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For the first time Alicia could remember, she was looking forward to the first day of school. She had packed her old Langston University gym bag and thrown it in the trunk when she left home that morning. She packed everything: black workout leggings and crop top, towel, spare towel, water bottle, bottle of green-flavored H-Twenty, weightlifting shoes, and running shoes. She couldn't decide which footwear was better suited for the ring, if either. If business casual was preferable, she had that covered as well. Perhaps pro wrestling and administrative work shared similar orthopedic demands.
For as quickly as Thursday arrived, the workday seemed in no particular hurry to end. The stench of bad news followed Dr. Pupe into the break room. Alicia stood at the sink scrubbing her pink plastic lunch container under the faucet with a sponge. The creases on the doctor's supple bronze face were carved into a pattern Alicia recognized as trouble. He couldn't be upset at her; she hadn't done anything. Oh geez, what did I forget to do?
He approached and stood in front of her, as if to initiate a conversation. She would have to wait for him to finish a long, deliberate sip from the mug in his hand. "Hi, Alicia, I see you're not in the middle of anything at the moment."
No! shouted Alicia as loud as she could in her own head. Please. Not today. Whatever you're about to say I did or didn't do, no or yes I didn't or did! She hadn't been accused of anything. Play it cool. "Yep! What are you implying?"
"There was another problem with the damn time-clock," he grumbled. "So everyone who clocked in between 7:30 AM and 8:00 AM didn't get clocked in until 8:31."
"Isn't that just me?" Alicia asked.
"Yeah," he agreed, happy she reached the conclusion without him needing to say it.
Alicia swallowed her displeasure and focused that energy into scrubbing her knife and fork harder. "Okay. How do I fix it?"
"You can't," replied the doctor matter-of-factly.
"How do you fix it?" Was that a spot on her plate, or a bubble? She was going to clean the power-tripping ceramic jerk until it shined.
"I don't know, and I'm not going to try. I tried to correct the old timesheet on the computer a few years ago before you started, and everybody's checks went out two weeks late," said Dr. Pupe, meeting her frustration in kind. "I'm not dealing with the complaining again."
The displeasure was getting harder to choke down. As plentiful as the unhappiness had been the last couple weeks, it had at least been reasonable. A discernible cause and effect still could explain what past conditions resulted in present misfortunes. This felt arbitrary. She felt her resolve start to buckle under the combined weight of five straight months of bad days. The emotion started seeping through. "It's almost 4:45! Why are you just telling me this now?"
As satisfying as the outburst was, she regretted the escalation as soon as the words left her mouth. Whether or not the hostile tone had been intended, it had certainly been noticed. His leathery cheeks reddened a bit as he seemed to bristle at the perceived challenge.
As usual, he had a lecture prepared. "Do you know the things these people have in their mouths? Or don't? The pressure I'm under when I've got that sharp metal tool- what's the hook you use to scrape… scaler! in some wheezing geriatric's liver-and-onion mouth?" He had the faraway look in his eyes. Dr. Pupe may have had two feet planted on the break room floor, but in his mind, he was back in the periodontal trenches.
"I can barely see a thing in there. I've got this tiny, little-ass mirror fogging up, glasses fogging up, half the time their breath's making me tear up, I haven't been to the eye doctor in years, and every day for eight hours I'm staring down a sopping wet, gaping hole surrounded by an idiot, and you're expecting me to work a mouse and look at a computer screen and figure out the time-clock. And every morning I wake up and look in the mirror and wonder when all of it's finally gonna- the long and short of it is, I need you to stay and clock out at 5:31 PM or you're not going to get your 8 hours for the day. You'd technically be leaving early. I would have to write you up."
Alicia threw up her arms in a splash of suds. "You know I was on time!"
"But the time-clock doesn't," he said, taking a sip of coffee. "You see my conundrum?"
"It's my conundrum!"
"I knew you'd understand." Sip.
Why today? Why why why today? thought Alicia as she dried her dishes with a frayed navy blue hand towel. She tried to think. Somewhere, there was a solution, a loophole, a bargaining chip, a way out the back door that would allow her leave on time. "I have something I've really got to be downtown for at 6:00 PM! Can't Maxin-"
"No, can't Maxine!" Dr. Pupe interjected. "Clocking in and out for someone else is against policy."
"You set the- didn't you write the policy?"
"So you can imagine the scrutiny I'm under to enforce it," spake the arbiter of Tooth Law, looking a little exasperated by the weight of responsibility. He tried to cross his arms for additional gravitas before realizing that the mug in his hand made it difficult. Trying to restore weight to his decree, the doctor tried returning his arms to where they were, before becoming self-conscious of his prolonged state of directionless non-pose. He leaned against the counter which was a little too far away and demanded too much of an angle to have been comfortable. "If I make an exception for you, then suddenly everyone's a victim when they're hurt by something that's out of their control."
"Can you please find a way to fix the time-clock?" pleaded Alicia. "I've gotten screwed by that thing twice this week."
"Hey. I understand you're upset, but let's check the language." scolded the man with dark hair and more-salt-than-pepper eyebrows.
Now she was starting to feel bullied. She stood tall with her hands on her hips and retorted, "You cuss all the time!"
Alicia's boss gave her a shocked look. "I do not say," he lowered his voice to a whisper for the offending vocabulary, "screwed," he continued in a normal voice, "At the office, Ms. Winthrop. No, I do not. I can't do anything about your time-clock problem. My hands are tied."
"You're the one tying them," Alicia grumbled.
"That's poetic." Dr. Pupe ruminated on this wisdom, took a sip of his coffee, and walked out the door.
Alicia racked her brain for a plan B. Plan B was to accept reality. Thankfully, the cordless phone had once again been abandoned on its usual counter. She had made a point to memorize the number for Hard Times anticipating something like this. The office tended to produce a gravitational field around 5:00 PM. She hit the "Call" button and dialed the number. It suddenly felt a lot more like a normal first day of school.
* * * * *
Half an hour of helpless staring at the FASTClock "punch out" screen crept by in agony. 5:31 PM. Punch out. Yes. Sign out. Yes. Confirm. Exit. Yes, I'm sure. Sign off. Sign out. She grabbed her bag and stood up fast enough to launch her rolling chair several feet behind her.
"Ms. Winthrop," said Dr. Pupe.
Are you juicing my prunes?! Alicia lowered her head, trying to remain calm. "Yes?"
"You left the door to the reception desk unlocked when you came back from filling up the coffee supplies," said Dr. Pupe with a frown.
Alicia opened her mouth to say anything in her own defense. She had nothing. "I'm sorry. Seriously, I will stop doing that."
"It's been more than two years, Alicia. It's a liability issue." explained the man who loved to explain things while wearing a white coat. "One more thing-"
Alicia's eyes darted to her desk clock and back to her boss. She pleaded, "I swear, Dr. Pupe, I will move the fern back in the morning I really need to leave."
"I was going to tell you that I already did. See you tomorrow, Alicia."
"You too," she called back. Polite little wave.
Out the door and into the parking lot, keys already in hand. The louder the music, the faster the car went. Windows down, driving into the city–this is what going home should feel like. Not retreating from civilization to dwell in a spider den at the edge of the woods in the nice part of a sketchy area. With the wind in the loose curls of her dark hair and the skyline framed in the windshield, it felt like old times. Windows up.
Once ink had been put to paper, Alicia tried not to come into the experience with expectations. Based on what she had seen at the lesson earlier in the week, wrestling school seemed to entail a lot of getting knocked down and hitting solid surfaces at high speed. The former hockey star felt confident in her qualifications. Compared to dealing with insurance and invoicing, getting thrown to the ground for four hours twice a week seemed refreshingly straightforward.
She made the 44-minute drive in 38, announcing her arrival in the parking lot with a shriek of metal. The well-maintained gray and white Hard Times Wrestling School building appeared to have been built recently and for purpose. Alicia grabbed her bag from the backseat. Breathe in, breathe out. She stepped out of the car and jogged across a mercifully well lit parking lot to the entrance.
Alicia picked the least cool way to burst through a door: on the second try. She pushed and then pulled the glass door open with a polite little wave and apologetic look to the familiar face behind the counter. "Hi. Sorry I'm late."
"At least you called," replied Sabrina. "Before we get started, let's get the money stuff out of the way. I don't like dealing with it. It makes things weird if it has to come up. So…"
It was clear by her mannerisms that Sabrina was telling the truth about the discomfort. Two checks migrated from Alicia's sports bag into the head trainer's hands into a locked cash box into a locked drawer as though she were securing radioactive material. The confidence of decades of experience faltered for a moment, but with the turn of a key they returned. Alicia briefly questioned placing someone uncomfortable with money in charge of ostensibly a private gym, but self-preservation pressed her to dismiss the thought. If being good at 100% of the job were a condition of employment, there would be no one left to even do the hiring.
"I'll show you where you can get changed," said Sabrina. She turned and indicated the door with a quick tilt of her head. "Follow me back."
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