Chapter 4
1763 Words
4
“Miss Miller!”
I started awake and whipped my head up. A skinny woman with a surprisingly imposing stance stood over me. Her spectacles were halfway down her sharp nose and her clawed hands were on her hips.
I sat in my small cubicle, a tree among a forest of other square boxes on the thirteenth floor of my dead-end job. A steady murmur of voices could be heard over the tops of the walls as my coworkers went about their work.
I sheepishly smiled up at her. “Yes, Miss Hawthorne?”
She stabbed a pointed finger at the phone on my desk. A red light blinked ominously at me. “You have a call. Stop daydreaming and answer it.”
I nodded and pressed the button on the side of my headset. “Home Decor Limited, how can I help you?”
“Yes, I need help installing my new shower rod,” an elderly voice answered from the other line.
My eyes flickered up to my unwelcome visitor. Miss Hawthorne continued to glare at me for a few seconds before she marched off, giving me some much-needed breathing room.
“Miss, could you not breathe into the phone?” my caller requested.
“Oh, sorry about that,” I apologized as I leaned back in my chair and folded my hands in my lap. “Now what seems to be the problem?”
“It’s this dang shower curtain. The damn thing won’t shove onto the circles!”
A flicker of light out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. A long row of windows looked out on the expansive city in which I lived, and what little sky I could see between the skyscrapers was clouded over. A far-off rumble warned of a storm. It threatened to be a storm as wild as that one strange night.
“Miss? Miss, are you still there?”
I shook myself and sat up. “Yes, sir. Sorry about that. Have you tried setting the rod over the top of the circles? There’s an opening at the top of them where you can drop the rod.”
There was silence on the other end and I swear I heard a forehead being slapped. “God damn son of a-” Click.
I had to stifle a laugh as I muted my headset. Another satisfied customer who had realized the error of their ways.
“That sounds like one of those Lost Glasses calls,” a voice spoke up, and a young woman the same age as my twenty-three years appeared in the doorway of my prison. She leaned against one wall with the skill of a pro who knew how flimsy those walls were and folded her arms over her chest. “What was it this time? The toaster wasn’t pressed down?”
“A curtain rod,” I told her as I leaned back in my chair.
She laughed. “That’s a new one. I’ll have to make out a better bingo card for next month.”
I grinned. “How is the Harriet Baldwin Bingo Bonanza going?”
Harriet shrugged. “Not too bad. I’ve expanded to the floors above and below us, and soon I plan on taking over the world.”
“Ambitious.”
“It’ll give me a nice hobby.” A low rumble echoed through the floor and made both of us look at the darkening windows. Harriet wrinkled her nose. “Looks we’re in for a real storm. My grandma would call it a Dark Walk.”
Something in that name piqued my interest. “Why’s that?”
She shrugged. “No idea. She’s the sort who listened to all the old folks when she was young, so she knows a lot about that kind of-”
“Miss Baldwin, what are you doing?” The crone had returned, and with her eyebrows knitted so tightly together that she had developed a uni-brow.
My friend spun around and gave our supervisor a big grin. “I was just asking Cait the time, Miss Hawthorne.”
Hawthorne’s eyes narrowed. “You have your own computer for that, Miss Baldwin.”
“I know, but I wanted to check it with mine and make sure my countdown was right.”
Hawthorne arched a sharp eyebrow. “What countdown?”
My friend looked at her watch. “Five, four, three, two, one!”
A mechanical chime beeped out of all our computers, and the red lights on all the phones went dark as all callers on the line were routed to the apology machine. Closing time.
My companion grinned at Hawthorne. “That countdown.”
Hawthorne’s cheeks reddened and she balled her shaking hands into fists. She held her tongue, however, as the throngs that were our coworkers eagerly raced from their cubicles. Our supervisor spun on her sharp heels and hurried away, eager, no doubt, to scream her anger into one of the many garbage cans positioned around the floor.
Harriet wiped her brow. “That was a close one. Now then-” She turned to me. “Ready for a fun night-” The lights above us flickered and the rumble grew into a loud growl. Harriet’s face drooped. “Oh, come on! On a Friday night?”
“Always on a Friday night,” I teased as I stood and looped my purse over my shoulder. “And that flicker tells me I should go home.”
“Everything tells you you should go home early on a Friday night,” Harriet scolded me as we joined the throngs of workers and went down in a crowded elevator. “Don’t you want to go out partying?”
“You could go with my crowd!” a short, lecherously-grinning man beside me invited.
Harriet leaned forward and glared at him. “Not on your life, Lloyd.”
He shrugged as the doors opened for the ground floor. “Suit yourself.”
We stepped out and walked toward the one of many doors that led out into the dark world. “So not a good time with old Lloyd?” I guessed.
She wrinkled her nose. “No. I went out on one of those and my hands were sore for a week from slapping those guys around.”
“A little too eager?” I guessed.
“A little too everything except gentlemanly,” she retorted.
We stepped out into the late evening and I tilted my head to look up at the black clouds. A spark of lightning shot across the sky overhead, followed shortly by a rumble of thunder. “I should get home.”
Harriet’s face fell. “Come on, Cait. Just a few bars and maybe a hotel lounge and then. . .”
The rest of her words were drowned out by a small voice. “Momma? Momma!”
I leaned this way and that searching for the tiny call and found a six year old standing in the middle of all the suited office workers. His cheeks were stained with tears and his brown eyes were wide with fright and confusion. One of the workers brushed too close to him and knocked him to the side.
I pushed through the crowd and knelt on one knee in front of him where I gave the sniffling boy a smile. “Hello there. Are you lost?”
He wiped the tears from his eyes and nodded. “I-I can’t find my mom. There were so many people and I couldn’t hold on to her hand, and now-” A sob escaped his lips.
I set my hands on his shaking shoulders and looked into his glistening eyes. “We’ll find your mom together, okay?”
He sniffled, but gave a nod. I looked around at all the gray and blue suits, but there was no sign of a mother among the stiff women who gave us only a passing glance, if that. Traffic zoomed by at the speed of light and the clouds overhead rumbled ominously.
I took the boy’s hand and stood as tall as I could without losing his little hold. No wonder he’d lost his mother. “Let’s get against that building and you can get on my shoulders to look for your mom, okay? It’ll be like having a piggy back ride, and playing hide-and-seek.”
He perked up at the mention of the games, and we hurried through the foot traffic to the wall. I knelt down and he hopped onto my back. A quick stretch and the little boy could see above all but the tallest of our fellow travelers. He scanned the area for a moment and his face brightened.
The little boy grabbed a hearty lock of my hair and gave a tug as he pointed to our right. “There she is! There’s my mom!”
I craned my neck and caught a glimpse of white among that sea of dull colors. “Hold on!” I shouted as I adjusted his weight.
We dove into the stream of life where a single misstep could mean a quick fall under a dozen pairs of feet. I wiggled and scooted my way between the traffic and soon we arrived at a woman about my age. Worry had aged her by ten years, but those fell away when she spotted us.
“Willy!” she shouted as she reached for him. I turned and she took him in her arms where mother and son snuggled. “Oh Willy! I was so worried!”
“It’s all right, Mom, I didn’t cry a bit,” he assured her as he looked over at me. “This nice lady helped me, too.”
She beamed at me with tears in her eyes. “Oh, how can I ever repay you?”
I shook my head. “Don’t mention it. Now you two should get along before it starts to rain.”
More thank-yous were exchanged before mother and son disappeared into the vast sea of people. I was still looking at where they went when a hand clapped me on the shoulder. I turned to find it belonged to Harriet who was all smiles.
“You know, Cait, you shouldn’t have gone into customer service. You should’ve gone into sainthood.”
I shrugged. “I just like to help people, that’s all.” A teardrop hit me on the nose, a friendly warning of unfriendly weather.
“Well, let me help you, then,” Harriet insisted as she grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the curb. She put two fingers between her lips and blew a loud, sharp whistle that made everyone around her, including me, cringe. It did the trick, though, and a taxi drove up to the curb. Harriet opened the door and pulled me toward it. “Get in.”
“But I don’t want to go clubbing tonight,” I insisted.
Harriet slammed the door behind me, leaving herself out on the street. “You’re not, and you’re not going to walk the eight blocks to your house getting drenched, either. A good turn deserves another.” She leaned in the front passenger window and handed the driver a wad of cash. “Take her to the eight hundred block.” The man tipped his hat and pulled us away from the curb. Harriet waved to me with a bright smile on her face.
My heart lifted as I sat back in my seat, grateful to be out of the rain that started to come down with the seriousness of a rough storm. It was going to be a rough night. Little was I to know how rough.
- Writer
