Chapter Ten
Ashlyn
It was scary being on the street, at first. The shelter I found wasn’t great but was better than sleeping out in the elements. Thankfully it didn’t last very long. While we were at the shelter, I managed to find a daycare that I could afford on the savings I had. My phone didn’t have data anymore, the bill going a bit too long without getting paid, but there was a library not too far away from the daycare with public internet terminals. I would spend the time that Katie was at daycare to look for a job. I didn’t have many skills to speak of, aside from cleaning and waitressing. The call for waitresses was surprisingly slim and most of the ones that there were wanted someone who could speak fluent Spanish, which I couldn’t do. Switching my search to the janitorial sector, I found four postings that looked promising and applied for them all, with an appropriately tailored and subtly padded, resume for each.
My phone didn’t have data, but it could still take calls, paid for on a month to month basis, which came in handy when it came to the job search. Two of the cleaning jobs got back to me the next day. They were both jobs cleaning office buildings. One during the day, which wasn’t a problem and one at night, which would be trickier because of Katie.
The second job paid twice as much, exactly because it was the graveyard shift, which few people were willing to work aside from the genuinely nocturnal and truly desperate. Since I fell into the second category, I figured it was worth a try. I managed to make both interviews during the morning when I knew Katie would be in daycare. The buildings were managed by competing companies which, of course, had set up their offices across the street from each other in the same prime, downtown location.
The first interview was for the day shift. I assumed it would start the next day. It was already well after breakfast. I had worn my best clothes and tied my hair back to hide how greasy it was, kicking myself for not taking a shower before I left Chase’s place, or at least sneaking back over to my old apartment. The lazy landlord had not even changed the locks. I could have been living there but there was too much of a chance of being discovered.
Both interviews went surprisingly well. The manager for the day shift was a prim woman in her late 20s who looked like her life’s ambition was to be a movie executive and her current job was just another step along the way. The manager for the company offering the nightshift was a coldly efficient gentleman with gray fringes to his otherwise jet-black hair and an accent I first thought was German but later turned out to be Norwegian.
Both were quite cordial, and neither of them asked about the size of my tits which was already one up on my last interview. Their main concern seemed to be about my experience, partly because I looked so young. Something I carefully lied my way around, first by convincing them that I was the age that I really was and then peppering some names of past clients that sounded convincing, some others actually being true. I picked up Katie from daycare and took her out for fast food, honestly hoping for better things. I was on my way to the daycare with Katie the next morning when my phone rang. “Hello,” I said, tucking the phone between my ear and my shoulder, both hands busy with my energetic toddler.
“Ms. Tate?”
“That’s me,” I said. “It’s Amelia from O’Connell Cleaners. We have decided to hire you on for our day shift at the Madison building. Your start tomorrow morning at nine.” “Wow, than—” She hung up before I could finish expressing my undying gratitude. I put my head against the vibrating bus window, doing my best not to fall asleep before our stop. After getting Katie settled at daycare — there had been some tears the first time I left her, but she had adjusted quickly — I walked towards the library. I could see it in the distance when the phone rang again, buzzing in the pocket of my jeans. “Hello?” “Ashlyn Tate?” asked the familiar voice of the second interviewer. “Yes, sir,” I said stopping, standing almost at attention. “You are on for the night shift tonight at the Adams building. You start at six.” “Yes, sir!” I managed to get out, nearly saluting before the line went dead. I had just gone from no job to two in a day. I was about to do a happy dance in the middle of the street until I remembered that while the hours for the day shift would be fine, nine to three being the exact hours Katie was at daycare. But I had nowhere to put her between six and two, or anywhere to go after that, the shelter closing its doors at eight.