Where's the passion?

The day was as clear as it could be. From the terrace of the tenth floor of the Equity Tower, one could see for miles and miles. Evan was standing there, in front of the glass, just millimeters away from a one hundred meter drop. But he wasn’t looking downward. He was looking across the park in front of the building and a little bit upwards. There was some sort of bird flying around, possibly after having spotted a delicious rat or something down between the trees. It was a majestic site.

 Evan didn’t move a muscle, as he looked on, mystified by the gracious movements of the bird. It was so agile and beautiful, only an event that could’ve been created by nature itself. Evan didn’t want to miss the moment for one second, as he knew it could end soon. And so it did: the bird suddenly dropped from the sky, flying downwards at top speed. It disappeared between the trees. Evan waited for several minutes, but the bird didn’t resurfaced. Maybe it had been successful. He wanted to believe that.

 Evan moved away from the glass and walked slowly towards his kitchen. Mind you, Evan had no clothes on: no socks, no underwear or shirt. Not even a towel or a baseball cap. He was naked as he always was at that time of day, which was past midday. The man was one of those people with so much money that they didn’t need to care about schedules or time in general. Besides, he loved to do his work and other commitments at night, when he felt most comfortable. During the day, he would rather sleep and eat.

 In the kitchen, Evan fixed himself a bowl of his favorite cereal. He poured some almond milk on it and then started eating it right there, just by the coffee machine. His empty cup was in the sink, as well as plates and other stuff from past days. Evan wasn’t a good cleaner and he preferred when he came back from work and everything had been cleaned and organized for him. But the lady that did that was sick and he did not want a stranger to come into his house just like that. He’d rather do it all himself.

 So after finishing his bowl of cereal, Evan did something he hadn’t done in a long while: he did the dishes and then checked his refrigerator for rotten vegetables or fruits or products past their expiration date. Nothing was out of order and he was able to get it all done in a matter of minutes. He wasn’t one for doing those sorts of things but the truth was that his work had begun to feel repetitive and boring to him. A change of pace would suit him right, as well as doing things he wasn’t used to do. The moment made him have several ideas, right on the spot.

 One might think he could’ve wanted to put on some clothes on before going ahead, but he didn’t. He decided to check every single drawer and closet in his two-story apartment and get everything he didn’t want to keep out of the house. He looked for some big garbage bags in the kitchen and then started on the living room. There wasn’t much there besides his bar, fully stocked at all times with the most expensive wines and spirits from around the world. However, he did find some underwear that wasn’t his. He just smiled and moved on.

 There were lots of drawers in his studio. He threw away a bunch of office papers that he wasn’t going to use anymore and several other notes and small objects he just hated. There were things inherited from his grandparents and parents and he really despised some of them. There was this bowl of marble balls that was supposed to be an ornament but it had always made him crazy because it reminded him of how strict his father was. When he wanted to use the marbles to play, his father would practically yell at him.

 There was never real violence on his house. After all, he didn’t really have a relationship that strong with his parents, he didn’t even see them enough during a whole year. It was rather sad but he always smiled telling the story of how he learned his parents birthday dates when he was about to enter college. The funny part, according to him, was the fact the he learned those facts by accident and not because they wanted him to know. It was like learning the birthday date of a beloved movie star. A far away star.

 He filled a whole garbage bag in the studio before moving on to his downstairs bathroom. There was not a lot there, only some old flu medicine and ointments he used sometimes when he was sick. It was funny that he had all of that there, as he would never use any of that. His parents only intervened in his life when health was an issue, probably because they knew that if he died, there would be no heir of blood running the company. As if it mattered, but it seemed important enough to them.

 After so many years, he still did things to keep them happy. He would do parties in his apartment with various friends of his family and the company, even if most of those people barely knew his name. He treated old friends of his parents and grandparents as if they were elders of great wisdom, but deep inside he knew there was no way he could really trust any of them. They were all around because of the money. Same happened with his so-called friends, vultures flying around him waiting for something to fall on their lap, a job or some money or compensation.

 In his bedroom, he threw away various pieces of clothing. Being naked, he smiled and thought of the whole situation as ridiculous. But then, he realized it wasn’t an accident that he liked being naked around his home so much. Back when he was young, Evan had been thought that the human body was practically something to be ashamed of. It was only during his years in college when he learned that shouldn’t be the case, when he started to explore his body and those of others.

 He remembered wearing ties every single day, not only to school but also in the house and to all formal events to which his parents were invited to, and there were a lot of those. His former house was one of the gigantic mansions where you might imagine a caped crusader living in. But nothing of the sort happened there. He did imagined to be an orphan many times in his life, but he was reminded many times that he did have parents and that it was important that he was their son.

 Evan’s future had always been in the company. He had no control of his work life and, to be honest, he didn’t want control over that. In college, he soon discovered he wasn’t really interested in something in particular. He liked numbers and sometimes watching movies and also music. But would have never thought of been an accountant, becoming a filmmaker or learn to play any kind of instrument. He had no passion for any of that. The only thing that ignited passion in his heart was his private life.

 He lived to invite random people to his house. He met them at galas or bars or even cellphone apps. Sometimes he would say how much money he had and other times he would create some sort of story, like the one where he was a caretaker for some rich people and how they paid him the bare minimum to take care of their houses as they sailed through the Caribbean. And people bought all those lies because they wanted and also because Evan was a very good liar.

 He got four garbage bags filled to the top. He took them all himself to the deposit downstairs, wearing a hoodie and some gym pants. As he put on the bags on a large container, he saw a picture escape one of the bags and fall softly, like a leaf, on the floor.

 Evan picked it up and saw his own face looking at him. It was a very old picture, from his early youth. He was maybe five or seven years old. And he was smiling. He seemed so happy and eager, so full of life. Evan wondered what had happened to that little boy, to his spark.

Fired

   Everything that could go wrong with that meeting had gone very wrong. The copies that Thomas had to give every single member of the board had been misprinted and he had not bothered to look before because time was of the essence and he had to arrange for the menu at lunch, the position of every single person in the room and even taking into account if they like the sun or not or if they have fallen out of grace with the big boss, something that was kind of important.

 After the copies, it was precisely the lunch menu that went to shit: the people from the catering service had mistakenly delivered a huge amount of vegan lunches instead of the pork or fish ones Thomas had ordered. It was only hours later, when none of that mattered anymore, that the lady from the service called to ask if she would be able to get the vegan lunches back because the clients that had ordered them were refusing to eat anything else. Thomas didn’t even bothered to tell her about his day.

 Besides that, the projector with every single slide from the big boss’s presentation had suddenly stopped working midway through the meeting and it had refused to turn itself back on. They called on every single technician in the building, but none of them were able to bring the machine back to life. Even worse than that, the cause of the whole mess had been some sort of power problem with the building’s wiring that had also fried the big boss’s portable computer.

 They tried to revive that too but it was obvious it wouldn’t work ever again. To call people down, he assured them he had a copy somewhere but that was bullshit. The person that managed the storage of the documents and the slides in the presentation, from that laptop, was Thomas. And he had created a copy of the document but had done so on an old removable drive that had been corrupted a long time ago with a very potent virus. Luckily, he had lost the drive at some time during the day.

 Of course, the meeting had to continue with a verbal presentation, with no images and no support documents on paper for the members of the board. Thomas had to stay put right there, next to the technicians that were still trying to save both machines. It was obvious they were doing so because the big boss was there. If it had been someone else’s computer, they would have just thrown the thing on a garbage bin and get on with it. But they couldn’t and Thomas couldn’t move because his boss had asked him, without really looking at him, to stay there.

 The outcome of that awful day was obvious: Thomas was fired at the end of that day and he was asked to grab everything of his right then. The boss told him he had been on of the worst, if not the worst, assistant he had ever had. He refused to give a recommendation of any kind and only wished Thomas luck, but not to find a new job. He told him he hoped he could get a brain or something that would work to make the world less of a pain in the ass while he was in existence.

 The words resonated with him for days, from the moment he put his belongings on a box and carried them all the way home, to the following days when he had to make a plan in order to survive with the small amount of money he had saved from that job. It was going to be very hard, especially because he was well aware that finding work was not going to be easy. As a matter of fact, finding the one, which he had been fired from, had been almost impossible and had only happened because of a friend.

 He actually felt the responsibility to tell that friend and he was very comprehensible. He told Thomas that, by what he was saying, he had simply been fired because the day had gone very wrong. Some of the things that had happened had been his fault, no doubt there, but others had been stuff that he wouldn’t have been able to control, even if he had wanted to. But his friend Fred had been most interested by the words the big boss had told Thomas when leaving.

 So interested in fact, that he asked Thomas to tell him the story, word for word, at least five times. Then, he grabbed a napkin from the place they were having a drink in and asked the waiter for something to write with. When he had to pen on his hand, he asked Thomas to say the words again. And Thomas had no problem with that because he was already a bit drunk and also because those words had resonated in his head, exactly as the man had said them, from the day he had been fired.

 His friend, when dropping him home, told him he was certain he could do something with those words. Thomas had no idea what Fred was talking about. The truth was that he only wanted to sleep and maybe just stay beneath the covers for some weeks. He wanted to have a moment to think about the next step to take in his live. It was nice of Fred to worry so much about him and about how he had been fired, but it was obvious he knew that Thomas had to move on and just see what else life had in store for him. That was his last thought before falling asleep.

 A week later, Fred called Thomas and then visited him shortly after. Thomas had been in several interviews for the last few days, but the truth was he had not been getting lucky at all. Most jobs involved things that were beneath him, and he knew that to be true. After all, he had gone places, studied a lot and spent a lot of money in education. And now he was going to ask for position in a call center and managing a register in some retail store. It was a bit degrading, to be honest.

 Fred only told him to keep trying. He seemed worried but also kind of happy. He has this expression on his face, which is very tricky to explain. Thomas didn’t ask what he was up to because he really didn’t want problems thrown at him. He couldn’t talk more drama or more denial or anything else that would make him feel like shit. He only wanted stability and it was clear that stability did not want anything to do with him. They spent the afternoon talking, Fred grinning every once in a while.

 It was kind of late when Fred finally revealed his intentions to Thomas: he had been talking with a good friend of his, a lawyer. Apparently, she was an expert on cases when people had been fired without any real reasons or in a manner that wasn’t the right one. Thomas was fearful of what Fred had planned but his friend assured him they could easily win a case against the company he had worked with. The only thing they needed was proof of the words that the big boss had told Thomas.

 They spent weeks looking for that. It seemed unlikely that the big boss would have a camera or a microphone in his office and Thomas was certain that he hadn’t been recording that dreadful evening with his cellphone or something. They tried security cameras and even other workers but at the end, they found that the answer had been literally seating there the whole time. Unbeknownst to Thomas, the big boss’s laptop had not really been destroyed by the power surge. It had been kind of working the whole time.

 The surge had opened and closed several programs, erasing some content also. But one of the programs opened was the microphone function that let people record audio with their laptop. And as the technicians had left the computer inside the big boss’s office after the meeting…

 Thomas got a good amount of money for the way he was fired, for the words that a powerful man had thrown at him. Those words had made him realized that he wasn’t worthless. But also, he realized what he wanted to do next. And he was going to need his friend Fred and that lawyer to accomplish it.

Sitting there

   Sitting there, with so many people worrying about their own business, was kind of soothing to me. It’s an awful thing to say, but I’d rather have that than a place where everyone is clearly waiting to hear what’s up with you. In other contexts, where nothing is really happening, every single ear in the vicinity would hear a bomb like that. There too but no one would really care because they are waiting themselves for some words they hope they might be hearing and other they don’t want to hear at all.

 I woke up very early that day and I have to say it was very strange to just stare at my own feet for several minutes, sitting on the edge of the bed, before I realized I wasn’t really doing anything and I needed to get going. I slowly dragged myself to the bathroom and had a shower, longer than those that I had daily. I wanted to make time feel longer, but when I put on my clothes and grabbed a glass of orange juice in the kitchen, I realized I hadn’t really spent much time and I would be getting early to work.

 It has to be said: I hate my job and the people I talk to in it. I hate my boss and the girl who’s supposed to greet people in the reception. I really hate them all. It’s not just that I don’t like them but I actually hate them, because they always seem to want more information about me than what they tell me about them. They clearly just want to gossip and my boss only wants me as a mule, as a beast to use for work and nothing else. I don’t thank him for this job at all, none of them.

  However, I need the money and no one else would hire me. So I go every single day to work, by bus, standing up and very rarely finding a seat before I reach my stop. That day I walked especially slowly in order to take my time to work. I managed to get there a little later than expected but still at least one hour before I was supposed to begin my work. I didn’t care. I turned on my computer as soon as I got in and started working right then, as I needed to make my lunchtime valuable.

 I was happy when my stomach started growling, towards the middle of the day. It meant I was hungry, of course, but also that I hadn’t been interrupted by anyone all morning. Not a single stupid question or a greeting that had no real intention of being kind. Nothing at all for almost five hours and that was simply the best time I had ever had in that place. I was able to reach some clients, fixing some documents I had to correct and even do a couple of things ahead of time to free my schedule even more. Other would not appreciate that but I didn’t really care.

 The moment people around me started talking louder and stood up to walk towards the elevators, I realized it was my time to run. I went down by foot, through the relative darkness of the stairs and I reached the main gate in a very short time. Luckily, the place I had to go to was nearby, only a couple of blocks away, so my time would be spent in the best way possible. My stomach growled the whole walk towards the clinic, but I ignored it by smiling at the beautiful weather.

 The sun was very high up in the sky and there were a couple of fluffy white clouds there but nothing to prevent the sun from reaching all the people below that wanted that beautiful day to last forever. I was a bit sad to get to the clinic, a place that should’ve been a lot less dark than it was, but I decided to just grab my number and sit down as I waited. The place was not a real hospital or something like that. It was more like a center to get help, something much more informal.

 That was a good thing because I had always hated the smell and the sounds of hospitals. They make my skin crawl. Maybe it’s because every time you’re in a hospital it’s because something wrong is happening with you or someone else. Not even the food is decent in a place like that. So I really don’t like those places. Burt that one was a lot warmer, both physically and in the décor. It wasn’t blue and white but orange and red and green and all sorts of other colors.

 Maybe that’s because people with children tend to go there. I saw at least three very young mothers with their babies, waiting for their turn to speak with a counselor. It has to be said there were not that many doctors there. People were not waiting to have a checkup or something like that. It was more of a social thing in general. I looked at those girls for a long time, and I realized many of them seemed ashamed to be there but they didn’t go anywhere until their names were called.

 I, on the other hand, was there for something between a medical procedure and a psychosocial thing. It’s hard to talk about it but at least I went there. The point of it all is I waited for about twenty minutes until a nurse, a very tall one, called my name and asked me to follow her. She asked me to wait in a very small room. She came back shortly with what she needed. A syringe and a small plastic bag. She asked for my arm and in seconds she extracted a whole syringe of blood from me. The nurse asked me to wait there, as someone would be with me shortly.

 Another woman came in and talked to me about all those things I knew about but I had ignored. She was very nice and kind and even tried to make me asked her questions. Just to be kind, I did ask a couple of things, of which I already knew the answer to. When I stepped out of the clinic, I still had a half an hour to have something to eat. Luckily, there was a fried chicken place in the way to work. I sat there and ate several pieces, with fries and a large soda. I was going to be late but I didn’t care at all.

 I sat on the restaurant’s terrace, where my face could feel the scorching rays of the sun. I didn’t mind at all. I was just so happy eating my chicken, getting all greasy and having such a blast eating and enjoying the sun. It was one of those short moments in life when you actually feel happy, truly happy. I did not feel my happiness then was artificial or the cause of something someone else had done. It was all about me and how good I felt for making a good decision and pairing it up with fried chicken.

 When I got to the office, the boss called me to his office to basically yell at me for being fifteen minutes late. Other people were still talking about the gossip they had heard at lunch, no one was really working, but I was the one being called to the boss’ office in order to be yelled at. I let him do that for a couple of minutes, not really paying attention, just nodding and saying, “yes” every so often. But then, he said something I cannot remember but that phrase somehow struck a chord deep inside me.

 I told him to "fuck off" and then went back to my desk. I did expect to be fired but nothing happened.  Actually, nothing has happened since then, almost two months ago. And now I’m in that waiting room again, waiting for them to tell me if there’s something wrong with me or not. I’m very nervous, of course, but somehow I feel as free as that day eating fried chicken. Because I defended myself once and I did something for me on the same day. I’m kind of proud of those things.

 The nurse calls my name. She’s the same very tall woman. She has such a kind and beautiful smile on her face. It’s so soothing to see someone greeting you like that. She asks me to follow her and we end up in a different room than the one the time before. She asks me to wait for the counselor.

 As I wait, I notice the pictures around the room. They are personal photos and items, collected through the counselor’s lifetime. She really does feel that place, that tiny office, to be her place. I hope I feel that way about a place too, someday. Or something else.

One kind of Christmas

   Last Christmas, he came out of the bathroom disguised as Santa Claus. I laughed at first but then realized it was supposed to be a sexy thing between the two of us. He did a striptease for me and then began to pull some presents of a big red bag he had brought out of our bedroom with him. A couple were sex toys, intended for both of use whenever we wanted to spice things up in the bedroom, not that we ever needed that. But one of the gifts was something else, something I wasn’t expecting.

 It was a little red box with only a simple ring inside. It had a smooth surface, resembling a little donut made of silver. When I saw it closer the next day, I smiled thinking he had been a very smart man by buying the one that I liked and then he would keep the gold one. Each ring was unique, as according to them we were different and that made us a better couple, but inside each little piece of jewelry, there was the name of the other one, the other person forming the relationship.

 That way, he would always be close to me and I would always be close to him. I changed from been excited and, frankly, very horny, to being on the edge of my seat, crying in silence, as I had never thought such a gift would come my way. I mean, yes, we had talked about it before but it had never been serious at all. I had no stable job, living from one thing to the next and his salary was just enough to survive for a month. His bank account was always empty by the time he received his next paycheck.

So marriage or whatever one would call it, wasn’t precisely something we had been planning on. We didn’t even lived together, not exactly at least. He would spend a couple of weeks in my place and then I would spend some time in his place. He always left socks or underwear in my place, in my drawers and on the washing machine. And my favorite sweater always had a certain tendency to end up in his closet, although I was certain that had to do with him loving it as much as I did.

 We wore different sizes of clothing but we sometimes shared, especially in the morning when it was difficult to find what one had wore the night before. I had answered phone calls or the door many times wearing only one of his work shirts. He always told me not to do that because then he would need to either iron them or send them to the cleaners, and none was a choice he enjoyed. But then he gave me mixed signals when he had sex on the couch just because he had seen me wearing nothing but that. It was funny and exciting, two words that described what we had together.

 The reason why I didn’t accept his proposal right away was the fact that his company was sending him far away, to a symposium or something like that in a city with beaches and many beautiful people to watch. He tried to convince me to go and I needed no convincing at all, the problem was the money, as I had no savings to just take a short holiday. I had to look for work everyday and there was no option for me to stop doing that, unless I won the lottery or something as insane as that.

 So I asked him to give me some time to think about it, because he wasn’t going to be there for a while and I had to be sure I wanted to change our relationship in such a way. I made it very clear that I didn’t wanted to end the relationship and that my decision wasn’t motivated by me not loving him anymore or something of the sorts. It was exactly the opposite: I loved him so much that I really wanted to make the best choice for us both, as marrying would be a huge thing for the both of us.

 He left for his symposium the day after Christmas. We had been in bed for hours before that, making love but also kissing, holding each other and enjoying each other’s silence. I loved him deeply and wanted the best for him, I really did. And I knew he had asked me to marry him because he was in love with me and he wanted, in a way, to make sure what we had together was never going to change. It was understandable so that’s why we tried not to talk about it too much, until I told him one-way or the other.

 Oddly enough, I felt devastated when the taxi came and he left in it, smiling to me, trying to cheer me up. But it was right then when I realized my mind had been made up for a while. Who was I kidding? Yes, money and all that stuff is always a problem but, there are some things that you just have to do, no matter what and being sure to stay with the person that you love forever, is one of those things. So I went up the stairs, running to my apartment, and I wrote him I would be happy to marry him.

 He didn’t say a word to me until two hours later when he made a bunch of people on his plane dance and cheer because of our engagement. He told me he would have a glass of wine and celebrate in his hotel room jumping around. Sure enough, he did call me later that night, while I was getting to go to bed. He was so happy and looked even more beautiful than always. It was contagious to see him smile so much, asking all sorts of silly questions and wishing me to dream with angels and with him. And I did have a dream about him, a really good one.

 One week passed and we tried to write each other everyday but it was very difficult. His office had decided to stay a while there after the symposium, as their whole goal had been to open an office in that city. In order to do that, they proposed him a raise in exchange for more work and a lot of effort put into making the whole new office thing work. According to his estimates, which he told me half asleep, the whole thing would take at least a month, maybe even a little more.

 He tried to make smile after telling me the bad news but I just couldn’t. Deciding had seemed easy once I knew hat I felt but then I realized I actually needed him to be around in order for the whole thing to work. He had asked me to look at restaurants to reserve in order for us and our parents to celebrate after getting formally married, but it all seemed pointless with him so far away. Besides, he always looked too tired or too distracted to talk about anything related to the wedding. So why bother?

 Then, the unthinkable happened. As his stay on the beach city turned into its third week, I received a phone call that changed my life. A company had been looking for me because they had an interest in new talent to come work with them. Apparently, they had gotten a copy of my resume and that had been enough for them to call me and schedule an appointment. I was very nervous throughout the whole thing but the people seemed very nice and comprehensive of everything I told them.

 Strangely, the day he decided to call and tell me his office had asked him to stay there to head the new office, the people from the interview had called me to offer me a full-time job which paid more than I would ever imagine someone would pay to a creative person. I almost didn’t have the courage to tell him, but I did. We had to talk about it; we had to make a choice. Either he stayed in his old job, something that made him mad and depressed, or I would stay jobless for longer, maybe forever.

 We decided to think about it and talk another day. Three days passed until we got the chance to talk again. He had been busy and, frankly, me too. He told me he had decided to accept the job and I told him my first day was already scheduled.

 Nothing was heard in either end of the call, for a while. His face was grim and so was mine. We did not want to day what we knew had already happened, because it would mean it was a fact. We didn’t wanted to accept things had already changed, and that was too late for us.