“Step one,” she told her ceiling. “Get crap.”
See how easy this was going to be?
Camilla had long been telling Anna about the inherent relaxing and mind-expanding properties of “having a hobby.” For Camilla a hobby was something entirely creepy, like pottery and Tai Chi. Those were two of the things on Camilla’s list.
Anna grimaced at the idea of all those weirdos in the park swaying in the breeze. And pottery? Who was Camilla kidding? A bunch of middle-aged women sitting around playing with mud. Anna would rather take up dentistry. She looked up at the ceiling. The hobby question would require more thought.
Anna let out a big sigh and reluctantly turned her mind to what she was sure was Camilla’s big hang-up.
Don’t you want a family?
A boyfriend. In Camilla’s eyes Anna needed nothing more than a boyfriend to marry her and give her babies. Camilla had said so only about four million times in the years Anna had been at Arsenal.
“If I get a boyfriend—” Anna jabbed her finger at the cracks in the ceiling “—it’s game over. I win.”
A boyfriend. Anna didn’t particularly want one. She certainly wouldn’t mind some of the naked benefits that came with having a boyfriend. She wouldn’t really even mind having someone to drink Sunday morning coffee with. In bed. And then some being naked.
That would all be fine. It was the other stuff Anna didn’t want. She and Jim had had a fun and happy relationship for about a year. A year that she had thought was pretty normal. They went to movies, out to dinner. They laid on a blanket in the park on Sundays. She had felt normal, and while not exactly in love, she did like Jim. But as she got promoted at work, her job demanded more time and things between them fell apart and everything about Jim began to bother her.
He used to clean his ears and then put the Q-Tips in the toilet, but he wouldn’t flush the toilet. It made Anna crazy. The sharing of space. The family obligations. The arguing over the amount of work Anna did. That was the stuff she could do without. That was the stuff she didn’t have time for.
Poor Jim just didn’t understand what Arsenal meant to her. And so Poor Jim had left. And that had been mostly okay with Anna.
Anna looked up at the cracked ceiling and frowned. Poor Jim had been really good with the naked stuff.
But Anna was looking for smoke and mirrors, not a relationship.
“Nope,” she told the cracks in the ceiling. “A boyfriend at this point just isn’t in the cards.”
3
AT 6:30 A.M. ON THE FIRST DAY of her unemployment, Anna was eating one of the oranges from her office while she stood in front of her shut closet door, contemplating what was going to be behind that door. Two months ago her washing machine had broken down and she had stopped doing laundry except for the things that could be dropped off at the dry cleaners. Which was why she was now wearing a dark blue silk suit.
When the machine broke, she had called for someone to repair it, but that required her being home to let the guy in. Which, of course, had been impossible in the middle of the week. And considering her sometimes twenty-hour days, she could forget about hauling herself to the laundry room. So, for two months, instead of washing her underwear, she’d bought more on the internet.
Behind that closet door Anna guessed there might be close to a hundred pairs of dirty underwear. And blue jeans, Anna thought suddenly remembering that she actually owned some of those.
Anna popped another segment of orange in her mouth and considered getting a cleaning woman. After all, Camilla had one. And, Anna realized this morning as she looked around her place for the first time in what was probably months, there were things in her apartment covered in a thick fur of something that might be dust. She remembered that she had contemplated a cleaning woman a few months ago, but she just never had the time to straighten up before someone could come over to clean. Besides, Anna was not a big fan of a stranger being in her house, touching her things. So she had put it off and put it off, until like most things in her private life, she had forgotten all about it.
Perhaps she should invite Camilla over to watch her sweep the dust out from under her bed. Surely, that was life-getting at its best.
Putting the last segment of orange in her mouth she threw open the closet door and stood still in the small avalanche of dirty clothes that rolled out onto her feet.
“I wondered where those went,” Anna said, looking down at a pair of khaki pants that she hadn’t seen in months. “I thought I threw that out.” She picked up an old U.S.C. sweatshirt that was stiff with whatever was growing on it. “Gross,” she muttered and quickly dropped it.
Standing ankle-deep in clothes that had been stagnating in her closet Anna guessed that her first real effort in getting a life would be laundry.
She had a small plastic hamper, which was ridiculous in the face of all of her dirty clothes. Even her gym bag was too small. With a resigned sigh, she pulled her giant roller suitcase off the top shelf, put it on the floor and began shoving clothes into it. Halfway through, Anna started breathing through her mouth.
When all of her clothes were in the suitcase, she felt pretty good and decided there was nothing wrong with a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup for breakfast. After all she was unemployed. She didn’t need to worry about getting a healthy breakfast.
After laundry, she would have to tackle the grocery store.
In the back of the closet, Anna found some laundry detergent. So, with her suitcase, a mouthful of chocolate and laundry soap that hadn’t seen daylight in two months, Anna set out to find the building’s communal laundry facility. She had been given a tour when she moved in. That was the last time she had seen it.
Before walking out the door she remembered quarters and grabbed the jar she kept on her dresser that was filled to overflowing with change.
Anna’s apartment complex was huge, much bigger than she’d ever realized. There were pathways that seemed to go on for miles. Buildings she never knew existed were nestled in small hills and valleys that were actually quite pleasant, or would be if Anna wasn’t wandering around in high heels dragging a heavy suitcase filled with dirty laundry. Her hand was beginning to cramp around the change jar, so she switched hands with the laundry soap and tried to drag the suitcase in her soap hand. For a few minutes it was okay, then that hand started to cramp. So she rearranged everything again.
Anna walked around lost for fifteen minutes, but finally she found the laundry room. After the bright sunlight, stepping down the small cement steps into the basement facilities was like stepping into a cave. It was cool and smelled like every laundromat she had been in with her mother and Marie over the years. That strange combination of detergent, fabric softener and cigarettes.
Anna looked around and noticed that all of the washing machines were open.
“Excellent,” she mumbled. She unzipped her suitcase and began filling the washing machines with armloads of laundry.
Whoever lived in the apartment directly above or perhaps to the right of the laundry room apparently loved Celine Dion and seemed to have a hearing problem. Anna could hear the singer clearly through the wall and as she dumped soap and clothes into every washing machine she started bobbing her head in time. She wasn’t a huge fan of the woman, but she played on the radio every ten seconds.
And she recognized the song currently playing and sang along—Celine Dion style, adding some chest pounds for the hell of it. And for the moment, Anna didn’t mind at all being unemployed. She was busy, she had some tasks, there was an agenda and it was early. After the day she had had yesterday she would take what she could get.
Walking back to her suitcase and the jar of coins, she saw a sock she had dropped on the floor and she bent to pick it up. She twirled with a little flourish in time