Elephant Man

And they lived happily ever after.

So, I ended my story and breathed a sigh of relief as I shut my laptop. I hadn't counted on staying up so late, with work only a few hours away. But what the hey. Push on through.

The city was so quiet, the odd passing car, someone walking.

Elephant man.

Why did he exist? This plodder, who could never sleep, his heavy steps sounding through the night, back and forth, was it untamed feelings, or a broken romance?

It's heartless to even think of progeny that could waste a night brooding and pounding floorboards in this creaking building until...

That knock on my door?

There was red hair. I mean bright red, in a mess, and long too. Or so she seemed. But who knows when looking through the dollar and half eyepiece embedded in a door?

I opened it at four in the morning.

She couldn't sleep either, or so she told me. She asked me to stop pounding around, keeping her up at night.

I would have asked her in, but you can tell when someone isn't your type. Writing a story was keeping me up. But it was pointless to say that, seeing as I didn't know her. But when she turned to go, I still called after her.

"Hey! I don't know your name!"

"Milo," she says.

"You can call me Andy," I say.

She smirks like there's nothing to talk about. I shrug my shoulders.

The next morning, I had such a headache after catching Z's on the kitchen table, remembering as people do why no one sleeps in their clothes. While showering I realize it's too late to call in sick. Great.

Staying up all night is twenty-something, like dreaming of Paris when you’re stuck in traffic.

I swoop into the building, it's a brisk walk from valet parking. Janet is at the front desk, as usual. She looks me up and down and then gets all huffy, like I owe her something.

"You sure picked a great day to look like shit, Andy," she says, like she cracked some hilarious joke.

"Huh?" I say

She frowns. "Davis is in again and everyone is worried. Why would you not know that?"

"Wait. What did you say?"

"D-A-V-I-S," she spells out to me, as she turns to look at Sue, who also worked the front desk on busy days. Sue laughed out loud.

"No, what did you say before that?" I ask.

Janet's eyes narrowed. "I said you looked like shit!" Then they both burst out laughing.

I’m about to have words with Janet but then I think better of it. Must save my energy, what little I have that is.

My office comes into view. Melanie has a sheaf of papers for me. I wave her off. Not a moment to spare before my nine o'clock.

The meeting room smelled like coffee. The cheap kind, in a cardboard box thingy that you only see when nobody cares. People are milling around sizing each other up. I mentally pat myself on the back. Maybe I can use this in my next story.

D-A-V-I-S. Could his suit be any darker? Briskly plunging into the room like he owns everything, he brushes off a coffee and sits at the head of the table, his suit so crisp-looking. Like his pant legs could slice through any bullshit, folding and unfolding, a time traveler, this one.

But it was all in the story I wrote. How the mysterious stranger arrived to be what would be. Not to shape a new reality, but to embody it. Ya da ya da, lots of mystery in that one, to string everything along.

Mom said I was “high-strung.” I remember how she looked at me, it was an autumn day, wind in the burdensome trees, creaking and swaying as she yelled at me. I said something I now completely forget saying. Her divorce from Dad would happen the following year. Why was I thinking about this now?

“So Andy! Your name is Andy isn’t it?” asked Davis, grinning as he tapped a pencil at the head of the table.

I cleared my throat. “Andrew, at work,” I replied.

“Really?” he continued, his mouth open, scanning the room.

There was Ted and Alice and Bob, the misfit crew from downstairs. All of them were staring at me. Also, there were a few people I didn’t recognize. Were they the wrecking crew?

“This meeting is being held precisely to make sense of this work thing, Andy!” Davis chuckled.

“Make sense of what exactly?” I asked.

“Work. Who does and who doesn’t? To be blunt.”

My face got so hot that I wanted to leave. But just then, Davis turned away, thankfully. He started his presentation and dimmed the lights.

Lunch couldn’t come soon enough, then the end of the day. People were swirling around me, twirling snippets of conversation from “the meeting” like tambourines at a carnival, each trying to get a smarter comeback or more trenchant observation. I was tired of keeping score.

Janet called after me as I was leaving. “You might want to make plans, Andy!”

Then Sue guffawed. It was thundering, a storm I guessed from how dark it was and the people scurrying about. I stepped out of that spacious foyer, into the rain that hid my tears.

#

Being up so late again I had to rewrite that story. But it was only two in the morning when there was a knock on my door. Milo again.

I open it. Her red hair made me think of a volcano. And her eyes were red too. “You are a pain in the ass!” she yells.

“I have a name for the noise,” I tried saying. “Elephant man.”

“What?” she shouts.

“Why don’t you come in? We could talk.”

She turns on her heel but not before screaming each letter of the word S-L-E-E-P at the top of her lungs. I call in sick afterward.

But you know what? I rewrote the story on that sick day. Completely rewritten. Oh, I exaggerate. It was only the minor details. The plot was still the same, a death-dealing stranger who makes everyone suffer and wreaks people’s lives. The ending was still a happy one though.

My next job was so unlike what I had been through. There was no Janet, Sue, or Davis. Just me. And whatever had to happen.