Lit in Progress

Marsha was late. Her alarm’s sound had been turned all the way down sometime yesterday and she didn’t wake up until 7:00, while she was supposed to be at work at 6:15. She hurriedly pulled her hair into a ponytail holder and grabbed her name badge as she headed for the garage, cursing as her shoulder caught the door frame.

Her grey Toyota sat cold in his place, knowing she was late. He didn’t know why she had to be at the warehouse so early. She didn’t like it there; he heard her complain almost every day to her friends, about the heat (or cold), the dust, the noise, the mechanical sameness of walking up and down the same aisle 70 times, to be finally done and the next day begin as though the former had never happened. Her words seeped into the cell phone, down the charger and into him, like fluid through an umbilical cord. Perhaps, he thought with a smile, I am the mother.

Marsha laughed, a bit bitterly, at the Alanis song on the radio. Here she was, two hours later, still no farther than 27th Street. “Don’tcha think…”

She coughed twice, and wiped her face with a Sonic napkin from the glove box. There was that horrid laundromat, wiped out in one of the tornadoes, then ressurected with the same ugly gold roof as though nothing had happened. She thought about her mother, riding a bus to the laundromat in Norman, calling once in a while to make sure Marsha wasn’t doing anything stupid.

Three cars whizzed by on the shoulder. She yelled at them in her mind, envied their audacity. Where’s a cop when you need one?

Marsha considered taking the exit, but since the construction ended in just a ways, she decided not to. Twenty minutes later, cursing the decision, she sped up with the traffic and fairly flew onto 240, almost colliding with a Stanley Steamer van.