8. Res
8
Res
I pause mid-step when I arrive back to my apartment.
I know I can be thoughtless and forgetful sometimes when I’m rushing out the door in the morning, but not like this. Not so much that I’d forget to turn around and lock the door, let alone forget to close it completely.
At the realization that there was no way that I could have left the door completely open, even in my haste to get to work this morning, I rush inside.
It’s reckless. I should have called the police first because the people who broke into my apartment could still be inside, and what was supposed to be a simple burglary can quickly turn into a homicide. But I only have one thought.
“Nala,” I call, scanning my apartment. The cushions of the couch are overturned, the cabinets in my kitchen are open, the mounted television is half hanging off the wall, my Keurig, air fryer, and PlayStation are gone. But those are things I just happen to notice as I look for my gray tabby cat.
“Nala,” I call again, growing concerned when she doesn’t come .
Maybe she’s just scared. Maybe she’s hiding somewhere, terrified when strange people came in and invaded our safe space.
I go to one of the open cabinets, grab a bag of treats, shake it, and feel tears begin to well up in my eyes when she doesn’t come out. She should have come out. She always comes when she hears me shake her treats.
I shakily take my phone out my pocket to call the police. While I wait for them to arrive, I immediately pull up the various neighborhood groups and chats that I’m part of to put up pictures of Nala, regretting more than ever that I didn’t just bite the bullet and pay the damn hundred bucks to register her microchip to my address when I got her.
The police arrive quicker than I thought. Turns out they were already in the neighborhood investigating a string of robberies reported in the last couple of hours. They ask me questions, help me write down and catalog what’s missing, and then tell me they’ll update me if there are any breakthroughs in the investigation. If I’m lucky, they say, they can catch the people and get my stuff back. But I don’t care about any of that. My renter’s insurance will replace everything stolen. But my insurance can’t replace Nala. I’ve had her since I graduated college, and she’s been my most reliable companion since.
If Nala being missing wasn’t bad enough, what’s worse is that the god damn thieves somehow fucked up my thermostat. That usually wouldn’t be terrible at this time of year when it’s a cool seventy-degrees outside on most days. But tonight, the temperature drops to forty degrees and my portable space heater went out at the end of last winter and I haven’t replaced it yet. So I spend the night in my bed cold and unable to sleep because of it and my missing cat.
Needless to say, I’m not in the brightest of moods when I force myself to get up and go to work the next day. I could call out, but that would mean sitting in a cold apartment all day, stressing over my lost cat. Besides, I just started that new audit with Shelly, and as much as I protested being given a new project, it would look bad to not show up so early into it.
I still end up showing up to work late, taking longer than usual because I kept slipping back under the covers of my bed in between waking up and finally getting dressed. I do arrive just in time for my meeting with Shelly. She’s waiting, bright and energetic with a coffee in her hands and another sitting on the table.
“Good morning, Lauressa,” Shelly says without looking up from her laptop. “I asked your co-workers what your regular coffee order is. They told me you like the chai from this coffee spot about a block away. They had a bunch of different ones, but since you told me you liked spicy foods yesterday, I got the spiciest blend they had. With half and half. Hope that was right.”
“Morning,” I say, far less enthusiastically than Shelly, even far less enthusiastically than my normal morning gloom.
Shelly looks up, concern etched into her features.
“Are you alright?” she asks.
I sigh. “I’m fine. Where did we leave off yesterday?”
“I’m sorry if I’m overstepping my bounds, but you don’t look fine. ”
“It’s just…” I hesitate. But what the hell. “My apartment got broken into yesterday.”
“Oh, no! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. And they didn’t take anything I can’t replace. But they left the door open, and I think my cat got out, and I’m so worried about her. I’ve had her since she was a baby, and I don’t think she’ll survive outside on her own,” I say, and to my horror, tears well up in my eyes. I wipe them with the back of my hand and say, “I’m sorry for unloading on you like this. I don’t even know you like that.”
Shelly sighs. “You don’t have to know somebody like that to offer compassion.”
“What an optimistic view of the world,” I mutter, even though I don’t disagree with her. I wouldn’t spend so much of my free time listening to people talk about their experiences with cults and volunteering if I did.
“We don’t have to do this today,” Shelly says. “Take the day off. I’m sure you have more things you need to do.”
“Not really. I filed a claim with the insurance last night. I needed the distraction. Besides, we just got started. It would look bad to—”
“My higher-ups are expecting this to take months. Likely going well into next year by the time we’re done and figure out where we’re short, what’s been misapplied, and what’s been outright stolen. A couple of days won’t hurt.” Shelly clearly sees that I’m about to argue and continues, “If it makes you feel better, we can just tell your manager we’ll be working off-site for the rest of the week. Tell her I use the flexibility of my work to work at various cafes with Wi-Fi or whatever and we’ll go to your house. You can work in your pajamas or something,” Shelly finishes with uncertainty.
“If my apartment weren’t freezing right now, I’d take you up on it. The thieves broke my fucking thermostat too, and my leasing office isn’t answering my calls or emails, so no telling when it will be fixed. The longer I can be away from home, the better.”
“If I tell you that I know someone that can meet us at your apartment by the time we finish picking up some of that chicken you like and will have your apartment all warm and toasty in an hour, will that persuade you?” Shelly asks.
It’s a testament to how exhausted I am that I don’t fight her. That I don’t fight packing up and taking someone I’ve only known for twenty-four hours, if that, into my home. My sanctuary. A sanctuary that’s been violated. But I’m too distraught over my apartment being broken into and my lost cat to care. We stop to get food, and just as she promised, someone meets us to fix my thermostat. Within the hour, my heat is on, knocking off the chill that filled my apartment overnight.
“Now that that’s all fixed,” Shelly says, “What do you want to do now?”
“Um… work?” I say, gesturing to our laptops.
Shelly gives me a wry look. “You really don’t think I convinced you to come back here so we can work?”
“We’re clocked in…”
“You say that like you’ve never clocked into work from home and then did everything but work unless you got an email or ping that absolutely needed a response. ”
I have. I still do it. Especially on the days I don’t have any work because I’ve done it all in half the time I told people I could. But today…
“I need the distraction,” I finally say.
Shelly smiles. “If it makes you feel better.”
I get into an oversized shirt and offer some more relaxing clothes to Shelly, who refuses and simply takes off the jacket to her suit. Then we sit and pour over financial errors while we eat and I drink a bottle of alcoholic lemonade. I offer one to Shelly, but she’s sober.
“If you were a normal stranger I’d met yesterday, I probably wouldn’t ask you this. But I feel like once someone is sitting on my couch with me in pajamas while we work, we’ve crossed certain boundaries,” I begin. “So, with the full understanding that you can tell me to shut the fuck up and mind my own business, why are you sober?”
“Oh,” Shelly says brightly. “I don’t mind. Religious reasons.”
That grabs my attention. “Religious?”
“Yeah. My dad came from a very strict…” Shelly hesitates here before finally continuing, “Christian upbringing, and he passed the strictness on. Some things I’m grateful for. Like the no drinking and drugs. Other things…”
“Like what?”
“He tried to force me to get married.”
That doesn’t shock me, and Shelly narrows her eyes at the lack of it.
“Do you deal with people being forced to get married often?” she asks .
I’m already in the deep end with Shelly as it is. Might as well.
“I run a podcast on cults. It’s a pretty common thing,” I explain.
“A podcast about cults?”
“Cults and high-demand, high-control groups and religions.”
“I… it’s not… it’s not like that,” Shelly assures. “It wasn’t the… my church. It was my dad who was wrong.”
It’s the classic “it’s the people not the doctrine” excuse, even though it’s usually the doctrine that enables the people. But I’ve learned that arguing with people who grew up in high-control groups only alienates them. It’s best to just be kind and not berate their entire belief system if I want to help them. Let them tell me the fucked up shit that they were told to get over, and then validate their feelings over the situation. Allow them to feel whatever they want and come to their own conclusions rather than the ones someone told them to have.
“How’d you get out of it?” I ask.
“My fiancé realized I didn’t want it and didn’t make me. His father backed him up. My dad really respects his father so he didn’t get mad. My ex-fiancé and I are still friends too.”
“Sounds like a decent guy,” I say, even though not forcing a woman to marry you is bottom of the barrel decent. Or, at least, it should be.
“More than decent. He’s great. Really cares about people. Sometimes I wish I had been able to suck it up and marry him.” Then, “He reminds me of you actually. He’s into connecting with non-profits and making the world a better place and all that. You’d get along. ”
I shrug. “You’ll have to introduce me to him one day. If I break up with my boyfriend.”
I doubt it. Not that I would break up with my boyfriend, but that I would want to be introduced to her friend to potentially date.
Not wanting to hear anymore about this friend of hers, just in case she’s already gotten ideas, and not trusting myself not to get pushy if we talk more about her religious upbringing, I distract her with a funny looking line in the report I’m looking at.
Shelly gives me a look like she knows what I’m doing, but looks at the line.
I smile. And to think, my mother was worried I didn’t know how to make friends.