“Hello, darling.” Rose gave her a little wave. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you any tea. We’re on our way to the hospital.”
“That’s Chloe,” I told the paramedic. “She came to help.”
“Good thing we got here in time.” He jotted something down on his tablet.
Alarmed, I tried to read his screen upside down. “What are you writing?”
“A note to myself never to be alone in a house with you and your friend.” He tucked the tablet away, then held the door while the other paramedics carried Stan out on a gurney. Rose walked beside them, holding Stan’s hand.
“Is that a joke?” I called out. “I hope it’s a joke. Don’t forget I saved him by making sure he was breathing. If it wasn’t for me, he’d be mostly dead.”
Chloe hefted her bag and a Costco-sized container of bleach onto the counter, then ran over to wrap me in her arms. “Are you okay? Should I call your therapist?”
“No.” I shuddered against her. “If you just pour some of that bleach into my eyes, I’ll be fine. The things I had to see . . .”
Everything about Chloe is soft and warm, from her organic cotton sweaters to her fuzzy UGG boots. Her bright blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and long, bouncy blond curls are straight out of the Hallmark Christmas movie universe. I could totally see her moving to a small town to run a bakery and falling for the grumpy firefighter police officer sheriff who plans to spend Christmas alone until they get trapped together in a cabin during a snowstorm.
Instead, despite having a software engineering degree, she was working days on an IT help desk with a side hustle as a community college teacher and an evening side gig / passion project as a white hat hacker. Even then, between rent, bills, and student loan payments, she struggled to make ends meet every month.
“I’d better call the insurance company for Rose,” I said, pulling away. “And then I need to start cleaning.”
“Don’t you have to be at work?”
“Work” for me was a mid-level position as a pricing analyst for a food distribution company. My job involved sitting in a tiny cubicle inputting data into a computer forty hours a week. Mind-numbing boredom, constant distractions, and a lack of social interaction meant I had to drag myself to the office every morning. I was overqualified, underpaid, and the job had nothing to do with the degree I’d spent four years at college to acquire. I’d had to take on a side gig at a candy store to help cover my bills, student loan payments, and the occasional evening out, which happened only if there was more than one hundred dollars in my checking account after paying back my friends for the Uber ride home I owed them from last week.
“I can’t leave,” I said. “I need to bail out the water, wait for the emergency plumber, call the insurers, and then I should really go to the hospital to make sure Rose is okay. I also need to salvage my stuff and let my parents know I’m moving back home until everything is sorted.” My brain was already in hyperdrive, setting off a rush of endorphins. There was nothing I liked better than having too much to do.
“You’ll get fired,” Chloe said. “They’ve already given you two warnings.”
“It was going to happen anyway.” I’d changed jobs frequently since graduation, struggling to find something that inspired my passion and utilized the skills I’d acquired for my business degree. I had too much energy, a short attention span, and a low boredom threshold. I needed to be moving. I needed constant activity and fast deadlines. If I had fifteen things to focus on at once, I was golden. If I had to sit in a cubicle doing repetitive tasks while faced with constant distractions, I had to work twice as hard as my colleagues just to keep up. Chloe said I was like a duck, appearing to swim effortlessly, but paddling furiously under the surface.
“You could ask for more hours at the candy store,” Chloe suggested.
“I’ve already gained five pounds. If I worked more hours, I’d need a whole new wardrobe.” I loved selling candy at Westfield Shopping Mall. I loved the chaos and the crowds. I loved that the owner had seen right away that I could manage the store alone—cash, stock, window displays, shoplifters, suppliers, kids, and tourists. It was a high I never got with my office jobs. Or maybe it was the sugar rush . . .
“I’d better get to work if I’m not needed for body cleanup,” Chloe said. “We can chat tonight.”
“I’ll definitely need some cheering up after I tell my parents all my bad news: I almost killed Rose’s boyfriend, I lost my apartment and my job, I might have to declare bankruptcy, and I’m moving back home.”
“Just don’t tell them you’re still single,” she warned.
“Of course not. They’d disown me.”
Two
What do you mean you need to move back home?” My mother’s voice reverberated around the family kitchen, making my sugar hangover one thousand times worse. I’d tried to sneak in the back door after spending the evening helping Rose with her insurance paperwork over a bucket of fried chicken, three bags of candy, and Murder, She Wrote. But, of course, they’d caught me.
“It’s just until my apartment dries out,” I said. “I promise you’ll not even know I’m around.”
My parents live in a modest raised four-bedroom ranch house on a quiet cul-de-sac in Evanston, or “little Chicago” as no one in Evanston calls our leafy urban suburb. Mom is an English professor at Northwestern University, which is only a few blocks away from our house. Dad has an easy commute on the Metra to his custom tailor shop in the Loop. After my three brothers and I moved out, Dad turned the twins’ bedroom into a yoga studio and kept mine as it was for guests and/or my inevitable return.
“We’ll have to make a shower schedule if we all have to be at work by nine a.m.” My dad looked up from his glossy men’s fashion magazine. He was a master tailor and owner of Chopra Custom Clothiers, so he had to stay on top of all the trends. He’d learned his skills from his father and together they’d built the business into one of the top custom tailors in Chicago, dressing everyone from celebrity chefs to movie stars and even a few Chicago Bears.
“Why do people have to start work at nine a.m.?” I wondered out loud. “Who decided on a nine-to-five workday? Don’t people realize that workers are much more productive if they get enough sleep? We’re not machines. Everyone has a different biorhythm. I could have been twice as efficient if my boss had let me start at eleven a.m. and work until seven p.m.”
I knew I’d given myself away when my father raised an eyebrow. “Could have been?”
“I’m not working there anymore,” I admitted. “I didn’t vibe with the idea of increasing the efficiency of moving unhealthy food products through the supply chain. There’s an obesity epidemic in children.”
“What about the candy store?” My mother frowned. “How does that ‘vibe’ . . . ” She said the word with an extra dose of sarcasm. In her line of work, words mattered. “。 . . with your beliefs?”
“We’re not offering it as real food,” I said. “Everyone knows it’s just sugar.”