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Yes.” She brightens. “Twin-City on Cliff Street has an office supply section.”
“You think they have filing cabinets and archival boxes.”
“I’m not sure but we can go see.”
“Well, then, let’s make it a lunch date, too.” I say cheerfully. Lunch always helps lighten a difficult task.
“Okay!” Cindy looks five years younger now that she realizes this declutter is a doable thing. I love it when that happens with my clients and especially when it happens with my friends. There’s nothing better than making a person that I love happy to be in their own space.
If only I knew what would put Kate in a happy space.
?
Sunlight fades from the large front windows of the accounting office as Cindy and I sip a glass of wine while a shredder machine ground and buzzed to chew up the papers we feed into its long, slender maw. This was the easy part. We had spent all morning and into the afternoon, checking dates and sorted out what could be disposed of and what needed to be archived.
We broke for Cobb Salads at the Buffalo Bodega. This was quickly becoming my favorite steak house although I had yet to have had a steak there.
“Say,” I spoke around my romaine lettuce, bacon, boiled egg, and slight amount of ranch dressing. “Let’s get the girls together for Karaoke tomorrow night.”
Cindy grinned from ear to ear, and one eyebrow bounced up and down. “Definitely.”
She texted the girls who were on a group text which included me. One by one, they responded affirmative. After lunch, we slipped over to where Cindy had said there was an office supply section in the Twin-City on Cliff Street.
Imagine my surprise to find the store’s official name: Twin-City Hardware, Lumber, Rentals, Office Supply, and Coffee shop.
I laughed. Small towns and their all-in-one stores. There was still more to do in Cindy’s office, but without the archival boxes and one extra filing cabinet, it would be moot to try to complete the declutter without the proper equipment on hand. Twin-City did have a delivery truck and promised to bring our purchase first thing tomorrow morning, even though it would be Saturday. Cindy, like-wise, promised to be at the office before eight o’clock to receive said supplies. I, too, promised I’d be there as soon as I could, to start again. Knowing I had to rely on Kate to bring me, I wasn’t totally positive I could be there by eight, although Kate had never denied me a ride when I neededit, but I didn’t want to make a promise I didn’t know I could keep.
As we end today’s efforts with a glass of wine while we shred the older files, we visit about Cindy’s past over the grinding noise of the paper-destroying machine.
Whirl, hiss, grind. “So, where did you go to college?” I ask while the machine chews a small stack of pages from a tax return. I divert my eyes from who it belongs to for customer privacy.
“University of South Dakota, in Vermillion. That’s where the Beacom School of Business is, and it got me out of Rapid City, which was my true objective.” She added a small stack to the grinding teeth of the shredder. “I had earned a full-ride scholarship in high school to USD, so it limited me from going any further away from home.” She smiled as she added more paper to the machine. It growled as the new batch sunk into its whirling blades.
“They have a campus back home, but I convinced my folks that the Vermillion campus had the better professors for Accounting, so they would let me move and live in the dorms.” She chuckled with a far away glaze in her eyes. “Vermillion seemed like a far-away city to me when I was eighteen.” She shrugged and put another pinch of papers in the machine. “It’s a ten-hour trip, if you follow the speed limit.” She giggled.
“I take it you were able to cut that time down a bit?” I smiled and dropped my eyes to the sheets I was separating and stuffing in the grinding teeth.
“I cannot confirm or deny.” Cindy holds up her hand as if she is swearing over a bible.
We laugh.
“I attended a local Community College. So I could live at home. I just couldn’t leave my momma alone. I started out in business and switched to personal organizer when I realizedI was helping my friends declutter their dorm rooms and apartments and there were possibilities for a career in it.” I shoved more paper into the machine at my feet. “That year of business helped me take my hobby and make it into a career.”
Cindy nodded and handed me another stack of tax returns. I unstapled the bunches and began feeding them into the hungry machine.
“I minored in Governmental Law, too.” Cindy added to her story.
“Oh, wow. That’s why you’re so good at this tax evasion thing.” I chuckle.
She squints her eyes with mirth. “Well, yeah, but it’s all legal stuff that I do.”
“Oh, sure. I didn’t mean otherwise.” I purse a smile. “So, how’d you get this job with Nancy?”
“I interned for her during the summers. She recruited me from a Businesses-on-Campus day. It kept me out of my parents’ house between semesters, too.” She giggled.
“You really didn’t like being at home, did you?”
“No.” She put more paper in the shredder. “My dad wasn’t easy to be around.”
