The Last Thing Beatrice Did

9:01 a.m.

On top of the empty styrofoam container from Sunshine China sat another containing a half-eaten hoagie from Dom’s. The screensaver on her laptop lulled her to sleep, the Herschel’s Warehouse logo bouncing around the screen, just barely missing the corners on its unending course. She wondered if it would ever land directly in a corner. “8-ball, corner pocket!” she whispered aloud, then giggled.

Timothy rolled back his chair and stared at her from the next cubicle over. “You okay, B?”

“Huh? Yes.” She rolled her eyes at him. “How many days in a row have we been here, Timmy?”

“One, stop calling me ‘Timmy.’ Two, this is only Tuesday, B. And we just had a three-day weekend… You ever thought about a different job?” Timothy smiled at her, patronizingly, then sighed and rolled back to his laptop. He tippy-tapped away on his keyboard, writing those awful, cheery emails he always wrote.

“I think about finding a new job all the time,” she said to herself. Staring at the piles of paper on her desk, the takeout boxes, the knick-knacks from Ted — why did she ever date Ted in the first place? What a jerk! — she contemplated the meaning of life. The analog clock on the wall behind her ticked louder and louder. She took a puff of her inhaler, then slapped her cheeks gently. “Wake up, B!” she whispered.

9:24 a.m.

She opened her emails and started deleting them one by one. “Oh, have to answer that one,” she said aloud.

“Quit talking to yourself, B! It’s weird,” Timothy said, laughing. Beatrice actually liked Timothy. They worked well together, he was kind, he always told the truth, and he never hit on her or anything. His marriage was great, his kids were beautiful, and as much as she wanted to hate his wife Tina for all her perfection, she liked her too.

“Shut it, Timothy,” she said back, laughing. “Have to talk to someone intelligent every once in a while.”

9:26 a.m.

“All the best?” she said out loud, having signed an email with the nicety.

“B! Seriously! Can’t think over here!”

“Sorry, Timothy!” She said.

Staring at the desk again, she became frustrated. So much clutter everywhere! She pulled the trash can out from under the desk, and in a single sweep of her left arm she knocked the entirety of her desktop contents into it.

The rest of the morning went nearly the same, then came her sweet lunch break. She wrote at least another 100 emails after lunch and went to a useless meeting. After the meeting, she drank two more cups of coffee that never fully woke her up.

3:59 p.m.

She got a call from a Miss Lane of Lancaster, PA, who griped about the way an employee at the warehouse had looked at her. I mean, God forbid someone should look at another human being, she thought to herself.

4:48 p.m.

“Yes Miss Lane,” she said. “I understand, I’ll pass it along… Yes, so awful to hear that you were violated like tha... Oh, and I understand that wearing a low-cut shirt doesn’t give license to people to… Oh, yes, I assure you, the management will be notifi… You can bet… So sorry again, okay, you too, goodbye.”

“Jesus, take the wheel!” she said to herself after hanging up.

“Go home, Beatrice,” Timothy said. “And here, this came for you on the mail cart while you were in the restroom a bit ago.”

Timothy’s hand emerged from above the partition, holding up a black Moleskine journal, just like the ones she always used for — well, everything.

4:57 p.m.

She took it from him and scanned it. No note, not in an envelope, no address on it, no return address. On the inside of the cover was a post-it that read, “Beatrice, 5th floor.” Hmm… left me a gift that I always use… I wonder if it’s Ted? But that’s not his handwriting.

“Thanks, Timothy. Tell Tina and the kids hello.”

“Will do. And B, please call up some girlfriends and have a nice night out or something. You’re dying here.

“I know. I’ll think of something… Thanks, Timothy. You’re pretty swell.”

“Swell, huh? Gee, thanks! All the way from the 1930s, she comes up with an adjective for me. Swell!”

“Shut up. I hate you. I really don’t… but still, shut up.”

5:13 p.m.

The drive home was less than entertaining, but before she knew it, she had showered and was sitting in her living room, pink fuzzy slippers and all, eating ramen and drinking a glass of rosé.

5:57 p.m.

She flipped through Netflix. Nothing. Then Prime. Also nothing. Always nothing. Maleficent ran across the floor wildly just as if she had seen a mouse. Beatrice wondered often whether or not her cat needed to see a therapist, but she never shared that with anyone, for fear people would think she needed one, too.

6:42 p.m.

Beatrice turned off the TV and got up. “I hate everything except you, Maleficent,” she said. “And Chinese food.” She stacked her bowl precariously atop the mound of unwashed dishes in her sink, then started to mindlessly wipe the counters down. Within ten minutes, a load of dishes percolated in the machine, her kitchen was mostly clean, and Maleficent had eaten a whole dish of Fancy Feast.

6:56 p.m.

Beatrice took her nightly walk out of her small apartment, up the three flights of stairs, and onto the roof of the building. The cold air of the city hit her face like the slap of a hand, and the smell of restaurant row below was almost enough to make her gag. “Ah, fresh air,” she said to herself sarcastically.

7:49 p.m.

After losing herself in her thoughts about Ted, work, the guy before Ted, whose name was Ned — she always thought the rhyming to be ironic — more than half an hour passed.

“Maybe I’ll paint or something,” she said, her voice more hopeful this time than sarcastic, as she remembered the glory days of college, when her work study program footed the bill and she had gobs of free time. Then her face soured. “Never finished that degree, did you though? What good is an art degree at a customer service job, anyway?” She laughed it off, but her words wounded more than she wanted to admit to herself.

8:20 p.m.

She fumbled with the key at the door, then finally got it unlocked. Maleficent sat with a beguilingly innocent look on her face. “What did you do?” She looked around. Maleficent ran off, but she found her small dining table completely cleared of its normal stacks of papers. “Guhhh, cat!” she yelled.

Picking it all up, she felt something new. “Journal,” she said, remembering the moment at the office when Timothy handed it to her.

8:25 p.m.

Beatrice undid the elastic strap, bent back the cover, and started writing. She wrote a short account of the day, then the week, then the months that had elapsed since college — 61 months since the December she dropped out, to be exact. She turned the page and wrote about her up-and-down relationship with Ted, how he had lied to her, promised her marriage and kids, promised her to let her go back to school to finish her degree; how he had lied and run off with that girl Camille he met in Milan on a business trip.

9:15 p.m.

She wrote a little about Ned, his kindness, his thin frame and doldrum demeanor. She flipped the page, wrote about missing her mom and dad, her baby brother Swing, they called him — a natural at baseball — and her best friend Marcy from childhood, with whom she hadn’t spoken in a year.

10:22 p.m.

She had a cramp in her right hand. Only time it’s fun to be ambidextrous, she thought. She flipped the page and began writing with her left hand. This time, it was of fairies and goblins, of an art collector, of a fashionable priestess with a perfect smile and a crooked laugh.

12:06 a.m.

The story got violent. The evil sorcerer — “Named Ted for now… I’ll rename him later,” she said — began his conquest of the villages surrounding the oceanic temple he guarded. But it would not turn out nicely for Ted.

1:50 a.m.

She yawned. Maleficent had curled up in a ball on top of her fuzzy slippers. Waking up in four hours was enough of a good reason to stop this now, but she felt invigorated for the first time in a long time. How many friends had she shared her life story with? Recently, that is?

1:55 a.m.

She flipped through the remainder of the journal. She loved the smell of the pages of a new book almost as much as an old one. She looked in the pocket in the back and found that instead of the typical Moleskine brochure, there was a simple, white envelope. A note inside contained the following:

“Don’t freak out, but I know you. I know how hard it’s been. I know who you are and that you are full of ideas and color and light, and that you sit behind that God-forsaken desk every day, rotting inside. Your heart overflows with cartwheels and rainbows, demon-possessed knights on horseback, and fairy princesses in war garb. I know because I am you. And I know you need this. Go start over, or Maleficent will eat you while you sleep. — B. XOXO — PS: I included an extra $51.18 for fun.”

“Need what? I didn’t see any money,” she said aloud. If the letter-writer meant the journal, sure. Sure, I could use a new journal, she thought. She flipped through the pages again, then looked in the back pocket, and finally, the envelope. Nope… nothing. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”

2:07 a.m.

Just then, Maleficent started pawing at a piece of paper on the floor that fluttered near the vent. She picked it up.

“Wells Fargo… 1904556…” She read the rest silently, then hopped online. It was a bank account, in her own name, containing $20K on the nose.

“What the heck?” she said, then continued looking through the profile. “That’s my Social Security number!” She kept looking and in every case, information that only she had access to perfectly filled every line.

A flash of a thought, a glimmer of hope! Quickly, she typed in the Brookdale Community College’s website, checked her credits, and immediately navigated to the New York Academy of Art website.

3:16 a.m.

“I have enough credits to transfer to NYAA and finish out my degree there… and I can actually finish out an MFA if I play it right. Math, math… where’s my freaking calculator, Maleficent?” She punched in a few numbers, including the MFA credits, thought about the time it would take, then went and looked at her own savings and checking accounts.

3:19 a.m.

Beatrice cried while she brushed her teeth. What was happening? $19,948.82 after fees for the courses she still lacked, including all the costs for room and board for the year. Just $51.18 less than the sum of money she’d just been handed.

She turned off her alarm, and the last thing Beatrice did before falling soundly asleep was write an email on her phone, scheduling it to send at 7 a.m. It read:

“I quit. You can replace me as easily as I can buy a loaf of bread. It appears someone from the future has sent me the money to finish my art degree. Thanks for nothing, Herschel! — B. XOXO.”