by Moondi, Romi
Year of the Chick: A Prequel
By
Romi Moondi
Published by Romi Moondi at Smashwords
Copyright 2013 Romi Moondi
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[This short story of 10,000 words is a prequel to the novel “Year of the Chick.”]
There was something unnatural about chewing gum at eight a.m.
But I had to.
Today was my very first time on a commuter train to downtown Toronto, and I didn’t want to be thrown off for having cereal breath. If only the middle-aged man across from me had felt the same. The odour of what smelt like week-old coffee breath seeped from the gap of his cracked thin lips. I checked his left hand for a wedding ring. And I found one. Which means somebody actually kisses that rancid mouth.
I shuddered and turned my attention to the window. My eyes suddenly brimmed with wonder, as the train rounded the bend, offering a view of the Toronto skyline. The CN Tower was surrounded by five smaller---but still extremely tall---skinny skyscrapers. Their windows glimmered in the morning sun, as my eyes focused in on the one that was the start of my very first full-time job. The day of firsts.
The train pulled into the station, and immediately several passengers scrambled from their seats, pushing past knobby knees in a quest to be first out the door. I straightened my long dark hair and nervously cleared my throat. Do I even know where I’m going? I followed the white-collar herd onto lower Bay Street, the heart of Toronto’s financial district. This street seemed vaguely familiar to the view I’d taken in from inside my father’s minivan, on that day he’d driven me here for my interview.
And then waited for me in the lobby.
And then asked the receptionist if she was interested in buying a house, in his funny Indian accent.
And then given her some stationary with his real estate agent face plastered atop it, so she could pass out all the notepads to her friends.
How the hell did I even get this job? Was it equal opportunity for minorities?
Confidence issues aside, the sun was beaming brightly on this warm June day. The breeze was also just right, though slightly marred by the smell of pollution, garbage, and stale urine. When the light turned red I stopped to take a look at my brand new adult tribe. Most of the fellow pedestrians looked way more important than me. And how could they not? I was the “thinish” girl in the ill-fitted black suit jacket, with pants that were a slightly different shade of black, which hopefully no one would notice. What was easy to notice were the women who wore skirts with their jackets, along with a scandalous lack of pantyhose. Welcome to the big city.
A few minutes later, I was standing inside one of the tallest skyscrapers in Canada. I waited patiently for the elevator, in this corridor rich with brass and plush carpeting. Everyone around me was over forty and somewhat bejeweled (big bobble earrings for the women, and thick pinky rings for the men), so they couldn’t have been my fellow recruits. All I knew was that six other graduates my age were beginning their careers today.
And I was nervous as hell to meet them.
A soft bell “dinged” and one of the elevators opened.
Here we go.
A minute later, I opened a big glass door that would lead to a small but shiny L-shaped office. Even though I’d been here once before, I gasped at the view beyond the cubicles. Sky, sun, Lake Ontario below, and the CN Tower practically at eye-level.
“Hi Romi!”
I suddenly remembered that I was a worker and not a tourist, so I turned to smile at the receptionist. “Hi Carla!” I lowered my voice for the next bit. “I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m supposed to go…help?” Carla was my anchor thus far, a non-threatening female I didn’t need to be jealous of, as she was already in her late twenties (how depressing), and wore a long flowy skirt that hid any hotness she might’ve had. Still, she looked me up and down in my mismatched suit with my sack lunch in hand, and suddenly I felt inferior.
Her eyes rested upon my crumpled bagged lunch. “You didn’t know there would be a welcome lunch?” I shrugged. “Come on, boardroom.”
As we approached the glass-walled room I counted six heads bobbing around in what seemed to be pleasant chit-chat. Great, they’re already all best friends.
Four guys and two girls.
Three attractive faces exposed in my direction.
Three mysterious faces with their backs to me.
I hoped the mystery faces were ugly so I could fall into the middle.
Carla opened the door and the room went silent. Not to mention that the mystery faces were attractive too. Especially the guy with the spiky dark hair and square jaw. Hmm. They all turned around to stare at me, and at that moment I wished I’d styled my hair somehow, or found a suit that actually matched. I also wished I’d worn some jewelry, like all the other girls had been fashionable enough to wear.
Carla gestured to an empty seat, smiled, and left the room. That’s it?! Thirty seconds later and I’m abandoned?! I opened my mouth to speak, but it felt so dry that I ended up coughing instead. I sounded like a fifty-year-old chain-smoker; all that was missing was the crusted yellow fingernails. I quickly looked down at my actual slender fingers and crust-free nails. The ego boost calmed my nerves. At least I don’t have man-hands.
I suddenly realized everyone in the room was still staring at me. Seriously? These jerks couldn’t even say hello? Why do I have to do all the work?
“Hi, I’m Romi Narindra.” I offered an incredibly awkward “half-wave” to complete the greeting.
What followed was the reciting of six names I would never remember in that moment. So instead I remembered them by visuals:
-Curly-haired blonde hottie girl
-Dark-haired doe-eyed girl
-Latina or Indonesian or “I can’t really tell” girl
-Indian girl with highlights
-Spikey-haired dude
-Buzz-cut dude
The Indian girl with the highlights struck me the most, because her highlights were light orange, which seemed wilder than Indian parents would ever allow. I was intrigued.
“So Romi,” said the Latina or Indonesian or whatever she was. “Which program did you graduate from?”
“BBA.” For this part I could confidently smile, since having a Bachelor’s degree in Business was something my parents would boast about when they mentioned me to our relatives, so I knew it had to be good.
Spiky-haired dude nodded in approval, ‘causing the light to bounce off his exquisite jaw line. Mmm. “So where did you do your internships?” he asked.
My beaming smile was replaced with my eyes popping out of my head and all the blood rushing straight to my ears. I’d known this moment would come so I cleared my throat. “I didn’t do any internships.”
Blank stares.
Curly-haired blonde: “Did you work at your dad’s company?”
“No,” I replied. Unless of course my dad owned a company called “Let’s eat samosas because it’s the weekend. Party time!”
Buzz-cut dude: “Did you work abroad in the summers? I had this awesome gig in Munich one summer.” He chuckled to himself whilst his eyes rolled back in pleasure. I’d lost him.
“This is actually my first time working in an office,” I said, smiling with made-up confidence.
Indian girl: “But…what did you…”
“Put on my résumé?”
She nodded.
“Filthy lies, mostly.”
Silence.
Hmm…tough crowd.
“Actually I wrote the truth. One year at a video store, and four years as a cashier.”
Six sets of eyes popped out of six heads.
“Well for two of those years I worked the returns desk,” I quickly said. “And believe me that’s tough. Like try dealing with some dude who wants to return a banged up VCR but claims he never used it.” I gazed into the distance. “He may have been carrying a knife…”
I looked around the room for smiles, but all I found were forced grins. Did they really think I was incompetent because I hadn’t worked in an office before? This was print advertising for companies that made food and shampoo and deodorant, in a world where no one wanted to spend more money on advertising. In other words it wasn’t going to be easy for any of us, but at least I knew what it was like to have a plastic hanger thrown at my head and be called a “stupid bitch,” because some shirt wasn’t fifty-percent off when the customer thought it was definitely fifty-percent off. If I could handle abusive men with bad tempers, then I could handle whatever this prissy little office would throw at me, and all of these grinning snobs needed to know it!
“So what about all of you?” I asked. “Where did you work before this? And what schools are you from?”
The fake-grinners suddenly switched into “sincerely happy” mode, as was usually the case when people got to talk about themselves. I was suddenly regretting telling the truth, knowing now that I should’ve just said I got the job by sleeping with the hiring manager. Yeah, ‘cause I’m smooth and seductive like that.
Instead it was day one, and I looked like a girl with no ambition and a mismatched suit.
***
A few hours later, my forced comrades and I were in the midst of signing a stack of papers. Papers about how we wouldn’t sexually harass people, about how strictly we would follow the health and safety standards (wash your hands and don’t shoot people?), and about how any inventions we came up with while at the company…would immediately be stolen by the company.
I periodically eyed the Human Resources manager as I signed each form; with every signature her emerald eyes grew brighter and her smile beamed bigger. She even nodded sometimes, but not a single strand of her hair moved an inch, trapped as everything was in that slicked-back bun. I’d watched enough movies to know that anyone who worked in Human Resources was a spy, quietly waiting for you to make a wrong move. I’d have to watch my step around this bun-lady…
***
I dragged my ass through the doorway, and sighed when I remembered all the boxes. My older sister and I had just moved into this three-bedroom home that was a train-ride’s distance to the city. It was absolutely thrilling to be away from our strict Indian parents and their impossible rules. Rules such as not being allowed to talk to guys on the phone, because if we did, our parents would immediately assume we were pregnant or participating in gang-bangs or both.
The only unknown was managing a house and splitting all the duties with my sister. Would it work?
As I peeled my sweaty feet from my shoes after a long first day, I suddenly heard her thudding down the stairs. The next thing I knew my thin and statuesque older sister was pushing right past me and heading for the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked. “Didn’t you just get home?”
She straightened out her flowery summer dress and frowned. “Yeah, so? I’m going out for dinner.”
“But what about all this unpacking?!” I gestured to the boxes.
She rolled her eyes. “You’ve got all night to work on that.”
The next thing I knew she was gone, and the second-next thing I knew was that I suddenly hated my sister.
***
A week into the job we were now semi-functioning drones, so the work was being thrown our way. We had each been assigned a Sales Director, thus making us, the Sales Coordinators, their little minion bitches. My boss was a small thin man of Italian descent. His voice however, was ten sizes bigger than his man-boy body.
He walked by our glass cubicles in a hurry and continued along the corridor.
“Romi! The sales scan data on the baby formula category…I need it by two o’ clock!”
I nodded, and continued to arrange and re-sort the data on the spreadsheet, just liked I’d learned in school. Who said you need prior office experience? Ha!
As I worked away, buzz-cut dude who’d been assigned the cubicle next to me checked his baseball fantasy stats as he leaned back in his chair. His boss was a woman and somehow he was such a charmer, that five days in he had already wormed his way out of work. In reality he was boorish and loud, which meant his boss who was thirty and single was probably desperate for some male attention. I continued to work on the data and shuddered.
Thirty and single? Shoot me if that ever happens.
***
Working in the heart of downtown Toronto and only a few minutes’ walk from one of the biggest malls in Canada was the best when it came to options, and the worst when it came to spending my first career paycheck.
I whistled when I saw the price tag on the exquisite navy suit. Since I didn’t really know how to whistle, I more accurately splattered a bit of saliva on the suit, which meant I probably had to buy it. And buy it I did, along with three crisp shirts and a pair of shiny shoes with a baby heel (my clumsiness had no room for big-girl heels).
Now mama needs some brand new jewelry…
***
The mid-July heat seared my polyester suit jacket along with my skin underneath it, as I scurried up King Street with my boss a few feet ahead, en route to a client meeting.
I fucking hate wearing suits.
***
Seven suit jackets were stacked in a pile on a nearby bench, as the summer sun shone at high noon. Nearby on the grass, me and my comrades ate our lunch and observed the square, which was tucked in-between two skyscrapers.
Ever since my co-workers had noticed I had a sense of humour, they’d finally started treating me as an equal instead of a cashier half-brain (yeah, it only took a frickin’ month). So we’d been coming here every day to eat lunch.
“Seven,” said buzz-cut dude, whose name was actually Matt.
Spiky-haired dude or Derek shook his head. “A seven in a poor man’s world! Five and a half, tops.”
“What do those numbers mean?” Doe-eyed Tara was the sweetest girl you’d ever meet, so she’d never be able to guess what these guys were doing.
“Pigs,” I muttered.
“I wanna play!” said Sierra, the Latina or Indonesian who was actually half-Trinidadian (oops). “That one, over there. Black hair, sunglasses, grey suit. An eight.”
Laura, the curly blonde, and Jayla the Indian girl laughed.
“You have horrible taste,” said Jayla. “Romi, you go.”
I scanned around the square, zeroing in on the hottest male within a hundred-meter radius. Finally I found him. “He’s coming from the left. In the jeans and red T-shirt. Look at that dirty blond hair…all messy.” I sighed.
“Dude, I’m pretty sure that’s a bike messenger,” said Jayla.
Everyone burst into laughter.
I frowned. “So what if he is? Who says they all have to be ‘suits’? Bunch of elitists…”
Derek snorted. “As if you’re not one of us too? Look at your job, look at your jacket!” He grabbed the nearest jacket off the bench and waved it in my face, his spiky hair glistening in the sunshine.
Derek was suddenly dropping like a rock on my hotness scale, straight from an eight to a two…
***
Summer was almost over, and two months in I was starting to master the gig. The data analysis was easy, and actually pretty
interesting. What was more was that I’d now uncovered a skill I didn’t even know I had:
-Bullshitting
I first became aware of this when my boss had taken me to meet his biggest shampoo client. He’d been busy rustling through his papers looking for a fact, so to fill in the air time I talked about why scent was so important to women in a good shampoo. I also added how women would talk about a new shampoo if they really loved the scent, and blah, blah, blah. I assumed what I was saying was true, but it wasn’t exactly a focus group. Yet the client ate it up.
And that’s when I knew I might be good in advertising sales.
I was buoyed by this feeling as I strolled into the boardroom for an out-of-nowhere meeting all us minions had been called to.
I sunk into my chair and sighed as I gazed at the lake. It was shimmering from the sun like it was covered in a layer of diamonds procured through violent means in Africa. You would never know that such a shimmery lake was so filthy you were barely allowed to swim in it.
The door to the boardroom clicked shut, and in walked the ever-suspicious HR manager. I expected her to wait another minute for doe-eyed Tara to show up, but instead she cleared her throat and began.
“Hey guys! I wanted to bring you all here to share some news before we announce it.” She paused as we minions exchanged curious looks. “I wanted you to know that Tara is no longer with the company.” Sierra, who’d become something of a drama queen over the summer, loudly let out a gasp.
“Did she quit?” asked Jayla.
“No, she didn’t quit…she was let go.”
Curly-blonde Laura from the big Italian family seemed the most concerned, as she’d done a good job corralling us into a “work family” at the office. “But how?” she said. “She was doing a great job. She showed up on time every day…”
