Chapter 4
The interaction was on repeat in Vanessa’s mind—reeling and rewinding, flashing back and forth in time. How could she have been so stupid? Why didn’t she check that her shoes were tied before she walked in? And more to the point, why was her shoe untied, anyway? Never in her life had that happened to her, the knot coming apart as she walked. Why then? Why at that time?
Vanessa couldn’t get him out of her head: that stunning man, his kindness, his quiet and smoldering sex appeal. It was disgraceful enough to have ruined that woman’s dress, but to make such a mistake in front of such a powerhouse of a man? The ordeal felt to Vanessa like a mosquito bite: painful and irritating, yet unable to leave alone.
Anxiety drummed through her when she thought about what she’d tell her boss. She was already on thin ice at work. Her personal life had spilled over into her performance on the job on numerous occasions, and Vanessa could feel the patience of her managers slipping more and more every shift. Each walk across the parking lot to the restaurant felt like she was walking to her own execution. How could she tell her supervisor that she’d dropped the entire tray of food to be delivered? That she’d spilled salad dressing all over a woman’s dress? And then, worst of all, that the CEO of the company gave her money for this blunder?
These were where her thoughts went—wild and torrential, unable to be contained—on the bus ride back to the restaurant from her delivery. She took the longer route, the one with a few different transfers, just to elongate her shift, to make this leisurely time of midday privacy bend in the light. Vanessa could feel the stress humming through her, but she simply had to sigh and put her fears to bed. It’s counterproductive to worry, she told herself. You already have so many things to worry about. Don’t add another one to the list.
Today was just a short shift anyway. Her sister’s appointment was at two o’clock in the afternoon, and Vanessa needed time to take the bus across town, pick Emma up early from kindergarten, and take the bus in another direction across the suburb to the doctor’s office. What should be a fifteen-minute drive turns into a two-hour debacle of transfers, waiting times, and constant stops. This is life without a car: it feels like you’re always in transit, but getting there is a sluggish lurch through time.
To make the appointment on time, Vanessa would have to leave work by noon. It was 11:45 now, and the bus was nearing the restaurant. Just 15 more minutes, Vanessa told herself. Just 15 minutes, and then it’ll be over until tomorrow. The time will fly. It wasn’t that the job itself was difficult, or even completely unenjoyable, for that matter. It was the people. Vanessa’s co-workers were harsh and unfriendly, closed-off and uninviting. They looked at her as if she had a disease, as if they’d catch some sort of plague just by breathing the same air. Her manager, too, was draconian and exacting—always chiding Vanessa on even the smallest slipups. She didn’t belong there. She knew it, her co-workers knew it, her boss knew it. And yet, Vanessa couldn’t afford to quit, and the manager couldn’t find a valid enough reason to fire her.
Vanessa walked back into work, puffed up by the miniature pep talk she gave herself on the bus. It was 11:55 now. All Vanessa had to do was walk in the restaurant, piddle with something for a few minutes to look busy, then leave. Only five minutes, she thought again to herself, walking across the foyer and through the dining room of the restaurant, where she was immediately face-to-face with her manager, a hard-faced, stern-looking woman named Christina. “Come to the office,” Christina quipped, shooting daggers of anxiety through Vanessa. What was happening? Was she in trouble? Christina couldn’t have possibly known about the delivery. There’s no way. Fear flitted through Vanessa’s mind as she followed wordlessly into the office behind Christina, awaiting whatever axe was about to swing down on her.
“I just got a call from a woman named Desiree,” Christina said sharply after closing the door to the broom-closet-turned-office-space in the back corner of the restaurant. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
The clock was ticking on the wall behind Christina, the hands dancing with each other in the solid and unending march of time. Vanessa needed to leave in exactly one minute. Tension gripped her. What if she couldn’t get out of work in time? If she missed even one bus connection, the entire afternoon would be ruined. Emma’s doctors were clear about their schedules: no latecomers to any appointment. If Vanessa couldn’t get Emma to her appointment on time, it would be canceled and rescheduled for weeks in the future. Everything hinged on this moment, on Vanessa being able to leave work, catch her buses, and get Emma to the doctor for her evaluation. That was all that mattered.
“Do you have anything you want to tell me?” Christina demanded.
Vanessa gulped, glaring at the clock behind her manager. “No,” she said, deciding that whatever punishment she received was going to have to happen. She could only stand here for thirty-seven more seconds until it was too late. Vanessa didn’t care if Christina yelled at her, gave her an undesirable shift, cut her hours, or wrote her up. None of that mattered. Only Emma mattered. Only this evaluation.
Christina sighed. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?”
Vanessa glared at her, willing the time to stop. “Christina, there’s nothing to say. The delivery went fine. I don’t know who this Desiree person is. I don’t know what she told you that makes you think I did something, but you’ve got to believe me.”
Christina locked eyes with Vanessa, sighing again. “You’re lying to me,” she sliced through the air with a voice like razor blades. “Desiree is the personal secretary to the CEO of Kümertech. That’s our largest and most loyal customer. Do you know how many years we’ve been delivering to them?” Christina shouted at Vanessa, who watched in horror as the clock struck 12:01.
“No, but Christina, you’ve got to believe me,” Vanessa stammered, noting each passing second with agony. “Whatever she said I did, she’s lying!”
“She wouldn’t lie to us. She’s been ordering catering from us for four years,” Christina snapped back, getting in Vanessa’s face. “You, however, have only been working here for a few months. I never should have hired you. You’re lazy, you’re inconsistent with your work, your mind is always elsewhere. You’re always asking to leave early, and you never work the night shift. What good are you? What else could be so important to you? Why even have a job if you’re not going to give it your all?”
Vanessa held back tears. She never wanted to tell her manager about the untimely death of her parents, that she’d had to care for Emma, that she dropped out of law school to work in a restaurant because it was her only choice. Vanessa didn’t want the pity. She didn’t want the scarlet letter of weakness. She didn’t want to be The Girl With The Dead Parents. And yet, the pressure mounted up around her; suffocating her with the vapor of demand in everyday life. One day, in a swirl of tension, she cracked. The truth came bleeding out, confession by confession, to her manager’s face. Christina glazed over with nonchalant indifference.
Today, and every day since she’d revealed her plights to her manager, there was no winning in Vanessa’s situation. She’d either be the girl everyone pitied, or the girl everyone considered lazy.
“Christina,” she sniffled, the mental dam blocking her tears on the edge of bursting, “you know my situation. How could you say I’m lazy? Don’t you understand how hard each day is for me?” It was no use to hide the tremors that snaked through her vocal folds at this point. She was collapsing again; keeling over in the ocean of her own anguish.
“Vanessa,” sighed Christina. “It’s hard. I know. I understand that your parents died last year, that you are the sole caretaker and guardian of your little sister, that you are doing it all on your own. I get it,” she lectured. “But there comes a point in time when you have to just move on. You have to grow up, you have to do what’s required of you. You can’t play the victim forever. It’s not the company’s responsibility to cater to you. You’re here to work.” Her words were jagged and blistering in their cruelty.
Vanessa couldn’t hear anymore. Her mind was melding shut with the glue of this malice that Christina spewed so effortlessly at her. It was now or never to get Emma to her appointment on time. That was the only thing that mattered.
“My shift is over,” Vanessa said, forlornly looking at the clock. 12:05. The bus comes at 12:06, on the dot. “I have to go. Right now,” she said, her voice quavering.
“Of course,” Christina roared back at her. “When things get hard, you just want to leave. Let me tell you something, Vanessa. You’re not cut out for this job. Go ahead, but don’t bother coming back. We can find someone much less lazy and more personable than you. Get out.”
Vanessa didn’t have time to process what she’d just heard. What mattered most was utilizing the minute or so that she did have, the precious time that she needed to catch this first bus from work. It ran every fifteen minutes, meaning that if she missed this one, she’d most certainly miss her transfers across town. There was no choice but to make it on time. Emma’s appointment would come and go if she couldn’t manage to take this specific bus.
Running maniacally, Vanessa could see the bus as it rolled to the small glass hut at the stop across the street. She could hear the hissing of the door opening. She took in the rumbling of the engine as it sat idle for a few seconds, passengers creeping on and scanning their tickets. Cars were racing across the four lanes of traffic, so fast and unstoppable that Vanessa couldn’t manage to run across to the bus stop. She clenched her fists and waited with billowing impatience for the light to turn red, for the walk sign to illuminate, for even the tiniest beacon of good luck. Maybe the card reader on the bus would malfunction. Maybe an elderly person would move slowly getting on board, causing the bus driver to wait until everyone was seated to pull away. Maybe a line of passengers snaked along the side of the bus that Vanessa couldn’t see.
As Vanessa wrapped herself in fantasy, hoping and wishing that she could magically transport herself across the street, she heard the grumble of an engine waking from a temporary nap. The doors whirred to a close and the bus began to shake with motion. Cars slowed to a halt on the street and the walk sign lit itself, but it was already too late. The bus—Vanessa’s one hope toward a possible reprieve of her financial woes—was rolling off, away, into the distance.
Sighing, Vanessa’s eyesight began to blur. Tears bloomed in her eyes, clouding everything around her in nondescript, unshakable despair. She missed the bus. She’d miss the appointment. She’d have to shoulder the already impossible burden of her little sister’s medication for even longer while she waited for the appointment to be rescheduled. Now, because of all of this—all of the weight she had to carry, all of the responsibilities that she couldn’t handle alone—Vanessa was out of a job.
Fishing around in her pocket for her phone, Vanessa reached into the back pocket of her unwashed jeans, where the receipt from last night still sat. She fumbled with the buttons on her phone and called the number as cars began to speed up around her, jetting off under the trail of green lights on the street. The air smelled like gasoline, and it felt like she was breathing in red dust from the tires of the cars.
“Talisha?” Vanessa asked into the phone, her voice shaking with desperation. “It’s Vanessa.”