Reagan was freezing in her apartment. The temperature had dropped steadily all night and she could almost see her breath when she woke up. She swung her feet off the bed and onto the floor and gasped. The floors had ceased being wood and were now made of ice. It seemed her whole floor was like the inside of a freezer. She imagined that boxer movie guy in the other room punching a side of beef. She couldn’t remember the guy’s name. One of her ex-boyfriends made her watch it and it was stupid. But she did remember the guy punching the meat in the freezer.
She grabbed her bathrobe and quickly tip-toed across the frozen wood floor tundra and into her bathroom. At least the heat had been on in there at some point during the morning hours. She turned on the hot water and looked at herself in the mirror. It’d been a long weekend and it had taken a serious toll on her hair. It was knotted and mashed into a curly blob. She sighed and considered getting a bob haircut.
She got in the shower and the hot water barely seemed hot enough. It was tepid and it seemed to take a long time to get going. The bathroom was fogging up too fast and that would make using the bathroom mirror a damn near impossibility. She cleaned herself up, skipped the leg shaving, and did what she could to get the knots out or her hair. She was sad she had to turn the water off. The hot water had just started to feel good. The chill in the air was brutal and she was shivering as she tried to dry off.
She put on her robe and went back to her ice box of a bedroom. She finished drying off and then remembered how awesome the new hair dryer was and how great that would feel. She looked at her clock and saw that her time was running short. She had to really get a move on. She had managed to develop a pretty standard rush action plan and she followed it to the letter. Blow dry, dress, scarf, coat and boots, make-up would have to be done on the train. It was a pattern she’d developed over the last four years.
She checked the weather on her iPhone right before she left her apartment. It was about as warm outside as it was in her bedroom. She took the elevator to the lobby and rushed through the revolving doors. She swore to herself that she would move somewhere warm very soon. She was not a winter person at all. She liked the summer and the sun. She didn’t like a lot of summer clothes, but she made due.
The walk to the train station was windy and freezing. Reagan wished she had grabbed her knit scarf instead of the thin one she was wearing. She walked fast with her head down against the cold. She started to get mad about her station in life. She’d worked at the same law firm for five years and wasn’t getting anywhere. She just couldn’t get motivated about it all. She wished she’d followed her painting passion, but her dad had talked her out of that.
The wind blew hard and right down her neck and it sent a vicious chill over her body. She cursed her rotten apartment and her life and all the stupid things she let herself get involved with. She was grumbling as she reached the top of the stairs at the train station and walked out across the platform.
The sun met her at the top stair and she had to squint against it. She stepped forward and suddenly didn’t feel as cold as she did before. The sun felt blazing against her face and in that moment, things just didn’t seem all that bad. Maybe could tough it out and try to stay positive. Maybe life was like that sometimes and you just had to keep you face toward the sun, feel its warmth and know that you can go on.
No comments:
Post a Comment