The Big Dream (11 page)

The next wrap rolled more smoothly, but then Sarah realized she hadn't tucked the ends in and had to undo it. “Shit.”

“Chill. We got a little time until lunch rush.”

A small gravelly throat-clear made them turn. A woman with a sharp bob and shiny silver glasses was standing beyond the stainless steel counter. Sarah kept Saran-wrapping her deformed wrap until the thing was a baton of shimmering silver. Kate would, she knew, eventually go deal with the woman. Except then Kief yelled from somewhere, “Katy, you gonna take out this garbage or are we gettin' a health violation?”

Kate jerked her gloves off by the fingers. “
Katy.
Vomit.” She stormed away.

“Excuse me? Hi? I need a turkey and cheese on honey wheat? Toasted.”

Sarah's hands shook as she peeled off her gloves. Non-specials were actually much harder than specials. She stuck slices of gritty bread into the toaster, wondering what she'd done with the piece her mother gave her. She got a plate and the corn chips.

The customer had been glaring at her Blackberry until she heard the crinkle of the Tostitos bag; then her eyes rounded childishly. “Oooo, chips!” The tiny screen buzzed in her hand.

Only a few chip-triangles fell onto the plate, plus crumbs. Sarah searched for a new bag until the toaster pinged. When she applied the chicken the woman thumbed her keypad and said, “Sliced thinly, please,” without looking up.

“Uh.” Sarah flapped a chicken slice. “It comes in the package, just the one thickness, er, thinness. I don't know how to get it thinner than this. I mean . . .”

“Oh.” The woman flushed behind her glasses. “Of course not. I was thinking of the deli. Of course, of course.” Sarah put the chicken in the bread, watching the woman rummage her tweed torso for something. They had reached the optional-toppings stage but the woman was muttering into her phone – “not Sunday,
Mon
day.”

Finally, after waving each garnish in turn (drops of brine flying off the pickle slices), watching for the nod or shake, Sarah finished the sandwich. Kief was bumping around in the back as if he was monitoring her. She passed the sandwich over the counter.

“Thanks.”

A man in a blue shirt gift-wrap tight over his belly approached.

“Can I help who's next?” Sarah said, though it was clear who was next.

“Yeah, uh, I'll get the, uh, egg salad – ”

“Excuse me, miss?” The woman had returned, mouth a tight bow.

The man kept ordering his
pickles, no onions,
and Sarah listened, feeling it safer.

“I said,
excuse
me,
miss
!”

“I'm sorry, sir, one moment. Yes?”

Suddenly the woman flinched, as if she hadn't thought Sarah would actually turn. “I don't mean to be . . . I'm – There aren't enough chips here. And they're all smushed.”

“There are chips.” She pointed at the woman's plate.

“Um,” said the woman. “Like four.”

The egg-salad guy and the woman were both glaring. Sarah managed to reach across the counter. But the woman didn't hand over the plate, using it instead to gesture at someone. “
She
has twice as many chips as me. And she's
already eaten some.
”

Sarah realized that she hadn't said,
I'd be happy to get you some more,
only thought it. She took her hand back; she couldn't say anything now because tears were haloing the light in the caf, a sob in the back of her throat.

The woman was staring. “Are you . . . ok?”

Sarah only got as far as “I – ” and even that was obscured by a hiccup. A tear escaped her left eye, but when it was passing her nose she inhaled hard and slurped it in.

“Hey, never mind. I was just being silly.” But the woman was still there, still staring, so she still wanted something.

Sarah reached mutely for the plate, but the trimmed, no-polish hand pulled it back. “Should I get someone?”

The thought of Kief – his curls plastered to his forehead, his polo-shirt damp, face flushed with irritation – was too much. Sarah fled.

Her pants already had avocado and jam on them, so it didn't matter that she sat on the bathroom floor. It was dirty, but she didn't think any of her fellow employees would actually piss on
the floor. After about ten minutes sitting under the paper-towel dispenser, Sarah got her breathing under control, though she knew she wouldn't have been able to speak quite normally. She wondered if anyone noticed her absence, and then realized the woman with insufficient chips had probably told Kief everything. She knew she should go out to apologize, to show Kief, the bob-haired lady, and Kate that she was all right.

Thinking about Kate was what made Sarah tip sideways until her head rested against the base of the toilet and her left shoulder blade in something wet. Yet Sarah half-wished for Kate's inevitable knock. She was hoping, a little, that Kate's clean common sense could jog her loose from whatever held her to the floor, whatever held her mother to boiled noodles and non-complaint, the whole household dusty and grey, with mold behind the bookcase. Sarah and Kate had been friends since kindergarten and Kate had never understood, but sometimes she could help anyway.

And there was that firm voice from beyond the door. “Sarah?”

Sarah lay still and spooked, as if she had summoned her.

“It's
Kate
, Sarah. Kief's doing orders with the greengrocer guy. Lunch is
over.”

Shocked that she'd wept or slept through the whole lunch rush, Sarah stood and opened the door.

Kate inhaled as if she were about to blow up a balloon. “What happened? What did that lady say to you? After you went, she looked like she was going to cry, too.”

Sarah slurped snot up her nose and tried to breathe evenly. She stared at the domed ceiling light – dozens of dead flies in the nipple of it. When she turned back to Kate, Kate's small blue eyes were trained right on Sarah's forehead, like gun sights.

“Is the reason I haven't been fired yet is that Kief is scared of the ladies room?”

Kate flinched and peered more deeply at Sarah's face. Then she abruptly sat down, legs accordionning her onto the floor. “If you
have a good excuse, like the customer was a giant bitch, you won't get fired.”

“I – No. She was average. I just had a meltdown, is all.” The words after
average
were watery, breathless. She lay down again, limp, beside Kate.

Kate's eyes narrowed even more, pale slits with the light of the fluorescent tube reflecting in them. “Can't you just . . . just . . . get it together?”

Sarah tried for another deep breath but there was the weight of a sob resting on her lungs and she didn't get much. “No.”

Kate's eyes were motherly and bright, unlike Sarah's blank, exhausted mother. “Of course you can. It's like at school – English is hard so you study more, lacrosse is hard so you train more . . . . We'll, like, practice and shit. I'll be the mean customer and – ”

“No, Kate, I can't.”

“We'll do it at my dad's, Sary, I know things are fucked at your place right now. It'll be fun – we can drink the beers in the garage – he forgot they're there.”

“Kate, it's like – ” Sarah thought about how she couldn't tell Margaret that it was appalling to puke in the kitchen, even if you did use a bag and not get it anywhere else. She thought about how no one in her family could say that out loud, and that was why Margaret would have that baby: because no one could take that cruel decisive action to rip it out of her belly and send her back to school and horseback riding and real life. Sarah suddenly saw every test she never studied for because she needed to lie on her back and count ceiling cracks, and Jeremy dropping out of school for that catering job and the break in her mother's voice when she announced everyday sadness like bills in the mail or running out of salt.

She shut her eyes against the hot white light and the nipple of bugs. “It's not the job. Practicing work won't help. It's me.”

“Keif is gonna be here in a minute, Sar. What are you gonna tell him?”

Kate was her best friend, and they had done everything together, Kate and Sarah, Sarah and Kate, kindergarten to grade 12, next year. So long trying to run faster, not cry when she fell, be smarter, not cry when she failed, get the boys to like her, not cry not cry not cry. Kate always wanting her to be better, more, different from how she was. It was a relief to think she would stop all that now, stop trying. But opening her eyes to look at Kate's hopeful smile and shiny skull, it was so hard to think how to tell her.

9:12 a.m., Tuesday. Rae was slouched so far forward her breasts weighed on the desk. The optical mouse had fallen and disappeared, so she was using the trackball one. On the desk: one apple cut into eighths, one Chinese New Year prosperity fish, 34 overstuffed folders abandoned when Amelia went on disability, notepad, Kleenex box, water glass, and a small, limp fern. Under the desk: a silver cellphone and charger, wastepaper basket, three pairs of dark pumps, optical mouse, somewhere. It was the first day of the second month of her trial separation, which Rae was marking by wearing her wedding ring on a chain behind her blouse.

“Rae.” Hamid stood in the opening between the grey baffle-cloth walls. His grey golf shirt hung free from his shoulders to his belt. Only his elbows and knees bulged; Hamid was all joints. “
Rae.
”

“Yes, Hamid.” She did not lift her chest, or turn, or cease scrolling down.

“Ursula hired someone.”

The trackball stuck. Rae was going to have to move the desk.

“And not admin. A junior designer, for real.”

“Amazing.” She clicked save twice, then finally turned. She could feel the necklace shift. “When do we get it?”

Hamid raised his left elbow above his head, pushing it down with his right hand to stretch his triceps. “Her. Today. Now.”

“Today? I don't have time for a welcome lunch. Ursula should've warned us.”

“Ursula's off-site today.” He shook his arms out. “Remember?”

“No. So? This person is here?”

“Sitting in HR, waiting for her tour.”

“And you're gonna?”

“The hell I am. Hear about the marketing feedback on the new feature template? Looks like it's been mauled by sharks.” Hamid bug-eyed her. He was older than she was, but lived with his parents, played indoor soccer, drove an ugly expensive car. He worked seventy hours a week, on salary.

“Hey, they don't like my column design, either.”

“Raeanne, sharks. The branding division'll have my ass.”

“Fine,” said Rae, the way she would give up and let Marley and Jake have cookies. She stood and tugged her skirt down. The waistband was high and thick, digging in. “You gonna introduce me?”

Hamid was already three steps towards his cube. “I didn't see her, HR just called. Look for the scared one.”

Rae thought about yelling, “We're all scared, Hamid,” but didn't.

The girl wore a white eyelet blouse with ruffled cap sleeves, her left bra-strap visible. Pink. She nodded as Rae approached. The nod turned her messy chignon into a ponytail. Rae stuck out her hand and said, “Junior design?”

She got a beam in response. “Hello, hi. I'm Andrea Goss. Andy. I'm so glad to meet you, glad to be getting started here. Hi.” At her feet a blue rain jacket, a Burberry lunch sack, a black leather shoulder bag the size of a Labrador retriever.

“I'm one of the senior designers, Raeanne.” Andy had scooped everything from the floor and arranged it in her arms before Rae added, “Rae.”