🌴: Oodles of Noodles

Her plan was to walk right into the noodle shop, except to her great shock and dismay, it was closed.

She had been a steady patron of this noodle shop for 4 years now, whether it was slotting herself in at a table on a Friday night after an exhausting week of overtime or takeout on a Tuesday when she knew by the time she reached home she wouldn’t even have the energy to boil water for instant noodles. It was Old Faithful, her most trusted, the one who was supposed to always be there. Especially in her times of need.

So, because what else could she do, she went back to her car to think about what she would do next. She had parked less than a minute’s walk away from the restaurant, practically in front of it. A good thing too, because it was cold and dark, which would have made a walk any longer quite the unpleasant one.

Perhaps she should have questioned why the parking lot was so empty today. While the restaurant was a far cry from the most famous restaurant on earth, it most certainly wasn’t unloved. Sure there was no time in her recent memory when the meager eight tables had sat a full house, but just the same there was no time in her recent memory that there was not at least one uncle hunched over a bowl of noodles they were languidly relishing with deliberate twists of their chopsticks.

Perhaps if she had looked up from her phone for even a moment during her brisk walk she would have noticed the lights that were now glaringly obviously dim. But why would she have even thought to question what had never been anything less than certain?

Her car door unlocked with a crisp beep of her keys and a soft click, and she pulled the tail of her fawn peacoat in behind her as she shut the door. As she sank into her seat, leaning back and staring out the windshield into the darkness behind the shop’s window shrouding familiar chairs and tables, she could not help but feel the length of the day press down her shoulders, causing them to sag. She had been awake well before the sun had risen, because of work, and now she was going to grab dinner long after it had set, because of work. The woman raised a hand to massage her temple with a knuckle in an attempt to relieve the pressure building. Her slicked back ponytail was starting to hurt her head.

How could she have not known this was going to happen? Was it because she hadn’t been able to stop by last month? But she had just been so busy with work. She couldn’t help that there was so much going on at the office. It was nearing the end of the fiscal quarter after all. Dinners had been covered by the office so the workers would have one less burden to bear and it was really all she could do to make it back to her apartment most nights. In fact some of those nights, she couldn’t even make it past the couch. Those nights were the worst because she would wake up an hour or two after she had collapsed sideways onto the pillows and blankets that were always laid ready to serve wondering how her life had gotten to this miserable point where she had a memory foam mattress, satin bed sheets, and even a weighted blanket to supplement her comforter but not the memory of the last time she had been in their sweet embrace.

She had moved to this city four years ago and only now was she willing to venture to say she had gotten acclimated. Only recently had she discovered the street with all the food familiar to her. For three years it had just been burgers, pizza, pasta, burgers again, and more burgers. Not that she had anything against burgers and pizza and pasta and burgers, but she did miss her noodle soups. She couldn’t help that noodle soups were what she had grown up on.

Her reason for the new location? Work. Was there anything else it could have been? When she had gotten the job offer that fateful day, it was perhaps one of the most exciting days of her life. The position? Administrative assistant at an office just outside of the heart of the city. No longer was she going to be an unemployed bum of a family disappointment mooching off the kindness of her parents, dishonoring them with her lack of prospects. No, at long last she would realize her dream of becoming a contributing member of society, one of the absolutely necessary cogs in the indubitably important wheels of the corporate machine.

Her parents were every bit as thrilled and helped her pack her bags with gusto, all two of them. After all, it had been a year since she had graduated college and they were getting worried about her lack of a job. Tutoring at the local afterschool where all employees were paid minimum wage in cash didn’t count. So, when the day came they were more than happy to drop her off in her new spot a whole new timezone away.

Finding an apartment that would suit her budget with the little she had to her name at the moment had been tricky, but given that she had been able to begin the semblance of savings by virtue of living at home, it wasn’t impossible. Further, and more importantly, her parents were willing to help her as she started out granted that she paid them back in with perfect filial piety. Only a fool would have refused that offer.

For this she worked, worked like her life depended on it because in many ways it did. Though if it were just her life that depended on her work maybe she could have struggled a little less. But alas, contingent on her efforts were her honor and her family’s honor. And so to fulfill her mission not only was she in the parking lot applying her final swipe of lip gloss—NYX at the time—five minutes before security would come to unlock the building, she was the one security would be waiting on to lock up. And her hard work did not go unnoticed because slowly but surely she was able to climb the ladder that she had set her eyes on rung by rung by rung by rung by rung by rung by rung by rung…was there no end to it?

Now here she was, in all her designer clothing and gold hoop earrings and MAC lipstick sitting in a car that was completely paid off about to break down in tears because the only noodle place that sold a dish similar to the one her mom used to make for the low price of $11.50 a bowl had closed and she didn’t even know why. And she couldn’t even call her mom about it because she was all the way on the other side of the country and if it was already late here, it would be even later there, and what kind of horrible daughter would dare disturb her mother’s peace at an hour so late?

If there were ever a time she would have buried her face in her palms it would have been now, but she couldn’t bear the thought of smudging her eye makeup on top of everything else. She pressed a kitten pump into her brake so she could get her car started, and as the engine came alive she began inputting directions for home.

Tonight she would be home an hour earlier than expected and tonight she would mourn a great loss with the same frozen pasta she had yesterday but this time with a cup of her oolong tea imported directly from China delivered a month ago that she would be unpacking for the first time.