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"Morning, Miss Maxine," said Alicia with a polite little wave.
"Hi! Good morning to you," said Maxine Winters from her seat behind the reception desk. Her face turned to one of concern. "How was your weekend? Are you doing okay?"
"I'm struggling, but I'm trying," said Alicia. "I tried to keep busy and ignore it, but I'm not going to lie, it's weird. Going places alone. Coming home and no one's there. There's so many times I just want to turn and say something to him or point something out. Everything reminds me of something." It was more of an answer than she meant to give, but she'd never experienced this feeling of loss before. She didn't know if she was taking it well.
"It's going to hurt for a while, that's for sure," said Maxine with a grunt as she pushed herself up from the one rolling office chair without a bad wheel. The short, chubby office manager came out the side door from reception and hobbled over to embrace Alicia in her warm, russet brown arms. Up close, she looked short. Standing in front of Alicia, Maxine looked diminutive. Although her short, naturally curly salt-and-pepper hair barely reached Alicia's solar plexus, Maxine hugged like a giant, all the same. "You're going to get over it, but first you've got to get through it."
How is she always so gosh darn apt? wondered Alicia as she hugged Maxine back. "Thank you, Miss Maxine. I know it'll get better. I'm trying not to think about it. I haven't unpacked any pictures yet. Not until I'm ready to see them."
"Look at you, coming up with a plan!" said Maxine, rubbing Alicia on the back a couple of times while following behind.
"Yeah, I thought- oh," said Alicia, seeing the flaw in her plan in glossy three-by-five.
Alicia opened the door to reception. Sitting on her desk in a blue and gray photo frame was the picture of her and Zack posed by the ice right after the Yetis took the conference. They stood side-by-side, one arm around each other, the other outstretched in a flamboyant "hey world, look at us!" pose. She towered over Zack–a contrast made all the more stark by her husky yet well defined frame. She turned around to face Maxine again.
"Well, it almost worked." Alicia brought her fingers up to her lips. The bottoms of her eyes felt warm. She fought to blink back the first hint of tears. With a sigh, she picked up the photo and put it in in the bottom of her rolling storage drawer. "It's coming back out eventually," she said, slinging her black leather purse off her shoulder and dropping it on her side of the reception desk. She closed the drawer before shedding her maroon jacket and tossing it onto her chair-back.
"I know, doll. I was thinking about you all last Friday. I know you know how Andy gets when you ask for time off, but if you need today, I say ask for today. I know it's not my decision, but if it were up to me, you could take all the time you need." Maxine sat back down in her chair, grunting just audibly enough from the effort for Alicia to hear.
"You didn't need to get up, but thank you, Miss Maxine. I appreciate you."
"I know you're gonna get through it okay," Maxine reassured her.
Alicia walked past the copy machine and through an open doorway, turning left and entering the employee break area. A man with a gold membership to at least one tanning salon stood by the yellowing countertop pouring coffee into a blue and red "Parent of a Chapperstein Academy Alumni" mug. He had started dyeing the gray out of his hair but not his mustache. The contrast grew more jarring by the day.
"Morning, Dr. Pupe," Alicia said with all the Monday morning energy she could summon.
He turned and looked over his shoulder at her as she put her pink and blue nylon lunch bag and protein shake in the refrigerator. "Good morning, Alicia. Welcome back."
From where she was standing, Alicia could see "Dr. Andrew Pupe, DDS" embroidered on his white doctor's coat as clearly as the fresh coffee stains. A quick scan of the room revealed more coffee had made it onto the countertop, cabinets, and floor. "It looks like you had a bit of an accident," Alicia observed, trying to gauge the doctor's mood.
"I most certainly did," he said, turning to look at her while taking a sip from his freshly poured mug. "Look, you know I wouldn't ask," Lie. "Unless I really didn't have a choice," Lie lie lie. "But I've got a patient coming in for an emergency extraction. Can you clean this up?" The doctor pointed out several coffee splatters, including some Alicia hadn't initially noticed.
She gave her boss a look much less annoyed than she actually felt. "Yep, I'll take care of it. Let me just clock in and-"
"Don't worry about it," said Dr. Pupe, cutting her off. His teeth gleamed iridescent white. White enough to give Giselle Tillman a run for her money. "I know you're here. Handle this first, and then you can go clock in."
Alicia grabbed a roll of paper towels from a stand next to the refrigerator. Her index finger touched something wet. A dark brown coffee stain roughly the size of a half-dollar had dampened a part of the paper towel roll.
"You got coffee all the way over here? What happened?"
"Don't worry about that, either," replied her boss. "I'm in a hurry. I don't have time to explain." Dr. Pupe walked to the door and took another sip from his mug. "Cracked incisor. Said he brought a glass up too fast and hit himself in the tooth. Says he broke it damn near in half, and now the rest of it's wiggling in the socket. Gnarly stuff." He took another sip.
"Must've been thirsty," mumbled Alicia as she folded a paper towel square into quarters and wiped down the side of the refrigerator before starting on the countertop.
"It sounds like it's going to look nasty and weird. Ugh," said the doctor, shivering like he had the willies. "Fuckin' people. Keep your teeth in your mouth. How hard is it? You've only got 32 to keep track of." Sip.
"Andy, Mr. Lawrence is walking up to the door now," Maxine called from the reception desk.
"Coming," the doctor called back. He set his mug on the circular wooden lunch table. "Keep this warm for me."
Alicia never knew what that meant, but he never complained, so she assumed whatever she had or hadn't been doing was working.
Maxine poked her head through the door leading to the office. "Miss Sherry said she prepped a chair and got the tray ready, so she can take him back right away if you're ready."
"Make sure the phone number we have on file for him is good before handing him off to Sherry, would you please, Maxine?"
"It's a good number. I called him on it for his checkup the end of last month."
"Just double-check it, okay?" said Dr. Pupe. "I'm going to make sure Sherry did the prep right. And one of you two needs to move the fern back." He walked past Maxine as though he were in as much a hurry as he claimed.
"It blocks the light!" Maxine protested.
"Move it back," he said flatly.
"Fine, I'll do it in a bit," grumbled the literally senior member of staff. "And you just let me know if you see any more spiders you need me to kill for you," hollered Maxine, her plump cheeks upturned in a grin. She shot Alicia a playful look as they both struggled not to laugh.
The silence of the doctor grasping for a retort and failing to find one made the struggle even harder. Mercifully, they heard the door shut behind Dr. Pupe as he stepped into the cleaning area, allowing the two to snicker to their hearts content.
"I like to wind him up a little on a Monday morning," said Maxine as she returned to her chair in reception. Alicia heard the door open tone play on the speaker in the break room and Maxine calling across the front desk, "You can head on back, Mr. Lawrence. Miss Sherry'll take you."
It was 8:08 AM when Alicia sat down at her desk and 8:12 AM when her computer woke up enough to let her clock in.
"You never did tell me about your weekend," said Maxine as she pulled up the appointment calendar for the day. She paused for a second, appearing to reconsider the question. "As long as you want to talk about it."
Alicia shrugged. "Not a lot. Unpacking. Worked out. I actually went to a wrestling show on Friday night." She had been eager to see her coworker's reaction ever since walking in. To her disappointment, the septuagenarian appeared unphased.
"Did you have a good time?" asked Maxine, still looking at her monitor.
“It was really fun,” said Alicia, taking the program Jim had given her from her black leather purse. She flipped it open and laid it in between them on the desk. "I might go again sometime."
A page had been devoted to each match on the card: Jill McKill vs. Connie Rocket, I.T. Factor vs. Hellion & Shieldbreaker Mazenda in a tag team "street fight," whatever that was, Iron Maiden vs. Phenom, Texas Rose vs. Lady Gallows, and Kendra Terminus vs "Rockstar" Jackie Skinner for the Queen of Queens Championship in the main event.
"You don't sound surprised I went to a wrestling show," said Alicia, paying more attention to the pages than the woman sitting next to her.
"It just seemed like you would," commented Maxine.
"I don't know how to take that."
"I just mean you take care of yourself," said Maxine, patting Alicia's sizable bicep. "That's all."
She turned to the last page of the event program to retrieve her ticket stub and saw a full-page ad for the next show. Alicia picked up the used ticket in one hand and reached for her wallet inside her purse with the other. She opened her wallet and stuffed the ticket stub inside next to a ten, a five, and three singles. Behind a clear window of plastic next to the coin pouch was the second flaw in her plan: a photo of her and Zack, him snug in her arms, cheek to cheek, his light, tawny complexion against her richer brown. That was it. No more. She wanted off.
Alicia set her wallet aside, grabbed the program, and double-timed it to the break room. Finding refuge partially obscured by the refrigerator, she hid herself away in as private a corner as available to fight back the sobs. She just wanted normal again–to know that she would go home to her old apartment, dinner would be ready, pop on the game, chill out, and talk about what was on the agenda for the coming weekend. It didn't make sense for life not to happen the way it always had.
Dr. Pupe rounded the corner. He reached for his coffee mug on the table with one hand while pulling down his mask with the other. Alicia opened up the program to cover her face.
"You're still back here? Did it take you that long? Look, I gotta get back to drilling this guy's tooth out, but I wanted to tell you that since we changed over to the new time-clock program on the computer, you actually did need to clock in before 8:00. You'll have to stay a bit later today to get your full eight hours. And put that wrestling magazine away. You're at work. It's embarrassing." He took a sip of coffee, then shot her a nod while holding up his mug. "Nice job." He turned and walked back out of the break room.
Alicia tossed the program down on the countertop as she wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. It opened to the back page again. Two matches had already been announced for next week: Kunoichi & Lady Gallows vs. Street Level and Raquel Covas vs. Daisy the Berserker. Alicia would be there.
At the very bottom, part of the full-page ad itself, was an advertisement for something claiming to be a wrestling gym directly affiliated with Queens of War: Hard Times Wrestling School. "Strong Women Make Hard Times," was the tagline. It had a phone number. She had a phone.
Alicia reached for the cordless phone someone (Dr. Pupe) left on the countertop and dialed the number. Then hung up. She smacked herself on the forehead with the handset. Two more times, harder.
"Didn't hurt," Alicia remarked. She dialed the number again.
Ring
Ri-
Click. A gruff female voice on the other end answered, "Hard Times."
"Hi. I'd like to come by and check out your school. How late are you open?"
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