Reorganize

from the Probability Spinner by Regan


From the moment Virginia saw the woman with whom she would be working, she was consumed by loathing and repulsed by the woman’s warm manner, her grey hair, and her new age affinities. Dawn and Virginia had been hired to work side-by-side for the extent of their residency, two years. It was an arranged marriage in which neither party could refuse the other. Each tried for the first few weeks – the Honeymoon period – to acquiesce and smile. After a month, courtesy demanded they retain a few pleasantries, so they greeted one another in the morning and bid each other a good evening at day’s end. Two months in, they thought they knew each other very well and left off talking altogether, instead simply nodding or pointing. At the six month mark, they spoke under their breath, muttering cutting asides, and both developed ulcers. Virginia smoked on her lunch, and Dawn snacked on antacids.
The woman’s name was Dawn Spirit-Welles, an obviously contrived pseudonym. She had been raised in Peking by a widower father who sent her on long trips with classmates and then, at age ten, by herself to Europe with only pocket change for months. She had peered at the windows of fine hotels, breathing hotly at patrons stuffed with pastries. She became a woman in Marrakesh, wearing a veil on the very day word came that her father had died. She remained in Morocco as a barley huller for another six months, returning to Peking to sort through inheritance papers.
Dawn had spent the next ten years driving a semi-truck across the southern United States, as her paternal grandfather had done in his youth. He had first driven the trucks then, gradually, worked his way up through management and finally took over the company, commanding a fleet of several hundred called Missouri Messenger. She wore heavy blue jeans that sagged in the rear, braless white t-shirts under thick flannel pea coats, and enormous shit-kickers braided tight with yellow laces. She enjoyed the function of those years, the sense of purpose, and the drive – both personal and geographical. On the road, Dawn had met a salesman, a lonely man with no will to live, who had changed her life.
She picked him up on a strip of highway that today posts signage preventing the good intentions of those who might give a hitchhiker a lift. She barely registered her own gender and, as such, did not take on any of the weaknesses, anxieties, or hang-ups of those who did. She reached out to the man because it was rainy and dark, and she would’ve picked up a mangy mutt if she had seen one in as rough condition. In the days to come, Dawn wished that he had in fact been a dirty dog, whose company might’ve been more soothing.
For the first day, Stanley Aufbacher was nearly mute, grunting over her loaner thermos of tepid coffee and gnawing on several day-old bagels in the compartment between their seats. On the second day, he complained. For hours, he mentioned things about the universe that didn’t make sense. By midday, he had found fault with every nation, world leader, and climate on Earth. In the evening, he disliked the way that Dawn drove, the sound of the engine, the odor of diesel, and the breathtaking view outside the windshield. During the night, he cursed himself, his circumstances, habits (negativity being one he mentioned more than once), and physique. On the third day, he was contrite and bereft, crying to himself over some unutterable misfortune, though whether this was his, a loved one’s, or the possession of the future was unknown to Dawn.
After four days with Stanley Aufbacher, Dawn handed him the keys to the semi, notified her boss on the CB, and looked up the nearest retreat center specializing in eastern healing. The west had not produced sufficient cures for the pains of the people. She wanted to create her own reality. If she chose to do so, she could sleep in every day, waking rested to the gentle flutter of birch leaves. She could meditate under an open sky or, if weather was inclement, beneath the canopy of a yurt, repeating nonsensical words until nothing remained in her thoughts. She could eat only raw fruits and vegetables and read until daylight snuffed itself out. She could do so only if she chose it.