Anti-Epiphanies

Outside it was snowing. The tops of the cars just barely peaked out of the snowdrift encasing their doors, faintly lit by the orange streetlights, half-obscured by the foggy windows of the office building, the one on the 5th floor. 

It was too late to bother checking the time, an action rendered unnecessary by the yawns and groans of the two stragglers who’d unwittingly chosen to spend the night. The quiet was punctured by light cursing from one, no doubt frantically scrolling through the News app illuminating his face like some 21st century ghost. Highway 4-0-something was shut down, telephone lines entangled in hundred-year-old trees, winds, blizzard, bad news—the whole thing was punctuated by the fact that the windows were too frozen to flip the lock, let alone push open and scream Help! out of. Across the room the other one was settling in for the night, jacket over her stomach and legs thrown over the arms of the longest couch in the office, which was just short enough to prop her head up 19 degrees with respect to the cushions, a fact made clear by much grunting and shuffling.

Then, silence. The lights flickered, going out occasionally, but the heat was still on, as I could make out from the comfortable snoring of 21st-century-ghost in the other corner, passed out on a similarly uncomfortable armchair. I looked around the room, an open office plan to encourage collaboration with coworkers, which only worked here because the work was so rote you could type with one hand and converse with the other. I sat down at my computer, leaning forward in hopes of chasing the blurriness from my eyes in what was quickly becoming a losing battle. My arms ached from the awkward position the sharp desk edges forced them in, though I trudged on through the emails and requests—not that they were particularly hard to understand, but the blankets of snow outside seemed to have taken a similar effect on my head, reading the same sentence till the words made no more sense than Polish, slowly falling, down…

Ah. My arms were killing me. I lifted my head and examined the pale mark it had impressed on my forearms. Well, that explained it. Judging by the rapidly decreasing visibility from the windows, the blizzard had only picked up. Soft snores floated in the air, and I pushed back the chair, rolly wheels rattling uncomfortably in the silence, though my companions were still knocked out cold. I walked into the break room, hoping some intern had found other work to prioritize, but a half-full coffee pot sitting in the sink was nowhere to be seen. Somewhere in the distance a car honked. I opened the blinds; through this window you could at least make out a long line of cars stretched out along the highway across from here, anxious to get home, or leave home, we all take different paths, don’t we. When I looked inside after that, the orangey glow of the streets made everything here seem a sickly blue, algae-tinted-like. I set the empty mug down.

I decided to explore.

The office space wasn’t large, off the elevator there was a short hallway with doors to the conference rooms on either side and the break room to the right, opening out onto the office plan. I decided to take a left, savouring the empty, singular sound of my shoes on the speckled, flat tiles, like the ones in my elementary-school. Now there was a gold plate in front of me: “Mr. Haines, Office Manager”. 

I pushed the door open with a little too much force, the door recoiling from the knob’s bump into the perpendicular wall. Not that I was allowed to, but I hadn’t really been in here except for Haines’s first day on the job, three years ago, and I wouldn’t have remembered it except for the way he moved on his seat, adjusting and shlumping and readjusting and turning a little this way and that; it made me want to tape his arms down. I walked around the overly-large mahogany desk and sat on his chair, swivelling on its satisfyingly silent wheels. I let my feet rest on the desk, which to his credit was marked by pencil marks and eraser smudges and a hole someone had drilled in with a pencil years ago, the only other adornment an outdated telephone and a picture of Mrs. Haines and Haines Jr. in a simple silver frame. Underneath his desk was a plastic portable drawer, the first one you’d see in an IKEA display of office ware. Whether it was my feet on the desk, the emptiness of the office, or that fact it was 2 am on a Tuesday and I’d not received my paycheck for the last week, I reached in without a second thought, and brought out the first thing my fingers had landed on. 

Now, I’d taken minimal accounting classes in university, their sole purpose being to fulfil requirements, but written on the cheque was a statement made out to a Delaney Morris, for enough money to pay 6 months of my rent, which probably meant 2 of hers. I pulled the drawer out further and found several cheques like it, each with the same amount, each addressed 2 months apart, as if in preparation. “Nancy Drew, you’ve done it again,” I snickered to myself in a state of 2-am delirium. I leaned over and pressed the voicemail button, a frantic woman on the other end snapping me out of my reverie. 

“Tommy, you’ve gotta stop ignorin’ me. Rain here misses you—don’t you now, boy,—come on, get over here—Tommy, I don’t want the money, I want you to come out with me, I’ll get a job, I’ll be a good wife, you can’t stop—you gotta stop ignoring me! I’m, I’m at my wits’ end, Tommy, you better pick this phone up right now! Or I’m gonna call Mrs. Haines, that bitch, you’ll see, I would be better,” and on and on, a slight Southern drawl slicking off the ends of the woman’s echoey words, as if she was speaking in a large chamber, or an expensive East End apartment with rent thrice as expensive as mine. I hung the phone up and slipped the cheques back in, having had enough of Mr. Haines’ scandals for the time being. Guess he was fidgety for a good reason.

In any case, it was more than I bargained for. I gently closed the door, and let my mind drift as I walked along the hall, observing each golden plate with engravings that may have matched their current users, depending on the grace with which the last one exited. I couldn’t have walked far, we weren’t no Grand Budapest Hotel, but soon I was in front of the bathrooms. Men’s-women’s. The wall separating the two marked my stopping point, frozen and frankly unable to move any further, as the dripping taps echoed back threefold, carrying with them the calls of boys in the dressing rooms in the gym, jeers, real tough talk on the part of the Teachers’ Darling, on what he’d like to do to Jolene over there, who looked miserable pretending not to hear anything on our side of the wall. More laughter and raucous applause. Last I heard he’d been arrested for petty theft, though he’d always seemed to me more interested in sticking his hands in the honeypot—not that they realized they’d been one in the first place.

Thinking of school reminded me of her. Jane Ferra, wannabe film director, a walking directors’ encyclopedia particularly of Tarantino and Ozu, complete with unabashedly pagoda shoulder-ed jackets and Doc Martens. We’d met briefly in high school, and seriously in university, where she’d shed the shoes but not the attitude maintained in part by those ridiculous jackets. She would drag me to the last Western-style bar in town, downing a drink a minute and fast-talking anyone who dared try and stop her, and come to at 2 in the afternoon babbling obscure trivia and notes from study sessions two days ago like it was her in that shower scene in Psycho. But despite the rumours graciously bestowed on her by our fellow students she was the most genuine person I knew. She called bullshit out when she saw it, but was never afraid to admit her fallibility, admitting to me from a viewpoint we’d found the night before finals that sometimes she felt like a fraud, like the more she learned, devoured technique and critique and knowledge, the more she wished she’d never started. Not for nothing I’d see her car pulling out the garage from my window, driving, somewhere, finding a beach to lay down, letting the water pull her in, just a little bit. 

I don’t know why, but I never really told her anything about myself. Our friendship stemmed from late nights and talks on subjects neither of us could truly understand. Come to think of it the last person I’d told anything important to my person about was a girl I’d stopped speaking to before high school had even ended, for no other reason than that we’d grown apart.

As I let my mind drift I wandered the place aimlessly, eyes drifting, lifting and discarding the engraved names beside each door, no more than a second needed to absorb its well-memorized contents. Had the place always been so small? The clock on the wall said 2:47 am. Bummer.

I chose the next door I stopped in front of and shoved my way in, remembering to hang on the knob a little so as not to wake myself up too much. On the slightly mismeasured wooden table sat a short stack of manila envelopes, that one strewn a little too far across the table, the others a little too wrinkled to suggest a civil handling. The “confidential” stamped across each envelope became, with each step, as clearer as my resolution was fading. I thought back to my teenage years.

I could recall, on the cusp of my 19th birthday, realizing I’d never done anything “crazy”. I’d never even dived backwards off the board of a swimming pool. I lived my life through proxy, in the books I read about people who would’ve done that and more in a heartbeat. So on the first day of being 19, I’d packed a small lunch in my bag, set off on my bike, and promised myself not to return until I’d found something worth discovering.

My birthday is in August. My city was built 10 years ago. All that cumulated in farmland as far as the eye could see in 30 degree Celsius heat. Needless to say it was the last time I attempted anything as dare-devilish as that.

I tore open the first envelope. At first it was difficult to make sense of the document, having been scribbled on by various frustrated executives and directors whose handwritings had varying levels of readability. The best piece of information I got was the printed statement at the top, detailing the date and time of that document’s birth, which upon thinking back was the day before the meeting that had occurred two weeks ago with much shouting as heard by the rest of us outside the thin glass walls. I blinked hard to fight back the dryness of my eyes. Then I walked around the table, to the unfortunate envelope whose contents had been anger-inducing enough to justify such an unruly journey. Inside that one was another document detailing a financial report. But not of this year—this one described the ins and outs of the office from two years ago. Our assets, and liabilities. 

To put it bluntly, we were royally effed. Issues presented themselves with increasing complexity in every number I looked at. Not enough of this, too much of that, and no time to fix anything worth fixing for fear of worsening something else. I closed the binder and sat on a chair rolled astray, likely a result of the same meeting. The greyish cushions protested underneath my weight, but I leaned back, hands on my face, closed my eyes.

I could remember the turmoil that my choosing of post-secondary programs brought down on the household. In front of me were not choices, as every cheery representative liked to say, but life paths. Business—suits, numbers, quarterly this and fiscal that, analysts with graver words than their faces betrayed, smart steel offices and a steady pay. Literature—writing and rhetoric, a piece of myself, just as much certainty in my love of it as my uncertainty in my career doing what, my mother would ask. Doing whatever she loves, my father would reply. Meanwhile I would be desperately trying to hold the pieces together with some elementary-grade glue. You’ll never be happy like this. I’d given in.

I stood up, grabbing the table to steady myself as the wheels wobbled uncertainly under me. The clock in the hall ticked its lullaby keeping Thing 1 and Thing 2 sound asleep in the thin couches not fully stuffed. Standing in the hall and looking out onto the office space, I saw my monitor light up a few feet away with emails that, if I hadn’t noticed, I likely wouldn’t’ve cared about. It felt good to finally admit it to myself. Outside the snow had quieted, settling in a thick quilt over the lawn.

It felt like the world was asleep, and each time my shoes tapped on the floor I felt guilty of disturbing such a rare peace. I closed my monitor, and took only my jacket.

I used to love staying up in these ungodly hours. When I knew I was the only one awake in that house, and for just those hours, I wasn’t anybody to anyone, didn’t owe anyone anything. It felt like my spirit could repossess my body for those hours before material stresses weighed it down again. I felt like I could close my eyes and fly.

It made me think of Jane. Maybe I would call her up. She would drive up in that Camaro she’s wanted since we were 17, shades on, smile bright. We’d cruise into the city a few days later, meet at swanky restaurants and have a grand old time in a rented apartment above the couple who always fights and the prodigy violinist to the left. We’ll find some movie mogul, pitch him a deal, get ourselves a production going. We’ll be blinded by the cracking bulbs on the red carpet, burning themselves into our eyelids for the rest of time.

Outside the snow had stopped. I exhaled, puffs forming and dematerializing in the same instant. Slowly, but not hesitantly, I stepped onto the ice, cracks spiderwebbing beneath my feet. When I looked up, the headlights on the highway twinkled in the distance, shining, through the tears on my eyelashes.