NOTHING

                       NOTHING

Frank Rooney had been the manager of the Shop & Save for thirty-eight years, and he wasn't retiring anytime soon. He couldn’t retire – not with all the unmanageable obstacles an unkind fate continually dumped into his life. Not the least among those obstacles was this God-forsaken job, which he detested and always had. He stopped asking himself why he hadn’t left it years ago when it dawned on him that he was trapped in it by a sub-par education, a marriage a pregnant girlfriend had forced him into as a teenager, and an admitted lack of drive and ambition. e stopped asking himself

On this day Frank sat slumped at his desk, feeling like a defenseless man surrounded by a pack of hungry predators. He stared dejectedly at the swarm of letters, memos, invoices, faxes, forms and phone messages that lay strewn like confetti upon his desk - none yet read or responded to.

           And none would be. Not today. He had no stomach for dissatisfied customers, lazy employees, and the endless flow of written and vocal bullshit that occupied ten hours each day. This day - like so many similar ones the past few weeks - had become unendurable. But today was the worst yet, and he felt on the brink of climbing a wall or punching a hole through one.

               He knew why, and it wasn’t just the incredibly taxing dead-end job he was trapped in. There were scores of reasons, and all of them were waging war in his brain, each as loudly as the next; one just as exasperating as another. When in chorus, they screamed the word STRESS: from the job he abhorred; from his carping, never-satisfied bitch of a wife; from his mistress, the money-grubbing tramp who was threatening to blow the whistle on their affair; from his gambling losses, mounting like the national debt; and from the certainty of a future filled with days just like this one. That’s why. And none of those reasons could be expunged. Not today...at least not in this miasma of chaos that was his workplace.

           e stopped asking himselfThe thought burned into his head like a hot rivet: By all the gods in heaven! How I need absolutely nothing to do today…nothing to think about…nothing to worry about.

           “Get out…just get the hell out of here for a while and do nothing. Absolutely nothing,” he said aloud. Given voice, the idea set him in motion, and within five minutes he had turned the store over to his assistant manager and had stepped onto the sidewalk in front of his store. Twenty minutes beyond that he was walking glumly down a back street he wasn’t even aware he had turned on to. His mind swirled with indecision, doubt, deadlines, and threats. There seemed no available harbor of peace, no matter where his mind searched.

           Halfway down the street he stopped, his attention suddenly gathered by the strange environs rising up to either side of him. He felt certain he had never been in this locale before, but the tumbledown area did remind him of Limboland, the sleazy five-block zone of the city that was crowded with strip joints, porno theaters, and the lost and depraved dredges of humanity. He’d been to Limboland a time or two - on a lark or on a drunk - but that had been ages ago.

           The street he stood rooted to was narrow, dark and full of shadows. The storefronts hovering over him were boarded with warped wooden planks and rusted iron grating. All had a dirty, corrupted look about them.

           All but one, straight ahead where the street dead-ended at a high brick wall. There, a bright-red oblong sign hung over the sidewalk. The broad white letters upon it read NOTHING.

           Curious, Frank made his way to the shop and peeked through a window. Inside was nothing…nothing but a bald, copper-skinned old man standing adjacent to a door centered in the blank back wall. There was nothing else in the room; nothing but the man, the door, and an eerie washed-out glow that soaked the room but had no obvious source. The old man, dressed in a loose white robe gathered at the waist by a shiny gold rope, appeared of Asian origin. He stood oddly at ease, his head slightly bowed, his hands cupped at his groin. A peculiar but not unfriendly smile gleamed between his gray mustache and tidy chin beard.

           Frank shrugged his shoulders, sighed then went inside.

           “Welcome,” the old man said with a smile.

           Frank looked around the empty room. “Nothing?” he asked cautiously.

           The old man nodded.

           “But…why? What’s the point?”

           “There are people who want nothing,” the old man calmly replied. “People who need… even desperately crave…nothing. And nothing is here.”

           In no mood for a philosophical lecture, Frank pointed to the door the old man seemed to be guarding. “What’s behind the door?”

           “Nothing.”

           Though Frank snickered, he nonetheless sensed something compellingly ingenuous about the old man. In spite of himself, he felt his spirits rise along with his interest. “Can I go through it?” he asked.

           “Yes, of course you can.”

           “And if I do, what happens?”

           “Nothing happens.”

           “Nothing?”

           “As I said, nothing…happens.”

           “Okay, I’ll bite,” Frank said with a slight grin. “How much, uh…does nothing cost?”

           “Nothing,” the old man calmly replied.

           Frank looked long and hard at the old man, who simply stared back.

           Frank scratched his jaw. “Okay, let’s see if I have this straight. You’re telling me it will cost me nothing to go behind that door where absolutely nothing will happen. That right?”

           “That is right. Nothing…will happen. Absolutely.”

           Frank chuckled and nodded slowly. “Well then, open it up, because absolutely nothing is exactly what I need today.”

           The old man bowed slightly, opened the door and stepped aside. “As you wish.”

           Frank walked through the door, and there was nothing…waiting.

           The door to nothing closed upon Frank Rooney as the door to the shop opened. The old man looked up.

           “Welcome,” he said with a smile.

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