Yet Another Untitled Short Story
I was inspired to write this short story when one of my dad's employees abruptly quit his job in the middle of the day. I did of course, take creative liberties.
Please read and let me know what you think. I already got some advice on how to make this story better, but I'd like to collect little buckets of advice to pour over my writing.
I suppose if you want to blame it on something, you can blame it on the damn Steelers game. I mean, we’re gonna have to pin the action of blatantly disregarding my career on something besides a general dislike of Mondays. But I don’t know…I think it started long before Sunday evening. There’s a black cloud hanging over my head. What can I say?
Anyway, this particular Sunday evening, I was completely geared up for a night of Eagle smashing. As usual, my roommate and I proffered the use of our house for a gigantic party, as per the ritual beginning to develop. The week before, the power had gone out all around my county due to a huge storm. We’d recently got the power back on and thankfully none of the food I’d bought for the Sunday game was spoiled. So we set it up - got the grill ready, got the Yuengling and Rolling Rock and Miller Brew buried in tubs of ice so the beverages were nice and cold and smooth going down throats that would be hot from cheering on our team. I went upstairs at 3PM to change from sweatpants and an old ratty t-shirt into dark-wash jeans (from the GAP) and a #58 jersey. Black and Gold, baby. I fucking bleed black and gold.
Everything about Sunday night was so normal. Sure, I was feeling like shit underneath the excitement for the upcoming game. I always feel the crushing weight of existence on my shoulders. I’m always tired, always wanting more and never getting it; though I couldn’t tell you what it is exactly I want more of. Rest I guess, relaxation or a vacation from monotony?
I didn’t think that night was anything different. I can’t say for sure, but I have a suspicion that if at least the Steelers had won that game, I could’ve hung on to my current way of being for a few more days. Maybe weeks.
So anyway, I jog downstairs and people are already showing up. Katie, my beloved best friend, whose face lights up as soon as she sees me, throws her arms around my neck and cheers “I love that jersey!” she giggles because she is wearing the same one. Katie and I go way back, back to when I had pimples and zero self confidence and braces and I was, to put it simply, ugly. She’d been my friend through all of the nights I’d sat on my floor and bemoaned the fact that I was fat and un-suave and couldn’t get the girls I wanted to go out with on Friday nights and my little brother wouldn’t leave me alone and eventually, we got older and I got into shape, got rid of the flab, exchanged ‘em for abs, I wasn’t pimply anymore and I didn’t have braces and I didn’t look too awful and then one day when we were walking around the mall, Katie turned laughingly to ask me a question and I thought, damn, she is beautiful.
It was as though I never noticed it before. She is so gorgeous; thick black curly hair and green eyes and pale skin with a light dash of freckles and a little upturned nose. She’s seriously the kind of girl who makes guys trip over themselves because they are staring so hard at her. The best part is that she doesn’t even know that she is such a knock-out. So when she throws her arms around my neck, celebrating the happiness we share over football season finally arriving once more, I hug her in a friendly way, but all I can think about is how much I want to greet those perfect pink lips with a kiss.
I guess one of the greater tragedies in my life (there are a lot of them) is that I once had the ultimate girl but I lost her. Not only did I lose her from a mutually exclusive relationship between the two of us, she got herself into another one of those things with a friend of ours. Yes, I said a friend. Of. Ours. I guess I should also mention real quick that in the mutually exclusive relationship Katie and I shared, I had bought her a ring and asked if she would marry me and she’d said yes and we’d started planning the wedding and all that life juice was flowing and I couldn’t wait to start another part of my life with her and then she’d come over one day to my tiny apartment that was rapidly filling with boxes and bags for the wedding and she’d had that look in her eyes and before she even opened her mouth to start to stutter some sort of conversation that would lead to the end of our exclusivity, I knew it was over.
I think I was waiting for it. I think it didn’t surprise me so much because I kept waiting for her to come to me and say “hey I think this is a bad idea and maybe we should slow down and really put more thought into this.” I knew she was going to say that, but it wasn’t because I’m omniscient or anything (hell that’d be fucking awesome), it was because I wholeheartedly expected a decline in her interest.
But this Sunday evening I greet her warmly, don’t kiss her the way I used and want to, and shake the hand of the man who had a fateful conversation with my ex-fiancé, the man who stole my heart, the man who was to be a groomsman in our ceremony; I say with a huge smile to both of them “get your asses in there and let’s crack open some beers!”
After Katie and Paul arrive, everyone else trickles in. Soon, the men are grilling and drinking and the women are primping, gossiping and drinking, and we are all watching the pre-game talk show and placing stupid bets on who’ll be the best player in the game. We are having fun.
Like I said, this is such a normal Sunday. In the midst of the camaraderie, I realize that tomorrow is Monday and tomorrow the 20somethings we are will head back to the offices and classrooms and buildings from where we gather our monetary sustenance. I don’t want to think about work so I push it to the back of my mind and concentrate all my efforts on enjoying the game and not looking at Paul’s hands falling everywhere on Katie’s body.
The game starts. We cheer, all of us guys and girls in our black and gold Steelers-wear, eating off of our Steelers logo plates and minding we don’t knock over the finishing touch, our alcoholic beverages. I will spare you the details of the game, but it wasn’t pretty. It was, pretty awful. Oh. Oh man. They were fucking bowled over by those damn Eagles. Our Steel got way bent and we couldn’t recover. All of the screaming and the cursing and the slamming of fists onto couches and chairs and coffee tables and all of the agitated movement and rising to our feet, and (did I mention the swearing?) all of the moaning did nothing to help Ben Roethlsberger. It also didn’t help Hines Ward or Parker or Polamalau. It didn’t help anybody and the Steelers fucking lost to the shithead Eagles 25 - 6.
That is a definite point to which the rest of my night and the following Monday turns to complete shit. To combat the depression I feel over my team letting me down, I drink a lot of beer. I’m talking a lot of beer. We all get pretty drunk. I have no clue how my friends make it home from this house to their houses, because I don’t want to know just as long as they text me to tell me they’re all right. I drink myself into oblivion, with Paul and Katie by my side.
They stay until the very end and we talk and drink and laugh, but the laughter is tinged with the deep mourning of being on the losing team. We drunkenly discuss what the Steelers could have done differently, what the coaches could have done, what we would have done if we were in charge. We talk about high school memories, the same ones we always talk about. We talk about Butler County and how much it sucks, this little podunk Pennsylvania area. We talk about Pittsburgh. Katie can’t wait to leave and I’m happy to stay. We talk about all the things we always talk about and then Paul rises unsteadily to his feet and holds out his hand, shakes mine and tries to rouse Katie, but she won’t move. She sits on the ottoman, staring at a spot on the carpet then looks up at me and says “are you happy?”
After they leave, I sit back down on the couch and contemplate the mess left behind by my friends and think about what Katie asked me. When she asked me, I smiled and said “fuck no! The goddamn Steelers fucking lost!” And she laughed and rose to her feet with the help of my hand and Paul’s hand and she sagged into me by the door when we all three said good bye to each other and her arms felt like they didn’t want to let go.
Then I locked the door and wandered into the living room and sank onto the couch and then I started staring at possibly the same spot Katie’d been staring at and I thought all kinds of questions and tried to find answers for some of them. The one question I never got an answer to was why Katie really left me. I wonder if it’s because of the kind of person I am. I am a risk analyst at a small company. I like to think of myself as a risk taker, but truthfully I don’t take many risks. Risky to me is getting completely wasted and seeing if I make it to work on time the next day. Instead of moving away from PA like I had staunchly claimed I wanted to all through high school and college, I’d moved back to the town I’d grown up in and now I go to the same bars my dad went to with his friends and I hang out at them with my friends. A few of my friends moved away, but most of them settled here, so I settled here. I guess I’m not so much a risk taker as a trend follower.
That’s one area where Katie and I can’t fit together. She is constantly doing new things. I prefer to do things I know about; habits that are safe, warm, and cozy, like an electric blanket. I golf, I watch sports, I drink, and I’m loyal to all these pastimes. Loyalty is hard to come by nowadays, but I have it, trust me. I won’t deviate from the ordinary, no fucking way. That drove Katie nuts, but I don’t think it’s why she left me.
I am thinking all these thoughts and somewhere in the midst of all that, I decide to go to bed. I don’t take any aspirin and I only have a few sips of water. When I wake up this morning, a puddle of my spit is pooled around my cheek and my head is on fire from the sound of the alarm blaring in my ear, I have to say I feel like shit. I am lying on my stomach, one arm hanging along the side of the bed, my entire body so close to the edge that I seem about to fall off. I reach for the OFF button on the alarm clock. I kind of lay there, continuing thoughts from the night before. About Katie, Katie and me, Katie and Paul; then my thoughts turned to work and I bury my head under the pillow.
When she came to my apartment that day, to talk to me about postponing or calling off the wedding, I remember that I was sitting on the floor in the middle of the wedding supplies. I was looking for the television remote. She had a key, she unlocked the door, and when she walked in, she smiled. It was a smile full of compassion and pity. Two of the worst feelings anyone can combine in a smile. I looked up at her. “Hello, Ray” she said softly. My body tensed. Like I said, I knew what she was going to say. “Hello Katie,” I matched her tone. Catching my stony features, she went from smiling to looking absolutely miserable. Thinking back, maybe I should have gone to her and put my arms around her and whispered dumb soothing phrases in her ear and just stood up for our love. But I didn’t.
She was staring thoughtfully at the little bell shaped containers of bubbles we’d picked out for the guests to blow on us instead of throwing rice. She seemed so sad.
“Katie,” I said sternly, “what is it?”
She continued her silence.
“Katie,” I insisted, finding the remote at the same time. “I know something is wrong. I don’t want to rush you or anything but I had a long day and I just wanna relax with the game on.”
I can’t even remember what game I wanted to turn on over my fiancé’s pain. She took a deep breath; as she turned to me, tears filled her green eyes. At this point, I literally heard the words before she said them. My heart filled with fear and I stood up, exclaiming “no!”
“Hey,” she whispered softly, “I think this is a bad idea,” she swallowed and tucked a strand of dark hair behind her pale pink ear, “and maybe we should slow down and really put more thought into this.” I could hear her heart breaking as she said the words. “Why?” I asked.
“I talked to Paul -”
“What?”
“He’s home from -”
“I don’t give a fuck where he’s home from! You talked to him and now he changed your mind?”
“Let me speak!”
“Fuck that! I love you! You can’t just call off a wedding because some fucking world-traveled asshole buys you a drink!”
“Where are you getting this from?” she screamed at me.
I stopped in my rage and looked at her.
“You’re jealous of Paul so you’re being a dick? You didn’t even listen to me and you’re assuming a bunch of bullshit! Fucking asshole! Listen to me!”
It was the first time she had ever raised her voice in such a manner to me, with such pain and anger and fear rife in her vocal cords. The desperation in her voice quelled the rage and pain rising in me enough so that I understood her. I heard every single bit of anguish and misery she’d suffered from this relationship. I sat on the couch.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I know I was wrong…please talk to me.”
She sniffed back the tears and sat on a chair opposite me. Her small pink tongue nervously licked her perfect pink lips and she sighed.
“Ray, I don’t want to hurt you because I do love you.”
Pause.
“But I have been thinking for a long time and I’ve seen a bunch of things that have upset me and now I think I just have the courage to surge forward.”
“What upset you?”
“Well, one year ago you quit your job because you were having a bad day.”
“I did not!”
“Ray,” she raised her eyebrows, “you did too.”
“That boss was an asshole!”
“Everyone is an asshole, according to you!” she fired back.
“Not everyone” I muttered, my eyes roaming the floor.
“Anyway,” she continued softly, “it bothered me when you quit your job just because someone upset you because I thought that what if something in our relationship upset you a great deal? I got a little scared, but I thought, well you were unhappy there, so maybe you’d find something that makes you happy. But at this job now, I’m hearing the same complaints coming from you and it’s starting to make me nervous again. And I realized that some of these complaints are about not moving up in the company. But you can’t get moved up if you don’t prove your worth. Ray, I don’t see you demonstrating to your employers how valuable an employee you actually are.”
“I do my work, well. I show up on time, I do what I have to. I’m a steady worker, that should be enough.”
She shook her head. “It is enough, to fill supply and demand for mediocrity. And if you are happy doing that kind of work, then stop bitching about not having more responsibility! You don’t have to be head honcho to impress me. Being satisfied with your life and willing yourself not to get stuck in a rut are impressive enough for me.”
My hands unclasped and I straightened my spine. “I am satisfied with my life!” I thundered at her, throwing my hands up in despair over the utter stupidity of her words. Those gentle green eyes widened as she took in my, what I now perceive to be, truly idiotic protestation. I wasn’t satisfied with my life then or now.
“Well I’m just saying, you seem to want more for yourself, but you’re not doing anything about it. You used to have all these dreams, Ray; that you were going to travel and you wanted to move to a different state so badly, just to experience something new, and you barely ever pick up the guitar anymore. I mean, I think what I’m realizing is that I’m in love with who you were when you had all those dreams and ambition, and I can’t say that you are the same person now.” She paused to breathe, the misery rampant in her eyes dissipating a little as strength of her decision came to stand beside the pain. “Look, Paul didn’t convince me to break up with you. All he did was tell me about his life and how he’s going to settle back in Pittsburgh for now, but he’s working toward a goal. He’s going back to school, he’s completing his master’s, and then he is leaving again.”
“And you’re going with him?”
“No, no, this is not about me, this is about what I realized about you. See, you two want the same things, but he’s taking steps to ensure his goal comes to fruition. You are just sitting on your ass, expecting it all to get handed to you.”
She stood up. “Ray, you are not stupid. You’re very smart. You have a penchant for numbers and you’ve been appreciated at your jobs. But the fact that the slightest criticism makes you go ballistic is making you weak. I don’t know what to do, how to help you. But I refuse to spend the rest of my life with someone who won’t take chances and can’t be relied upon to provide a steady balance to life because the minute someone tells you that you might be wrong, you call that person an asshole and quit your job!”
Katie’s voice rose so high with the passionate anger she was feeling, that I expected her vocal cords to crack. Instead there was dead silence in the room. I wasn’t willing to let her go, but having never been a fighter, I wasn’t about to start now. “You do what you want,” I said. “Whatever you think is best.”
I turned my back on her, metaphorically and physically. I let her go.
She didn’t leave right away, but stood there, probably willing me to turn around and say “dammit, you’re not going anywhere and I will grab my life like a bull by the horns!” Instead, I listened to her harried breathing as she fought back sobs. Then she opened the door and walked out.
I decided after cracking open a few beers and reflecting on everything that she had said that I would rise to the top of the next company I worked at. She would see; I’d show her. I hadn’t got a chance to tell her that I had a job lined up at a small finance office closer to where I lived, where we’d be living, if we were still together. Slightly more pay, but also better hours. And with such a small amount of people, I could quickly become a manager. I’d show her.
These ruminations about Katie got me through my shower, got me dressed, and drove me to work. It’s a miracle that Katie and I stayed friends. After the debacle that was our break up, we didn’t talk for six months, choosing to communicate through friends. Nothing was the same without her and finally, I swallowed my pride and humiliation and invited her and Paul over to watch the Steelers game with a couple of our friends. That was the year the Steelers won the Superbowl, 2005. That was also the year that started the tradition of football parties at my house.
Damned football, I think, getting out of the car and walking into the office. Damned stupid fucking Steelers and stupid fucking work. I don’t even feel like working today. Katie ought to be proud of me though, because I just celebrated being at this job for 3 years. Although I’m not the manager of anything and I kind of do the same job I’ve been doing since I started, it’s pretty amazing. I am going places, Katie, yes I am. Although Katie actually did go places. She and Paul moved to Chicago. They were in town this past weekend on business so they dropped by my house for the usual football watching party. Good ol’ Ray. He stays the same.
I am the first one in the building, so I do the normal opening routine. Turn on lights, make coffee, turn on the computer, sink into my desk chair and concentrate all of my hatred for life into the fact that I don’t want to be at work today.
Once the computer is on, I log onto my email and prepare to begin the day’s work. In the process of beginning, I must pause. I know I have only opened one tax return for review, but already it looms like a rocky mountain of in front of me. Work. What a disgusting 4 letter word. The world would be so much better if we could do nothing all day except for what we wanted to do. Katie always hated that attitude. She’d say “but how will people keep moving if no one does anything?” I would shrug my shoulders and stare at the T.V. or drink a beer. It’s not my problem how the world turns, so long as I can to do the minimum to get by.
Slowly, I plod through the review of the tax returns for one deal. It takes two hours because I keep stopping every three minutes to look up something on the internet. I stretch. I yawn. I stand. I sit. I shift my chair to the left. Study the computer screen. I’m not sure I like this angle. Shift my chair to the right. Cock my head. Put my face in my hands. Fill in another blank on a spreadsheet and then take more time to consider that the Steelers lost and I am going to be pretty pissed if they lose the next game.
The door opens and a few more employees file inside. They congregate in the kitchen to pour cups of coffee, put their lunches away, and chit-chat. I sit hunched in my desk, my back to the chattering ladies. “Pleasedon’ttalktome, pleasedon’ttalktome” I mutter over and over as I pretend to study the tax return.
“Hi Ray, how you doin’?” Kim asks cheerfully.
I fake a grin as I turn to face her. “Good, how are you?”
“Oh doing well, thanks for asking. Hey, you haven’t gotten a chance to look at the Hawthorne deal, have you?”
“I’m looking at it right now,” I indicate with a chin-nod the tax return open on the computer screen.
“Oh great! I can start docs up then. We gotta get some of these ready to go. Do you have any others done?”
“I wrote two analyses Friday,” I say patiently, as though she is a five year old. “Did you see those?”
Unfazed, she replies “yes, but remember there are problems with those ones. Right now we need to be working on the Hawthorne and Kommireddy deals.”
Fuck them! I say in my head and for a second I think I’ve said it out loud. Kim is studying me with her Mom-look. She can tell I’m more annoyed than usual today.
“What’s bothering you?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Upset about the Steelers?” She is teasing me, something I would appreciate if I wasn’t hung over, pissed about the Steelers, and missing Katie.
“Yeah, it sucks.”
“They’ll do better next time,” she reassures me and then turns to go up the stairs. “Please have those deals ready to go by this afternoon, Ray. Thanks.”
As she climbs the stairs, I think bitch and then feel a little bad. It’s not her fault that she expects me to work. Ugh, there is that disgusting four letter word again. I’m not sure when I turned from being grateful that people are nice to me, to hating everyone I’m around.
12:30 rolls by and it is time for lunch. Usually we don’t really take lunch breaks until we have finished with the morning’s work and I haven’t finished my write up on the Hawthorne deal at all. I don’t care; I have to get out of here. My head still hurts and aspirin is not dulling the pain, so I go to the restaurant across the street and order a beer. The alcohol does away with the throbbing in my skull and I begin to think about my favorite memory of me and Katie; the one day when I was a perfect gentleman and she was my lovely lady.
It was a fall day, of course, in 2004 and Katie had bought me tickets to the Steelers game. I was decked out in my black and gold gear; a Steelers’ hat turned backward on my head; Katie looked adorable in her white long-sleeved shirt with the black and gold jersey over top. I knew she had sexy black and gold underwear on as well, because we’d gotten into it before we drove downtown. Just thinking about it made me shiver. Katie saw a blonde girl with a pink jersey on and said loudly “who the hell wears a pink jersey? I swear, that is the dumbest thing I have ever seen in my life! What a way to not be a true football fan!”
The blonde girl tsked at us and flipped her hair over her shoulder. I kissed Katie then, my hands on her face, my mouth warm and tight against hers, my tongue tasting Yuengling and the ketchup and spicy mustard she flavored her hamburger with, her arms about my neck, rubbing my hair, our bodies fitting into each other, the heat I felt beginning to rise against her leg. We were young and happy to be together, at a Steelers game. She moved away from me and laughed. “It’s almost game time.”
With certain memories, the mind creates a sanctuary, a perfect home for the things we most want to remember. This is sort of a snow globe - a memory perfectly encased in glass inside the mind. No matter how many times the brain is jumbled and upended, when the shaking stops and the debris settles, there is your perfect memory intact.
That day with Katie is inside a snow globe in my mind. If I designed it, you would see Heinz field, the players out and ready to go, a corner of the parking lot where the tailgaters are, and the stadium. Right in the center are two happy, smiling, cheering, laughing people, not divided into man and woman, but one entity, unified by love, “we”. It is us.
I will never believe the Steelers ever played as well as they did on that day. The grace of their legs as they ran down the field, their gigantic leaps, their superhuman strength as they knocked down their opponents, the fact that they beat the hell out of the other team and won. We were there, we saw it, we cheered, our team took us to the next level. I think that, in my effort to keep that memory perfect, I have exaggerated some details, but no matter. It is us.
We split just a few months later, the end crashed over me like a pair of cymbals clanging, and realizing suddenly that I have been gone 45 minutes on my lunch break, lost in reverie, I scramble to my feet, pay the bill, and hurry back to the office.
As soon as I walk into the office, I smell it. Tension. I’m like an animal that senses danger and begins to feel the fight or flight mode of survival. The tension wraps around me like a jacket, holding me in its arms, whispering that it will not let me go. My feet drag as I walk downstairs, tension pushing behind me, threatening to knock me down the stairs. As I near my cubicle the woman who works beside me, Lane, gives me a warning look. No sooner have I sat down, than I hear the ferocious roar from the boss’s office. “RAY!” he thunders. “GET IN HERE NOW!”
Instant Jell-O; the knees are gelatinous, the arms float away from the body, hair stands on end. Every time the boss yells at me, I get nauseous. Now I feel as though I am swimming underwater as I make my way to his office.
There he looms behind the desk, a big building of a man, tall, strong, and reflecting anger so bright, it seems I am looking at a thousand windows sparkling in the sun’s rays. “Close the door.” I close it. “Sit down,” he points to the chair in front of his desk. He is observing me, those shrewd eyes boring deep into my eyes, piercing past my walls of silence to the very heart of the matter.
“You are lackadaisical lately?” He asks in a way that does not require a response. I wish I could get his keen gaze out of my soul. “You haven’t been working the way we need you to, Ray. What’s the problem?”
Even though I know it is stupid, so mindlessly stupid that even as I say the words I am trying to put my foot in my mouth, I say “I wasn’t aware there was a problem….I’ve been - ”
“NOT AWARE THERE WAS A PROBLEM?” he nearly screams. “Don’t fuck with me. You know perfectly well that your performance at this company has been sub-par these last few months. What I want to know, is why?”
Under his wrath, I feel like I am slumped over, as though the wind is knocked out of me and I am trying to catch my breath. He is waiting for an answer. “I don’t know, I guess I’ve been a little slow. I’ve been trying to take care of my family (this is not a lie, both my grandma and my dad were sick the past two months) and I haven’t been feeling well either, so I guess I’m feeling rundown.”
He is looking at me as though I am some sort of mutated alien figure he would like to squash into the ground. “I understand that personal affairs may sometimes intervene into the work day,” he begins, “but that does not mean you let them overwhelm you! I’ve noticed this about you Ray, every time you have a personal issue everything around you crumples. Your whole life falls apart, whether it’s a girl you’re dating or a fight with your brother or an illness, you let everything defeat you. That is not the way you will get ahead in life. Now, I understand that everyone has a different way of dealing with things, but this is your job. You need to be giving it your all.” He pauses. I am silent.
“Listen, Ray,” he continues, “it shouldn’t take you all morning to make a modification in a write up. You had that tax return for Fred Hawthorne Friday. You should have had this write up done in 5 minutes! Now our whole day is delayed and I’ve got customers calling asking when they’re going to get their deals looked at and the sales reps are sending new stuff every day; I can barely keep up. That’s why I need you, ok? That’s your job. You analyze the credit packages, write a review, submit it to me, analyze the next one, write a review, take the approved one upstairs, and take the denied one to the shredder. You’re a smart guy, you know how this stuff works! We’re a small company, you know we’re a team. We all work together here. We have one man down or not pulling his weight, the whole operation’s off, correct?”
Numbly I nod my head up and down. He pauses once more, and suddenly I realize that he is waiting for me to say something, say anything, to defend myself, my job, my life. He is waiting for me to speak up, just like Katie did. He is trying to give me a chance. I choose silence instead.
“If you don’t shape up and start working again, then I will have no choice but to let you go.”
I have dreaded these words for the past few months and now that I’ve heard them, I have an epiphany: that I don’t give a flying fuck about this job. I am pissed off for a lot of reasons. He sounds like Katie; Katie is gone; my dad’s been sick and annoying; customers are annoying; there aren’t enough weekends; my brother pisses me off; I want to play more golf; I want to drink more but not be an alcoholic; I’m horny; I’m hung over; and the fucking Steelers lost yesterday. My life couldn’t get any worse. I raise my head, look the boss straight in the eye, and say “well if that’s how it is, I quit.”
He nods, knowingly, and purses his lips. “All right, please leave in a timely manner. In fact, I better not see so much as an ass cheek streaking out the door after the 5 minutes I’m gonna give you to get the fuck outta here.” He doesn’t add “you piece of shit” but the unspoken words hang in the air, so heavily that they might as well have been said.
I walk to my desk, starting to grab whatever I can and shove it in a plastic Wal-Mart bag that I should have thrown away. Now I’m glad I didn’t. Strange isn’t it, how both the boss and Katie managed to see that, when confronted with my own shortcomings and weaknesses, I will walk away and leave someone else to clean up the mess. I am nothing but my own worst enemy.
Lane looks quizzically at me as I put on my jacket, grab my plastic bag and keys, and head for the stairs. I don’t look at her and I don’t look back. Whatever I’ve left behind can stay where it is. That’s the past and I am looking to my future.
Please read and let me know what you think. I already got some advice on how to make this story better, but I'd like to collect little buckets of advice to pour over my writing.
I suppose if you want to blame it on something, you can blame it on the damn Steelers game. I mean, we’re gonna have to pin the action of blatantly disregarding my career on something besides a general dislike of Mondays. But I don’t know…I think it started long before Sunday evening. There’s a black cloud hanging over my head. What can I say?
Anyway, this particular Sunday evening, I was completely geared up for a night of Eagle smashing. As usual, my roommate and I proffered the use of our house for a gigantic party, as per the ritual beginning to develop. The week before, the power had gone out all around my county due to a huge storm. We’d recently got the power back on and thankfully none of the food I’d bought for the Sunday game was spoiled. So we set it up - got the grill ready, got the Yuengling and Rolling Rock and Miller Brew buried in tubs of ice so the beverages were nice and cold and smooth going down throats that would be hot from cheering on our team. I went upstairs at 3PM to change from sweatpants and an old ratty t-shirt into dark-wash jeans (from the GAP) and a #58 jersey. Black and Gold, baby. I fucking bleed black and gold.
Everything about Sunday night was so normal. Sure, I was feeling like shit underneath the excitement for the upcoming game. I always feel the crushing weight of existence on my shoulders. I’m always tired, always wanting more and never getting it; though I couldn’t tell you what it is exactly I want more of. Rest I guess, relaxation or a vacation from monotony?
I didn’t think that night was anything different. I can’t say for sure, but I have a suspicion that if at least the Steelers had won that game, I could’ve hung on to my current way of being for a few more days. Maybe weeks.
So anyway, I jog downstairs and people are already showing up. Katie, my beloved best friend, whose face lights up as soon as she sees me, throws her arms around my neck and cheers “I love that jersey!” she giggles because she is wearing the same one. Katie and I go way back, back to when I had pimples and zero self confidence and braces and I was, to put it simply, ugly. She’d been my friend through all of the nights I’d sat on my floor and bemoaned the fact that I was fat and un-suave and couldn’t get the girls I wanted to go out with on Friday nights and my little brother wouldn’t leave me alone and eventually, we got older and I got into shape, got rid of the flab, exchanged ‘em for abs, I wasn’t pimply anymore and I didn’t have braces and I didn’t look too awful and then one day when we were walking around the mall, Katie turned laughingly to ask me a question and I thought, damn, she is beautiful.
It was as though I never noticed it before. She is so gorgeous; thick black curly hair and green eyes and pale skin with a light dash of freckles and a little upturned nose. She’s seriously the kind of girl who makes guys trip over themselves because they are staring so hard at her. The best part is that she doesn’t even know that she is such a knock-out. So when she throws her arms around my neck, celebrating the happiness we share over football season finally arriving once more, I hug her in a friendly way, but all I can think about is how much I want to greet those perfect pink lips with a kiss.
I guess one of the greater tragedies in my life (there are a lot of them) is that I once had the ultimate girl but I lost her. Not only did I lose her from a mutually exclusive relationship between the two of us, she got herself into another one of those things with a friend of ours. Yes, I said a friend. Of. Ours. I guess I should also mention real quick that in the mutually exclusive relationship Katie and I shared, I had bought her a ring and asked if she would marry me and she’d said yes and we’d started planning the wedding and all that life juice was flowing and I couldn’t wait to start another part of my life with her and then she’d come over one day to my tiny apartment that was rapidly filling with boxes and bags for the wedding and she’d had that look in her eyes and before she even opened her mouth to start to stutter some sort of conversation that would lead to the end of our exclusivity, I knew it was over.
I think I was waiting for it. I think it didn’t surprise me so much because I kept waiting for her to come to me and say “hey I think this is a bad idea and maybe we should slow down and really put more thought into this.” I knew she was going to say that, but it wasn’t because I’m omniscient or anything (hell that’d be fucking awesome), it was because I wholeheartedly expected a decline in her interest.
But this Sunday evening I greet her warmly, don’t kiss her the way I used and want to, and shake the hand of the man who had a fateful conversation with my ex-fiancé, the man who stole my heart, the man who was to be a groomsman in our ceremony; I say with a huge smile to both of them “get your asses in there and let’s crack open some beers!”
After Katie and Paul arrive, everyone else trickles in. Soon, the men are grilling and drinking and the women are primping, gossiping and drinking, and we are all watching the pre-game talk show and placing stupid bets on who’ll be the best player in the game. We are having fun.
Like I said, this is such a normal Sunday. In the midst of the camaraderie, I realize that tomorrow is Monday and tomorrow the 20somethings we are will head back to the offices and classrooms and buildings from where we gather our monetary sustenance. I don’t want to think about work so I push it to the back of my mind and concentrate all my efforts on enjoying the game and not looking at Paul’s hands falling everywhere on Katie’s body.
The game starts. We cheer, all of us guys and girls in our black and gold Steelers-wear, eating off of our Steelers logo plates and minding we don’t knock over the finishing touch, our alcoholic beverages. I will spare you the details of the game, but it wasn’t pretty. It was, pretty awful. Oh. Oh man. They were fucking bowled over by those damn Eagles. Our Steel got way bent and we couldn’t recover. All of the screaming and the cursing and the slamming of fists onto couches and chairs and coffee tables and all of the agitated movement and rising to our feet, and (did I mention the swearing?) all of the moaning did nothing to help Ben Roethlsberger. It also didn’t help Hines Ward or Parker or Polamalau. It didn’t help anybody and the Steelers fucking lost to the shithead Eagles 25 - 6.
That is a definite point to which the rest of my night and the following Monday turns to complete shit. To combat the depression I feel over my team letting me down, I drink a lot of beer. I’m talking a lot of beer. We all get pretty drunk. I have no clue how my friends make it home from this house to their houses, because I don’t want to know just as long as they text me to tell me they’re all right. I drink myself into oblivion, with Paul and Katie by my side.
They stay until the very end and we talk and drink and laugh, but the laughter is tinged with the deep mourning of being on the losing team. We drunkenly discuss what the Steelers could have done differently, what the coaches could have done, what we would have done if we were in charge. We talk about high school memories, the same ones we always talk about. We talk about Butler County and how much it sucks, this little podunk Pennsylvania area. We talk about Pittsburgh. Katie can’t wait to leave and I’m happy to stay. We talk about all the things we always talk about and then Paul rises unsteadily to his feet and holds out his hand, shakes mine and tries to rouse Katie, but she won’t move. She sits on the ottoman, staring at a spot on the carpet then looks up at me and says “are you happy?”
After they leave, I sit back down on the couch and contemplate the mess left behind by my friends and think about what Katie asked me. When she asked me, I smiled and said “fuck no! The goddamn Steelers fucking lost!” And she laughed and rose to her feet with the help of my hand and Paul’s hand and she sagged into me by the door when we all three said good bye to each other and her arms felt like they didn’t want to let go.
Then I locked the door and wandered into the living room and sank onto the couch and then I started staring at possibly the same spot Katie’d been staring at and I thought all kinds of questions and tried to find answers for some of them. The one question I never got an answer to was why Katie really left me. I wonder if it’s because of the kind of person I am. I am a risk analyst at a small company. I like to think of myself as a risk taker, but truthfully I don’t take many risks. Risky to me is getting completely wasted and seeing if I make it to work on time the next day. Instead of moving away from PA like I had staunchly claimed I wanted to all through high school and college, I’d moved back to the town I’d grown up in and now I go to the same bars my dad went to with his friends and I hang out at them with my friends. A few of my friends moved away, but most of them settled here, so I settled here. I guess I’m not so much a risk taker as a trend follower.
That’s one area where Katie and I can’t fit together. She is constantly doing new things. I prefer to do things I know about; habits that are safe, warm, and cozy, like an electric blanket. I golf, I watch sports, I drink, and I’m loyal to all these pastimes. Loyalty is hard to come by nowadays, but I have it, trust me. I won’t deviate from the ordinary, no fucking way. That drove Katie nuts, but I don’t think it’s why she left me.
I am thinking all these thoughts and somewhere in the midst of all that, I decide to go to bed. I don’t take any aspirin and I only have a few sips of water. When I wake up this morning, a puddle of my spit is pooled around my cheek and my head is on fire from the sound of the alarm blaring in my ear, I have to say I feel like shit. I am lying on my stomach, one arm hanging along the side of the bed, my entire body so close to the edge that I seem about to fall off. I reach for the OFF button on the alarm clock. I kind of lay there, continuing thoughts from the night before. About Katie, Katie and me, Katie and Paul; then my thoughts turned to work and I bury my head under the pillow.
When she came to my apartment that day, to talk to me about postponing or calling off the wedding, I remember that I was sitting on the floor in the middle of the wedding supplies. I was looking for the television remote. She had a key, she unlocked the door, and when she walked in, she smiled. It was a smile full of compassion and pity. Two of the worst feelings anyone can combine in a smile. I looked up at her. “Hello, Ray” she said softly. My body tensed. Like I said, I knew what she was going to say. “Hello Katie,” I matched her tone. Catching my stony features, she went from smiling to looking absolutely miserable. Thinking back, maybe I should have gone to her and put my arms around her and whispered dumb soothing phrases in her ear and just stood up for our love. But I didn’t.
She was staring thoughtfully at the little bell shaped containers of bubbles we’d picked out for the guests to blow on us instead of throwing rice. She seemed so sad.
“Katie,” I said sternly, “what is it?”
She continued her silence.
“Katie,” I insisted, finding the remote at the same time. “I know something is wrong. I don’t want to rush you or anything but I had a long day and I just wanna relax with the game on.”
I can’t even remember what game I wanted to turn on over my fiancé’s pain. She took a deep breath; as she turned to me, tears filled her green eyes. At this point, I literally heard the words before she said them. My heart filled with fear and I stood up, exclaiming “no!”
“Hey,” she whispered softly, “I think this is a bad idea,” she swallowed and tucked a strand of dark hair behind her pale pink ear, “and maybe we should slow down and really put more thought into this.” I could hear her heart breaking as she said the words. “Why?” I asked.
“I talked to Paul -”
“What?”
“He’s home from -”
“I don’t give a fuck where he’s home from! You talked to him and now he changed your mind?”
“Let me speak!”
“Fuck that! I love you! You can’t just call off a wedding because some fucking world-traveled asshole buys you a drink!”
“Where are you getting this from?” she screamed at me.
I stopped in my rage and looked at her.
“You’re jealous of Paul so you’re being a dick? You didn’t even listen to me and you’re assuming a bunch of bullshit! Fucking asshole! Listen to me!”
It was the first time she had ever raised her voice in such a manner to me, with such pain and anger and fear rife in her vocal cords. The desperation in her voice quelled the rage and pain rising in me enough so that I understood her. I heard every single bit of anguish and misery she’d suffered from this relationship. I sat on the couch.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I know I was wrong…please talk to me.”
She sniffed back the tears and sat on a chair opposite me. Her small pink tongue nervously licked her perfect pink lips and she sighed.
“Ray, I don’t want to hurt you because I do love you.”
Pause.
“But I have been thinking for a long time and I’ve seen a bunch of things that have upset me and now I think I just have the courage to surge forward.”
“What upset you?”
“Well, one year ago you quit your job because you were having a bad day.”
“I did not!”
“Ray,” she raised her eyebrows, “you did too.”
“That boss was an asshole!”
“Everyone is an asshole, according to you!” she fired back.
“Not everyone” I muttered, my eyes roaming the floor.
“Anyway,” she continued softly, “it bothered me when you quit your job just because someone upset you because I thought that what if something in our relationship upset you a great deal? I got a little scared, but I thought, well you were unhappy there, so maybe you’d find something that makes you happy. But at this job now, I’m hearing the same complaints coming from you and it’s starting to make me nervous again. And I realized that some of these complaints are about not moving up in the company. But you can’t get moved up if you don’t prove your worth. Ray, I don’t see you demonstrating to your employers how valuable an employee you actually are.”
“I do my work, well. I show up on time, I do what I have to. I’m a steady worker, that should be enough.”
She shook her head. “It is enough, to fill supply and demand for mediocrity. And if you are happy doing that kind of work, then stop bitching about not having more responsibility! You don’t have to be head honcho to impress me. Being satisfied with your life and willing yourself not to get stuck in a rut are impressive enough for me.”
My hands unclasped and I straightened my spine. “I am satisfied with my life!” I thundered at her, throwing my hands up in despair over the utter stupidity of her words. Those gentle green eyes widened as she took in my, what I now perceive to be, truly idiotic protestation. I wasn’t satisfied with my life then or now.
“Well I’m just saying, you seem to want more for yourself, but you’re not doing anything about it. You used to have all these dreams, Ray; that you were going to travel and you wanted to move to a different state so badly, just to experience something new, and you barely ever pick up the guitar anymore. I mean, I think what I’m realizing is that I’m in love with who you were when you had all those dreams and ambition, and I can’t say that you are the same person now.” She paused to breathe, the misery rampant in her eyes dissipating a little as strength of her decision came to stand beside the pain. “Look, Paul didn’t convince me to break up with you. All he did was tell me about his life and how he’s going to settle back in Pittsburgh for now, but he’s working toward a goal. He’s going back to school, he’s completing his master’s, and then he is leaving again.”
“And you’re going with him?”
“No, no, this is not about me, this is about what I realized about you. See, you two want the same things, but he’s taking steps to ensure his goal comes to fruition. You are just sitting on your ass, expecting it all to get handed to you.”
She stood up. “Ray, you are not stupid. You’re very smart. You have a penchant for numbers and you’ve been appreciated at your jobs. But the fact that the slightest criticism makes you go ballistic is making you weak. I don’t know what to do, how to help you. But I refuse to spend the rest of my life with someone who won’t take chances and can’t be relied upon to provide a steady balance to life because the minute someone tells you that you might be wrong, you call that person an asshole and quit your job!”
Katie’s voice rose so high with the passionate anger she was feeling, that I expected her vocal cords to crack. Instead there was dead silence in the room. I wasn’t willing to let her go, but having never been a fighter, I wasn’t about to start now. “You do what you want,” I said. “Whatever you think is best.”
I turned my back on her, metaphorically and physically. I let her go.
She didn’t leave right away, but stood there, probably willing me to turn around and say “dammit, you’re not going anywhere and I will grab my life like a bull by the horns!” Instead, I listened to her harried breathing as she fought back sobs. Then she opened the door and walked out.
I decided after cracking open a few beers and reflecting on everything that she had said that I would rise to the top of the next company I worked at. She would see; I’d show her. I hadn’t got a chance to tell her that I had a job lined up at a small finance office closer to where I lived, where we’d be living, if we were still together. Slightly more pay, but also better hours. And with such a small amount of people, I could quickly become a manager. I’d show her.
These ruminations about Katie got me through my shower, got me dressed, and drove me to work. It’s a miracle that Katie and I stayed friends. After the debacle that was our break up, we didn’t talk for six months, choosing to communicate through friends. Nothing was the same without her and finally, I swallowed my pride and humiliation and invited her and Paul over to watch the Steelers game with a couple of our friends. That was the year the Steelers won the Superbowl, 2005. That was also the year that started the tradition of football parties at my house.
Damned football, I think, getting out of the car and walking into the office. Damned stupid fucking Steelers and stupid fucking work. I don’t even feel like working today. Katie ought to be proud of me though, because I just celebrated being at this job for 3 years. Although I’m not the manager of anything and I kind of do the same job I’ve been doing since I started, it’s pretty amazing. I am going places, Katie, yes I am. Although Katie actually did go places. She and Paul moved to Chicago. They were in town this past weekend on business so they dropped by my house for the usual football watching party. Good ol’ Ray. He stays the same.
I am the first one in the building, so I do the normal opening routine. Turn on lights, make coffee, turn on the computer, sink into my desk chair and concentrate all of my hatred for life into the fact that I don’t want to be at work today.
Once the computer is on, I log onto my email and prepare to begin the day’s work. In the process of beginning, I must pause. I know I have only opened one tax return for review, but already it looms like a rocky mountain of in front of me. Work. What a disgusting 4 letter word. The world would be so much better if we could do nothing all day except for what we wanted to do. Katie always hated that attitude. She’d say “but how will people keep moving if no one does anything?” I would shrug my shoulders and stare at the T.V. or drink a beer. It’s not my problem how the world turns, so long as I can to do the minimum to get by.
Slowly, I plod through the review of the tax returns for one deal. It takes two hours because I keep stopping every three minutes to look up something on the internet. I stretch. I yawn. I stand. I sit. I shift my chair to the left. Study the computer screen. I’m not sure I like this angle. Shift my chair to the right. Cock my head. Put my face in my hands. Fill in another blank on a spreadsheet and then take more time to consider that the Steelers lost and I am going to be pretty pissed if they lose the next game.
The door opens and a few more employees file inside. They congregate in the kitchen to pour cups of coffee, put their lunches away, and chit-chat. I sit hunched in my desk, my back to the chattering ladies. “Pleasedon’ttalktome, pleasedon’ttalktome” I mutter over and over as I pretend to study the tax return.
“Hi Ray, how you doin’?” Kim asks cheerfully.
I fake a grin as I turn to face her. “Good, how are you?”
“Oh doing well, thanks for asking. Hey, you haven’t gotten a chance to look at the Hawthorne deal, have you?”
“I’m looking at it right now,” I indicate with a chin-nod the tax return open on the computer screen.
“Oh great! I can start docs up then. We gotta get some of these ready to go. Do you have any others done?”
“I wrote two analyses Friday,” I say patiently, as though she is a five year old. “Did you see those?”
Unfazed, she replies “yes, but remember there are problems with those ones. Right now we need to be working on the Hawthorne and Kommireddy deals.”
Fuck them! I say in my head and for a second I think I’ve said it out loud. Kim is studying me with her Mom-look. She can tell I’m more annoyed than usual today.
“What’s bothering you?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
“Upset about the Steelers?” She is teasing me, something I would appreciate if I wasn’t hung over, pissed about the Steelers, and missing Katie.
“Yeah, it sucks.”
“They’ll do better next time,” she reassures me and then turns to go up the stairs. “Please have those deals ready to go by this afternoon, Ray. Thanks.”
As she climbs the stairs, I think bitch and then feel a little bad. It’s not her fault that she expects me to work. Ugh, there is that disgusting four letter word again. I’m not sure when I turned from being grateful that people are nice to me, to hating everyone I’m around.
12:30 rolls by and it is time for lunch. Usually we don’t really take lunch breaks until we have finished with the morning’s work and I haven’t finished my write up on the Hawthorne deal at all. I don’t care; I have to get out of here. My head still hurts and aspirin is not dulling the pain, so I go to the restaurant across the street and order a beer. The alcohol does away with the throbbing in my skull and I begin to think about my favorite memory of me and Katie; the one day when I was a perfect gentleman and she was my lovely lady.
It was a fall day, of course, in 2004 and Katie had bought me tickets to the Steelers game. I was decked out in my black and gold gear; a Steelers’ hat turned backward on my head; Katie looked adorable in her white long-sleeved shirt with the black and gold jersey over top. I knew she had sexy black and gold underwear on as well, because we’d gotten into it before we drove downtown. Just thinking about it made me shiver. Katie saw a blonde girl with a pink jersey on and said loudly “who the hell wears a pink jersey? I swear, that is the dumbest thing I have ever seen in my life! What a way to not be a true football fan!”
The blonde girl tsked at us and flipped her hair over her shoulder. I kissed Katie then, my hands on her face, my mouth warm and tight against hers, my tongue tasting Yuengling and the ketchup and spicy mustard she flavored her hamburger with, her arms about my neck, rubbing my hair, our bodies fitting into each other, the heat I felt beginning to rise against her leg. We were young and happy to be together, at a Steelers game. She moved away from me and laughed. “It’s almost game time.”
With certain memories, the mind creates a sanctuary, a perfect home for the things we most want to remember. This is sort of a snow globe - a memory perfectly encased in glass inside the mind. No matter how many times the brain is jumbled and upended, when the shaking stops and the debris settles, there is your perfect memory intact.
That day with Katie is inside a snow globe in my mind. If I designed it, you would see Heinz field, the players out and ready to go, a corner of the parking lot where the tailgaters are, and the stadium. Right in the center are two happy, smiling, cheering, laughing people, not divided into man and woman, but one entity, unified by love, “we”. It is us.
I will never believe the Steelers ever played as well as they did on that day. The grace of their legs as they ran down the field, their gigantic leaps, their superhuman strength as they knocked down their opponents, the fact that they beat the hell out of the other team and won. We were there, we saw it, we cheered, our team took us to the next level. I think that, in my effort to keep that memory perfect, I have exaggerated some details, but no matter. It is us.
We split just a few months later, the end crashed over me like a pair of cymbals clanging, and realizing suddenly that I have been gone 45 minutes on my lunch break, lost in reverie, I scramble to my feet, pay the bill, and hurry back to the office.
As soon as I walk into the office, I smell it. Tension. I’m like an animal that senses danger and begins to feel the fight or flight mode of survival. The tension wraps around me like a jacket, holding me in its arms, whispering that it will not let me go. My feet drag as I walk downstairs, tension pushing behind me, threatening to knock me down the stairs. As I near my cubicle the woman who works beside me, Lane, gives me a warning look. No sooner have I sat down, than I hear the ferocious roar from the boss’s office. “RAY!” he thunders. “GET IN HERE NOW!”
Instant Jell-O; the knees are gelatinous, the arms float away from the body, hair stands on end. Every time the boss yells at me, I get nauseous. Now I feel as though I am swimming underwater as I make my way to his office.
There he looms behind the desk, a big building of a man, tall, strong, and reflecting anger so bright, it seems I am looking at a thousand windows sparkling in the sun’s rays. “Close the door.” I close it. “Sit down,” he points to the chair in front of his desk. He is observing me, those shrewd eyes boring deep into my eyes, piercing past my walls of silence to the very heart of the matter.
“You are lackadaisical lately?” He asks in a way that does not require a response. I wish I could get his keen gaze out of my soul. “You haven’t been working the way we need you to, Ray. What’s the problem?”
Even though I know it is stupid, so mindlessly stupid that even as I say the words I am trying to put my foot in my mouth, I say “I wasn’t aware there was a problem….I’ve been - ”
“NOT AWARE THERE WAS A PROBLEM?” he nearly screams. “Don’t fuck with me. You know perfectly well that your performance at this company has been sub-par these last few months. What I want to know, is why?”
Under his wrath, I feel like I am slumped over, as though the wind is knocked out of me and I am trying to catch my breath. He is waiting for an answer. “I don’t know, I guess I’ve been a little slow. I’ve been trying to take care of my family (this is not a lie, both my grandma and my dad were sick the past two months) and I haven’t been feeling well either, so I guess I’m feeling rundown.”
He is looking at me as though I am some sort of mutated alien figure he would like to squash into the ground. “I understand that personal affairs may sometimes intervene into the work day,” he begins, “but that does not mean you let them overwhelm you! I’ve noticed this about you Ray, every time you have a personal issue everything around you crumples. Your whole life falls apart, whether it’s a girl you’re dating or a fight with your brother or an illness, you let everything defeat you. That is not the way you will get ahead in life. Now, I understand that everyone has a different way of dealing with things, but this is your job. You need to be giving it your all.” He pauses. I am silent.
“Listen, Ray,” he continues, “it shouldn’t take you all morning to make a modification in a write up. You had that tax return for Fred Hawthorne Friday. You should have had this write up done in 5 minutes! Now our whole day is delayed and I’ve got customers calling asking when they’re going to get their deals looked at and the sales reps are sending new stuff every day; I can barely keep up. That’s why I need you, ok? That’s your job. You analyze the credit packages, write a review, submit it to me, analyze the next one, write a review, take the approved one upstairs, and take the denied one to the shredder. You’re a smart guy, you know how this stuff works! We’re a small company, you know we’re a team. We all work together here. We have one man down or not pulling his weight, the whole operation’s off, correct?”
Numbly I nod my head up and down. He pauses once more, and suddenly I realize that he is waiting for me to say something, say anything, to defend myself, my job, my life. He is waiting for me to speak up, just like Katie did. He is trying to give me a chance. I choose silence instead.
“If you don’t shape up and start working again, then I will have no choice but to let you go.”
I have dreaded these words for the past few months and now that I’ve heard them, I have an epiphany: that I don’t give a flying fuck about this job. I am pissed off for a lot of reasons. He sounds like Katie; Katie is gone; my dad’s been sick and annoying; customers are annoying; there aren’t enough weekends; my brother pisses me off; I want to play more golf; I want to drink more but not be an alcoholic; I’m horny; I’m hung over; and the fucking Steelers lost yesterday. My life couldn’t get any worse. I raise my head, look the boss straight in the eye, and say “well if that’s how it is, I quit.”
He nods, knowingly, and purses his lips. “All right, please leave in a timely manner. In fact, I better not see so much as an ass cheek streaking out the door after the 5 minutes I’m gonna give you to get the fuck outta here.” He doesn’t add “you piece of shit” but the unspoken words hang in the air, so heavily that they might as well have been said.
I walk to my desk, starting to grab whatever I can and shove it in a plastic Wal-Mart bag that I should have thrown away. Now I’m glad I didn’t. Strange isn’t it, how both the boss and Katie managed to see that, when confronted with my own shortcomings and weaknesses, I will walk away and leave someone else to clean up the mess. I am nothing but my own worst enemy.
Lane looks quizzically at me as I put on my jacket, grab my plastic bag and keys, and head for the stairs. I don’t look at her and I don’t look back. Whatever I’ve left behind can stay where it is. That’s the past and I am looking to my future.