The ticket
Chapter one
A plush maroon-carpeted hallway led to the penthouse offices of the Deluca-Brown Advertising Agency, located in the Eisenhower Building at 1063 6th Ave and 43rd Street in midtown Manhattan. The art deco agency’s solid oak-panelled walls, which were painted a deep plum, now and then infused with soft lavender, were covered with pricey artwork from contemporary American painters.
Sadie McGann hitched a thumb beneath the strap of her fake Chanel swap-meet handbag to adjust it more securely to her shoulder, before stuffing both hands deep in the pockets of her tan camel-haired coat from three winters ago and sighing heavily, staggered from the parted elevator doors which announced their arrival with a ding. Sadie headed briskly towards her office without as much as a cursory look around.
This morning she was decidedly unable to muster any enthusiasm for her ostentatious surroundings. The enthusiasm had waned as disillusionment set in. Besides, she was far too preoccupied, reflecting on the lousy day she’d been having so far.
It was a cold, rainy November morning. A cold front had moved in overnight across the Bronx, and she’d woken up freezing. Her landlady, Mrs Henry, the old Jamaican hag who lived in the apartment above her, had been putting off getting the heater in the tiny one-bedroom flat fixed. Sadie had been living there more than five years, since she’d first moved to the Bronx. She had always been a good tenant, following the terms of her lease to the letter. She paid her rent promptly on the first of each month as she was supposed to and, because she knew Mrs Henry’s idiosyncrasies, avoided unnecessary noise by not encouraging friends to stop by too often.
After Brian was born though, Sadie had begun noticing a change in Mrs Henry’s attitude towards her. She all but stopped exchanging pleasantries with Sadie if they met in the hallway and she had developed a habit of blaming Brian whenever anything went wrong. Sadie complained to a co-worker who asked her if Mrs Henry had children. Sadie thought a second and said no; she hadn’t seen or heard about any children.
The co-worker said triumphantly, “Well! There you go! The woman is probably just jealous because she didn’t have any kids of her own.” Which made complete sense to Sadie as that morning when she called to complain that Brian was almost comatose from the cold, Mrs Henry had mumbled in her affected American accent that she had rented the flat to her alone and not her and “no damn kid that ain’t have no daddy”.
The morning had only gotten worse. On the way in to the office, Sadie had gotten into a fight with Brian about remaining seated in a moving vehicle. The wilful four-year-old had ignored her, continuing his bouncing up and down on the seat, resulting in him spilling most of the breakfast she’d packed for him over some of her files on the back seat of her little ’87 Toyota Tercel.
As days went, this one so far was certainly one of her crappiest. To make matters worse, it was also her birthday. Sadie had always loved her birthday. But today, she would have much preferred spending the day anywhere else in the world but at an office that had begun to bring her nothing but stress. She thought birthdays should be fun, days she should be entitled to take off from work. She could vaguely remember back home in Jamaica, her mother and all her aunts taking their birthdays off. One year Auntie Lena had even prevailed upon Sadie’s mother and their other sisters to drive to the country with her. Sadie had been excused from school that day. They had packed a picnic of rice and peas and fried chicken, potato salad, roast corn, corn bread and breadfruit, and jugs of carrot juice cushioned in a jumbo-sized cooler with party ice bought at a gas station.
They had set out early that morning and had driven the scenic route to the north coast of the island, the warm rising sun and gentle wind streaming through Auntie Lena’s dilapidated green VW bus. That day there had been much laughing and joke-telling, swimming in the tranquil, warm sea, and even Sadie’s mother, generally reputed as the spoilsport of all the sisters, had gotten into the spirit of the merry-making. That day they had been just a family having fun.
Sadie had been a little girl then, but the memory had stayed with her up until this day. Now, when Sadie thought about Jamaica, that day always stood out. You could do things like that in Jamaica. Simple liberties like those could be taken without fear of not being paid, or worse, losing your job. But here she was, in the good old USA, reporting to work on one of the worst days of her life, simply because she couldn’t afford to be docked even a day’s pay.
She glanced at her wristwatch. 9:15. God, she was so late. She would be surely bawled out by the Dragon Lady this morning. The frightening thought hastened her footsteps.
