I, Julie Mitchell, am going to say something that I would never normally say, "My life sucks! Not just run of the mill suck, but it fucking sucks big time."
Life up until a couple of months ago was great, I was in a long term relationship with a great guy, I, I mean we had our own apartment, we went out to restaurants and the theatre on a regular basis, we were comfortable financially, and then he got sent overseas, and he never came back, at least not alive. He was working with refugees and stood on a land mine. They said that he never stood a chance, he was dead before his body hit the ground.
I had a good job, I worked for an international finance company. I had a good boss, who was thoughtful, he gave me as much time as I needed to recover from Mike's death, he remembered my birthday and bought me presents for Christmas and stuff like that.
I am thirty three years old, I still have a pretty good figure, at least men still look at me as I walk by, my dark hair is usually pulled back and caught at the base of my skull by a bow that matches whatever outfit I wore. I have blue grey eyes that I inherited from my mother and a fair complexion that came from my father's side.
Like I said, life was pretty good until this morning. Jason, that's my boss, called me into his office as soon as he got in, there's nothing unusual about that, "Julie, I wanted to tell you before I tell the rest of the staff, but I have just had some bad news. Our parent company has folded and we are going down with it. It has been over-exposed to the Sub-Prime Mortgage market in the US and is unable to service its debt. I'm sorry but the company assets have been frozen, so at least until the dust settles there will be no pay or entitlements for staff."
I stood there open mouthed, just staring at him. This is the company that I had given a fair slab of my life to, and that I thought would look after me as it had promised, but no. If I couldn't get a job straight away, and that was going to be difficult in this industry with even the major banks running scared, how was I going to pay my mortgage when my savings ran out?
"I'm really sorry that this has happened so soon after your loss, and I understand that it is going to be tough for you financially if you can't find another position. I will do everything that I can to help you, you don't even have to ask." He stood up and came around his desk, taking me in his arms he kissed me, and that brought back memories of a recurring dream where he would do just that. Unfortunately the kiss that he gave me was nothing like the ones in my dreams. Life really does suck.
The rest of the day was spent fielding phone calls from clients asking about the monies that they had invested. I really felt sorry for some of them who had entrusted their life savings to us to be told that we could not guarantee that they would get it back. There were also calls to Jason from the media wanting to know what was happening. The responses to these calls were that all enquiries should be referred to the receivers who would be handling matters in the future.
Then the biggest bombshell. Jason, the man that I looked up to, the man that I had a secret crush on for as long as I can remember, the man that I thought was the most honest and trustworthy person in the industry, had betrayed me, had betrayed the staff and had betrayed the clients. It appeared that, as the financial crisis on the other side of the globe had been getting worse, he had begun to siphon money out of our trust accounts and transferring it to an overseas country that had no extradition treaty with ours. And to make matters worse, I was the person to discover this.
I felt gutted, not just for myself but for everyone who would suffer more hardship as a result of his actions.
Like I said life sucks big time.
On my journey home on the train I was pondering my next move. It was a toss up between going home and spending the next couple of days wallowing in self pity with the help of copious quantities of booze. This didn't excite me all that much because, from experience hangovers were self inflicted pain and I had a low threshold for self inflicted pain, and going somewhere that I could find an obliging man and get myself well and truly fucked, after all it had been some time since I had felt anything more animated than a vibrator between my legs. This also didn't excite me because the consequences could be disastrous.
I wondered what was on the idiot box tonight, a romcom might ease the pain, but the thought of watching some handsome man and beautiful woman bumble their way through formula situations and find each other at the very end depressed me even more.
A good book, now there was an idea. After getting off the train I walked purposefully into the shopping mall and headed for the bookshop that Mike and I used to spend literally hours browsing through before, fuck, before he died. That took some of the gloss of this prospect, but I was in the store and there was no turning back now.
I looked at the shelves of new releases and found them singularly depressing, I looked in the crime section to see if there was anything there that might take my mind off my troubles, but again inspiration was lacking.
"It's hard to choose isn't it?" The voice beside me had a familiar sound to it. I turned and looked into the eyes of Derek, the store manager. Mike and I had spoken to him just about every time we came into the store and he could almost be considered a friend. "I haven't seen you in here for some time, since the news broke about Mike. I went to his memorial service but kept in the background, mainly because I didn't know what to say under the circumstance. When you don't talk to many people it's often hard to know what to say."
My first impulse when he interrupted my train of thought was to tell him to fuck off and leave me alone, but the soft, gentle tone of his voice halted that thought in its tracks. "Hi, yes it has been a while, I guess that I hadn't wanted to come in here to this place where Mike and I had found so much joy, the pain was something that I wasn't prepared to face at the time."
"If you don't mind me saying this, but if I were in your situation, I would go to those places where you found joy to remind myself of the good times. But everyone is different and I'm not you."
"You're probably right. I thought that by immersing myself in my work I could forget about my sadness at losing him, but that hasn't worked out." I burst into tears.
I heard a sound and then found a handful of tissues before my eyes, taking them I tried to stem the flow. I felt his hand on my shoulder and then I felt myself being drawn close to him. I buried my face in his chest and the tears flowed even harder. "Come with me, it's Julie, right?." I nodded and he led me to a small office at the rear of the store and motioned me into a chair. "I was just about to make myself a cup of coffee, would you like one?"
"Thank you, yes."
"How do you like it?"
"White, no sugar."
He took down two white mugs from a cupboard and placed them on a small bench on which stood a kettle and a jar of instant coffee, thankfully one of the better brands. While the kettle boiled he got milk from a small bar fridge under the bench.
As we sipped our coffee he asked me, "You're upset more than I would have expected given that its three months since Mike's death, is there something more?"
"I don't want to burden you with my problems."
"No, I don't mind, it's not a problem, truly."
'Well, if you must know, I lost my job today."
"How come, you didn't do anything wrong did you?"
"No, nothing like that. You've heard about the Sub-Prime Mortgage collapse in the States? Well the company I work, or worked for, its head office was over-exposed to it and went belly up and dragged us down with it."
"And there was nothing that your office could do to save the local operation?"
"I thought that we could have hung in there but my boss, the man that I trusted implicitly, had been investing money in an offshore shelf company that he owns. The particular country doesn't have a treaty with us so he can't be touched by the authorities."
"You really are in a bad way, there must be something we can do to lighten the mood."
"I had thought of going home and getting shit-faced but decided against that, and then I thought of going somewhere for a bit of casual fornication, but that didn't turn me on at all. I couldn't face the prospect of some dreary romcom on television, so I thought that I'd drop in here and pick up a good book and curl up in bed with it."
"What a waste, no forget that I just said that."
"You didn't harbour thoughts of sharing my misery did you? Or maybe you thought that I'd let your replace the book in bed with me."
"No, I was just being frivolous. Look, I'm going to close up in a minute, why don't I take you to dinner in one of the cafes in the mall, and then I'll take you to the multiplex and watch a movie, I had planned to see 'Ironman' soon so this could be the perfect opportunity. What do you say?"
"I say yes. I love Robert Downey Jr. I think he's a great actor, and I've read the reviews and it seems to be a good escapist action flick. Let's do it!"
Toasted foccacia, filled with chicken and salad, followed by cheesecake and coffee filled me totally and I wasn't looking forward to the prospect of popcorn and some sickly sweet soft drink, but when the credits rolled I found that I had somehow managed to consume all of it.
Derek took my hand as we left the cinema complex, and led me towards the car park. "Where are we going now?"
