Andrea en retarde

Andrea had the dream again. It always started the same way. It was a sunny day and she was in a hotel room packing. She had more than enough time to catch the flight to her appointment in another city. But then everything would go sideways. One delay after another.

Only once did she manage to catch the plane, but it crashed. The descent wasn’t fiery and spectacular, the plane merely gliding quietly to the ground with no-one apparently noticing, let alone screaming; just another device to delay or stop her. At other times she’d become lost driving to the airport and had watched the plane take off without her. She’d never once made the appointment and her frustration had usually stayed with her for the rest of the day.

Andrea turned over in bed and frowned. The dream was particularly not welcome on today of all days when she was in a real hotel in preparation for a real interview. The feeling dragged at her but she could not allow it to affect her mood. If successful, the job would be the pay-off for all her education, experience and hard work. She swung out of bed. Coffee and a shower.

She found the coffee machine stored tidily out of sight in a slide out desk drawer together with a single decaffeinated coffee pod. She sighed. No matter. Housekeeping could bring up the real stuff while she was taking her shower. She glanced at her mobile. Plenty of time. The sun clouded over and the room darkened as she made her way to the bathroom.

When she emerged later the decaf pod was still sitting by itself. Goddamn. It was as she snatched up the house phone again that she noticed the discrepancy between her charging phone and the clock radio. Surely not. There was the little plane indicating that she had not taken it out of airplane mode since arriving. As she did, the cellphone adjusted to the time zone and synced forward to the same time as the clock, depriving her of a whole hour. She said a word she normally resisted saying in company while being grateful to herself for factoring in time for delays. Instead of coffee though she would need to leave soon.

As Andrea emerged from the elevator into the lobby, a woman brushed past her out to the forecourt and into a waiting cab. The cab drove off. Andrea followed through the revolving doors to find the forecourt empty. The clerk was waiting as she revolved back into reception. “Saw that,” he offered. “Are you Room 303? That was your cab. Would you like another?” Andrea began to hate the hotel. It had not brought her coffee and it had let someone else take her cab. Of course she still bloody wanted it. It was not the man’s fault, so she bit down and asked that they send another straight away.

She would have preferred to be outside to wait but it was clouding over and looked windy and cold. People were walking more resolutely. She positioned herself in one of the lobby chairs by the window intending to catch up on one or two emails. Luckily it wasn’t rush hour so that she could still arrive comfortably on time.  

After some minutes a busload of tourists arrived disembarking with their luggage into the hotel. This blocked her view so she was forced to navigate her way through the crowd out of the hotel to keep watch. There behind the bus was a cab with a driver seemingly absorbed with his cell phone. As she approached, he looked up appearing to be annoyed and rolled down his window. “There you are. I was about to give up.” Andrea could not explain to herself the mystery of being unable to see the car while located directly adjacent to the window in front of the cab stand. Had he been parked somewhere else, or had he just arrived and was lying? Neither made sense. She had not eaten. She had not even had coffee and now time was running down. After she settled herself in the rear of the car she shook.

“Where to?” Andrea pulled out her cell phone to check the address. She’d read the email over several times to memorize it, but it was one of those addresses with a series of long numbers rather than street names. She scrolled up and down in her inbox several times but could not see it. Perhaps she was panicking. It had come in last Friday on the 10th, she knew that for certain, so she scrolled back to the date. Not there. It had come from the agency, so she hunted by sender. Still not there. She had replied so she switched to the Sent box.

She looked up to see the driver quietly watching her in the rear mirror. Her trembling worsened. She tried one last thing. There it was… but why was the goddamn email in the trash? That would have been the last place she’d move it to. She read out the address. The driver tapped it into his GPS and pulled out. 

Focus. She needed to focus and be on top of things. Andrea had awoken this morning assured that she had prepared well for this interview. She knew the company and its business. She knew the trends and had sound ideas of her own. Hell, she even knew a couple of people that worked there that had intimated she was a shoe-in. All she had to do was show up and be herself. Her shirt began to stick to her.

The driver was confident and making good speed. Traffic was backed up at the light ahead but he swung into the alley and was soon out the other end and back on a clear street. That was until the construction signs, with a closed lane and speed restrictions. “Don’t worry.” he said, his brown eyes looking into the mirror as he turned right quickly into another alleyway, but this time there was a truck unloading that blocked the way. The cab driver put his right arm up and across the seat swiveling his head round to back up but an SUV had driven in directly behind us, as had another truck arriving behind him. Andrea's cab driver laid on his horn, but the driver was sandwiched in and threw up his hands. 

Andrea stared as the workers pulled out the loading ramps from the back of the truck, realizing that they had yet to start unloading whatever it was. The sound of clanging iron ricocheted around the alley. Consulting her GPS she found they were only three minutes away by car, and fifteen minutes on foot. It could take more than that to unload the truck. Her only option to be on time for the interview would be to run. She took out the bills she’d withdrawn from the ATM the night before and tossed them through to the driver. Then Andrea ran.