The mundane motions repeated every night for the last seven months and eighteen days somehow seemed more ordinary tonight. I worked in a typical office filled with dull gray cubicles, desks, chairs, floors and ceilings as a data entry specialist. I basically did the work of an intern, with a title meant to make me believe otherwise. After four years of the same mind-numbing grind, my work warranted a promotion. I was the perfect candidate to climb the company ladder if not for my boss, a slimy little worm of a man who used me as a front to keep his salacious interoffice relations under wraps.
My routine continued every night at five o’clock as I sat in an hour of bumper-to-bumper traffic on my way home through the city. The honking horns of drivers convinced of their supremacy on the road were the only sounds on my long and otherwise silent drive. Endless rows of fifteen story buildings narrowed my line of sight to only the vehicles in front of me. It took me two hours to inch my way out of the city into the suburbs that bordered farms and vineyards. My small house sat in on the edge of a boring neighborhood with an elementary school two streets back. Small munchkins learned their ABC’s during the day, but the moonlit mask of midnight attracted high school punks with their experimental drugs. Sure, I was tired of this predictable life—tired as hell, but I guess I brought it upon myself. I couldn’t go back in time and undo the things I had done.
When I finally made it home, I tossed my old briefcase to the floor by the door and slipped my sensible wingtip shoes off next to it. I hung my coat on the rickety old coat hanger that had belonged to her mother. Every night I wondered if the weight of even my light jacket would crumble the ancient wooden remnant, but it remained steadfast. Before now, I had never cared much for the thing. I tried countless times to convince her to get rid of it, that we should get something shiny and new. She defended the piece and its sentimental value as if her mother was holding it up. That was probably the only way it was still standing. Now, I saw it less as a hand-me-down relic and more as a piece of her I couldn’t imagine ever letting go. I still held out hope she would return, even if just to leave again with the old coat hanger. At least I’d be able to see her again.
Almost without thinking, I rolled up my shirtsleeves and went straight to work making one of her favorite dinners, setting a formal table with the green napkin and placemat that we had received as a wedding gift. Green was her favorite color and coincidentally matched her incredibly expressive eyes. I wanted to be swallowed whole by those soft green portals and swim the wandering currents of her mind. I could tell when she was thinking about something peculiar because she had the slightest smirk in the right corner of her mouth. She was almost always smirking.
The formal setting at dinner was her favorite. She said it redirected our conversations to something meaningful as opposed to the empty jabber we often overheard at company parties. She never looked down on my coworkers for it, she just preferred more. Required more. I didn’t appreciate the thoughtful conversation then. In my mind it was all jabber. Now, I’d do anything for a conversation with her again. There are many things she used to do that I now performed ritually with hope that I would somehow feel her with me again. Just as she would, I wrapped a half-folded apron around my waist before preparing the meal and placed a lid over the pot of water on the stove after turning the heat to high.
Soon, angry hissing accompanied the water as it boiled over to the hot surface of the stove like it was causing a scene because I hadn’t been paying enough attention to it. I never watched the pot as closely as she had. “I have more important things to do than stare at a pot of water until bubbles appear,” I would spit at her, though I knew I was to blame for the mess. She only ever responded with silence when I hissed like the boiling water, but I knew right away my temper had gotten the best of me. I always knew, but that never stopped me.
Leaving the mess to clean up after dinner, I continued with the meal almost exactly the way she prepared it. I served myself a hefty portion of fettuccine alfredo beside a smaller portion of garlic green beans. She put garlic on anything she could get away with. If it would improve the flavor of her cereal, she would have tossed garlic on that too. She always encouraged me to take smaller portions of pasta, but I never failed to cut off that conversation quickly with a sharp remark about how I was a grown man and could do what I wanted.
