In Francine's room, Jake babbles on about how his parents are driving him crazy, as usual. Francine half-listens as she gets back to doing what she was doing before Jake arrived, ". . . So my mom asked me today if the cats had ever talked to me and I'm like 'Talked to me? You mean like meowed at me?' because they do that all the time, and she says, 'No, I mean like talk to you like I'm talking to you, with language, in English', and I said 'No', and she went 'Hmm . . .' and walked away . . ."
Francine says, "Uh huh," and picks up another piece of paper to shred.
Her filing cabinet has filled up again so it is time to shed some more of the past, or at least its paper records. She went through the cabinet and picked out the things she probably wouldn't need in the future--electric bills from 2009, copies of outdated resumes, materials for blog postings already written or never to be written, and so forth. Now she has a pile of paper to shred so she has borrowed Donald's grandmother's shredder, a Karl Rove Deluxe 2000 Election Model ("Faster than a speeding subpoena"!) to shred them in order to guard against identity theft. Then the shreds will be dumped in the recycling bin.
". . . so my dad's still bothering me to find a job. I tell him I'm trying but he tells me to try harder, and I'm like 'I can't hire myself, Dad. It's not that easy'. Fortunately, that temp agency called and got me a temp job for a couple of weeks at a downtown bank where I'll fill in for their regular proofreader who's on vacation so that should keep him off my back for a while. I start there on Monday. That'll be nice to have some money coming in again, though I'll have to get used to working during daylight hours. It'll be nice to see you at night though. Remember when I worked at Ostomy and I could only see you during the day? Boy, that was a drag . . ."
Francine says, "Uh huh" and picks up the next piece of paper to shred, and shoves it in the shredder.
She can barely hear Jake over whir of the shredder as its blades chop up the paper into tiny strips. He's probably talking about wrestling or something anyway. Sometimes a person just needs to talk and the other person doesn't really need to listen. However, Francine is polite enough to at least pretend to listen. She picks up the next piece of paper to shred, looks at it, and stops.
It is a plan she and John drew up of a tentative guestlist for their wedding. She wonders why she's hung onto this for as long as she has, but she knows that as long as there is room in the filing cabinet, she tends to keep everything in case it ever comes in handy in the future, however unlikely.
This will never come in handy.
She looks at Jake. With the shredder idle, she can hear him better, ". . . once I get an ongoing job, then I can move out of my parents' house, which I hope will be before they've driven me permanently crazy. I love them but being an adult under their roof is more than I can take. That's why I'm glad I can come over here and get away . . ."
"I'm glad to be of service," Francine says and smiles. She can feel the gloom of the past week lift a bit as Jake smiles back.
She particularly enjoys watching that next sheet of paper shred as she feeds it into the Karl Rove.
Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.
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