California Dreaming

Chapter 2

Ann stared absentmindedly at the TV, trying to ignore the loud music coming through the wall of her apartment. It was a terrible place to live, she admitted. The neighbors to her left played their music far too loudly and the neighbors on the right seemed to argue constantly. Naturally, the upstairs neighbors seemed to be a couple of horny teenagers since they were constantly having sex.

It was one of those situations you just couldn’t remedy, she thought. What would she do, go to the neighbors, knock on their door, and say, “Excuse me, would you please be more considerate of your neighbors?” In a place like this, that was likely to get someone killed.

She turned the volume up as high as it would go—still not loud enough to drown out the music. She’d become accustomed to watching TV with the closed captioning turned on. The captions go from annoying to helpful surprisingly quickly, she learned.

She was watching a show about three young men who lived together in a luxury apartment in Seattle and always ended up finding themselves in tricky situations when they brought a date back and found that they weren’t the only roommate who had that idea. A terrible show, really, Ann thought. But it passed the time.

The microwave dinged. She got up to get her TV dinner. Suddenly, Ann caught herself reflecting on life. This is not at all what she thought her life would be like, she thought. She reluctantly got a plastic fork from the box in her cabinet, found a magazine to put her TV dinner on, and walked back to the couch.

Almost as if on cue, a commercial on TV caught her eye.

“Are you stuck in a rut in life? Are you looking for a career, not just another job?”

It was one of those cheesy local ads.

A couple of students were sitting at a table, smiling and nodding at each other thoughtfully, reviewing a large piece of paper. Then a cartoon overstuffed armchair walked into the room, gave a thumbs up, and put his hands on the students’ shoulders. All three had artificial grins plastered on their faces as they stared into the camera.

“Get your life back on track with an associate’s degree in accounting or finance.”

It was apparently an ad for the Los Angeles School of Finance and Accounting. SOFA—that explains the armchair, she thought. How terrible.

“Don’t think you can afford school? Think again! We have several tuition plans available to suit your needs.”

Maybe it was worth looking into, she thought, as the cartoon armchair started bouncing across the screen. She vowed to give them a call the next day. For now, she was satisfied with her plastic tray of meatloaf and spongy mashed potatoes.

* * *

Ann’s alarm went off. She reached over and mashed her hand on the snooze button. Then, instantly, it seemed, the alarm went off again.

Better get up, she thought. She rolled out of bed. Crap, already 6:17. She walked to the bathroom, took a quick shower, ran a brush through her hair.

Ann found a uniform on the edge of the bed and threw her clothes on, trying her best to smooth them out. She found a flat pair of shoes, threw them on, grabbed her purse, and ran out the door.

She got into her rusty old Toyota and turned the key. The engine sputtered but never turned over. Typical, she thought. So she alternated between turning the key and pressing the gas in that special way that she knew would make her car start. Eventually it did.

Of course, traffic was terrible that day, because it always was.

Crap, already 7:06, she thought. She raced into the parking lot and pulled in behind the back of the store like she always did. She jumped out of her car and ran inside through the back door.