POW!
Anneza yelped in surprise as the static charge she'd built up discharged itself in one enormous burst. She looked around, panicked, worried that it might have started a fire, but wherever it had arced to, it evidently hadn't ignited anything. Maybe it'd gone down a power outlet or something. She sighed in relief, then looked down at herself, irritated. Why'd it have to do that the moment she got her clothes off? She picked up her dress from off of the bed and slipped it on. If this turned out to solve the problem, she'd have to open up the collar of her shirt and the cuffs of her pants, she supposed - she didn't like the idea, but it was better than abandoning pants altogether.
As far as the issue with the bank, she'd have to make a trip back with Ellen, this afternoon or tomorrow. She supposed she should probably start taking Ellen with her everywhere she went; her sign-language was improving, but her attempts at spoken English (at least she could recall its name now) were much slower. She wondered, again, what would become of her; how long could she keep this up? Her bills, at least, were auto-debited from her account, but with this fabric work drying up, and she didn't even know what the salary was...
She sighed. If she couldn't communicate, she couldn't work, and if she couldn't work, she was in trouble. Ellen could help her to some extent, but definitely not enough for her to get a job like her old one, or probably even much of any kind of job. But she didn't have enough saved to simply stay unemployed until she could get a working grasp of English again, just the mortgage payments alone...why had she bought this stupid house in the first place? It was too damn big...but of course, that was why she had bought it. Spacious and showy - but until the wolf-girl moved in, she'd never even used the other bedrooms. Stupid, stupid! Granted, she'd bought it before the real-estate bust, but it was a buyer's market now and she was stuck with this...she'd be lucky to get back anything on top of the mortgage balance, if she sold it. Just another useless artifact of a career she no longer had...
There was that feeling again. That sensation of...nothing. Anneza kept thinking that she ought to feel wounded at the loss of that job, at the prospect of losing all this, but all she really felt was a sort of empty space where a great inert mass had been. Had it really all meant that little to her? She wouldn't have thought so, but the only strong feelings she could work up about the matter were her worries about her finances and what jobs she could possibly get like this that wouldn't be horribly demeaning. The actual death of her career...didn't feel like much to her. She missed some aspects of the job - bargaining, organizing plans and watching them fall into place - but that was it. She'd felt like she was staking all her hopes and dreams on what she was building there, but...what were her hopes and dreams? She didn't know if she even had any. She'd worked hard in school to get into a good college, she'd gotten into a good college to get her MBA, she'd gotten her MBA to get into management, she'd gotten into management to build a career in management, she'd done that to...to what?
She didn't even know. What had she ever intended to accomplish? Her career had brought enough money for her to pursue her interests, but she didn't have any interests, or at least nothing more than nascent fancies, so she'd just wound up throwing away money on things she never used. There were all the books on her shelves, which she'd hardly ever read even back when she could still read them, the random paintings she didn't really like and that didn't fit the house, the house itself, little more than a container for all the other accumulated detritus of her life, or what passed for her life...
The space-girl bit her lip, fuming, angry at herself for thinking that way. It had to mean something! There had to be some reason she'd put years of work into it, half-alienated her parents, stepped on people on the way up the ladder, wasted countless evenings hobnobbing with people she didn't know and probably wouldn't have liked if she did, or attending seminars on new management techniques that only bored her and never turned out to be useful, and ultimately turned to crime in a last spiteful lash-out at someone who threatened this...this thing she'd built her life around! It couldn't all be a waste, could it?
...could it?
She felt like she wanted to throw up. She couldn't...couldn't accept, almost couldn't fathom the idea that her entire adult life might've been spent in pursuing things she didn't really want and pushing aside anything that might actually have made her happy. Or was it only her adult life? Even back in high school she'd been focused on getting into college; she knew it was something you were supposed to do if you wanted to be successful, but she hadn't really known what she was trying to succeed at then, either. Was there no beginning to this? Had she always been this...this person toiling away endlessly in service to nothing? She thought of the people back then - oh, you're so serious all the time, An...neza. No, I don't want to date you again, you're no fun at all. Why don't you ever come hang out, Karaz? Her own parents, worrying that she wasn't balancing her personal life with her academic life, then with her professional life.
At the time, she'd told herself that it was persecution of the serious intellectuals, that this was just another facet of the attitudes that saw the real nerds shoved into lockers or stuffed in trash cans in public schools (the private school she'd attended had been stricter about that, though there was still an undercurrent of social ostracization.) But even the nerds had their gaming groups and Japanese cartoon club and things. Anneza was just alone, by stupid, pig-headed choice. All these had been the people for whom she had adopted the "show them all!" attitude - but what if, all along, they'd been...?
She couldn't bear to think about it. Even to entertain the idea felt like the entire world was laughing at her. But every time she tried to find some alternate conclusion, she found herself winding around in mental circles until she wound up back where she'd started. What if...they'd been right? What if she'd been...been wrong?
Oh, what did it MATTER!? That was all in the past! Even if she'd made mistakes, what could she do about it? She couldn't just...just go back and get a do-over! She was a grown man, dammit!
She laughed bitterly at that when her analytical mind caught up with her emotive ranting. But whether she was a grown man or a young woman with freakish antenna and only a loose relationship with gravity, the point stood - she couldn't just go back to being a child and build a different life. She had a j...no, she didn't. But she had bills...that she couldn't pay...and she had...no relationship, no attachments...
As Anneza mulled over the fact that in thirty-seven years she'd completely failed to build any lasting relationships or any external legacy aside from the career she'd recently torpedoed, she found a crazy idea beginning to form in her mind. If...if she went back...back to her parents...she could sell the house, sell the paintings and all the other useless junk, that would take care of the mortgage, and that was her only outstanding debt, she'd paid off her college loans some years before, she could move back in with them, and...and...something.
No, that was ridiculous. Why would they take her back? She'd ignored their concerns and yelled at them when they expressed them, she'd moved away so that they couldn't nag her, she'd all but cut them out of her life entirely to prevent them from...from threatening that great thing that dominated her life, just like she sacrificed everything else worthwhile to it...why would they want her? She'd have to grovel, she'd have to get down on her knees and...she wouldn't do it! She couldn't! Her cheeks burned just thinking about it. All the arguments they'd had...she couldn't just give in like that! And...and besides, she couldn't talk to them, she didn't speak there language. It wouldn't work. Clearly.
...God, she could use a bowl of hot mushroom stew.
