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.