Blinding Light

“You work for me. I want everyone to know that”, shouted Mr. Pondscum. “You belong to me while your uncle isn’t here.” 

We were on the 50th floor of a New York business sales floor. I came from Canada to work for my uncle who owned this corporation. 

“Yes sir anything you say.” I replied.

“Today will be your training day. You only get one. You have tables to wipe, floors to sweep and food to get. Now go down to 1st avenue and get me a Leo’s bagel.”

He said that while eating a bagel but I didn’t question that.

“But I came here to be a manager”, I pleaded.

“Move it!”

This being my 1st day in New York City, I came to realize that 1st ave was 40 minutes away on foot so I caught a taxi. Once I got the bagel I received a call.

“Forget the bagel, I want a giant pretzel now. I need it in 10 mins or you’re fired.” Mr. Pondscum hung up.

I looked for a pretzel shop but they weren’t as common in NYC as bagels. On the taxi ride back to the office, I kept on the lookout for any pretzel stands but no luck. As I got out of the taxi I saw a small crowd to my left. There was a street performer with long hair. He was contortionist. He put his one leg behind his head, then the other leg and then criss-cross arms around his body.

I read a small sign with his name: Ahmed the Human Pretzel. I dropped him a $200 tip and told him to come with me. He asked me where I was taking him. I said I had no time to explain. I tried to grab him except he twisted his body and evaded me very time. So I gave up.

“You gave up?”, said Mr. Pondscum. “Where is my pretzel?”

“Well the guy couldn’t, I couldn’t get a hold of-“

“What are you going on about? What were you doing before your uncle gifted you this position?”

“Well before I graduated from college I got a year-long internship with the one of top companies in my field. After that I returned to school briefly but decided to try my chance at opening a business instead. I created an app that helped restaurants sell off their extra food that would usually throw away at the end of the day. Then I sold the app and returned to school-“

“I don’t want to hear it! You privileged garbage! If you weren’t your dad’s brother’s mother’s daughter’s brother’s nephew, then I would’ve fired you a long time ago…which was an hour ago when you first got here. Now get out of my sight!” This was when I realized Mr. Pondscum had anger problems.

I left his corner office and went back to the sales floor where my desk was assigned. I was suppose to manage the sales team but nobody told me anything. I tried to talk to the person next to me but they looked the other way when I spoke. If I stood in front of someone, they’d spin their chair around. 

Later in the day I overheard everyone saying they were having a fancy dinner at Dorsia that night. I asked some of them if I could come too but they would just put their hand in face to block me out. If I moved my head to get a better angle, then they would plug their ears with their fingers as I talked. That night I went to Shake Shack by myself which happened to be directly across from Dorsia. I could see all my coworkers having fun and laughing together. Turns out they were laughing at me after seeing how lonely I was. At least my food was better than theirs.

The first week of work was like this day in and day out. No one talked to me and they were having a great time doing it. They thought I got this job through nepotism. You’d figure they be nice to me so I wouldn’t get their asses fired. They were right I was too nice.

My uncle finally arrived at the end of the week and invite to dinner at his place. He lived in one of those super scrappers or “pencil towers” looking down on Central Park. The glass elevator shot up kind of like an amusement park ride so I rode it 5 times in a row. Every tenant had their own floor and my uncle lived on the 60th floor.

“Quit. If you don’t like it there”, said my uncle Mr. Tsai.

“But I came here to work for you.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something else out. You can stay or go it’s up to you. I can always find someone else.”

We had dinner at a long 50 foot wooden table during sundown. As the food came out my uncle put on some sunglasses and told me to do the same.”

“Put these on. We get no sun protection being this high. It was an engineering flaw they didn’t see coming.”

Suddenly the sun was in clear view and a focused beam of light entered tthrough the windows and bounced all around. The light sprayed around the apartment like a disco ball except the light was blinding. 

“Just close your eyes and eat your dinner. It’ll be over soon. It only happens once a day.”

I did what he said. However a waiter walked around the table and caught a stray light beam in his eye and bumped into the table. The table dislodged into the direct sunlight and caught on fire. I couldn’t see anything but it was starting to get really hot. To say the least, this kind of ruined dinner. 

As we flew away in a helicopter from the smoking building, I continued to talk to my uncle over the headset radio.

“They call it God’s blinding light. A light meant to punish us rich people for living so lavishly”, my uncle explained.

“Do you think it’s a sign?” I asked. “Like to maybe reassess everything you’re doing?”

“What?” my uncle was too busy dumping his coffee out the helicopter window onto the people below. “I don’t know what I was thinking getting a giant coffee at night. Now what were you going on about?”

“Nothing. I think I’m going to quit. Yes, I will quit now.”

“Alright well we’ll miss you.”

The following Monday I walked through Washington Heights to think over my life. As I lined up for my morning coffee, I overheard two teenage boys discussing the topic of God very loudly.

“What is the transmitter,” the angrier boy said.

“Jesus Christ,” said the more sane boy.

“No! If we are the receiver of the signal then who is transmitter?”

“Jesus-“

“No stupid it’s not Jesus. Jesus doesn’t exist. It’s the sun. How don’t you understand that?”

“Jesus-and don’t interrupt me-birthed all mankind including us and everything else like the trees and the animals.

“Everything in your little coconut brain believes that because you can’t think for yourself. In fact if you used your brain independently for once, you’d know everything you attribute to god can be attributed to the sun, a real thing! Life on earth comes directly from the sun, not Jesus. Stupid!”

“But Jesus is all powerful.”

“Do you believe superman is a movie?”

“No that’s a movie.”

“It’s the same story! He’s just a character. Jesus Christ was just a book instead of a movie. They didn’t have movies back then.”

“So Jesus is a sun.”

“No! There is no Jesus. The sun is the creator of all things. Watch Silence by Martin Scorsese if you want more details.”

“Jesus!” the sane boy moaned.

I took my coffee to go and went outside to look at the cloudy skies. I didn’t know whether to believe the loud boy but he was making sense. 

As I walked more and more thinking my life over, rays of light shot through the clouds and illuminated the streets ahead of me. I didn’t know where I was going but I followed the path it laid ahead of me. It didn’t point me anywhere in particular but I felt compelled to follow it anyways.