plots.  

Rory stares at her reflection in the mirror and notes that her eyes are darker than usual, reflecting her mood.  Her eyes are blue, darker than her mother's, with less of a light and more of a swirl of blues and greens.  She admits to liking them.  They soften when she is happy, but are otherwise like the onset of a storm when clouds darken.  She studies them while she waits at a red light on the corner of you don't care and neither do I.  Time for a change, she thinks.  She needs to shift her focus from one to the other.  A new job, a new man, a new haircut.  Something more than that.  But what? 

Green means go. 

Her relationship with Brian has lasted for a few months, but it's too vanilla for her.  It's not his fault.  He's nice enough.  Midwestern, with all of the wholesome suburban qualities the term implies.  This is the problem.  At thirty plus a year, nice enough is not cutting it anymore.  

Fingers tap against the sides of the steering wheel.  The September sky is perfect tonight.  She loves a good sunset.  The moon is hungry tonight; bright orange and huge.  Is it more like a blood red?  Rory blinks and rubs her eyes, deciding they must be dry and tired. 

At a second light, she inches forward and squints, concentrating on the pigments of the harvest moon.  Red.  Too bad the camera's in the trunk.  Maybe the moon will wait for her to get home before it fully rises and changes colors again.  She hasn't seen a red moon since last year when Henry died.  The thought distracts her until the blue Audi behind her reminds Rory of where she is.  The man gestures in a rude manner like an Italian as he passes her.  "From New York," she notes aloud to herself, "Figures."  She waves back at him.  Kill them with kindness, she reminds herself and smiles casually at him as she drives alongside his car.  The Audi guy looks like a fat George Clooney.  Rory pictures him sidling up to a bar in the Gold Coast, preying on hot young blondes.  At the next light his eyes linger on her and he studies her breasts.  Fat Clooney winks at Rory.  She ignores him and rolls the windows up with a decisive tap of her finger.  

Rory shifts in her seat and scrolls aloud through the laundry list of tasks to complete before climbing into bed.  I won't bore you with it but it does include both laundry and dishes.

Rory is a mostly good person.  Typically good-natured.  Usually friendly.  Feisty, witty, intelligent, funny.  Lately on edge and numbed by boredom.  Too sedated and unchallenged.  That's going to change in about 3.6 miles.  She has no clue what's going to happen to her, but I do.  She'll say later that everything that happened was my fault.  I say I was the best thing to happen to her.  That's humans for you.  Complain, complain, com - right, better pay attention here, it's not easy to hold on to a moving car and it's hard for me to focus with these eyes.  Although I can tell you that Fat Clooney has good taste in breasts.  She has a great ass too, especially for a short white gal.

Ouch!  Quick kicking me, lady.  I'm just saying.

2.4 miles and her mood starts to improve as she passes Victorians and Colonials.  Pajamas!  Dinner!  Modern Family!  She's thinking about the weekend ahead of her.  Dump Brian, schedule drinks with Alex and Georgia for sympathy and reassurance, cut hair, bike 50 miles.   Maybe take Monday off to shop for new clothes and revamp that old profile on desperatesingles.com.

Shit!  She just kicked me.  You're lucky I have six of those, lady.

I should get to the point.

Rory lives in the suburbs of Chicago.  It's got houses, Protestant churches, schools, shops to buy overpriced art and vases, a few restaurants, and two bars.  Whatever, it's got stuff.  Do you really care about these details?  It's actually pretty enough, I guess.  The town she lives in is idyllic for parents but teenagers call it Borington.  Unless you're popping out babies there's not much for you to do here.  Still, it's where she grew up, so she bought a house once she had enough money saved.  Apparently you need to kill trees to turn them into paper to buy a home.  This world kills everything, even plants.  You people need to work out your aggression.  Anyways, her family is gone now, but she decided to stay.

Finally!  She pulls up to her house.  Two stories with a garage and a neat yard that she pays a landscaping crew to mow.  One of them is teaching her Spanish.  She's not picking up on it very fast.  She just added a fence for a future dog.  It's light blue.  The house, not the fence.  Not that this matters. 

She opens her garage and pulls into it, parks the car, turns it off, and emits a happy sigh.  She cracks her neck twice, lugs her briefcase and purse over her shoulder, and slips one foot out of the car but stops when she hears a sound.  A soft whimper, like an animal.  Or a small child.  She's not sure.  It sounds like the it's coming from under her car.  Another sound.  No, it's coming from above.  Her eyes widen as she looks up and says, "What the fuck?" 

Get ready for it, this is where I enter.  Now it gets good. 

Glass breaks.