Nora pulled Sport into her sideways-tilted garage. She is forced to get out on the low side which means constantly battling the wildly swinging car door that seems to want to knock her out. Some days, Nora wants to let Sport have a crack at her. Leaving her groceries and work heels on the dirty floor of her garage as she took a nice, deep concussion nap. She managed to get inside with her arms overflowing, kicking the side door open and using her hips to slide her way into the kitchen where she was greeted by Miles, her black and white cat. Nora turned some James Vickory on the speaker and considered her day. Most days working at Techtron were hellish but on Fridays, Charles always turns up the harassment. Charles, Nora's boss, must have walked by her cubicle over 20 times today. Each time his cologne made its way to her nose, she proactively put her headphones in to poignantly ignore him between calls. He even went so far as to rub himself up behind her when trying to “get past her” so he could get a single paper off the printer. Charles made the hair on her arms and legs stand up and the more she worked at Techtron the more she realized that her job was taking her nowhere. Collecting money from other broke people seemed like bad karma to Nora but a job is a job for now. She stood for a moment in front of her medicine cabinet and considered taking one of the little blue pills sitting on the shelf. A doctor prescribed them for her in college and she still had more than half the bottle. When they don't make her violently ill, they put Nora in a trance, where she feels like she is watching everything from underwater. She decided against the blue pills and splashed some water on her face before reaching for a wine glass. She filled the glass to the rim with some cheap Merlot she pulled from the fridge. Nora finally took a deep breath in and let the music soothe her, the day dissipating from her like a bad dream. She felt her jaw relax and realized she had been grinding her teeth throughout the day. She needed to unwind. She needed to cook. She was the furthest thing from hungry but cooking had always given her a sense of calm. It was the only time she felt like she could stand to live inside of her own body- hear her own thoughts happening in her head. She removed the eggs and the English muffins from her shopping bag. It was nice to be able to afford her own groceries instead of having to stock pile staff room doughnuts like she did for the first few weeks at work. She got some water boiling on the two-burner stove top. She carefully dropped two eggs into a pot of boiling water and vinegar. As they poached gently in the liquid, she sliced off some pork roll and started to crisp it in the pan. She remembered the first time she learned to cook scrambled eggs. Her dad taught her. She remembered he would yell at her, make her practice scrambling eggs over and over again until they were fluffy enough. She was 6 years old at the time. Nora's wrists would be tired and her arm sore from whisking all those eggs as tears streamed down her face. She quickly learned that he was never going to be a real dad, only a chef and a person that she couldn't rely on. She grabbed a knife and lathered both sides of an English muffin with butter she dropped them into the toaster. She moved around the kitchen like an artist, a dancer. The gurgles and dings of the kitchen around her were like a symphony where she could get lost, just moving with the music all in perfect timing. Her whole life all she wanted to do was not suck. She didn't even need a bunch of money or a crazy house, all she wanted was to have life be as easy as cooking. But Nora knew life was hard. She watched her dad, who was once cooked at a Michelin star restaurant, sink into a deep hole filled with booze and drugs after her mother left them. That day, Nora was pretty sure her dad had left her too. She shook the memory from her mind and began to whisk the eggs and butter together with a squeeze of lemon, careful not miss any seeds trying to sneak into her emulsion. She dressed some spinach with olive oil and a tiny bit of balsamic that she mixed with water to get it to come out of the bottle. She put the browned muffin neatly on the plate next to the greens. She topped it with the crunchy pork roll, followed it with the smooth but jiggly pouches of egg before smothering the meal with her hollandaise. She diced the last of her green onion and sprinkled it on top. Nora ate mindfully at the counter with Miles, savoring every slow and decadent bite between sips of wine. She felt her shoulders drop away from her ears and she allowed herself to sway a little bit with the jazz in the background. For the moment, she felt light. Nora relished the feeling and knew it would be the only thing to get her through the sleepless night that would lie ahead.

The weather was cold and snow was almost certainly looming. The heavy clouds hung permanently above Nora as she drove her two door Ford Explorer into a half ice and half snow-covered lot. Both options were less than ideal but she knew her tank of a car could handle snow better than her bare tires could handle ice. She pulled her car into one of the first two spots in the row right in front of the brick building, coated thickly with yesterdays snow. Nora checked the time and put her car in park, 1:47 pm. Her interview was scheduled for 2:00 pm. She liked to be on time but her fingers were still tingling from the bitter cold. She decided to use the spare minutes to heat up her bare hands in front of the luke-warm heater, the vents forcefully pushing resembling a dragon breathing fire but unlucky for Nora, had a drastically less warming effect. She popped out of her car once the dexterity returned to her hands and checked herself in the reflection of the car mirror. Her brown, wavy hair tangled in the icy wind. She noticed the dark bags under her eyes and made a mental note to grab some concealer on the way home since the medication from the doctor either makes her sleep for 18 hours at a time or makes her vomit. Both side effects she'd prefer to avoid. Nora knew she needed this collection agent position. She was 9 months out of college, business degree in hand, and no one wanted to hire her. Nora expected college to be a fun place, where she got to try new things and experience life for herself but that was far from the truth. Most of her time in college was spent alone. Some days, she'd stay locked in her dorm room and would sleep all day. Other days she would work herself into a fit of anxiety and wouldn't sleep for days on end; reading books, painting her walls, obsessively walking or running to try and tire herself out. Nora didn't love college but she quickly found out that real life was harder. Nora had already been on 6 different job interviews and hadn't gotten a single call back. Her luck needed to change today. She walked through the front office doors and the young guy behind the desk pointed her toward the office she should wait in. A man wearing an outfit of entirely khaki walked in. His name was Rich and he looked like a walking contradiction with stains on his jacket and scuffs littering his dull brown shoes. Despite that, Rich clearly thought very highly of himself. He showed Nora all his accolades hanging on the wall behind him and told her that she could maybe one day earn the same. Nora wants to make a good impression, show Rich that she had done her homework for the interview. Not only that, Nora knows people- especially men- and she knows how to stroke and ego. She made her eyes wide with wonder and let Rich talk about himself. She smiled and laughed at his corny jokes and by the end of the interview was pretty sure that she would get the job. She had to get the job. It was the last chance for her to get paid before the 1st of the month, when her rent was due and an eviction notice was likely looming. She stepped out of the cramped office feeling a little a little lighter now that the interview was over. She glanced at her watch, 3:08 pm, definitely had time to grab something from the corner store before heading home all while avoiding the rush of afternoon traffic when she looked up and her heart dropped. Her car was gone. It definitely was not in the spot where she parked it. Was she going crazy? She ran to the spot where her car should be, and in the thick snow she could see tire tracks. Did someone steal her car, right from in front of this office? Her mind couldn't fit the pieces together. She hustled back inside, out of breath now, and asked the front desk worker, Jay, if he saw what happened to her car. He looked at her with a pout on his face, his frosted tips made Nora pretty sure he was about to answer her with a Backstreet Boys lyric but he said, "Oh, honey. I'm so sorry but that car was towed because it's in a handicapped spot…" Nora expected him to say more but he just sat there pouting at her. She wanted to scream. She felt the anger bubbling up in her throat like lava that was about to pour out. She took a moment, with both hands bracing her body weight on the front desk and with a squeak in her voice Nora replied, "But there are no signs..." desperate now, "you can't even see the handicapped paint because of the snow!" She felt herself basically begging, choking back the tears burning her eyes, "I just had an interview, I didn't even know…" her voice trailed off and the hot tears came. Defeated. "Oh sweetheart!" Jay had true pity in his eyes that made Nora sick, and his hands moved to frame his slender face, "I'm so sorry but there is nothing that I can do. Better luck next time hun," he said and gave her hand tightly gripping the counter a little pat before disappearing into the back. Leaving Nora to figure it out alone, just as she always did.