Small Change

by Sheila Roberts

  Although they'd left the city for the ’burbs, they still drove in on a regular basis to take his mom to dinner at the Waterfront Seafood Grill on Pier 70 or to enjoy Indian food thali style up at Poppy's on Capitol Hill. Visiting the city was great, but Jess wasn't sure how she felt about working there. Seattle had grown far beyond the little big town it had been when she was a girl. And, at an hour each way by freeway, it wasn't exactly a short commute.

  She rode the elevator to the twentieth floor and found the A-Plus office in a far corner of the skyscraper office maze. The reception area was small, with a love seat and matching chair upholstered in retro ugly, a fish tank, a blocky coffee table littered with business magazines and, on one side of the wall, a bank of computers. On the other side, at the reception window, sat a twenty-something babe wearing an outfit that looked even more expensive than Jess's, talking on the phone.

  “I'll have Mrs. Withers call you as soon as she can,” said the girl. She hung up and looked Jess over. “May I help you?”

  Jess stepped up to the window. “I have an appointment with Caroline Withers.”

  The girl nodded. “Have a seat.”

  Feeling a little like a patient waiting to see the dentist, Jess perched on the couch. It was hard.

  She looked over at the computers and felt her pulse rate start to rise. You have a computer, she told herself. You can type. E-mail counts. In spite of her positive self-talk, her pulse scooted up another notch. She should get out of here. Was she too old to sell her body on the street?

  “Jessica?”

  Jess tore her gaze away from the computers and looked up to see a thin woman with shoulder length gray hair, expensively cut, and stylish glasses looking down at her. The woman was dressed entirely in black. Maybe an escapee from New York? Jess thought of all the money she'd spent to avoid wearing black and sighed inwardly.

  The woman was studying her, too, her smile polite, professional. “I'm Caroline Withers. Why don't you come into my office and we'll talk.”

  Talking was good. Jess followed Caroline through a small conference room and into her office. Here the furniture had been upgraded to fake leather. Caroline settled behind a massive desk. “I'm happy you thought of us first,” she said, pulling together a pile of forms. “Did you bring a résumé?”

  Jess's palms were suddenly damp. “Actually, no.”

  “Well, you can e-mail it to me later,” Caroline said amiably. “What kind of work are you hoping for?”

  “What kind?” The kind that pays?

  “Secretarial, accounting …”

  “Receptionist,” Jess said firmly. “I have great phone skills.”

  Caroline nodded. “All right. Let's have you fill out some forms.”

  “Fine,” said Jess, forcing the corners of her lips to stay up. Oh, God, she was going to flunk form-filling.

  Caroline clipped the papers on a clipboard and handed them to Jess, then she stood and ushered Jess back to the little conference room. “You can fill this out and then we'll get you started on the computer.”

  The top form was terrifying. A-Plus wanted to know everything about her: educational background, work background, last employer. Jess was pretty sure Bennie at Bennie's Tavern, where her band had played, wouldn't be the right kind of business reference. She should have gotten a job long before this. What had she been thinking?

  Twenty minutes later Caroline found her still at the table, hunched over a form with a lot of white space. “Is there a problem?” Caroline asked.

  “One small one,” said Jess. “I'm afraid I can't give you the kind of references you want.” Playing in a band and selling wine cork trivets and beaded jewelry boxes hardly equated to office skills, although Jess was sure she had enough of those to fill in at a front desk somewhere.

  “I see,” said Caroline slowly.

  “But I can type,” Jess said quickly. “And I can certainly file and take messages.”

  “All right, let's put you on a computer and test you,” said Caroline.

  Test? Jess had never tested well.

  The computer hated her. She knew it five minutes after she sat down. Excel was a mystery, and the typing was a nightmare. It was the sweaty palm thing. Her fingers kept slipping to the wrong key. Soon she had both sweaty palms and the beginnings of a headache. She did well on the spelling and grammar test though. That should count for something.

  “Well,” said Caroline when they met again in her office after the computer torture session, “you can type a little.”

  Types a little. There was a glowing recommendation. “I think I'd be great with phones,” said Jess. Types a little and great with phones.

  “I think you would, too,” Caroline agreed. “How many days a week are you available?”

  “Seven.”

  Caroline smiled at that. “Well, we'd only need you for five.”

  “Do you think you could use me?” asked Jess.

  “I think you could do nicely as a receptionist. Let's have you fill out this card and I'll put together a folder for you.”

  “A folder?” She was going to get a folder? That had to be good.

  “With a booklet that will tell you about our policies and procedures, and a time card, which you'll fill out and submit to us at the end of every work week.”

  That sounded official. “Great. Thanks.”

  “It can be hard to reenter the workforce. This is a good way to ease back in. Often companies wind up hiring our temps full time.”

  “Full time. Really?” echoed Jess, trying to convince both Caroline and herself that she was interested. Good-bye to staying up late watching TV and sleeping in the next morning. Good-bye to driving north for lunch with Erica. Good-bye to Friday morning tennis with the girls at the Grandview Park tennis courts. Good-bye to volunteering at the food bank.

  It beats saying, “Good-bye, Heart Lake,” she reminded herself sternly. And really, it was about time she got a job. The kids were grown and she was no longer needed as a chauffeur, inhouse para-educator, Girl Scout leader, chief cook (she was a rotten cook, anyway), or soccer mom. It was time to do something new with her life.

  For a moment her mind wandered to the past and paused at the road not taken, the one she'd been about to go down before love came in the door and her dreams scrammed out the window. How she had wanted to be a star!

  She could see herself up there on the stage, adoring fans roaring as she sang and rocked out. Now she was playing a riff on the keyboard. Look at the crowd going wild—women jumping up and down and screaming, men throwing their underwear. Ick.

  Her eyes popped open. All right, that was a little too far down the road not taken.

  But what about the road she stood at now? Working in an office, answering phones, draining her creative juices to help someone else build his dream or some big corporate monster keep its heart beating—was this really her?

  It is now, baby. Welcome to the work force.

  She took her folder and left A-Plus Office Services ready to face a brave, new world.

  • 4 •

  It's always good to go into the weekend with something to celebrate. This was another important truth Jessica had learned in her forty-four years on the planet. Celebrating over her possibly successful foray into the job market beat discussing what lay ahead on Michael's job horizon.

  He had been more than willing to celebrate her afternoon's success. “Way to go,” he said after she'd told him, and gave her a big, smacking kiss. “You're already out there fishing for something. I'm impressed.”

  “I don't exactly have a fish on the line yet,” she reminded him as she ladled canned sauce on their spaghetti.

  “But you've baited the hook.”

  She frowned. “You wouldn't believe how much bait costs.”

  Both his eyebrows went up.

  “I had to buy something I could wear to a job interview. I never realized how noncorporate my wardrobe was.”

  Michael smiled at that. “You've got a point there.
I can't remember the last time I saw anyone in the office wearing sequins or tank tops.” She dumped her salad-in-a-bag into a bowl and he took it to the kitchen table.

  She joined him with French bread. “I gave myself permission since I'm investing in my future.”

  “You are. You have to dress for success,” he agreed.

  Michael pretty much always agreed with her when it came to spending money because he was a sweet man. In the past money hadn't been an issue in their marriage, but now, between college and wedding debt and a possible period of unemployment, she realized he needed to stop being so agreeable.

  “I just hope that investment pays off,” she said. It could. Caroline Withers could feel sorry for her.

  “You'll get something,” Michael said easily. “Try another agency next week.”

  “Another?” He wanted her to go to another agency and do all that sweating again?

  “You probably should. The more temp agencies you have your name with the better, at least if you want to find a foothold in the corporate world.”

  “I do,” she said. Who was she kidding? Michael should be singing Fleetwood Mac's “Tell Me Lies” to her.

  “It's like putting out résumés,” he continued. “You want to circulate as many as possible so you increase your chances of getting an interview.”

  “Oh.” That made sense, of course.

  She thought of having to face that one-hour work commute on a regular basis and shuddered. You don't have to find full-time employment, she reminded herself, something part time will do. Nothing at all would do better. She really wasn't cut out to be an office drone.

  Grow up, she told herself sternly. This is how it works in the real world. Millions of people go to jobs they hate every day.

  Except her husband. He loved his work. So did Rachel Green. So did Tiffany Turner, her other neighbor and craft buddy. Jess sighed.

  “Don't worry,” Michael said as they settled down with their meal. “I bet you'll have more work than you can handle.”

  She nodded and managed a smile. Who knew? She might decide she liked office work. She would definitely like a paycheck. She knew that much.

  “Where's our son?” Michael asked.

  “He went over to the Sticks and Balls to shoot pool with Danny.”

  Michael frowned. “I hope he spent time job hunting first.”

  “I'm sure he did,” Jess said quickly. Mikey was asleep when she left for the city, but he'd been gone by the time she got home. Surely somewhere in between sleeping and leaving to hang out with his buddy he'd done something other than eat all the leftover chicken she'd been saving for dinner.

  “I don't want him sitting around playing games on his computer all day,” Michael said sternly, as if Mikey was still twelve and she was, somehow, responsible for his behavior.

  “I'm sure he's not.”

  “Our son really needs to be looking for a job.”

  “He will,” Jess assured Michael. Mikey had a business degree. He shouldn't have trouble finding something. If he looked.

  She suddenly understood why her son had been dragging his feet on the job hunting for the last month. It was hard going out there and putting your ego and your future on the line, hoping you'd impress some stranger enough to want to take a chance on you. She really didn't want to do that again, herself.

  After dinner Michael went to his computer to check out some business networking sites and Jess drifted to the old baby grand piano she kept in a corner of the living room and vented, pounding the ivories. But hard as she banged, she couldn't stop thinking about the pounding she and Michael were about to take.

  Tiffany stopped at Safeway on her way home to pick up a little something to bring to Friday craft night. Jess was hosting this month, and while she always had plenty of goodies, Tiffany never liked to come empty-handed. She found some fresh strawberries that would be wonderful.

  There. That took care of the girls. What about dinner? She decided to pick up some odds and ends from the deli. It was a great way to save time.

  But not money. Tiffany checked in her wallet. Just as she suspected, she was two dollars short. The woman behind the counter had already put everything in little cartons so Tiffany couldn't very well say, “Put it back.” She'd have to use her charge card.

  By the time she got home Brian was already there, sitting out on the deck, drinking a Coke. She opened the sliding glass door and poked her head out. “Sorry I'm late. I had to stop at Safeway. Dinner'll be ready in a sec.”

  “I'm not hungry.”

  There was something very unsettling about Brian's tone of voice. “Did you have a late lunch or something?” Maybe he'd had bad news at work. With a sick feeling, she sat down opposite him.

  He was a hottie, with that beefcake chin and those dimples. Except they only showed when he was smiling, and right now he wasn't smiling. “Tiff, have you been charging things?”

  Her heart began to thump wildly. “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because I found an unopened package of sheets in a bag under the bed.”

  Abracadabra sheets. She'd meant to transfer them to the linen closet and forgot. “What were you doing looking under the bed?”

  “I was looking for my old running shoes,” he said, frowning at her. “What? I'm not supposed to look under the bed?”

  “No.”

  His frown became a scowl.

  “I mean, no, that's not what I meant.” Oooh, this was not going well.

  He looked at her warily. “You've only been using the debit card like we agreed, right? You haven't gotten another charge card, have you?”

  She could feel her cheeks sizzling under his penetrating gaze. “I …” Her mind went blank.

  “Oh, God,” Brian said faintly. “Tell me you haven't.”

  She bit her lip.

  His lips pressed into a thin, angry line and he left the deck.

  “Brian, wait.” She followed him through the kitchen. “I can explain.”

  He walked through the living room.

  “Brian, please. It's not much.”

  He grabbed his car keys from the little table by the front door.

  “Where are you going?”

  He held up a hand. “I can't talk to you right now, Tiff. I need to go cool down. Okay?”

  No, it wasn't okay. “Brian, don't leave. Please.”

  Tiffany turned on the tears to no avail. Her husband shook his head and went out the door.

  Run after him, cried her conscience. Give him the credit cards and tell him to cut them up.

  She took one step and stopped. No. I need to let him calm down.

  You just don't want to give up the credit cards.

  That was so not true. But it would be stupid to cut them up. Who knew what the future held? They might need those credit cards.

  Tiffany shut the door and flopped on the living room couch where she indulged herself in a good cry.

  You'd better do something.

  And right now there was only one something to do. More bar-gains had to return to the mall. She hauled her unhappy self into the bedroom and took the sheets out from under the bed. She found the receipt for them in her underwear drawer, where she hid all her charge receipts. She also grabbed the receipt for the body butter she'd stocked up on and fetched one of the two jars from under her bathroom vanity. She could part with one.

  But wait. They'd been on sale. It was hardly worth returning body butter she'd eventually need. She put it back under the vanity. The sheets would still go. She'd regret it, she was sure, but she'd take them back. She had to have something to show Brian when he came home.

  After much soul searching she also parted with a pair of shoes and a serving platter she'd gotten on sale and had tucked away to give as a wedding present in case someone they knew decided to get married. Her returns assembled, she put the deli dinner in the fridge, grabbed her car keys, and left for the mall. As she got closer with her returns she began to cry again. Her husband was gone who knew
where and now the last of her bargains were going. Life sucked.

  You're doing the right thing, said her conscience.

  “Oh, shut up,” she snarled.

  Jess shooed Michael out the door to go play poker with his pals down the street and got busy setting out the refreshments for craft night. She and her friends were making wineglass charms and Jess had planned her menu accordingly. She had picked up a couple of bottles of raspberry dessert wine from Bere Vino and truffles from the Chocolate Bar, Heart Lake's favorite chocolate-ria. Wine and chocolate, perfect.

  Next, mood music. She put on a CD she had burned with all of her favorite American Idol downloads. Now she was truly ready. Let the crafts begin.

  Rachel was the first to arrive. She was tall and willowy and Jess heartily envied her great legs. If she had legs like that she'd never waste them on pathetically unshort shorts like the ones Rachel was wearing tonight. Rachel also had on a turquoise colored spring sweater set that was lovely with her dark coloring. Lovely, but not hugely sexy. Rachel had never dressed provocatively, but it seemed to Jess that since her divorce the girl had been sinking into schoolmarm mode, becoming increasingly more conservative. Her long, black hair was now sporting a few fine strands of gray—battle scars, she called them—which she refused to hide under hair color. As far as Jess knew, she hadn't even cut her hair in the last year, preferring instead to catch it in a band at the base of her neck. Her face was a little too long to call her beautiful, but her big, brown eyes were striking and she had a gorgeous smile.

  When she had something to smile about. From the look on her face as she walked through the door, Jess could tell that she wasn't going into the weekend with any reason to smile. She'd looked somber when Jess ran into her in the grocery store, but since then, she'd gone from somber to shoot-me-now.

  “You look like you need chocolate therapy,” Jess said as she led the way to the worktable she'd set up in the family room.

  “I need therapy, period,” said Rachel.

  “Aaron troubles?” Jess guessed. The goodies were laid out on the nearby coffee table. She picked up the plate of truffles and handed it to Rachel.