I sat down at my breakfast table one morning, one which might have seemed at the time the same as any other, for nothing ever really changes. Same coffee grounds in the swirling deep of my emptied cup, same burned around the edges but soft in the middle toast, same soggy brown banana wilting at the touch. Every day. The same gray, steady rain outside every morning, but that’s now become one of my favorite events. It’s relaxing to me in a way that sun and warmth never was. Too many people go outside when it’s sunny, tan and healthy, doing exciting and glamorous things that always made me feel hopelessly inadequate.
The breakfast was dull. I stared at the blue flowered rim of my plate and wondered who had designed this floral pattern and if he had meant it to decorate my plate of burned toast crumbs. How would that make him feel? That his beloved creation, the one his wife praised as one of his best, and the one which adorned his daughter’s room, had been bought at an unfair price by a large-scale syndicate and now embellished millions of identical, mass-produced dish sets across the internationally trading world. One thing that meant something to someone, torn from him and scattered like seed throughout the fertile network of commerce. It was one of those days and was rapidly becoming worse.
I stepped out of my car onto the rain-soaked pavement. My groggy memory cued up a picture of my wallet, still sitting warm and cozy on my bedstand table. It was followed up by an image of the five bucks I hastily stuffed in my pocket on my way out the door, my way of planning for such an unforeseen event as a wallet overlook, but my hand sought out the bill and came up empty. Evidently, the five had been offered to the gods as a sacrifice to appease and abate the world’s ire at me this morning and was stranded somewhere on the cold asphalt looking for new home after being so hurriedly ejected from my pocket.
Lunchless and cold, with no prospects of even a vending machine pick-me-up, I entered the office and endured a morning of angry telephone calls and even angrier bosses, whose view of me is remarkably similar to a hammer looking at a box of nails. I would even say that their purpose in the company, and (thoughtful pause) within the entire world itself (confident finish) is absolutely and entirely nil. My tie was choking me by 11 and by noon I felt as if time itself had decided to take a break. I had nothing but an afternoon’s eternity of unfinished crossword puzzles and a desklamp that buzzed incessantly until it penetrated the lower reaches of my brain.
My usual lunch break at 12:30 was torturously endured by staring blankly out the window to avoid looking at the clock. I knew seeing my colleagues returning from their conquests holding grease-stained, delicious smelling fast food bags would force drastic action. To satiate my pangs, I chewed on torn pieces of leaves from my potted African violets and attempted to organize my pencil jar. No, I didn’t deserve this. To think that I could be tilling soil in Nepal or climbing mountains in Bolivia, fishing off the coast of Chile or commanding the Northern Army in 1864. To think that my luck had landed me here. It was as unjust a thing as I could imagine. I could have been the foreman on a cross-country railroad construction company in 1902. I could have been a bootlegger in the clubs of New York City during the mighty Prohibition. I had, as so many others have, been born into the wrong era and tragically missed my calling. I wasn’t made for this.
As the day waned, so did my spirits. Three o’clock rolled around and I decided to escape ever so briefly for a cup of coffee until halfway to the elevator I remembered the only money I had consisted of spare change, mostly pennies. Completely defeated, I lay my head on my desk and hoped for a miracle.
It only took a moment. As if my despair had stirred the heart of some benevolent force in the universe, I was suddenly on the way to deliverance. Blinding white lights burst before my eyes, pandemonium overran my eardrums, and I found myself on top of my desk, preparing to leap over the dividing wall to make my final exit to the unknown. I leapt the leap of faith, the jump into the next world, beckoned forth by cherubs—and was met in midair by the rotund form of Bill, the second-year sales associate from the next cubicle over, who had also found it necessary to exit with haste. I struggled to find an answer. The lights, the roaring in my ears…this wasn’t the Rapture? Where were God and the multitudes of angels singing heavenly tunes atop a pure white backdrop of cloud? You mean, I wasn’t dead? No one had taken pity on me? There was a fire in the kitchen? Wait, what? Ted took too long on the microwave popcorn? Get out of the way, you asshole, we’re all going to die! A fire? A fire, I pondered aloud….ah, how appropriate! Instead of a heavenly arrival, I was relegated to the depths of…FUCK, A REAL FIRE! THERE’S A DAMN FIRE, MY DESK IS IN FLAMES! GET THE SHIT OUT OF MY WAY!
We stood huddled together outside watching the building smolder and light up the darkening afternoon sky. I watched the smoke, following it up, up, up until it dissipated in the clouds. It stained the reds and oranges with a streak of pale gray like a winter sunset. The rain had stopped but puddles still dotted the asphalt. The wind picked up around us, fanning the dying flames in the windows, and no one spoke. My eyes strayed down to survey the damage as burning scraps of paper danced across the ground. I bent down to examine the charred remains of a payroll report when something caught my attention as it fluttered fearlessly among the singed fragments. My heart leapt—it was a beacon of hope, a promise from above that the universe still had some regard for me. One of my distracted coworkers glanced down where I was sitting. “Hey, did you find five bucks?”
