Brushstroke Legacy

Chicago, June 11, 2002 Her dream had been a lie. When Ragni woke, failure stung in the morning light. She fought to ignore the pull of the sheets tugging at her arm, dragging her back into the haze of twilight sleep where everything went away.The dreamwhat was the dream?Ah yes, she'd been painting with watercolors, a garden grown wild with bloom. She heard an alarm ring again, but this time it was the phone across the room, a sound that tore at her nerves like a car alarm stuck in perpetual squall. Bash it, drown it, drop it out of the second-story window. Ragni just wanted to turn off the phone and crawl back in bed, back to her dream. Through the sleepy haze, however, she recognized that if everything went right she could still make it to work on time. That'd be a nice change. For ten years, she'd been known for never being late. Now she had a warning note in her file for tardiness. She glared at the still-ringing phone. Ignoring the urge to lie back down, she stomped across the room and stayed standing, thumb punishing the Talk button. "Yes." "My, my, a bit testy this morning, aren't we?" It was Alisha, her boss's assistant at Advantage Advertising, Inc.or AAI, which could also be an acronym for a scream. Both fit. "Arewereally?" Ragni matched saccharine tone for saccharine tone. This was all she neededa conversation with Alisha before coffee. Alisha who saw herself more as savior than assistant. "You will be on time this morning." The tone conveyed order rather than request. "Yes."God willing and the el on time."But not if I stand here visiting." Ragni, you must regain the upper hand if you want to keep hold of your remaining sanity. "I called you last night to remind you to bring the dog biscuit file, but you didn't answer and you didn't return my call." The urge to slam the Off button gnawed at her fingers. Ragni never liked the feeling of being in trouble with the principaland this woman was neither her principal nor her boss. "I-I'm..." She cut off the urge to apologize and finished, "It is already in my briefcase." Not that the file had ever been out of her briefcase. After arriving home close to nine the night before, she'd collapsed on the couch rather than reviewing the file and preparing for the morning meeting. When she woke enough to crawl into bed several hours later, she'd promised herself to get up early to go over the ad layouts. "Look, Alisha, if I don't get off the phone, I won't make the el, and if I don't make the el..." She let the sentence run off deliberately. When Alisha started to speak again, Ragni interrupted. "Got another call, bye." She pressed the Off button and set the phone back in the stand. I can do this. I can do this. Ragni closed her eyes and pictured her dream vacation. In just three days she would walk through the door of the Golden Dreams Spa, greeted by soft music and a heavenly fragrance. A smiling woman would show her to her room and explain the program for the entire week. She'd be pampered with massages every day, pools of this, soaks of that, sea salt scrubs, manicure, pedicure, facial. No cooking, no work. Naps in the afternoon. Workouts every day to magically do away with the accumulated flab. And it was already paid for. If only she could afford an extra week, surely all her troubles would be over and she'd return refreshed, revitalized, restored, and every otherreword she could think of. But then the spa brochure promised those same results could happen aSnelling, Lauraine is the author of 'Brushstroke Legacy ', published 2006 under ISBN 9781578567898 and ISBN 1578567890.