Monday morning, woke up with a headache, a jarring pain in his back and a slight toothache, one of his molars, maybe. The apartment was cold, icy air seeped between the cracks, percolating through the frosted windows and creaking floorboards, their silent, delicate fingers tugging hungrily at his skin as he lumbered to the bathroom. Chipped tiles and a malfunctioning toilet he’s been trying to fix for ages, a tiny tub and aged shower curtains that were, at one point, white adorned his lonely bathroom. A single toothbrush sat in a cup, he turned the hot water on, metallic knob painfully cold to the touch, sent a shiver down his spin, digging beneath the shirt he slept in and his boxers.
He’s bound by company regulations to the same white, collared shirt, the same fading red tie, the same worn and beleaguered suit, the same listless shoes, the same morose and repetitive lifestyle no one warned him of back in college. He counts, in fact, the number of days he spend toiling in that godforsaken cubicle, bent over numbers and papers, gum wrappers and coffee cups, for some invisible purpose. That’s a lie, a lie he tells himself, a lie to maintain his sanity, because he knows, knows in the back of his mind that there is no purpose.
He stepped out at a quarter to eight, slightly early but not too much to make a difference. Mass transit eats time, the mysterious underground tunnels swallowing eons and eons of time, some secret it keeps, mute, dank and alluring as rickety, squealing trains traversed its tunnels. He waved to Jeff, his doorman, a quick nod to Ms. Bentley walking her dogs (the frail, old woman amazed him, up earlier than he, quicker and far more nimble than he, owns more dogs that he has shoes), caught a flash of April, a waitress from the corner diner that haunts his imagination, something he’s too embarrassed to think about without the deep, dark cover of night and sleep. He’s always wanted to stop inside, but never mustered up the courage to even maintain a momentary glance in her direction. So, he buys coffee from a deli a block further.