I only wrote one chapter, 50% true, 50% imagination. Let me know what you think
Chapter One
I laid on the hotel bed. Took a new selfie, I had recently done a balayage on my
hair after all, platinum blonde. I’ve always been a brunette, I kept looking at the picture to confirm I was indeed half-blonde, half-brunette. Why did I always have to be a brunette?
I unpacked my reusable plastic bag in the dimly lit hotel room, August had been a disaster. There was my office mug, a jar of Nescafe Gold, my iPhone charging cable, a book about graphic design, a journal, some pens. I had just lost my job an hour ago, at 9:15 am sharp. “You just can’t focus” “You got so much on your mind” my manager had told me. Unfortunately, It was true. Anxiety sucks I told myself, I didn’t deserve this with all the hard work I’ve been doing to maintain my job. 3 Months in, my manager fired me without a second thought. I was just a number in their huge corporation, a useless sheep, cropping pictures and pasting price tags on ready-made packages. I kept making mistakes because I couldn’t focus.
I had nothing to do, I opened my MacBook and wrote a message to my girlfriend on my WhatsApp Mac application. I didn’t wanna tell her I got fired. The feeling sucked other than admitting I no longer could do the 9-6 pm work shift. At 28 years old, I didn’t have the health to keep up with a regular boring underpaid job. I had a good savings account from freelancing for many years, so I was not worried. They paid me 4 days extra along with my biweekly salary and let me go in the morning, they didn’t even wait until it was dawn so I could walk out with some dignity. “You can keep this” My manager had told me while giving me the reusable plastic bag full of my of- fice clutter.
“Hey Jen” I said “Do you wanna meet for a drink tonight at the hotel lobby?” “I am not doing well”
1
There was no answer. Probably she was busy at her job working at the learning disability centre. She was such a better human than I ever was. She cared more about helping others and making a difference in the world around us. She slept in the cen- tre, cooked meals for the patients, bathed them. I didn’t have that kind of patience or grace.
I walked back to the bed and laid down. My apartment had flooded two months ago when my landlord sent a plumber to fix my clogged bathroom. It was an old building, from 1960’s, 3 and a half with a medium sized kitchen and a very old bath- room. The guy had told me it’s fixed but when I woke up in the morning to the sound of water I freaked out. Between the landlord and the insurance company, the insur- ance company had given me a choice to select a hotel to stay in until they fixed the flooded apartment. Obviously I had selected the closest hotel to my new job, it was 15 minutes walking distance.
The hotel had a questionable quality. In the morning I saw gentlemen having meet- ings and corporate gatherings when I went down to light a cigarette with my morning coffee in my flip-flops. In the evenings I saw drunken and possibly drugged prostitutes waking across the hallway to their rooms when I returned from work.
My room was pretty big and had a small built-in kitchen. They didn’t do the daily main- tenance though, I didn’t have a designated cleaning person who did my dishes, they piled up within one week of staying there until one day I complained to the lobbyist. They did send someone to clean the room the next day but that was the only time within the two months that I had stayed there. “Another month to go” I told myself. I was stuck in this hotel room for another month without a job until my apartment was fixed. I didn’t have anything to look forward to.
