Streetlights Part 2 (fiction)

Hm. Here is part two of my story. I'm not too happy with it, but I like to finish what I start (bags of chips, bottles of wine, boxes of chocolate), so here is the second installment.

And while the elevator had, of late, been opening up as though solely for her when she arrived home, so did it continually let her boyfriend off at the sixth or the eighth floor of her building, instead of on the seventh floor where she lived.
Today, Friday, she was awakened earlier than normal: her alarm clock was emitting a strange electronic burping sound – the kind of sound that her car radio would make shortly before her cell phone began to ring. She knew it was pointless to try and seek out the additional fifteen minutes of sleep and roused herself out of bed and ended up catching an earlier bus than what she was accustomed to, to work.
Not wanting to actually spend the additional fifteen minutes at work, she decided to treat herself to a cappuccino. As soon as she decided this, she got the go ahead to use the crosswalk, so she darted across quickly. She was briefly debating whether or not to treat herself even further with a biscotti when she spotted her boyfriend Thomas a block ahead of her. He also worked downtown as a trader and, since he started much earlier than her, she figured he was likely out for a late (for him) morning coffee. She called out to him, but he couldn’t hear her over the din of the traffic and he crossed at a set of traffic lights and she lost sight of him.
She was in the process of pulling out her cell to call him to ask if he had ten minutes for a quick coffee when a filthy, ragged man smelling of stale alcohol, sweat and piss sidled up next to her, asking for a handout. His brilliant blue eyes caught her off guard and she forced herself to focus on them, and not his lank, unkempt hair or the several raw looking sores that pitted his face. He was missing teeth and the ones remaining were nut brown. She started to insist that she didn’t have any spare change and then decided that she would forgo the biscotti and gave him a dollar. As she placed the coin in his hand she was startled by a strong electric shock that made an audible crackling sound.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, rapidly withdrawing her hand. When she looked back at the homeless man his gaze was oddly unwavering and she thought that either he hadn’t felt the shock through the layers of grime on his hands, or he did and his motor skills were such that it hadn’t even registered.
“Have yourself a good day,” he enunciated perfectly with a strong, articulate voice. He didn’t smile.
Slightly unnerved, she nodded and decided to forgo the coffee entirely and instead head back to the office.
She arrived, coffeeless, to be ushered into a boardroom by the receptionist, where she looked quizzically at some of her coworkers.
“What’s going on?” she asked of Kelly. Kelly worked in the HR department and always reminded her of what little orphan Annie would have looked like when she grew up: a kind, open face with a smattering of freckles, and fantastic, coiled and springy orange hair.
“No idea,” Kelly shrugged, and smiled amiably.
When the CEO came in a few minutes later they learned that they were the first group of people to be given their walking papers as the transportation and distribution company they worked for had been bought by a multi-national company that would be taking care of the HR, accounting and marketing functions from their head office.
Stunned, they were all allowed out of the “meeting” and given ten minutes to collect their personal effects into the cardboard boxes thoughtfully placed on their respective desks before being summarily stripped of their access passes and keys.
Some of her coworkers wanted to go for a coffee to decompress, discuss what had happened, commiserate, and start figuring out what their next step was. She looked at the gaggle of them, with their boxes balanced on their hips, housing sad plants and photos of loved ones in happy times and begged off, not feeling up to company of any sort, and instead caught a bus home. Though she hadn’t wanted to be with her coworkers, she didn’t feel like being utterly alone, so she went to a nearby café and ordered her much delayed coffee and biscotti and idly flipped through the previous day’s Globe and Mail. Her mind was in turmoil: she had never been laid off before. She had been at her current job for over four years, her resume was antique and her interview schedule were, at the best of times, sadly lacking and now they were rusty as well.
“Fuck,” she muttered to herself. She tried to look at the positive side of things: her car was paid off, she had cheap rent and her parents had drilled the concept of saving one’s pennies into her at an early age. Pondering, she realized that she could afford to go for a year without employment, but watching her bank account drain and dwindle wasn’t something her personality could handle and still enable her to sleep nights. It was not in her nature to be idle, and she promised herself she would simply take the weekend to rest and enjoy herself, and then hit the pavement first thing Monday morning to find a job.
After finishing her coffee she wandered her neighborhood for a while, not wanting to go back to her apartment. She sat on a park bench, basking in the unseasonably warm sun and called her mother to fill her in on the details. Her mother told her that she was always welcome to move back home, as she knew her mother would. She didn’t want to move home, being in her early thirties and wanting to be able to at least affect some level of stability and independence, but to make her mom feel appreciated (and to keep that door open in case she should need it) she said that if she hadn’t found a job in a couple of months she would consider moving back into her old room. Her old, sky blue room that still displayed the van Gogh Café Terrace at Night poster. The last time she had been home she had been amazed that the battery in her Tickle Me Elmo doll still worked. She chatted with her mother for close to an hour and when she finally did go back to her place it was to pack an overnight bag: Thomas would be home by 3pm and she intended to meet him at his apartment. She normally met him after the Friday night rush hour mania and they would go out to dinner or a movie and she would spend Friday night, and sometimes Saturday night, at his place. Though she liked her apartment, it was a bachelor suite, and while roomy enough for her it became rather cramped quarters when the two of them were together.
With still some time to kill, she stopped off at the supermarket on the way over and shopped for their dinner: she didn’t really feel like going out. She just wanted to talk to Thomas, to be comforted by him, to stand near him as he cooked for her in his stainless steel and granite countertopped kitchen, drinking wine and feeling happy to simply be in his orbit.
She and Thomas had been together for a couple of years: they had been introduced by a mutual friend and had hit it off immediately. He was smart, successful, attentive, athletic, had a wicked sense of humor and was very easy on the eyes. Some of her friends had started nosing in on their relationship, wondering when he might propose but, as much as she would certainly say yes if he asked her to spend the rest of her life with him; she wasn’t in a huge hurry. As corny as it was, she was simply happy to see him and be with him as often as she did.
At the supermarket she picked out a couple of nice steaks, asparagus, baby potatoes, chocolate macaroons and then went to the liquor store to pick out a bottle of Spanish Grenache. She was starting to feel better already.
When she arrived at Thomas’s sleek, modern apartment building she managed to score a great parking space outside, which was a rarity for her. She grabbed the bags of groceries from the back seat of her car and thanked the woman that held the front door open for her as she left. She realized she should check in at the buzzer to make sure Thomas was there, but decided against it – if Thomas wasn’t in she would call him on his cell and entertain herself at a nearby coffee shop until he showed up.
She was too busy shifting the grocery bags, her purse and her overnight bag around to notice that the elevator door had slid open for her, and there was no one in it. Glancing up she stepped into the elevator waiting for it to whisk her to the fourteenth floor.