Rich Groom (The Dirty Thirty Pledge 1)

“Margie is here?” I don’t wait for her to answer as I step behind the counter. Margie is the owner of this perfect little store, and she’s always been a great boss for the many years that I’ve been working here. But honestly, her being here on a Monday morning is an occurrence that’s never happened before. In fact, she’s barely here at all.

I knock on the door to the office, and I hear a muffled voice inside. “Come in.”

“Morning,” I say, putting a smile on my face. “I didn’t expect you on a Monday.”

She gives me a weary smile in return. “I didn’t want to be here on a Monday, but here we are. Sit down, dear.”

I move a stack of books from one of the cluttered chairs and sit, butterflies going crazy in my stomach. “What’s going on?”

Margie sighs, and looks out the window for a minute. So long that it kind of seems that she’s forgotten I was there. But eventually she looks at me. “I don’t think that I’ve ever told you what a good job you’ve done with the store,” she says. “These past few years you’ve turned it into something really lovely.”

“Why do I feel like there’s a very large ‘but’ coming after that?” I say with a laugh, but my heart is in my throat.

Margie’s voice is filled with sadness. “That’s because there is. We’re not doing well.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that even though we’ve turned this place into something great, we’re not doing as well financially as last year, or the year before. We’re barely breaking even, and if it doesn’t turn around, we’re going to have to close the store. I wanted to tell you that it has nothing to do with you, and I don’t think I could have had a better manager. People just aren’t buying in the way they used to.”

I swallow, and try to process. On some level, I knew that this is what she was going to say the minute that I stepped into the office, and yet I can’t believe that it’s happening. This is the only thing that’s keeping me afloat. If we close and I lose this job, I’ll have nothing. I haven’t had any other bites in town. “But we’re not closing yet?”

“We can hold out for another month,” she says, looking at the papers in front of her. “Maybe two. But if there’s no improvement, then I can’t take the risk anymore. I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah,” I say, looking away. I can’t stop the tears that are in my eyes. “Thanks for coming in to tell me,” I say, standing. “I’ve got to open the store.”

“I really am proud of you, Anna,” she says. “I’m sorry that things haven’t worked out differently.”

It’s like she knows what I’m thinking, and I can only nod as I head out into the store. I barely keep myself together as I open the store and a couple of our regulars come in to browse. But by mid-morning, I feel like I’m going to burst. I excuse myself to do some shelving and leave Eva to man the front of the store.

In the back of the store, more hidden by the shelves and the books, I feel comforted and safe enough to let go. It’s easy to cry here. I pull a cart of books to be shelved from the back and sit on the corner to sort them, letting the tears run down my face as I do so. I don’t understand why this is happening. It feels like one thing after the next after the next and I can’t do anything to stop it. My mind goes to the pile of late notices on my coffee table. I think I’ve got at least one from every utility, even the ones that I’ve cancelled in order to cut back. I’ve been buying the cheapest groceries I can in order to save. If the store goes down, I’ll never be able to survive. I’ll either have to sell my car or live in it.

My sadness turns to anger and I’m s fucking furious. I miss my parents and yet I wish they had told me that they were in trouble before it had come to this. We could have worked together to fix things while they were still alive. But they didn’t, and now I’m stuck.

I just want to get away from all of this. My mind flits to Frankie. I’d love to see him right now, and ask him to make me forget. I haven’t seen him since Saturday. We’ve texted a little, but that’s it. I don’t know where we’re at, and I don’t know where we’re going. But now, I don’t even think that I have time for this. Everything I have is going to be going into just surviving. As much as it sucks, it’s the way it is. It’s been that way for a while now.