The story starts with the breaking of a glass.
It broke as the sun set and the sky bled an orange hue. It broke because she had stumbled into the house, tired and sweating and confused and had bumped right into the vase in front of her. At first, she did not realise what had happened, that she had hit the vase with such force that it leapt out of its wooden holding plate and fell to its death. But then came the sound, gradually and then all at once. Like a firecracker. Then, shards of broken glass, tinted lavender, on the floor, everywhere—under the rug, beside the lamp, on the sofa, in front of her feet. Panic climbed up her spine; she did not know what one does when they break glass. She swore silently and took a deep breath. Then she pushed the pieces on the floor to one side through the broken, torn, dirty edges of sneakers. She looked around the room—at the royal blue velvet curtains that draped the living room, at the mahogany wood furniture decking up the area, at the grand piano posing gracefully in the centre of the room. The dim, yellow lights hurt her eyes. She rubbed them and walked ahead, forgetting the broken glass she left behind.
Actually, the story starts with a lost dog. A sweet, innocent, drop of liquid sunshine roaming the planet in the form of a large golden retriever. She bought him from a pet shop after reading about a sweet, innocent, large golden retriever in one of the books she was reading. Yes, she did that. She read a lot of books. It was her ‘thing’. But the pet shop owner didn’t care about why she wanted a dog, he had said. She could just choose one, pay and take him home. Promise not to hurt him. She could try playing with them to choose one, he had said. So she played with them and then bought the one with the most yellow fur and the most lopsided smiles and he looked like he was always thinking about the moon and the stars. And chocolate. She made him a dog house in her backyard, built from scratch using the instruction manual and her dead father’s old tools. She fed him, washed him, and took him for walks. She, as promised, did not hurt him. But maybe he was unsatisfied with what he had or maybe he got bored because one day when the door was open—of his house and her house—he ran away swiftly. He did not look back, did not make a sound. And so when she realised he had gone she started crying and then crying some more but I have to get a handle on myself, she said. No one else was going to bring him back. Dutifully, she left her house and searched for him all day and half the evening but when she still couldn’t find him she stumbled back home, tired and sweaty and confused.
There was also getting fired from her job which made her sullen and anxious. Yes, actually. This story really starts when she loses her job. The clouds were pale and the sunlight was scarce when she walked into the store, thirty minutes late for her shift, for the thirteenth time in the thirty-one-day month. She was late because the car would not start because the children in the neighbourhood broke something in it with their ball because they wanted to rebel against their parents because they had been denied money for eating out. So, you’re telling me that your car broke down because of some parents worried about their children’s health? He screamed at her but no, that is not the whole story, if only he would listen to her. But he was mad and she was trying in vain to form full sentences so she couldn’t tell him the domino cycle, and frankly, he didn’t care, he said, because she was an irresponsible employee who never bothered to show up on time. And this was the last day he would tolerate it. She was fired, she was told. Pack up your things and get out. So she packed up her things and got out, still thinking about how she was going to afford to pay rent for that god-forsaken house she had decided to buy last year without any thoughts. She did not know. But alas, she always did make it.
But that god-awful dinner party was before the firing. On her sofa on a Friday night with the book she was reading in her hand, she thought about the night being young and hazy, and cold. Then she thought about how she was also young and that people her age, and people in her books, always go to dinner parties on Friday nights. They wear clothes they cannot afford and drink their weight in champagne from the open bar and they dance even though they’ve never taken a dance class in their lives, and they chat with people and they live. So, she got up from her sofa and tripped over the rug because that is just how clumsy she was and walked over to the mahogany wood table to pick up an invite for a dinner party being held in the celebration of a merger between her organization and someone else not important enough for her to remember. She was invited even though her rank amounted to nothing because the company operated on down-to-earth standards, they had said. Anything, to get her mind off the children outside throwing stones and breaking cars. So she wore a silver silk dress that caressed her body just enough to make it seem like she was a weightless feather flying around the night. And she drove to the address. And she drank champagne and chatted up with not people she knew but with the waitress diligently refilling everyone’s cups. But that was fine, because she had one night all to herself, away from the dismay.
The first time she really understood that she had to do something about the not-having-a-job problem was when the light went out. Truly, this story begins from then. It was January and it was morning and it was unbearably cold. But that was fine because the heating was on and everything inside the house was warm and fuzzy and everything nice. She woke up after morning was over and the afternoon daze had creeped over the day. Without thinking, she walked into the bathroom, started her shower and stepped underneath it. Just like the glass, the water broke gradually and then all at once and then she couldn’t breathe because the water wasn’t hot, it was icy cold. Why was it cold? She was murmuring to herself, not daring to open her eyes or move her limbs for fear of touching the water anywhere but she had to, otherwise, how would I figure out why the hot water wasn’t coming? Turns out the geyser wasn’t working because the electricity went out because she didn’t pay the bill because she did not have an income. Domino effect. She draped her white towel around her body and stepped out into her once-heated apartment, now nothing but a shadow up cold, cold sadness. Didn’t they say that an apartment mirrors its owner’s feelings?
Reading was her escape from problems, fights, breakdowns, everything. She read, she dreamed, she forgot. She could live in the intoxication of a new story. And she read everything—from mysterious landlords to a murder in 1950s Louisiana and even becoming a famed actress in the town of Edinburgh. She read about romance and vacations and about a con artist getting fired from her job and finding herself broke, only to remember the address of the nice woman she spoke to during a god-awful dinner party that one November night and planning and plotting and buying a gun and gathering up all her courage to distract her dog and get inside her house but accidentally knocking over a vase but that’s fine because she was so engrossed in her book that she didn’t rea—Oh, she’s right behind me, isn’t she? Shit.
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