With a drawn out sigh, Mr. Sands gestured for one of the security guards who'd dragged Mrs. Sands away to step forward. Zoe automatically took a nervous step back.

"Please remove her before she destroys any more company property," Mr. Sands ordered, stepping away.

Destroying company property? With a frown she looked down at the chair that had given her nothing but problems over the past three years and by this point consisted mostly of duct tape. Before she could tell him that the chair was given to her already broken the large security guard had her by the arm and her worn black purse in the other hand and was dragging her towards the elevator.

"Hey!" she said, desperately trying to dig her feet into the cheap paper-thin carpet. "Why am I being fired?" she asked, reaching out to grab the wall of one of the cubicles only to have the security guard yank her away. She grabbed another wall. Damn cheap plastic walls, she thought as her hand slipped off the cubicle wall. "I don't understand why you're firing me. I'm not the one that stole!" she cried as she was dragged into the elevator. She reached out and slapped her hands against the edge of the elevator door to stop the doors from closing so she could get her answer.

Mr. Sands shrugged. "Because you should have found it sooner," he said, leaving her absolutely stunned.

Her hands dropped away, allowing the elevator doors to close and her world to crumble.

What the hell was she going to do now?

"I would have kept my mouth shut," the security guard mumbled.

Zoe sighed unhappily. "I really am an idiot."

"Yup."

************

"Please, please, don't be in my spot," Zoe chanted softly as she slowly turned the corner, wishing she knew how to change or at least temporarily fix her windshield wipers as she did her best to squint through the heavy downpour.

A moment later she slowly stopped in front of her house....at least she thought it was her house. With a small groan, she pressed the button to roll down the driver's side window and tried not to cringe when the window emitted its usual grinding noise. Once it was down, Zoe leaned out the window and tried to make out the color of the townhouse, pale blue, not hers, but at least she now knew that she only had two more houses to go.

Just as she was pulling back, a car sped past her, crashing through a large puddle and further soaking Zoe. This day could not get any worse, she thought, wiping mud out of her eyes and jumping when somebody behind her blasted the horn. With a resigned sigh she started driving once again, but apparently not fast enough for the people behind her, who accompanied her twenty yard drive with continuous horn blasting.

After the day she had she wasn't too surprised to find Trevor's pickup truck parked in the middle of their short double wide driveway. With a groan she did her best to park across the street, trying to ignore the cars that sped past her, telling her off, and adding a special blast of the horn just in case she didn't quite get the message the first time.

When she tried to close the window she received another little surprise when the window slid up noiselessly. Well, that's a relief, she thought, grabbing her purse and climbing out of the car. She was really afraid she'd have to pay three hundred dollars to have her windows fixed, again. She closed the door and turned to walk across the street when an odd swooshing sound caught her attention.

Praying that is was just her imagination, Zoe turned around and frowned. Why did her window look weird? She pushed her wet hair out of her face and leaned forward to get a better look. It didn't take long before she realized that her window had come off its tracks.

She wiped her wet hands on her soaked skirt and gripped the edge of the window and tried to pull it up only to have the window slip through her hands and slide further down.

"Oh no you don't," she muttered, dropping her purse and grabbing the window and doing her best to yank it back up. The last thing she needed was for the window to slide down into the door where it would have to stay until she could scrounge up the money to have it fixed. With no job and no prospects that wasn't happening any time soon and since there was a very good chance that she'd be living out of her car soon she wanted to keep it dry and mold free.

It took several minutes, but she managed to pull the window up several inches. One last pull should do it, she decided, gripping the window tightly and pulling as hard as she could. When the window slid up easily she couldn't help but chuckle. Finally things were-

Her hands slipped and before she could grab the window it slid down quickly into the door and if the noise that followed was any indication, cracked. She stared numbly at the empty window for a long moment before she picked up her purse, not at all surprised when the strap broke off, or when the heel on her left shoe snapped off a minute later.

Clutching her ruined purse to her chest, she wobbled towards the front door, only getting stuck in the mud twice and losing one shoe, the right one, before she found herself on the front stoop, searching her purse for her keys. By the time she found them she was shivering violently from the cold and close to crying for the first time in five years.

She opened the door, spotted her now mud caked puppy welcoming mat and let herself into her apartment, praying that her next door neighbor took it easy on her tonight since she really wasn't sure that she could handle much more.

Doing her best not to ruin her landlord's carpeting, she made her way over to the phone, deciding that she needed the ultimate pickup after the day she had. She knew she shouldn't, especially since she would have to live off what little savings she had, but she just couldn't help herself. She called up Black Jack's Pizzeria and ordered the special, a two liter bottle of Coke, a large order of chicken fingers with extra honey mustard sauce, and an extra large, extra thick Chicago style pizza called, The Monster.

For once the customary one hour wait for delivery didn't bother her. She pulled off her mud soaked shoe and stockings and made her way upstairs to her bedroom and grabbed a change of clothes as she headed for the bathroom, praying that her surprisingly quiet neighbor remained that way.

She quickly pulled off her soaked, coffee stained, and mud splattered skirt suit and looked it over. As long as she pretreated it and got it into the wash tonight it should be fine, at least she hoped it would. She didn't exactly have the funds needed to go out and buy a new suit for job interviews. This one, with the aid of many interchangeable blouses, had lasted for three years and she'd been counting on it to last another two.

After a five minute search she found her bottle of generic stain pretreatment behind the box of condoms she bought, what was it now? Three years ago? Or was it five? The realization that she hadn't had sex in over five years was rather depressing, she thought, tossing the condoms back under the bathroom sink so she wouldn't have to look at the depressing reminder that her love life, social life, and professional life just plain sucked.

She liberally sprayed her suit, only wondering if the pretreatment chemical would harm her suit after she sprayed it. Knowing her luck, the chemical would probably chew through the imitation silk shirt and stain the suit jacket with large weird shaped polka dots.

With a resigned sigh, she left the suit on the sink counter and climbed into her bathtub and turned on the shower. For the first time all day she felt herself relax. She stood beneath the hot spray for several minutes just enjoying the hot water before she applied shampoo to her hair.