Duality

Chapter 1 “Carl, for f**k’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you to take out the trash?” Kat hollered, pinching her nose. The stench was unbearable, the kind of reek that made the hairs on your arms stand up and burn the inside of your nostrils. Rotten kale—the stuff always went to s**t three days after you bought it—colluded with spoiled yogurt and moldy salami in a concoction of biological weaponry. She was certain she was breathing in the deadliest of pathogens, all conspiring to kill her. And her dumbass boyfriend, Carl, couldn’t be bothered to move from the couch. He leaned back in his LazyBoy armchair, his feet propped up, one of his gnarled toenails poking through a hole in his suspiciously dirty sock. In fact, his entire body was suspiciously dirty—she was almost certain he had been wearing those clothes for the past two days. He also sported a bit of scraggly brown stubble, the kind that would belong to either a prepubescent boy or a pedophile, take your pick. When he was clean shaven, he looked relatively attractive, but at this point in time? Garbage, like his holey socks. He spammed buttons on his Xbox controller, his arms jerking every so often. She wasn’t sure what he was playing, but she guessed by how angrily he was shouting expletives into his mic, it was PUBG. He always got unreasonably angry while playing PUBG. Grimacing, Kat lifted the entire bag of garbage out of the trash can. She dragged it over to the center of the living room and stood in front of the TV. Predictably, Carl tried to move his neck so he could see around her. His desperation would be comedic if she wasn’t so pissed off. “Babe!” he shouted furiously. “Come on! I’m in the middle of a match.” “Shut up,” Kat snarled. “Why the hell didn’t you take care of this?” “I took care of it last time!” “I work all day! You don’t even have a job! Seriously Carl, the one thing I ask you to do is to keep this place clean, and you can’t even do that!” By the sounds of explosions echoing from the TV, Kat assumed he lost the match. Carl threw his controller and mic down on the floor. He leaned forward, exhaling sharply, burying his face in his hands. He looked up at her with angry amber eyes and laughed, as if he was trying to refrain from screaming. “Thanks Kat. I’m so glad this couldn’t wait.” “Would it kill you to help me?” her voice grew thinner with each word she spoke. She blinked rapidly. I am not going to cry over this. But it was seven A.M. and she was already struggling not to break down. Part of her wanted nothing more than to crawl back under her bed covers and sleep the world away, but she had already used up five of her fifteen vacation days left this year. Seeing her distress, Carl’s face finally softened. He stood up and squeezed her shoulders, then pulled her in for a hug. In the rare moments when he was sympathetic, Kat was reminded of what attracted her to him in the first place. “Aw, babe,” he crooned, rubbing her back. “I’m sorry. I’ll be better.” Kat nodded, eyes cast downward. She brushed a lock of brown hair behind her ear. He held her at arm’s length, looking at her with a mischievous grin. “You know what would help you relieve some stress?” he said. She stared at him blankly. He slid his hands from her back to her breasts and started unbuttoning her blouse. She slapped his hands away and thrust the trash bag at him. He frowned but grabbed it. She buttoned up her blouse, averting her eyes from him. She could once again feel the rage bubbling in her stomach, ready to rise from her body and light the world on fire. “We can have s*x when I am not trying to rush out the door on my way to work. And also, when you learn to do things without me asking.” She grabbed her backpack off the counter and slipped on her winter gloves. Those January winds would blister her hands until they fell off if she didn’t. She ignored her boyfriend’s angry eyes and slack jaw. As she left, he shouted, “It’s been six months!” * * * * “One java chip Frappuccino for Kat?” a tattooed barista called out, leaning over the stained ceramic counter. Kat stepped up to the counter to claim her cup of coffee, offering the overworked barista a kind smile and a murmured thank you. While she wasn’t one to usually buy coffee from shops, she was out of it at home, and Carl hadn’t gone grocery shopping yet. So a five dollar Frappuccino from Starbucks it was. She felt reluctant to hand over her credit card for such a frivolous expense. Her best friend Zara sat in the back corner of the coffee shop, drinking from a chai latte. She ripped open Splenda packets and stirred them in with a stick. Kat grabbed a seat across from her. Zara lifted her head, her eyebrows raising. Kat bit her lip, taking a long sip from her drink. When Zara got that look in her eyes, she was about to go off. “So he didn’t take out the trash again?” “I mean, no. He’s just lazy.” “Kat, I am telling you,” Zara said slowly, “you need to dump Carl. I am cancelling your relationship.” Kat shrugged her shoulders. “We’ve been together for two years.” “That’s two years too long.” “I can’t dump him until he finds a new job.” Zara rolled her eyes and laughed, leaning back in her seat. “Kat. That man hasn’t had a job for eight months. You think he’s looking? He ain’t.” “I know. But what can I do?” “Send him to live with some of his gamer friends. Hell, tell him to move in with his parents. This man has walked all over you. Why you let him, I don’t know.” Kat’s green eyes flashed. “I’m sorry, I let him walk all over me?” Zara was unintimidated, flipping her long platinum hair over her shoulder. “Yes. You absolutely do. I’ve told you what I think about you and Carl, but you don’t listen. So, honestly, I am done hearing about it.” Kat scoffed and laughed, incredulous. Zara shrugged her shoulders and scrolled through i********: on her phone. She found a model in a frilly pink top and showed it to Kat. “Also, we need to take you shopping,” she said. “Look at this! So cute.” “I don’t have money.” “You’d have money if you stopped spending it on that boyfriend.” “I don’t spend any more money on Carl than I have to! Besides, what’s wrong with my clothes now?” “They are drab ass Goodwill hand-me-downs. You look unprofessional and honestly sweetie, sad. I know you want to snag a job in the marketing department at work, and if you want that, you gotta learn to market yourself.” “Yeah well, I don’t even like spending my money on groceries, let alone clothes.” Zara exhaled sharply, frustrated. She rolled her eyes, batting her false lashes together rapidly. She slouched down in her seat and crossed her arms, shaking her head. “You constantly make excuses for yourself and it’s so f*****g annoying sometimes,” she said. “Oh, I can’t spend money on a basic necessity like clothes, but I can spend it on my stupid boyfriend. Kat, don’t you get it? This is why you’re stuck.” “Stuck?” “In a shitty life, going nowhere,” she took a sip from her latte. “You don’t budget or manage your money well.” “Hey,” Kat snapped. “That isn’t true. I paid off my student loan debt, didn’t I?” “Uh, yeah. But only after you got your grandpa’s inheritance, right? And you accumulated so much debt just from the interest, it took all of that money to pay it off.” “But still, I paid it off, didn’t I?” “Well, besides that, you have totally lost your ambition. Whatever happened to the girl who wanted to lead her own ad agency? How did she end up working for a call center?” “Zara,” Kat snapped, “I feel shitty enough as it is. I really don’t need you to add to it.” “Well, what do you want me to do? Do you even realize every time we’ve met up, you complain about your job or Carl? Every single time, Kat.” “Wow. I didn’t realize my problems were bothering you so much.” “Look, I’ve given you my advice. Take it or don’t, I really don’t care at this point. But please spare me from the woe-is-me attitude. You just make things worse for yourself.” “I am sorry I didn’t get a job at my daddy’s news station,” Kat retorted angrily, slamming her hand down on the table. “And I am sorry my problems annoy you. But don’t you dare say I ‘choose’ to make my own life worse.” She stood up, grabbed her backpack, and exited the shop. * * * * Now out in the bone chilling cold, Kat wrapped her scarf around her face and trudged her way through the snow. A freezing gust of wind sliced up her cheeks. A passing car slipped through a puddle of slush, spraying her ankles with freezing water. Minneapolis winters were hellish, and this winter had been particularly bad. From what the forecasts were predicting, it would take at least until the end of May for all the snow to melt—if they were lucky and didn’t encounter another snow storm. Kat continued down the crowded sidewalk and crossed a couple of streets to reach her workplace, Rueberg & Finch, a mail-order furniture company that catered to small businesses. She checked the time on her phone, 7:58 A.M. Her shift started in two minutes, and she would be yelled at for being late, but she couldn’t be bothered to pick up her pace. Eight and a half hours of taking phone calls was a special kind of hell for introverts. Predictably, her supervisor Minnie was waiting for her in the open area before the rows of cubicles. Minnie was a woman in her early forties, with hair tied up in a messy black bun. Like most Minnesotans, she was annoyingly passive aggressive. She opened her mouth to say something, but Kat stopped her. “Sorry,” Kat said preemptively. “I lost track of time this morning.” Minnie’s pursed lips formed a small, phony smile. “Sure, sure. Happens to the best of us. Just be more careful next time, okay? It’s important everyone clocks in for their shift at the appropriate time.” It was 8:03 A.M., and there were almost no calls at that time of day, but Kat nodded and went to her desk. Minnie and the other supervisors were consistently late for their shifts, but apparently Kat couldn’t afford the luxury. She quickly plugged in her computer and put on her headset, trying to get logged into all appropriate systems. She heard someone clearing their throat and turned again to see Minnie leaning over the walls of her cubicle. “I forgot to remind you, we have a meeting at ten,” Minnie said. “I have to go over some of your call evaluations.” “Yeah, I know. It’s on my calendar,” Kat said. Progressively, her scores had been getting worse, and she was honestly hanging by a thread. While she would love to just say “f**k it” and quit, she also needed the money, and hadn’t gotten a bite on any other jobs as of late. However, her patience was wearing thin, and she found it harder to control her overwhelming frustration. At this point, food service didn’t sound like a bad gig. Kat sat in the chair across from her boss. She sat up straight but twiddled her thumbs nervously. Minnie turned her computer monitor to face Kat and clicked open to the scoring system they used for call evaluations. Kat saw a wall of graphs and numbers she didn’t entirely understand. No matter how many times Minnie explained it to her, she knew it would never make sense. “So Kat, we’ve been working on your active listening skills, and well, talking about ways we can empathize with the customer.” “Yep.” “For the most part you’ve been doing great! Some of your calls have already been graded for this month, and your percentage might just bump up a bit,” Minnie said. “There was just one call I wanted to discuss with you. It was the owner of a pizzeria…he called in to discuss a broken table set?” Kat rolled her eyes and nodded, laughing. “Oh, no. That wasn’t the owner, that was the owner’s father. He was trying to take care of a return for his son but didn’t have any of the information he needed.”