Chapter Twenty-Five

“I thought I should be the first to tell you,” Sara announced to me.

She had hunted me down where I was working in the maintenance closet which had sort of become my unofficial office. I didn’t mind. The smell of the off-brand, all-natural orange scented cleaner they used, until customers complained about it being too pungent, was nice, and it warded off the maintenance staff from lighting up a joint in there which half of them (including their manager) did until I showed up. I’m sure the insurance company wouldn’t have been too keen if one of them was injured while changing one of the light bulbs because they were higher than a kite.

Sara stood in the door, arms crossed and hips akimbo.

“Tell me what?” I asked.

I played dumb, even though I was almost completely certain of what was coming. I was pretty sure that Sara was about to tell me something that I most definitely did not want to hear.

The day had already been crummy enough. The swan song of winter was a truly ugly spectacle to behold. Outside, empty bottles that had once been filled with sports drinks littered the ash-gray snow. The nearby plasma donation center was the culprit; they gave out sports drinks for free, as many as the donors could drink and carry from their appointment. As such, the sidewalks and streets surrounding the donation center were covered with empty bottles for miles.

On that particular morning, when all the trash had become visible after a brief thaw brought on by a heat wave, the empty sports drink bottles had become the most prevalent among their trashy brethren. They were exposed like gemstones incorporated into rock as the snow that had accumulated and iced over them over the course of the winter proceeded to melt and then refreeze in rapid succession as the temperature yo-yo’d in a manner that I had been told was common for that time of the year.

Oh well. At least the donors were well hydrated. I say this because a lot of them were alcoholics, which is why they turned to donating their plasma for money in the first place.

On top of the snow encrusted garbage, I was pretty sure I was coming down with something. I woke up that morning and my throat felt as if it had rolled through a bush of nettles. My head was groggy, and my muscles hurt. I wanted to call in sick for that day and, under any other circumstances, I would have. However, I was too far behind in the process of implementing the plan for improvement for the Fresh Face Co-Op. So far behind, in fact, that I was really beginning to feel like a loser.

This is all to say that the day had started out on a low note, and it didn’t look like things were going to get much better from where I was sitting.

“I’ve given Jaime my two weeks’ notice,” Sara said, snapping me about of my reverie about litter, waking up sick and the general lousiness of what my life was at that point.

This was just as I suspected and even though it didn’t surprise me, it brought me down a little. Sara had to go sooner or later. It was fate; she was simply not meant for the Fresh Face Co-Op in either qualifications or temperament. The fact that she had stuck around for so long in the first place was frankly shocking.

“Congratulations!” I said. “Though, I have to say, I’m sorry to see you go. It’s not going to be the same here without you.”

Indeed. The Fresh Face Co-Op was about to diminish in what little quality it had with Sara gone. I knew that the moment she announced her imminent departure.

“You’re not the only one who’s sorry,” Sara said with a sly smile. “Jaime practically begged me not to go.”

I slid back in the swivel chair that I had swiped from the upstairs office. Given Jaime’s history of trying to get Sara on the list of employees culled as part of my plan, it was frankly shocking that she would try to keep her around, at least it was shocking that she would do such a thing so vocally.

“Don’t act surprised,” Sara said with a supercilious tone. “I know she was always making noises about wanting to let me go. Don’t pretend like she wasn’t; I have my ears to the ground. But the truth is that now she’s going to have to hire at least three people to make up for all the shifts I covered on a weekly basis.”

If anyone other than Sara had uttered those words, it would have come off as incredibly arrogant. But the words were coming from Sara and if she had personally assessed the situation as anything less than that, she would either be showing disgustingly false modesty or she would be undervaluing herself to the point where I would consider her pathological and suggest some form of counseling.

“I’m glad you know that,” I said. “It’s going to be really, really, difficult to find people to fill in the gap you leave.”

“Yeah,” said Sara. “Good luck with that.”

The full realization of all the additional work Sara’s departure would entail caused me to draw a beleaguered hand to my forehead. This was going to make things hard, very, very, hard. At that point, I threw professionalism out the window. I didn’t matter; Sara was leaving in a matter of two weeks and she already knew what a poop show the place was. It was no use pretending otherwise.

“That’s right!” I moaned as I drew my hands over my already sunken pallor. “Jaime does not like setting up interviews.”

God forbid Jaime go through the effort of scrolling through all the new applications even though employee finding websites all over the web were bringing them in every day. She did not like to have to make the phone calls, set up the schedule and then actually show up to ask the questions written down for her as part of the interview.

This meant that the process of hiring new employees for the front end was left to me, then. Luckily, I had just implemented an increased pay rate for new hires. Perhaps that would draw in applicants that were more competent than the standard batch the Fresh Face Co-Op received in the past. All the same, it was going to be so, so, hard to find anyone as experienced and as diligent as Sara, even under the best funded of circumstances.

“So, what brought this on?” I asked. “Did you find a new job?”

Sara shook her head.

“No,” she said. “In fact, I’m sort of winging it from here. I’ve decided to move out of the city.”

“To where?” I asked.

“To New York,” said Sara.

Ah yes. Sara had said something about wanting to move to either New York or Chicago when we first met.

“So, no Chicago in between?” I asked.

Sara shook her head again.

“One day I was working after not having slept the entire night and I started thinking about why I’m even here in the first place,” she explained. “And I realized that it was because I was always telling myself ‘baby steps’. I had always figured that if I took a big risk, I would fail. But look at me now. I’ve been taking measured, risk-averse steps this entire time and I feel as if I failed, anyway.”

I nodded in sympathy. I didn’t want to say it out loud, but in my head, I was saying, me too.

“It hit me like a ton of bricks that if I wanted even a chance at the life I want to lead, I would have to take a really, really, insane, over the top, let everyone think you’re crazy, risk,” Sara continued. “So I figured, why not now while I’m still young-ish?”

In that moment, I realized how foolish I had been all along. When Sara phrased things like that, it became clear that I had been making the same mistakes of being far too cautious and living a life I hated out of fear of something much worse, but, in so doing, I was almost assuring that things wouldn’t get any better.

I shooed away the thought. I would consider the question at a later time when I wasn’t miserably ill, and it would be more appropriate to do so.

“So,” I said. “What do you think you’ll do once you make it out there?”

Sara shrugged.

“I have some money saved up and some friends who said they’d let me crash on their couch once I’m out there,” she said. “I figure I’ll apply for some reporting jobs, but, worst case scenario, I can always work retail jobs like I’ve been doing for the past five years. At least I won’t be here, anyway.”

I scrambled around looking for one of my business cards among my files.

“Let’s stay in contact,” I said. “I want to know how it goes.”

Even though I was a little disorganized that day, I managed to find a stray business card. I also wrote the usernames for a lot of my personal social media accounts because she had effectively surpassed the threshold from subordinate to friend in my mind.

“Thanks,” she said. “Hey Ron?”

“Yeah?” I asked.

“Take care of yourself,” said Sara.

Based on the serious tone of her voice and the concern in her eyes, I could tell she meant it.

I tried to laugh it off.

“I should be saying that to you,” I said. “Not the other way around.”

Sara seemed to consider this.

“I know,” she said. “But it just seems appropriate this way.”

I was sad to admit it to myself, but she was right.

“Hey Ron?” Sara asked again.

“Yes?” I asked with a beleaguered sigh.

“Trust Horatio,” she said. “He’s going to be your best ally, now.”

I nodded. It was a tactical insight I would not forget.