Before the Glitter: 1971

Running on Empty

The late June breeze made the white cotton curtains flutter in the family room. The screen of the long sliding glass door allowed the London air to filter in through the tiny slats. The front door down the stairs opened up, squeaking slightly as it was swinging backward.

Veronica Tetzlaff came slowly up the stairs of her townhouse, groceries in tote. Her footsteps broke the silence as she made her way to the platform at the top. She scurried to the kitchen table and let her groceries empty from her hands before spilling them all in the floor. In the nearby drawer, Veronica took out a pen and immediately went to the calendar. The date was June 15, 1971: Borden's 7:00. She wrote into the date of June 18. She noticed another item written in on today's date: ET332 project due. She stepped back and noticed how very full the month of June had become on Friday nights. Nearly every Friday there was an event penciled in at the same bar: SHOW 8:00, on June 21, SHOW 10:00 on June 22, SHOW 8:00 on June 28, SHOW on June 29 at 10:00. She smiled at seeing all the dates. It was at this time that Veronica realized she had forgotten to pick up the mail, as her hands had been too full on her way into the house. Before going back downstairs to retrieve the mail from the front of the townhouse, she turned on the telly to the late afternoon news and proceeded to properly place the rest of the groceries in the respective spots aside from what she would need for the evening. She took the receipt from the bottom of one of the bags and laid it on the counter.

It was 4:30 PM and nearly time for her to get dinner started. She made her way back down the carpeted stairs, opening the front door and taking a handful of mail from the drop box at the side of the door. She began to flip through it as she closed the door behind her and proceeded back up the stairs. She sighed as she saw three pieces of mail in particular that she had dreaded: the spring semester bill for her university classes and the bill for her boyfriend's university classes. There was another bill staring her in the face from the stack as well.

Veronica pulled open a drawer near the sink and took a green notebook from within. She sat at the small kitchen table with a pen and opened it up to the last page on which she had been working. The last number she had recorded was £1457.36. She stared at the figure before opening up the bill from the local hospital branch from where she had cut herself deeply on the railing in front of the townhouse before it had been repaired. £85.67. Immediately, she wrote a check for the amount and recorded the new total: £1371.69. She stuffed the check into an envelope and gazed down at her hand where the scar still loomed. She licked the envelope and sat it aside to obtain a stamp for it later. Next, she tore open the bill for the university: £485.43. She repeated a similar chain of actions and recorded the new total: £886.43. Finally, she ripped open another university bill groaning when she noticed a university library overdue charge. £242.70 and a library charge of £7.00. £636.73 was her new total. Veronica subtracted the day's groceries thus finally arriving at the amount of money left for the month: £600.23. She sighed again and stared at the ink in the little segmented boxes that she used to organize her numbers. "Not quite paycheck to paycheck this time." She nodded her head in approval. "Not enough in case of emergency, though..." she added out loud. She clicked her pen and turned her head to face the skillet sitting on the stove across from the table.

Veronica got up from the table and shoved her notebook back into the drawer, throwing the pen inside with it and taking out the phone directory and flipping to the back page. She quickly picked up the phone and dialed a number as she searched the nearby drawer for the can opener. "Hel...hello? Hello, professor Snyder? Yes, It's Veronica Tetzlaff? I was wondering if...um...if you had anyone call off at the pre-school for next week? Oh. Okay. That's fine. Would you care to call if anyone calls off? Great. Thank you. You still have be down from 8:30-12:30 with the four-year-old class next week, yes? Okay. Okay, thank you professor. Buh bye." Veronica disappointingly hung up the phone as the city air moved the vertical blinds and twisted the can opener until she had the can of beans open. She reached for a small saucepot under the stove and turned the front burner on. She stopped and thought for a moment as she stared into the open can of beans. Just as she dumped the can into now warm saucepot, the front door of the townhouse opened. Footsteps quickly made their way up the steps.