#keepitsharp

New clients come in all of the time ; troubled businesses, over-their-heads housewives. Marlene’s seen it all, her chin balanced careful against the fat slide of her palm that she kept planted there as she took notes, her eyes lifting in sympathetic care. I hear you, she’d say without the saying, putting them at ease with her posh English accent, the particularness in which she made it all feel as if this were HARDLY UNUSUAL, regardless of what she was eventually faced with. It’s a retreat, this, so much so that she never felt herself ungrateful for the turn her life has taken, even in a city that sang so contrary to what she’d always known, and despite the oddity of it, to be so far and away from her family, her friends, her former life.

He calls in, a frazzled voice. Explaining something of financial troubles for a local shop, one that she knows, outside of the reaches of her neighbourhood, but well known enough that she’s stopped by with friends on a cheeky weekend takeaway moment. “I’M SURE WE CAN FIGURE THIS OUT.” There she was, Marlene, the consummate professional, all charm and cautious care, sketching out a name, an address, even though she knew the rough ends of what to expect. In return for a promised date for a visit, she too provides her expectation of what she hopes he’ll find for her, to make things as easy as possible for the both of them. Could he? She asks so warmly, that she’s rarely found herself at odds and ends of her clients, packing a bag and her computer as the anointed day comes, making the trek out from her South Loop office to where she’s to meet the new shop’s proprietor. 

The tingling of a bell ; and she takes one step in, a hand sweeping through her hair as she made corrections to what the windy streets had inflicted against her as she’d stepped from her Uber to the door. Gaze left to wonder about her, the frantic weekend energy less so during the week, even if it landed on the slumped spine of a man that she could ONLY ASSUME was Carmen, the previous owner’s son. The prodigal son, it appeared, having done a precursory search of his name on the ride over, left to blink, curious, at the stories of him written out in glowing rhetoric within articles and reviews.

“Carmen?” Her voice, a perfect match to that on the phone, is met with her carefully glossed smile. “MARLENE MCKINNON. Thanks ever so much for taking the time.”