Hemingway

Alania looks at the clock on the radio of her 2001 Nissan, it was one of the few things on that car that works like it should, so she knew the time was right, she just really didn’t want to believe it. She was going to be late again the third time in a month she was going to be late for work. She was trying to image as she sit there though yet another red light what Mr. Gregor would say to her this time. The first time she was late he was nice to her about it, just ask to try and avoid it becoming a habit. The second time she was late, it was only by two minutes, so he just gave her a look and kept walking by her desk. This is the third time, and she wasn’t sure what he would say to her this time, but she figured she would get an occurrence this time. She got to the stoplight just as it was starting to turn yellow, so she hit the gas petal and ran under the hanging lights just as it turned red. It was a calculated risk worth taking, she had to get to work. She parked her car and didn’t even take the time to put the key into the door to lock it. The key fob stopped working about six months ago, she called to see how much it would be to get a new one. They told her $150, she decided she could lock and unlock her car the old school style to save $150 bucks. She did however take the time to pick up her copy of Hemingway’s classic, A Farewell To Arms. It felt like it was becoming a part of her everyday attire. She had been carrying it around with her for four months, meaning every day to make it to the library. She was almost running when she finally arrived at her tiny spot, they company called a desk, she threw her lunch box and pocketbook on the floor and hit the button on her phone. She was logging into the system as she got her first call. She somehow managed to make it only six minutes late, but she knew that was going to be a red flag warning popping up on someone list somewhere within the next hour or so and she would be called into a meeting room. She just thought to herself she hoped that maybe somehow, they would still give her time during the “meeting to tell you just how bad you suck” to go pee during her break. She only got fifteen minutes for a break and the meeting normally took about ten minutes, so she was praying that she had that five minutes to pee before she had to get back on the phone. Her first call was already coming in, time to work, no time to think or worry now.

               “Thank you for calling Happyville Community Bank this is Alania how can I help you”. She said it as cheerful as she possibly could, but deep down he just wanted to take the phone and throw it against the wall when she heard it ring. That was becoming a tread recently, as soon as she heard that ring on her phone, she had the overwhelming desire to pick up the phone and sling it against the brick wall on the other side of the room. She envisioned it often and compared it to a stock car crashing at Daytona Speedway. Tumbling over and over again until it hit the wall and busted into tiny pieces which scattered the speedway or in this case walkway. Making all the other competitors dodge the parts as they scramble to get back in line and win the race. The race for the drivers was the actual race, the race for her coworkers was to get that bonus for collecting the most money for an overdue debt or signing up the most people for the credit card, or worse yet, helping someone to sign up for credit repayment plan. This was basically setting someone up for a program that took money directly from their account that they really do not have to give. To Alania it felt like she herself was taking the food out of the pantry of the customer and putting in her Nissan and driving off with it, just to throw it in the well-manicured yards of the bank owners. She hated her job, she hated the policies she had to following, she hated the pre-written lines she had to repeat, and she really hated the way Mr. Gregor was looking at her as he was walking up to her desk.

               How the hell did they already know she was late? Nobody saw her coming in so they had to be watching the system just waiting for the red flag warning, as she liked to think of it, coming up on the screen. She imaged people standing around at the top of each hour waiting to see who had clocked in late. Once that red flag appeared, they all high fived each other and yelled “we got one boys” like the old fisherman do on the pier a the beach. They got a sucker and today that sucker was her, it was written all over Mr. Gregor’s face. The look he had you would think she had run over his mailbox throwing out an empty wine bottle as she drove off shotting him a middle finger. Not the look she would image anyone could have for one of their employees being six minutes late to work. She thanked her customer Mr. Jones from Summit as they ended the call and Mr. Gregor stood beside her, a little too close for her liking. But she had nowhere to go. The cube was the size of her toy poodles’ crate and there was no room to get away from anyone or anything. “Alania this is becoming unacceptable, you being late every Tuesday of every week, what do you have to say for yourself”. Alania looked directly at him and wanted to say and came very close to saying “Mr. Gregor its unacceptable that you wear pants that are two sizes too small every Tuesday of every week. Just give it up and buy a new size”. Instead she decided to tell him the truth, not like it would matter, but at least she could hold her head high and let him know why every Tuesday she was late to work. She looked over at the overdue Hemingway book at her feet, took a breath and started to tell the story.

               Her neighbor Gretta had moved in about four months ago and they quickly became friends. There was a fence that had separated their backyards, but it was falling and frankly dangerous. So after about a month of Gretta and her son Jack living in the small house beside Alania the three of the decided to tear the fence down on Saturday afternoon. The girls shared a few rounds of margarita’s and Jack shared in a lot of the laughs as they torn that fence down nail by nail and created a big open space for them to share. About a week after the fence came down Alania came home one evening to Gretta pacing back and forth on the newly formed yard talking on her cell phone. Alania kept putting up the groceries she had just bought and kept glancing at Gretta and watching her become more upset as time went on during the phone call. She heard her ask WHY many times and HOW many times, finally her dog Ralph had to go outside. She opened the door trying not to bother Gretta but she was meet with tears streaming down Gretta’s face as Ralph ran out the door. Gretta without hesitation ran up to Alania and said in one of the most fearful voices she had ever heard, I don’t know what I’m going to do, Robert’s out of jail and I’m screwed! Alania tried to take in the story as Gretta frantically told her swinging her arms and her newly formed habit of smoking Marlboro lights cigarette hanging from her hand. She told how Robert her ex-husband had been into selling drugs and she had turned him into the cops. They told her he would be gone for a long time, since he had a felonies worth of drugs stuff up under their camper’s firth wheel, but apparently, he gave up some higher people in the drug world and he got out early for “good behavior”. She was terrified he would come looking for them and she had no idea what to do.

               She invited Gretta into her house and went straight for the whiskey cabinet. It was the only good thing Alania’s ex-boyfriend Luke had done for during the whole year they were together. He was a carpenter and he had promised to help her fix up the old house she had bought, instead he built her a liquor cabinet which he proceeds to fill and empty on a weekly basis. When she finally kicked him out, she made sure it was a day he has freshly stocked the cabinet. She put down two glasses, pour the Jameson and moved the book she just rented from the Library, A Farewell to Arms out of the way. Now the girls could drink and talk without risking getting the rented book damaged. She had plans to read that book this weekend, since it was supposed to rain both days, but it looks like she might be starting that book a little later than she anticipated. Gretta explained that she been told that Robert was going to move to Canada in three weeks to start a new life and he wanted to take Jake with him. She had a restraining order against him so she could call the cops as soon as she caught sight of Robert, but she was fearful of the times she could not see him coming. Sitting there with Hemingway watching they create a plan that would even impress old Ernie. After a few shots of Jameson’ a delivery of Chinese food and a few death plot scenarios’ the girls devised a plan. Each and every moment of Jake’s life would be spent with an adult for the next three weeks. Her brother, her sister, her old neighbor, her parents, her friends from work, and even her old teacher from high school would help to ensure every moment of every day Jake was protected, except for two hours a day on Tuesday mornings. Gretta had to pull the early shifts every Tuesday and that mean she had to be at work at 6am, she was a 911 operator, and they were extremely shorthanded on Tuesday, and basically it was life or death if she wasn’t there for those two hours. So, it was no question Alania would step in for those two hours and make sure her little buddy Jake was safe from harm. 

Every Tuesday for the past three weeks Alania would wake up early and bust her house like her pants were on fire trying to get everything done so should be at Gretta’s by 5:35am. She made it on time everyday and everyday she had the intention of finishing the Hemingway classic, but every morning she spent the hour she had before woke Jake up just standing in front of the dinning room window watching every car go by, making sure it wasn’t Robert. Every day she had the full intention of not only reading the book but also returning it to the library, but everyday came and went and she didn’t do either one. She dropped Jake off at school around 7:20am and that should have given her time to drop the library book off in the after hours drop box, but somehow every day she ended up getting stuck behind the Mom who was dropping off 12 kids for school, or the kid that didn’t want to leaven Mom’s car, so they had to drag him out of car seat, or worse, the crossing guard made her stop and let half the worlds population pass by before he allowed her exit the parking lot. So, every Tuesday she drove past the library about ten miles over the speed limit trying to make it to a on time to a job she hated more than she hated hang nails. All the other days she could have dropped the book off at the library before she went to work, but she really, really, really wanted to finish the novel before she gave it up. It was silly she knew but had set three goals, one to make sure Jake was safe, two, finish that novel and three, find a better dang job.

               As she told her story to Mr. Gregor, he looked uninterested and basically bored with life in general. She even threw in a Earl Had To Die line just to see if he was really listening, he actually was listening and called her into a side meeting room. He informed her that throwing a man into the back of a trunk wasn’t very funny and that he hated the Dixie Chicks for the past fifteen years. He also informed her that his brother was on the local police force and he had to contact him to report the threat of a man’s life. Alania laughed at him at first then realized old tight pants wasn’t joking. As he left the room, he informed her that legally he could not lock her into the room, but he strongly encouraged her not to leave the room. She stood there for moment waiting for someone to tell her it was April Fools Day, then she realized it was January. Alania stood there for a minute then she wondered to herself “what would Hemingway do”, and in her mind she heard Absinthe soaked voice saying “the hell if I’d stand around and wait for my demise”. Alania opened the door to the meeting room and all she heard was phones ringing, everywhere. It sounded like a four-alarm fire was going off, but it was just the normal sound o f a contact center. A sound that Alania had often though should be used by the FBI to get information from terrorist. Just make them sit in a cube and answer 300 calls a day and they would break. Alania started her slow and methodical walk back to her cube. For the first time in a long time she was thankful she was short. It made it easier to go undetected as she made her way through the masses of people and cubes. She made it back undetected and picked up her lunch, pocketbook and of course Old Hemingway and made her escape.

               She walked out the door knowing that somewhere someone was watching a red flag warning going off saying Alania left the is building when it wasn’t her break time, go get, she MUST get some poor sucker signed up for some credit protection program. She made her way to the car about the times she heard Mr. Gregor yelling from the door. “Miss. Ryder you were told not to leave the building”. She pretended not to hear anything but the birds chirping in the trees at the end of the parking lot. She made it to her car and floored it out of the parking lot. She knew she was fired but could they really call the cops on her? She wasn’t sure so she drove over to the local community college to call her own brother who was also on the town police department. She gave him the short version of the meeting, and he laughed at her during most of it. He said he would check with is boss but basically, he figured the worse thing that could happen was she lost her job.

               She was going to lay low and wait it out while her brother checked out everything, so she found her a spot at the corner of the parking lot and she backed her old Nissan in and picked up Hemingway. She read the whole book in the time it took for her brother to call her back, he said she really didn’t make a threat just a bad joke, so she wasn’t going to jail, at least not today.  She sits in car for a few moments taking all the day’s activities. One she spent her last morning in the car line at Jenkins Elementary School, it was confirmed that Robert left for Canada this morning. Two, she lost her job. It was a crappy job and she really hated it, but it did like help her pay the rent. On the flip side she may save money in alcohol and anti-depression medicine if she wasn’t working that job anymore, so it may be a win-win. Three she had to return this dang book to the library, TODAY.

               She started her car and made her way to the library, a place she use to spend hours. She had been avoiding this place ever since her book became overdue. When her law firm downsized and let her go a few months ago she spent hours here. At first, she was just using their free internet, but then she became hook into all the adventures the library had to offer. She could use the free internet to look for jobs, their printers for printing out her resumes. She could get free coffee, even thought it wasn’t good. Today she was coming in with her held both held high for helping a free and sinking low for committing the terrible crime of hold a classic library book hostage at her home past it due date.