The Unfortunate Existence of Dulcie Dunbar

When Dulcie Dunbar arrived at work on Monday morning, she reflected that she was, at no fault of her own, facing something that should appear to most as agonisingly rotten. She reflected that, no matter how hard one may try, some happenings in this life are out of an individual’s control, and for that, we can simply not live it alone. So, it was not her, but the tram conductor’s decision to drive just two kilometres below the required speed, Stephen Swann’s routinely verdict to get on the tram at Harcourt, causing it to stop, and her manager’s particularly sweltering headache caused by Sunday night’s birthday bash, that caused a curious stir of words to trudge into Dulcie Dunbar’s ears.

“You’re fired.”

Dulcie Dunbar woke up on Monday morning and did everything right. She departed from her quilts and sheets at seven o’clock, brushed her hair, boiled the kettle, put two crumpets in the toaster, and waited intently for their arrival on her plate. She left the house at precisely seven forty-five and was boarding the Luas at two minutes past eight.

Two minutes.

It was just two minutes late.

But in those two minutes everything in her life was flung out of her control. Perhaps her mistake was believing that her life was normal enough that something as futile as being late for work would never happen to her. After all, there were bigger things to worry about – like, why am I still at this job? Will I always be an intern? Will I ever write for a big publisher? Were there too many calories in my jam and crumpets this morning? Questions Dulcie Dunbar would one day know the answers to or learn to not bother seeking them.

Her existential questioning served that morning as a catalyst for one thing – an “unbothered” mindset. Dulcie Dunbar decided in those two minutes she was waiting at the tram stop that she would not care if she was fired, or for that matter, not care if the rest of her life was singed in bad luck. Because it was simply not her fault. For those two minutes, she lived on the hope that some higher power would recognise her genuine attempts to live her life correctly and decide to reward her at some point.

But as she boarded the tram, the dread set in. Blast divinity. She thought. It’s just another thing no one can agree on. It will serve me no justice in this life. It was easier, she realised, to panic than to hope, and so, that “unbothered” mindset was no more.

Stephen Swann awoke on Monday morning and lived the first hours of daylight as he always did. He got out of bed at 7:30am – one leg, then the other – replaced his bedtime socks with his Monday socks, he fed his cats, he poured a glass of milk. He put the television on whilst he tried to find his glasses. How he did anything else before this step, I do not know. But I suppose, after doing it often enough, this order became a habit, and his glasses became always lost in the same place. After all, Stephen Swann was a man of one talent, and that talent was owning far too many mangy, unbrushed, ginger cats.

If Dulcie Dunbar had ever gotten to know Stephen Swann, outside of just being aware of his weekday passage, she would think he was some erratic psychopath. He drank milk with his lentil soup and did not mind if he was picking cat fur from his mouth as he did so. In the mind of Dulcie Dunbar, these were not the actions of a sane man.

Of course, that morning, a good deal of people boarded the tram with Stephen Swann at the Harcourt stop, but unfortunately for our Stephen, he was always the last on, and Dulcie could not help but think (despite it being false), that the tram doors might have closed just half a second sooner, and she would be on her way to work significantly quicker if Stephen had not gotten on at all.

The tram conductor, one John Riley, felt rather jolly about things. He woke up earlier than both Dulcie and Stephen, for he and his tram had to tattle on for twenty minutes before they got within close proximity of either of their stops. On this particular Monday he woke, he ironed, he peppered a fried egg, he kissed his wife on the nose, and he drove to Broombridge stop.

Jolly, certainly, but John Riley was too, a nervous man. His wife that morning had told him of the dreadful forecast. One that should blur and haze the sky until one could not look past the end of one’s nose. Or more simply;

“It will rain this morning,”

He responded, “Heavens. I’ll have to drive carefully, and I should take this,” He took an umbrella from beside the front door and proceeded to drive two kilometres slower than usual that day.

By the time Dulcie had departed from the tram, she had five minutes to get to work, and a twelve-minute walk ahead of her. No longer had she departed the stop, started running down the street, decided she’d might like a coffee, and thought against this intrusive wish, had the sky decided it might like to cry. And as the streets blurred in rain fall, Dulcie Dunbar thought that she ought to cry, too.

Dulcie had not brought an umbrella, unlike John Riley, who had brought an umbrella, despite never actually having to get out of his tram the whole workday. Late Dulcie would be, but the woman had standards. She would not show up to work looking like soggy bread. Her dark fringe, if swamped in water, would fall in dark lines about her forehead, and this, she had always said, made her look like a wrong zebra.

She entered a large Boots around the corner. A large Boots should always have room for an umbrella, she thought, as though it were some philosophical understanding. She picked up the cheapest one, a child’s size it was – small, feeble, no match for a torrential downpour, but few umbrellas were, and this one might just about last the next seven minutes. Dulcie brought it to the counter. Unfortunately, because of its size, and its tasteless, vulgar, leopard-print design, it was three euro cheaper than the larger umbrellas.

“You can’t buy that,” Is what the lady at the register said. She gnawed chewing gum in her mouth like some dog attacking a bone.

“Why?” Dulcie asked impatiently – she had no time to haggle.

“It’s a child’s umbrella,”

“It’s for my child,”

“You don’t have a child,”

“I could have a child.” Dulcie said, offended. Why shouldn’t I be able to have a child? I’m perfectly capable, she thought.

“But you don’t. You don’t look the type,”

“Fine, I don’t have a child. And I bet your parents wish they didn’t, either.”

That was mean.

The lady popped her chewing gum; “You’re boring me now.”

“I’m sorry for being such an inconvenience,” Dulcie said, bristling and stalking out of the store.

Her cheeks were so hot with anger by now, that she hardly needed an umbrella anyway, because her warm, reddened face would dry any scribbles of wet hair drawing in unwanted places. Her cheeks were also red with shame, for she did feel quite bad about that mean comment. Naught to dwell on now, Dulcie thought, and continued to dwell on it for the remainder of her dash to work.

She arrived in the office of which she worked at 8:40am. She was ten minutes late.

Her manager, one Ari Jean Ryan, was a strict woman. She was narrow faced, and her features were long and sharp. They hung from the pale of her complexion like melting icicles. Her favourite green was rocket, and she smelt of spoiled Rosemary. When she walked, she was heard, even if she was bare foot, as though her heels were naturally shaped like stilettos. She did not like nonsense, she thought most people were out of control, and whilst indulging in tea-drinking, she had stomach only for Earl Grey. Naturally, a woman ten minutes late for work had no place in her office. A woman ten minutes late, dripping wet, and profusely apologising to Ari whilst Ari was embarrassingly and viciously hungover, had no place in the same 16,000 kilometres as her.

“Ari, I am so sorry, and I know I look like I’ve slept in a pigsty, but I-”

“You’re fired,” Ari interrupted.

Dulcie couldn’t quite believe her ears. She felt there was a small man in her brain lighting matches and throwing rocks and doing everything he could to stop her processing this information. She was suddenly aware of how little everything in life mattered, and at the same time, how important everything in life was. In short, she didn’t really know what was going on.

“Right, so” Dulcie said, her eyes blank. Eventually, she smiled, and Ari smiled. Dulcie noticed that when Ari smiled her mouth looked like the curved edge of a dirty fingernail.

“I apologise,” Ari said.

“All is well.” And Dulcie went home.

Some protective mechanism in Dulcie’s mind stirred – not unlike the unbothered façade she had adopted earlier on – convincing her that she did not need a job because she could get a new one, and that she did not need to pay her rent because she could move back in with her parents. Both things which she had no particular desire to do but resulted to determining them solutions to save facing the true bulk of her situation.

She cried when she got home, but only over the fact that she lived in the same vicinity as imbeciles that ruined her life – including (but not limited to) the train conductor, Stephen Swann, the foul lady at Boots, and most of all, Ari Jean Ryan, who seemed to Dulcie, to be a materialised piece of phlegm that once gurgled at the back of her throat. She was the calories in her crumpets, the wet of the rain, the dreadfully lacking tram speed. She had spoilt Dulcie’s existence and blamed her for it, instead of blaming the world.

She was, Dulcie believed, someone who woke up each morning and decided to live life wrong.

When Ari Jean Ryan got home, she put the kettle on, she toasted crumpets, she had them with a slather of strawberry jam. She considered her day, the choices she had made, and blamed her actions purely on everyone else. Her cousin, irresponsible enough to reach the age of 42 and still have the heart to party on a Sunday night, her Aunt, for boring her so much with drawl and dribble that Ari decided her survival relied solely on drink, and Dulcie Dunbar, for having the nerve to show up late to work whilst Ari was in such a dreadful state, and start begging her forgiveness like some fish out of water.

In hindsight, it really was a shame that Ari and Dulcie did not get to know each other better, because they really are quite similar people.