Just North of Whoville by Turiskylie, Joyce (mobi ebook reader TXT) 📕

you back home where you’re safe, honey.”

And then the Chief of the Police would call a news conference.

“We are in touch with the suspect, a thirty-four year-old temp who calls herself Dorrie Krakowski. Our negotiators are working closely with Ms. Krakowski and we ask for your prayers and a few hours of silence so that Ms. Krakowski can get her cat to come out of hiding. We have every hope that if Ms. Krakowski can retrieve her cat, she will come out of the apartment and the situation will end peacefully.”

As I turned off the hair dryer, I heard Heidi circling around the laundry basket, trying to make a comfy spot. There was something peaceful about cats. Even ones you rarely saw.

Suddenly, there was a knock on my door.

I crept slowly to the kitchen and replied to the wooden door.

“Who is it?”

“Building manager.”

My brain seemed to actually freeze.

“Um…I just got out of the shower. Just a minute.”

Why did I say that? I just dried my hair. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I quickly opened the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of cold water, leaned into the shower and poured it over my head.

Then I raced to the “Alex Box”, pulled out the shaving cream, tie, and the Ted’s Ribs and Chicken shirt, spritzed the men’s cologne around the place, threw a towel over my head and opened the door.

“Hi. You must be Alex’s girlfriend,” he said as I rubbed my wet hair with the towel. “Sorry I caught you at a bad time.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” I said peering out from under the towel.

“I’m Nate, the building manager.”

Oh god. It was him. The cute playwright.

“Hey---I know you! You’re the ice cream girl. Dorrie, right?”

Wait---was I Dorrie? Or Celia? What did Alex say? What did I say? What was my story? I know Alex had important Wall Street business, but we really should have had a meeting about this.

“Oh yeah. I remember. Hi,” I simply replied.

I guess I was going with Dorrie.

“You’re Alex’s girlfriend? Wow. I mean….I’m sorry. I meant that as a compliment. You caught me at my day job,” he said holding his hands in the “Stick ‘em Up” position.

“Well, we all have to do it. That’s theatre,” I said nervously making conversation.

“So you have one, too. What do you do?”

“I work at a modeling agency.”

“Really?”

There it was again. The incredulous reply that I could somehow be involved in the modeling profession.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized again. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“It’s okay. Get it all the time. I’m not a model. Just work in the office.”

“Oh…sure. I mean…” he stumbled. “What I was trying to say…is that you seemed too intelligent to be involved in…the modeling industry.”

“Well, thank you. It’s a living.”

“Oh yeah. Me, too. So---Alex said there’s leak?”

“Oh, it’s way beyond a leak, at this point,” I said as I led him to the main room.

“Wow. This is bad,” he said as he looked up into the rafters. “Sorry about this. Maybe you guys could go over to your place for a bit. He said your apartment is being painted right now?”

Painted? That only takes a few days. We really should have had a meeting about this.

“Well…it’s painting….and plumbing…and electrical work…it’s a whole thing they’re doing.” I tried to keep it short and sweet. I’m not good at lies. And the thing is---When you start telling them, you have to make sure you remember them.

“That sounds like a mess,” he said with such genuine compassion and sympathy that I began to worry if I told one more lie, my nose would start to grow.

“Oh----I got the script,” I said, trying to change the subject.

“Well…it’s just an adaptation,” he said self-consciously. “Spoiler Alert: Bell rings…”

“…angel gets his wings.”

“Yeah. I really am a writer, though. I swear!” he laughed. “I have actual plays to prove it.”

“I’d love to read them sometime.”

“Ah!---now that’s a dangerous thing to say to a writer. Next thing you know you’ll have a stack of manuscripts on your doorstep.”

“Or maybe just bring them to rehearsal,” I suggested, not sure having the Building Manager hovering around my doorstep would be such a good thing.

And then I had a horrible thought. Steve. He knows Steve.

A few minutes later, I looked out my window and saw Nate drive away.

“Steve…” I whispered into the phone, “you know about my whole illegal sublease thing, right? Well, it just got a little more complicated…”

The next day, I sat on a futon wearing an ugly Christmas sweater and Timmy’s holiday pin.

“I think we’re getting somewhere,” Dr. Price said as she surveyed my festive ensemble. “Didn’t I tell you? The Christmas Spirit makes all the difference.”

“Oh, absolutely!” I beamed as brightly as my cubic zirconia pin. “I think so, too. So I was wondering, maybe you could take a look at my resume,” I said as I reached into my bag.

After all, isn’t that why I started coming here to begin with?

“Oh yeah, yeah,” she said as she jumped out of her seat. “But let me just show you this. Oh, you’re going to love it!”

She ran across the room to retrieve some sort of mechanism with a reindeer and the flailing arms of a nylon-faced, puppet grandma that moved around wildly as the song, “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” came gushing out of a mini-speaker.

“What do you think?”

“Oh…it’s…cute. It’s really cute,” I did my best to squeeze out.

“You like it?”

“Oh yeah. It’s got the song…and the reindeer…and the grandma. Just…ties the whole thing together with a big red bow!”

“It’s my gift to you.”

“Oh---I…I couldn’t.”

“No. You keep it.”

“Really. I...”

“You hate it.”

“No! No. It’s…cute.”

“Dorrie----it’s irritating. Even