Carina is a 20 something broke, exhausted professional living alone in a tiny one room mid-Manhattan apartment. Her apartment is so small and cramped that her parrot Bart has more room in his cage than Carina does.
For someone so young and seemingly successful, Carina has never figured out how to correctly use an alarm clock to get herself to her subway train by 9:00am. She’s tried every conceivable trick over the years but nothing has worked and now she is still in bed asleep at 8:55am.
The sun is shining through the partially opened curtains and a narrow beam of sunlight pokes through into the room. The sunlight falls on Carina’s face, she yawns, stretch herself gently while the memory of a pleasant dream rolls around her head until her eyes snap open suddenly.
She casts her eyes around the apartment, she can’t even be sure where she put her alarm clock but she is certain that she is late again. Carina screws her eyes shut for a moment, she wants so much to go back to sleep and pretend this isn’t happening again.
She has been late so many times she is sure this time she will lose her job. She jumps out of bed, dashing across the room to her closet to get dressed but trips and falls over the only appliance in her place, a little refrigerator.
“You could have just asked me to wake you up Carina”, says Bart. Bart has never spoken before. Carina is so stunned she lays on the floor for a few moments before opening the fridge and giving Bart the only thing she finds in there: an old carrot.
It’s a rather lovely morning in the city Carina thinks when she reaches the street via the back stairwell. She has a second to check her looks in the reflection of the subway car window before she jumps aboard.