The River Walk Home

The ambient background noises of electronic phone rings, faint scribbling, and inexplicable mumbles of private conversations clustered the air. The smell of freshly printed paper and brewed coffee welcomed itself to the noses of the office’s worker colony. Breaking the natural components of the office was a seduced yelling and loud thumping coming from the private office in the room’s back right corner. 

“C’mon Joe! Never have I ever had to come to you about this! W-what the hell man!” a deep-throated voice directed. 

In reply came a voice of indifference, “Sorry Jaydon. I promise it won’t happen again.”

“Well, it can’t happen again! Or-or you’re fired my friend! Get it?”

“Yes.”

“W-well now get the hell out of my office and go back to work! You still have 10 or so minutes before clocking out you-you lazy bum,” demanded Jaydon.

As these words were nothing more than a leaf being blown by a wind, Joe calmly stood up and swung open the private office’s door and headed back into the grid of cubicles. 

Soft sunlight leaked through the office’s wall windows as the salvation of 5 o’clock approached. Joe, lucky enough, sat in a cubicle that placed his back to the window, allowing himself to every so often turn and hug the images of outside with his daydream thoughts. Back at his seat, Joe blankly stared at his computer screen. Open on the desktop was an anxiety amount of tabs that included stat sheets, excel files, and income statements. The screen looked as though the number system was designed on it, for little to almost no words were displayed. 

Closing his eyes from the electronic mess, Joe took a dramatic heavy breath and exhaled out saying, “Of course Joe,” before then methodically wheeling himself around to face the windows. 

It really was a beautiful day. The neighboring skyscrapers all glittered with the adored golden color the sunset always gifted. The sky was deep blue, ready to turn into the purple opaqueness of night. Down below on the ground, people and cars endlessly mixed the streets with their personal destinations at priority. They were outside, Joe was inside. 

Just as indifferent as he was with Jaydon, Joe simply stood up, gathered his suit coat and briefcase, and headed straight to the exit doors across the room. Politely nodding to the secretary goodbye, Joe took a joyful breath and headed out the office’s lobby and down the flight of stairs to be greeted by the outside he was just watching only several moments ago.

Outside, the rambunctious noises of downtown metropolitan living encaptivated the ears. A squat man in a tight orange jumpsuit yelled into his phone while a group of high school girls giggled as they gossiped over their latest friend’s drama. The bass of it all was the squeaking of cars, the blaring of horns, and the rattling of distant passing trains. 

Another deep exhale, and Joe pleasantly breathed out, “I’m going home.”

Jacket folded in his left arm, briefcase secured in his right, and a slight grin on Joe’s face modeled him in a serene state. The street he was on decorated itself with store after store of fashion designer brands and Michelin 3-star restaurants. Most notedly, a line of flamboyantly dressed gorgeous women and handsome men stood patiently on the block’s corner, which held the entrance to a fruitfully artistical restaurant labeled Flamón. Though they were orderly, the anticipation of high-end dining floated energetically in their conversations. 

“Mrs. Floren the piece of the treat to try in my opinion is definitely Mr. Flamón’s lemon capellini with golden flaked steak and caviar. I’ve spoken to his advisor whom I met at his Paris opening just last year. It’s hands down the best,” eloquently gestured a thickly built man in a sharp grey suit. 

“Oh, Ryan,” nonchalantly waved a slim dark-haired woman, “Please just call me Eliza. We are too good of family friends at this point. You really think so. I was thinking of trying the tuna and garlic marinated grilled goose with frog eggs.” 

“Food is food. Keep it simple keeps it better Joe,” Joe mumbled to himself as he turned the street’s corner. 

By now, Joe headed in the general direction of the city’s train station, with only the thought of experiencing the end to his workday. The new street now cultivated smaller, more quaint shops of Mom-and-Pa-type pizza joints, coffee dine-ins, and fast-food restaurants. Waves of people passed, crossed, and ran in every direction. A woman in runner’s wear bumped into a tall garbage man carrying two black bags of trash which resultantly flooded the gum stained concrete of used napkins and empty take-out boxes. 

“Hey dumbass aren’t runner’s supposed to see where they are running,” the irate man called. 

With no words, the woman simply got to her feet and kept running before proudly displaying a slim middle finger in response. 

Slightly chucking Joe muttered once again to himself, “Honest emotions bring out the most radical selves.”

A city breeze padded the back of Joe as he moved on from this scene causing his strides to slightly extend and his back hairs to rise just a pinch. The setting sunset still shared its golden paint with the city, spreading its glare across the high windows of towering skyscrapers and casting long, drawn-out shadows of the environment. It was though the sun too was a pedestrian on the street that was engulfed by the array of societal fluidity. Being greeted by a short, dark-skinned man offering out flyers for a concert. Or anxiously watching a bald, grey-bearded man barely turn his oversized 18-wheeler just right enough to avoid a head-on collision with a small neon Fiat. Maybe too, the sun examined the beautifully rhythmic taps of a group of four young boys rattling at the bottom of their 5-gallon pail buckets with drum sticks, connecting their beats to ears of passers. 

Step after step morphed into block after block until Joe paused at the chaotic intersection of cars that led to the bridge, a sign that his journey home was near. As the violent orange hand flashed to the white walking stick figure, Joe followed the pack of city strangers to the other side. Yet, as many of them like Joe, dressed in dark suits and dresses with properly combed hairdos, they continued monotonously straight onto the arched sidewalk, whereas Joe instinctually turned left. There was no special landmark left weirdly enough, just more pools of city skyscrapers and bunched up cars heading to unidentifiable destinations. What only lay different ahead was that to Joe’s right was a maroon metal rail, behind which lived the poised glossy blue of a river, and to his left which was the never-ending rush of speeding cars and honking horns. In between it all, simply Joe with his jacket in his left and suitcase in his right with his face to the setting sun. 

Folding his eyebrows to hinder the omnipresent light, Joe rotated 90 degrees left on the spot. In front was the busy street but beyond was a deodorant-shaped glass skyscraper, its height relatively smaller than the rest. At its bottom boasted a bright complex symbol similar to a trapezoid with configuring lines piercing through its center. The slogan underneath read:

Face the present to build your future

Raising an eyebrow while tensing his right cheek, Joe questioned, “Who writes these slogans?” mumbling incredulously, “Face the present? Face the present….”

Turning 180 degrees now, Joe met the ambient river. Basking in its intrinsic design the river slowly seemed to have properties Joe never quite took time to ever examine before. Its night blue skin reflected the infinite rays of dying sunshine that made it look at though stars and Space itself were here on Earth. The minuscule ripples gave the river’s stars their twinkle while the quiet flow matched the vacuumed silence of Space. This imaginative reflection birthed a thought in Joe. 

Muttering to the warm air, “Space is so scary. The darkness, the void of life, the-the everything. Yet, here, here in this moment it looks… just another part of life.

“I lost our company thousands today Joe… thousands. I can say it all I want but it still doesn’t connect. One wrong addition mistake, the first thing you learn in school…,” Joe for some reason grinned again with its paired soft chuckle. 

“I get yelled out yet Jaydon has been cutting jobs since he’s got divorced. What’s worse than blind love is false love. At least it shows he feels something— he experiences something…. I guess that’s what everything is about. Just experiencing. Nothing is identical in a philosophical sense which means there’s always some type of new… thing to do I guess…. Wow, now that—”

“Would you shut up you creep! Who the hell are you talking to? I swear there are too many people on this earth!” croaked an elderly woman so hunched over her body looked like a semi-underside down u. She was walking in inches by Joe with a faded wood cane in her left and a hideous brownish-orange bag in her right. 

Joe turned to face her, seeing the couple strands of silver hair left on her head and half-closed right eye that made her look as though she was just recently in a boxing match. Lost for words, Joe simply just stared until the lady croaked again saying, “What you want a picture! Go home don’t you have a family or— wait I forgot you young people don’t marry anymore,” adding in a mocking voice, “Too much commitment or something. Freaking weirdos this world inhabits…,” and the rest of her speech trailed off into a mumble as she continued her march by the inches down the sidewalk.

Raising an eyebrow again, but this time matching it with an amused smile, Joe nodded to the woman even though her back was to him. Turning around, Joe marched down the corner where he took his sporadic left just minutes before and headed once again back to the train station. This time though he wouldn’t view it as just going home or just taking the train, but rather, another addition to his experiences.