Love of a Job

    

    To most it appears Ellen Roberts leads a bland and plain life. She gets up at 8:30 sharp every morning. Two minutes after her alarm rings, she slips her purple bunny slippers on, and waddles off to the shower. Ellen is a tall thin woman with mousey brown hair, which seems oily even after just being washed. After her shower she puts her matching purple robe on and brushes her teeth. It is unfortunate that she brushes her teeth before breakfast, because, everyday on her way to work she catches people giving her sideways glances and she is never able to figure out why. It is due to the fact that the eggs and tomatoes she eats every morning are still in her teeth… every morning.

    At 9:30 am Ellen gets her boss coffee and sits down to wait for the excitement she is sure is coming her way. She is the office manager for a high profile CEO of a multimillion dollar company, (in other words his secretary). Since she is a painfully shy woman, Ellen has few friends and the excitement of work is her substitute for real relationships. Ellen loves her job. It is all she has (not including her cat, whiskers). She works hard and takes her work very seriously. Her job is full of surprises. At any given moment she could be doing one of a million things; changing the printer ink, taking a message, making dinner arrangements, dealing with unruly wives (or even girlfriends). In short, Ellen lives for her days tending the office. Over weekends she anticipates nine thirty AM the next Monday. She makes lists, buys supplies, and even ventures to call her boss once in a while to see if he needs anything in particular.

    Everything changed on Tuesday at 3:30 pm, when Ellen was called into her boss Chuck’s office. Ellen hurried in, thinking how happy she was to be working there-- wondering what thrilling task her boss had to offer.

    “Hello Ellen, sit down,” her boss mumbled. He was short, fat, and balding. Ellen has had a little crush on him ever since she began working for him.

    “Hello Sir, how are you doing today? Anything you need?”

    “No, No, Ellen I’m fine,” he exhaled in exhaustion from the annoying formalities, “And yourself?”

    “I’m Great. It comes from having such a Great job.”

    “About that Ellen, the company is making cuts…”

    “Oh! Too bad,” she interrupted, “did you want me to make a few calls?”

    “Unfortunately Ellen, it’s me that has to make those calls, and you’re one of the people on my list. You’ve been a really great secretary. If it was up to me you would be around for as many years as I work here.”

    “You’re firing me…” Ellen whispered.

    “Firing is a harsh word, but yes.”

    All she could do at this point was refrain from bursting out into tears. As she turned to leave, Chuck shouted these last words;

    “You’ll have to be out by Friday. You’ll find a box already on your desk.”

    She packed her things and took the elevator down from the twenty first floor, for the last time.

    Ellen decided to walk home. Usually she would take the bus, but today she just couldn’t handle the stress of the social situation. On her walk home all she could think about was her job. She would never be able to reload the printer’s ink, or lick the American flag stamps that Chuck used for all his mail. As she walked into her house all Ellen had the strength to do was take a nap-- something she hadn’t done in fifteen years.

    Ellen woke up at 12:22 am. She didn’t think she had ever woken up this late. She scanned her apartment trying to keep her mind off the day. She cleaned the floors the night before at 8:02 pm; she could still see her reflection in them. The pillows had been fluffed Tuesday at 7:30 pm; they were getting a little droopy. She walked over to the linen closet where her cat whiskers loved to sleep. He wasn’t there at the moment, but the towels that she had washed and folded Friday at 9:15 pm were still there organized by size and color. Just then whiskers jumped into the midsized beige towels and went to sleep. Ellen followed and went back to bed.

    Ellen woke up the next day at 1:56 pm; this was the latest she had ever woken up. She thought she should probably take a shower, do some laundry and fluff the pillows, but instead she stayed in bed ordered, Chinese food, and watched soaps. The next day was the same, as was the one after that, and after that. Soon she knew every characters name, and every dish on the Chinese food menu (in English and in Chinese.)

   Ellen woke up to a knock at her door. She wasn’t sure what time it was- she thought probably a little after noon. For a second she was embarrassed as she looked around at her apartment. There where several hundred take out Chinese food boxes scattered on the floor. Her kitchen no longer held clean dishes, and she hadn’t showered all week.  She shook off the embarrassment, got out of bed, and slowly walked to the door.

   It was Phil, her land lord. He was a tall thin man with age spots all over his bald head. He looked awfully uncomfortable. Ellen stood speechless for a couple minutes, forgetting the formalities of social interaction.

   She then croaked, “uh… hello.”

   “Hello, Mrs. Roberts, how are you today?” Phil said as he shuffled his feet awkwardly and looked at the door frame above Ellen’s head.

   “I’m fine,” Ellen said a little harsher then she had intended.

   “That’s good… I need to talk to you. The neighbors, they have, uh… well, a few people have had some complaints.”

   “Really… well thanks for your concern, but I’m fine. No complaints here. At least if we’re talking about the apartment.”

   Ellen realized that her last statement was inappropriate. Not right for a man she barely new, and now she was really embarrassed.

   “I’m glad, but it’s not that Ellen, the neighbors are all complaining about a smell.” Phil hinted hoping Ellen would catch on. Ellen a very naïve women, didn’t.

    “I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you are talking about.”

   “The smell is coming from your apartment.” He shifted uncomfortably. He had been there for what seemed like several hours.

   “Oh, ok. I’ll clean up a little, thank you.” Ellen choked back her tears as she finished her sentence. She felt like her checks would burn off. She couldn’t believe she had let herself fall so far apart.

   Again Ellen looked around her apartment. It was worse then she thought. For the first time since she had lost her job she saw her surroundings clearly. The apartment was dark and with every step Ellen took, she walked into a pile of things. The only light that came in was from the little slits between the window frame and the shade. In the few patches of light, Ellen could see thick, dense, dust ridden air. The couch was covered in old tissues and grains of rice. Stains had appeared on each of the arm rests and three out of four seat cushions. The pillows hadn’t been fluffed in weeks and Whiskers had no water. Ellen went to bed—thinking she would clean up in the morning.

   Ellen woke up reasonably early the next day. She had made the resolve the night before to turn things around, and she would start by taking a shower. Something, she thought, she should have done weeks ago. As she opened the door to the linen closet, she immediately realized where the smell had been coming from. It almost knocked her over as she moved deeper in the closet towards the towels. Then she saw it.

   “Oh my god” Ellen whispered out loud to herself.

   “Whiskers…” She realized that she hadn’t seen, or fed the cat since she got fired. Ellen dropped to her knees and started to cry. Her early resolve to get her life back together dissolved and all she could think to do was call her landlord and crawl under her unwashed covers.

   The land lord came got the cat and left. The only words he managed to utter were:

   “I’m sorry Ellen, about the cat you know… but your rent’s due.”

   Ellen had enough money in the bank to pay for at least half a year of rent, but she decided against paying her land lord. She spent her last few days in her apartment missing the only two loves in her life; her job, and whiskers.

   About a week later Ellen still hadn’t moved. She hadn’t watched her soaps or even ordered Chinese food. She ate her last piece of toast as she heard her landlord at her door.

   “Hi Phil,” Ellen said lamely.

   “Hey Ellen, are you alright?”

   “No.”

   “Ugh… well… hmm.”

   Ellen knew she had made him feel uncomfortable, but she really didn’t care.

   “Phil, what is it that you want?”

   “I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, but I’m here to evict you,” he said without emotion.

   “Can I just pay you next week?” Ellen said half heartedly.

   “No, you’ve been saying that for the past four weeks. I’ve tried to be nice, but I need to make a living too. Please be out by Friday.”

   “That’s in two days.”

   “Yea, I know, sorry,” Phil replied, and left.

   Friday came and went and Ellen found herself out on the street. She had rented a storage room and put all her belongings except her clothes and one midsized beige towel in the small empty room. Ellen couldn’t bring herself to go to a hotel. She felt the luxury was too much for a woman who had killed her own cat. She got a sleeping bag from the Good Will and slept in a park at night. Her favorite bench was one near the duck pond. The ducks reminded her of whiskers and she made sure to feed them constantly. They became her new pets. The bench she slept on donated by “Fredrick Monterey”, became her new bed. During the day she would watch people go by. As they passed, she made up stories about who they were and what they did. Ellen created lives for people she would never see again. Once a week she would get money out, just enough to go to the fast food place across the street from the park. Once in the morning and once at night, she would get chicken fingers and fries. She would eat six fingers and 57 fries. This was her new job, people watching and counting fries.

   One particularly sunny afternoon Ellen was people watching when she saw a man who she thought she recognized.

   “Ellen? Is that you?” Ellen looked up from the bench to her old boss.

   She cleared her throat, “ugh, hello Chuck. Yes it’s me.”

   “Are you O.K? You’re not looking so good Ellen.”

   “I’m fine, just out for the day. Didn’t shower this morning, you know… I guess I was just feeling a little lazy.” She lied

   “I suppose you never got that letter I sent you?”

   “No, I didn’t.” Ellen lied again

   “Well, my branch got a budget break, and I needed a secretary. I wrote to you to see if you’d want your old position back. I’d offer you the job, but I just hired another woman.”

   Ellen watched as Chuck walked away. She thought back to the day she left her apartment and remembered the feeling she had gotten as she opened the letter addressed from her old office. Just then a women quickly walked by Ellen’s bench in the park. She was wearing a huge hat with a bird on it. Ellen began to imagine her life: She had just come back from church with her two young grandsons. Each had wanted an ice cream cone so they had stopped and now this woman was late for a meeting with a friend…