The Only One He Wants

“No, sir. Please, listen to me,” Gabrielle replied with her heart in her throat and her stomach sinking. This was going to be much tougher than she had expected at first. The client had sounded so positive a few days ago. What had happened now? “The market seriously needs these headache pills. Just think of all the people that are going to be eternally grateful to you. The teachers who come home tired from work, the stressed-out employees, the boys and girls facing relationship and college issues. They all need these pills. A couple of bucks more is nothing compared to the return.”

Silence.

Gabrielle breathed in and out. Speak, damn it!

“You see, madam. We can’t import with that price. I’m sorry. The deal’s off.” He hung up. The bas*ard hung up without even negotiating further. Her own boss had previously told her that it was the bottom price and she could do nothing about it. She had even tried the emotion card, but it didn’t work.

And that was when the day started to go downhill. The simplest, everyday things turned against her as if shifted with some kind of magic. The coffee machine was broken. She almost slipped on the polished floor on her way outside during her break. She ran out of cigarettes. And to top it all off, she had smeared her dress with vanilla cream from the donut she was having for lunch.

She cursed everything before her eyes from the left to the right, from A to Z. It had been such a great day and now… Now her blood pressure was going up. And worst of all was that her headache was coming back. She found that when she was getting frustrated, like now, she got this pain. She reminded herself to take one of those pills she had so persuasively spoken about to that German.

The cage she was in, she felt, was getting tighter with each passing second. No exploring the world for her and no taking long vacations from work. Everything seemed so distant now. And her life seemed grayer than ever. There wasn’t even a trace of the energy and liveliness that had coursed through her body in the morning.

After some chatting with her colleagues, she had to deal with her manager.

“I have no words, Gabrielle,” he said and sighed as if his own house had been destroyed by a huge flood. “He was supposed to bring in a lot of cash. And now…”

“We move on,” she told him and smiled. “It’s what this company has always done and will continue to do. Pick up the pieces and move on. Find a better client and land the deal. It’s what we do.”

As she said those words, her heart jumped a little. No matter how crappy her job was, at the end of the day it was still hers. And her rational mind was holding onto it like a drowning man to a stick.

Her manager’s face was neutral and serious. He was an older man with snow-white hair and wrinkled skin. Then his face lit up. “You’re right, Gabrielle. We move on,” he smiled. It was a wane, shy smile, but a smile nonetheless.

She returned to her office with her head high, walking proudly. When she entered again she looked at herself into the mirror. She reapplied some make-up and looked at her face. She noticed the laugh lines on her brown skin were more pronounced. There were even some crow’s feet under her black eyes as well. Her body may have started to age, but not her spirit. She felt like a twenty-year-old ready to travel the world.

She fished her cell out of her purse and dialed her daughter’s number. She knew it by heart. Every mother did.

“Hey, Alesha, sweetie! How are you? How’s Francis?” Her voice reflected the joy and excitement she felt when she heard her daughter pick up.

“It’s Francis, ma’am. Alesha’s a bit sick. I’m by her side all day. Some really bad case of flu, I guess,” he said. Gabrielle noticed the distress in his voice. He loved her daughter so much and she could tell it pained him to see her like that. Gabrielle was no exception. Her heart was fluttering like crazy and she felt a cold sweat washing over her body. Now she knew why Alesha hadn’t called her all day.

“How is she? Is she okay? Have you been to a doctor?” Her panic reached a whole new level. Tears started to accumulate in her eyes.

“No, no. She insisted that we don’t. You know that Alesha’s afraid of them,” Francis said. “Her temperature is climbing and medication isn’t working. I don’t know what to do. It’s getting worse and worse. I’m worried sick.”

She quickly advised him to go to the nearest hospital and ask for the specific doctor her company knew so well. She was surely going to give her daughter the best possible treatment. But tears were slowly falling down her cheeks. Gabrielle was an emotional person and when family was concerned she was very much affected by it. And while speaking with her son-in-law, who she loved as her own son, she fought hard to swallow as many tears as possible.

When the conversation finished and Francis hung up, thanking her, Gabrielle just sat in silence. Her head squeezed between her palms, she was out of her mind. The deal, her daughter… And if that wasn’t enough, she had reviewed her financial situation. She had realized that all of her savings were for nothing, because she would have to work for five more years to accomplish her dreams.

It all became too much to bear in one day. They weren’t huge apocalyptic events, but they still took their tool by clouding her thoughts and worrying her.

Gabrielle landed a fist on her office table. Her headache was splitting and there was a strange feeling in her lower back, probably from sitting too much.

All of it added up to an exceptionally bad day.

She sat like that, unresponsive, staring at one spot on the floor. Her mind was blank.

After a couple of hours every last one of the firm’s employees had left. Only the night shift janitor was sweeping the floors. Dead tired, she called it a day and exited her office.

It wasn’t until she sat in her car that all of her emotions overwhelmed her. In front of everyone she managed to hide what she felt. But whatever was burdening her always came out to play in the darkness when she was utterly alone. Her pride didn’t allow otherwise.

Starting the engine she headed toward home. After the first red light, the tears came. And they came all of a sudden, without any warning. Just pouring down her face, they ruined her mascara and ran down her cheeks in black rivulets.

“Oh my God! What is happening to me?” she screamed aloud, her lips contorting into a snarl.

Perhaps some early kind of menopause was happening. Worries were happening. Crushed dreams were happening. Slowly going towards fifty was happening. Job issues were happening. Alesha was happening.

Life was happening.

And she could do nothing about it. She couldn’t possibly fight life, right? She was completely… powerless.

That was why the tears rolled down, as if that was the only way all of her feelings could be let out. Rare were the occasions when she felt like this. She was angry and concerned and frustrated and nostalgic and yearning and a thousand more things. They were tangled into one fat ball which weighed down her heart.

It was night. A deep black night outside. Through her blurry vision she could see the starless sky. It was ornamented only with the moon’s gigantic milky white ball. A few clouds were gathering in the corners of the sky. Possibly meeting for rain later during the night.