9

He fastened the silver band of his silver watch and braced himself to leave. He was taking her with him wherever he went. She spectated the things he could see. Don’t you think that person is speaking obnoxiously? They’re walking fast and inconsiderately right? Maybe they have the same right to speed as everyone else. God, do I wear that same look of consternation on my face as I walk?

This was his fault. She remained because he kept talking to her, he could ask her, he would ask her, and picture her response,to the sound of a pang of his conscience, as it directly conflicted his most recent decision to give up her image entirely. He could keep the empty habit, still point these things out and direct them out into the open air but this wasn’t appealing, it was just thinking at that point. He said to himself that he wasn’t picking. So what if he came off like an unbalanced senior if it beat picking from two pitiful options?

She wasn’t living and to keep her alive was to bastardize her life. The living memory was for his benefit. The fullness of her being had shed into a function and a function the product of only what he could remember, ever shortening in the passing time. All that while he ran the risk of turning her memories labile, writing over them, losing the authenticity of her alive self as she rested in peace.

He shut the window that he was previously leaning out of to watch the crowd. To onlookers, his internal debate looked as if he was going to jump into the streets bordering the St. Germain that were as filled as they permanently seemed capable of being. No signs of slowing. He would float if he landed in that pedestrian flow and that was, all things considered, not an uninviting option.

Being of retirement age, and having nothing but despair planned for the day, he decided to consider some of the creature comforts that, over time, he had collected from acquaintances as “shoulds” for his age while his notice of retirement was pending. He had spent the last four decades climbing the ranks to a comfortable spot in a firm that tested, and worked backward, to produce manuals for both complicated and straightforward equipment. From engine propellers and fuel pumps to emergency red lights, umbrella mechanisms and gate locks. He relished the time he jointly examined ejector seats before the task was reallocated beyond his jurisdiction.

The task was initially to sit down and take first glances at the object. He would approach it as a customer. The next step was to supply the object with the requisite time enough to understand it. This meant fiddling, occasionally breaking, deconstructing and reassembling so that through and through the object was understood with closed eyes. Once well understood, all that was leftover was to envision how he only recently was as a consumer, first encountering that same object in all its mechanical mystery. If he could make a manual that expedited the whole learning process, he had done his job.

The task thus asked for mechanically minded people. If there was fluff in his writings, it was bigger than it needed to be. As tough and long-winded objectives do, it constrained and filtered his mindset until the lens through which he observed things was a functional, but restricted machine, bottlenecking what was technically relevant to life in so far as his job was that life. Either that or failure and inefficiency reared themselves in work bloat. This was an area where you couldn’t argue he was wasted; you’d sooner ask him questions, turning the unknown into the known, for predictability and safety, took the best among them.

Perhaps this was why he was having no success in his writing. He had either become too rigid or was powerless to turn his skills inward onto himself. He considered these possibilities. It wasn’t clear where the point of entry was or where the point of entry to a point of entry was. Just one little shimmer that pointed to a lode of ore was all that he asked for.

As can happen, the point of revelation came when things were viewed one degree removed. This distance could make clear what wasn’t visible with eyes too close to the issue. He wanted to write. So it was made clear, this wasn’t about reverse engineering himself, it was about listening to what he wanted to say starting now. The process moving forward. He sped from the window to his desk and compressed the cushion of the chair in sitting.

It hasn’t been pleasant without you. Sometimes I curse you for being taken by your ills.

That didn’t sound right. It wasn’t fair. He glanced at his cigarettes but resisted them. He considered relighting the cigarette filters in flagellation for his poor progress. Watching the fibres of the filter gloop and pop as he inhaled the dark, plastic smog, relighting the previously collected nicotinic oil solution as a thickener to the tastes of the smog. In light of that idea, forgiving himself seemed more productive. He rebegan.

Pleasant isn’t the word for your absence. I find myself cursing the ills for taking you. It’s not going to be the same. Let me scramble some semblance of a person together because this is not feeling nice. It’s not so clear where I stand and it’s not so obvious what I have here for you in writing. This sorry lot is better off ignored. Pay it no mind.

Being stuck was too tempting to write about. Soon he would title it “untitled” and pat himself on the back. This was his thought and he knew it had pinned him down exactly. At this point he refused to go any further.

He gripped the pen inside his fist and stabbed down over top his words in large, jagged lettering: FUCK

The length of time it took to write all the letters betrayed it being an outburst. It felt more chosen and decided halfway through where he was already calm but continued tracing back over the straight lines to give them a fuller body.

He quickly stood, pushing his chair out with the back of his knees, and left the room in an exasperated huff. While not obviously, he had made some form of headway in his writing, the process was tough and his body was hot, but removing a possibility that failed was still working a clearing with his small introspective blade (driven by the larger arm of his obduracy). He called for the elevator and it came. The fence opened and there stood the always aloof liftman. Resulting from that day’s haste, however, the old man hadn’t noticed the new presence revolving around the pale-faced plank of a man.

“Ground please.” He voiced, continuing the huff from before.

An ungrounded and exploratory voice rattled the old man.

“Of course.”

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