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loss I’m feeling.
Callaghan places both hands flat on his desk and leans forward. That frozen forehead isn’t so
frozen anymore. He looks a little like a cartoon movie villain about to say something dastardly.
“Pardon me. Are you telling me you’ve been away from my business for four days, because your pet
died?”
I could argue the word pet with him. Explain to him she was so much more than that. That she was
my connection to the world. My reason for leaving my apartment. The light in my life. But he doesn’t
get that part of me. “Yes,” I say flatly.
His lips pull back from his teeth in a snarl. Disgust coats his voice as he lectures me about my
irresponsible choices and lack of professionalism. He has a vein over his left eye that bulges each
time he yells. The yelling doesn’t bother me. I don’t like the volume, but long ago I learned to tune the
words out.
He sounds like the teacher in theSimpsons.
But his next words snap my attention back to this room. “You ever leave this company in the lurch
for some fucking dog, you will be out on your ass so fast, you won’t know what hit you. You’re being
docked four days’ pay.”
“I had family days saved up. Mr. Williams said I could use them.”
“Family days are for family. Not for a fucking dog. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to give
people time off every time their budgie dies? Not bloody likely.”
When I told Mr. Williams that Birdie was going to be put to sleep over the weekend, he was
sympathetic. He told me to take all the time I needed to grieve. I came in today because I felt I should,
not because I feel better. It’s going to take more than four days to adjust to losing my best friend. If
Birdie hadn’t just died, maybe I would care more about what he thinks of me. Maybe I’d care more
about this job.
But she is gone, and no matter how much I wish that weren’t the truth, it is. For the first time in a
decade, I’m completely untethered. My future is stretching out before me, and while I’m not sure what
I want, I know for sure I don’t want anything to do with the man sitting in front of me.
All my reasons for temperance, for patience, are gone. I know for sure I don’t want to spend the
next decade getting sneered at by this man. Or his version of a sneer, I guess. It’s actually a little
grotesque. He could go on a billboard advertising the dangers of Botox.
