So We Meet Again - Suzanne Park Page 0,4

had that day was that the elevator doors opened immediately, and no one was inside. Heaving my bag strap onto my shoulder again, I hit the lobby button and the doors closed on my past.

On the way down to the ground floor, it started to sink in.

The elevator dinged. I had no job as of today.

The doors opened. No career at Hamilton Cooper.

Through the lavish lobby with the crystal chandeliers and the white-and-gray swirled marble floors, I pushed through the revolving door and walked straight into an unyielding NYC spring thunderstorm.

With nowhere to be, I pulled out the travel-size umbrella from my bag and walked thirty blocks home to clear my head. I had no idea what to do the rest of the day. Even more tragically, I had absolutely no idea what to do with the rest of my life.

Chapter Two

Chuck-chuck-chuck.

Chuck-chuck-chuck.

Chuck-chuck-ch—bzzzzzzzzzz!

Mr. Fowler, my parents’ seventy-year-old neighbor, had revved up the hedge trimmer. I could handle the lawnmowing whirs through the single-pane glass, the trills of cricket chirps all night to the wee morning, even the woodpeckers drilling the utility poles near my window throughout the day, all thanks to my former Lower East Side studio apartment located practically underneath the Williamsburg Bridge. I’d become accustomed to all sorts of noise and I could sleep through everything.

But Mr. Fowler’s erratic hedge trimmer pull-cord technique, plus him yelling “GODDAMN IT!” with every few failed attempts, ripped through my concentration like an audial tornado.

There was nowhere else in this house to hide from the racket: opening my creaky door would signal to my mom that I was awake, and it was too early to deal with the onslaught of interrogation. She was rightfully curious about my sudden arrival home a few nights ago after I’d revealed my abrupt departure from my Wall Street job and canceled the lease to the fancy new apartment on the Upper West Side I’d signed only days before my layoff. The one with the doorman and the sizable, nonrefundable down payment. But I wasn’t ready to talk about it. Any of it. The fact that I’d crash-slept for eighteen hours that first night alone probably raised a few dozen questions and red flags in her mind. She’d been nice to let me sleep and rest. And most momlike of all, she left me a fridge full of Korean food, a mix of homemade and store-bought favorites. This almost made up for when she greeted me at the airport with “Waaaa, you look terrible. You need to sleep because your face . . .” and then trailed off. I was doing exactly as she’d said. I got sleep. Because . . . my face.

And now, two days later, at 8:54 A.M. Nashville time, my face was well-rested but I needed coffee.

I opened my grocery delivery app and requested priority delivery of milk, sugar, and a twenty-four-ounce plastic bottle of Starbucks coffee, plus some nonperishables. Not my favorite choice for morning caffeine, but better than nothing. Tap, tap, tap, and . . . tap. Delivery in thirty minutes.

Through the air-conditioning vents, Mom hooted with laughter. She was watching Korean dramas, apparently a comedy. Mom was an OG K-drama fan, renting DVDs from the local Asian market every weekend before streaming them was in vogue. She remembered everything too, a walking Wikipedia of K-drama trivia.

Buzz! Notification that Flora B. was shopping my order.

Buzz! Notification that Flora B. had replaced my 2 percent fat milk with a 1 percent one.

Buzz! My delivery was now en route.

While awaiting my groceries, I pulled my laptop off my nightstand and opened up the spreadsheet I’d worked on during my awake time: a robust color-coded Excel sheet with separate worksheet tabs reflecting all aspects of my life: job prospects, savings and budget, business books to read, people to contact, hobbies to try, places to live, side hustle ideas, and recipes to try while unemployed. This spreadsheet had already crashed my computer a few times because it was a huge file, more like a mood board than a data sorting or calculating tool, where I’d dumped inspirational pictures and copy-and-pasted articles on every sheet. It was my way of blending my artistic side with my analytical one. I’d tried to use one of those bullet journals, with their tedious hand lettering and fancy brush pens, but it wasn’t very me. It was too delicate and pretty. It didn’t feel results-oriented.

I wanted results. Immediately.

There was a problem though. The only blank page on the spreadsheet was “job/business