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 ^{(it's beta!)}

STANDING THERE, AT THE BAR, he wondered how it was that he had gotten there; in front of a counter brown and green and dingy; next to a series of groaning bar stools that swiveled reluctantly, occupied by a series of groaning working men who, breaking the pattern, drank with a fraction of said reluctance. His breathing was slow, deliberate, as though he had been weaned from support not eight minutes ago, where the intern on duty had done quite a number on his esophagus while removing the half-inch tube. His eyes, green, were neither glazed nor glistening as he stood there at the bar, opposite the partially-obscured reflection of a man in a grey suit, his face hidden behind a half-empty bottle of 1962 Manna Cheviots wine.

The bartender, who was cleaning his twelfth highball glass of the day with his faded blue towel, gave him the indifferent look that bartenders usually gave vagrants or reluctant protagonists who stood at bars, not unlike the look a cat gives when you’ve decided to frantically wave an old catnip mouse in front of it, and now all one had to do was picture the cat bald, with a neatly trimmed moustache and an apron.

“Will you be having a seat.” The bartender said with practiced interest.

The green eyes moved back and forth and tilted his head slightly. He had a seat. He had a scotch, and an Arnold Palmer; and he drank.

There are few things quite as depressing as eating alone in a busy restaurant, and five of those eight things involve bodily disfigurement. Two of them involve infant animals and boots. Many believe the advent of the ‘drive-thru’ came as the obvious next step in the streamlining of so-called fast food, but the final say in the matter is that it was invented because the vast majority of people find the idea of ordering and devouring their lunches and late-afternoon-accidentally-worked-through-noon meals solitary, whether or not of their own volition, absolutely mortifying. This feeling is accordingly compounded when one does so at a fast food establishment – no matter how distinctly themed the place may be. Researchers first proposed this theory when they observed mice who, when put in a room with glass walls, and outside those walls were other mice milling about in twos and threes with their miniature iced coffees and scaled cafeteria trays, refused to eat several morsels of cheese, packaged in staggered levels of sophistication beginning with greasy wax wrapping. Instead, the solitary mouse sat down with deliberate impatience, alternating between nibbling the cheese, unwrapping and rewrapping it, and shooting glances at the clock, as though a mild work acquaintance was becoming inconveniently late. Eventually, ninety-nine percent of the mice tested stuffed the cheese into their mouths and paced to the exit, muttering something about getting back to the grind before the closing bell. The remaining one percent died within twenty-eight minutes, presumably of excruciating social embarrassment. Fortunately, the mammalian species Homo sapien sapien evolved with an increased tolerance of such extremes, largely due to the practiced act of rationalizing one’s utterly soul-crushing conditions.

This story does not begin in such a situation. Realistically, dramatic change does not happen over a distinctly abrupt period of time. It could, of course, begin with him eating alone at a restaurant, much as he has done for the past seventeen years of his life, eating slowly and deliberately and with no visible notion whatsoever that his tongue can experience flavor. It could begin at his office, where his single grey suit and his single black tie blend in so well that people there are often greeted by the sight of a floating novelty coffee mug. It could begin at the city park, with him sitting at a plastic bench, smoking as quietly as possible and at an acceptable, guilt-free distance from the children’s playground. But, for the sake of being able to circumvent describing those surroundings and the people that navigate around him there, this story will begin in an empty, wood-paneled room, lit by murky yellow lights. One wall, the wall which he will lean against, is lined with a host of empty, dark-bordered picture frames. This, as he will later attest, is his situation number eight.

Internally, Adam admits that his life has been unremarkable. He has gotten drunk once; used recreational drugs twice, and has been kissed by a female precisely eight-and-a-half times, with the half-a-time being that he was the unfortunate, unwilling end of a high school girl truth or dare. Quite frankly, the feeling had been mutual. However, it is these slow Sunday afternoons that get to him – he finds that, with a disturbing notion, that what he feels is now routine; the sun goes down outside the room and, regardless of how he has felt at ten or twelve or one-o’-clock, he is then tired and alone and forced into another night with yesterday’s chow fun and Tuesday’s deli salad. He doesn’t even use chopsticks.

He sat on the white carpet floor of the second room. It was the kind of white that attracted a disproportionate amount of spills despite the fact that it was really only ever lived on by a rather neat and quiet owner. A spaghetti stain had planted itself defiantly next to where Adam sat, almost an angry, radioactive orange under the tungsten lights Adam had installed. The spill itself was not noteworthy – Adam had simply forgotten to look underfoot for Sicura, the grey, fuzzy slipper any tenant was sure to be wearing should they ever forget to close their window after seven-thirty. However, the attempted removal of the stain in question had nearly driven him mad – the nearby residents had taken to calling those eight days the Series of Incidents, thusly capitalized in the occasional internal monologue or anecdotal flashback.

He got up, slung over his neck, to answer the doorbell, picking thoughtfully at the last piece of shrimp at the bottom of the take-out box as he walked over. A light rapping could be heard at the door. Adam opens the door and, for a solid eight minutes, standing there on the terrace in his socks, he expects nothing. He looks down, and there is a cigarette butt on the ground, its smoke dancing with the cold, brittle air.

He spoke softly, graciously, like he had spent his life talking to delicate 4th century porcelain vases. Excusing himself from the company of the governor’s wife, he leaned over the nearby hors d’oeuvre table, adjusting his tie in the reflection of an abandoned champagne tray. Katharine had vocally disapproved of the tie in all of its black and crisp-dollar-colored glory, but he had walked out of the apartment with it on anyway. His hair, normally matte black and kinetically unkempt, had been slicked back for three hours of the total eight that he did so in the entirety of a fiscal year. He considered contacting Guinness on the prospect of submitting an entry for the world’s longest formal ass-kissing event.

Antoinette from the District Attorney now engaged him in conversation, and he gave his polite attention, chiming in between nibbles of a wayward pastry that yes, the turnout for the recall election had been rather disappointing, and that he is in total agreement with the idea of a new pol-sci wing for the H. Newton Library and no, he has yet to see the new Dadaist interpretation of Death of A Salesman at the Donathan but he is excited to buy tickets for him and Kate when the crowds calm down a little. There is a pause, and Antoinette waves emphatically at a friend a distance behind him and hurriedly excuses herself to greet an old friend whom she had ignored until the opportune moment. He is left to his own accord, shifting his weight from one Oxford cap to the other, and he delicately plucks a champagne flute from a passing waiter. Ambient classical music plays somewhere, and he sips the drink.

Outside, Adam sits on the monolithic stone steps, which overlook the city park; arguably it is the one place where a person could find anything resembling nature in the city. Collar and tie askew, he leans back on the step behind him, and he can hear the murmuring of the remains of the party back inside. He hears his name, but makes no movement towards acknowledging it. He breathes in deep the two-o’-clock air. The clock tower at the center of his view rises above the tree line, like an ancient oak, and its limbs strike the time against the night.

At around four in the morning, he excuses himself, sober, from the company of the men at the table. Their ties are loosened, and the talk of fiscal decentralization had drifted off into what-I-wouldn’t-do-if-that-bitch-was-dead. There is no sign of the press present. Adam picks up his coat at the door, and he walks through the park, careful to step around the occasional homelessness. He counts eight oak trees before he is to the cemetery, and instead of continuing to Fourth and Solace he keeps to his left, past the blackened, burned gates. If he knows where he is going, he isn’t admitting it to himself. He hears himself talking, in a casual tone he has forgotten how to repeat, and he talks about his day at work and about the man on the corner of the business district with the cardboard sign. For some reason, he is holding a cigarette, and his breath. And as suddenly as it came, the movement left him, and he walks out the Tenth street exit onto the sidewalk, and he makes his way home.