Moments
By Kyle Kennedy
A man paces behind his desk in a brightly lit office on the forty second floor. He is yelling angrily into his wireless head set, for his top of the line phone. He is impeccably dressed from his expensive patent leather shoes to his ridiculously overpriced salon hair cut. The view from his forty second floor corner office is breathtaking. The entire city stretched out before him, yet he hasn’t taken the time to appreciate the wondrous sight since the day he got the promotion that gave him this office.
With a heavy hand, the man slams the phone onto the receiver. He sits gruffly on his executive leather chair, releases the top button of his overpriced Italian shirt, and loosens his extravagant silk tie. A brilliant red vein pulsed viciously on his forehead. He hated getting this angry before his lunch. The man violently stabs a button on his desk phones base station.
“Brenda!” he bellows into the phone. Moments later a shattered looking woman cautiously steps into the office. Her frizzy hair and the black pockets under her eyes dictates all one would need to know about this woman. She lives alone in a dingy little flat above a liquor store in some bad neighborhood. Her life has become her work. Being the secretary for someone like him is never good for your nerves. His constant borage of diminutive comments and asinine remarks has thoroughly broken her spirit after six long years.
Not once and all that time has a single, solitary kind word ever stemmed from his lips. Not even so much as a “Hello” or “Good morning.” His years of torture and abuse have caused her to become a shell a former self. She was once an up incoming star. She was ready to change the world right out of college. This job seemed like the stepping stone required for her to climb the business ladder.
She even used to go out. She can still remember getting all dolled up with her friends before a big Saturday night out. They would spend hours getting ready together in hopes that tonight would be the night their search would end. That was a long time ago and now all she can do is go to work, come home, feed the cat, and make herself a sad little TV dinner. The time to impress has passed. Today was like every other for the past four years. She expected nothing less than his awful temper and his harsh tongue dripping with poison.
Barely looking up she quietly mutters, “yes, sir?”
“Reschedule the meeting with Mr. Ford for 2:30. Barney, in all his fucking brilliance, decided unilaterally that it would be best to meet with Ford tomorrow. Now I have to go suck his dick for three hours just so we can keep the account. Why are you still standing here! I said reschedule the damn meeting!” His anger reached its peak only after throwing pencil at her head, thankfully missing its target by mere inches.
Nearly on the verge of tears, she quickly removes herself from the office hoping; just maybe the janitors might have made the walls thicker during the night. To her dismay the walls were the same as they were the previous day and the horse shouting of her employer could be heard clearly down the hall. Many heads turned quickly away as she looked up from under her bangs, fighting back her tears of embarrassment.
Was a person really meant to live this way? Was she some how destined for constant fear and self doubt? She had been like this for so long she was having trouble remembering what it was like to be happy. Even the things that used to make her happy as a child no longer carry the same value. Flowers never smelt sweet anymore, the sky doesn’t look as blue, and the people… well, the people don’t smile like they used to.
She could remember as a little girl in pigtails, walking down the street hand in hand with her father. Life was simple then. There is only her and her father walking to the corner doughnut store for their Saturday morning ritual. There was only the smell of flowers in the air, mothers and daughters laughing, the smell of fresh cut grass and trees. How she loved the trees. She loved the sound of the wind in their leaves and the feel of the bark on her arms as she climbed them. She even loved the sap on her Sunday morning dress, even though her mother would scold her for being such a tomboy.
Now she only felt the cold fake wood of her cheap desk. The harsh fluorescent lights burned unmercifully yet still caused an overwhelming grayness to the floor. She gazes unseeingly at the piles of papers strewed across her desk. They were supposed to be filed a week ago, yet there was never enough time. Something more “important” always seemed to come down on her. She picked up the phone. She knew he would come out of his office soon and if the phone call had not been placed there is no limit to what he might do. She finds the number in her “Roll-A-Dex” instinctively. She dials the number carefully. Busy.
What! It can’t be busy! She nearly panics. Yet she is able to maintain her composure and redial the number. Busy. She knows there is precious little time before he emerges from his office.
Please... please…please…
She dials the number one last time. An impatient voice answers with a curt, “Yes.”
After relaying the message secretary to secretary she gets the best news she has heard all day. Ford is unable to make it at 2:30 but is willing to see her boss tonight for drinks. A wave of relief swallows her. She thanks the woman and hangs up the phone just in time for the man to open the door to his office.
“Did you call Ford or have you been sulking out there!” He yells at her, that old vein throbbing once more.
Without looking up she replies in a quiet voice, “Yes, he can’t make it at 2:30…”
“I gave you one fucking thing to do! How can one person be so worthless! I am so fucking sick of you just sitting around here all day with your thumb up your twat or whatever the hell you do out here!” The man was now towering over her crossing every line he had managed to miss over the last four years.
Sobbing quietly she merely sat and took what he could dish. When he had seemed to exhausted himself with threats to transfer her to the mail room and other sexual remarks she finally found her voice.
“Mr. Ford says he can meet for drinks tonight. Around 8:30.” She said never looking up. Without a word more hands him a small note dictating a restaurant.
“Wow. You got something right? Keep diddling yourself out here and maybe your coffee might improve. On second thought I’m not really fond of coffee that tastes like tuna. I’ll just buy my own.” He cackled that awful cackle that made her skin crawl.
“Now listen up bright eyes, you’re coming with me right now because I got a lot of shit on my plate.” He’s already down the hall and yelling at her. “Bring the fucking phones!”
She hastily grabs several phones off their respective chargers and hurries to catch up with him. He has already called someone by the time she catches up with him at the elevator. He laughs and talks loudly and crudely into the phone as the doors close.
Her fear of confined spaced mixed with her intense loathing for her employer are starting to take their toll. She can feel her face getting flush and small beads of sweat forming on her arms and brow. 40. He’s talking about his latest conquest as loud as he can. 37. The walls are starting to get closer. He’s now talking about which five star restaurant he wants to eat at for lunch. While he’s paying seventy-dollars for a steak the size of a pack of gum, she’ll be around the corner in a hole in the wall deli with a five year old Health Inspection Certificate on the wall. 34. She can feel the panic growing in her stomach. She tries desperately to control it. Now he’s telling dirty jokes into the phone. 31. She knows she can’t last much longer the ways things are going. She’s feels her chest start to tighten up. 30. Her arm starts to go numb. 28. She starts to lose her balance. 26. She can’t stand up any more. The tightness in her chest is consuming her whole body. 25. The punch line of a rather offensive joke is cut short by Brenda falling into the man slightly. 24. He pushes her back towards the wall impatiently and finishes his joke. 22. She grips the railing as hard as she can to keep from falling over in front of six total strangers. 21. She feels something through the blur of pain. 20. Its something familiar, almost comforting. 19. What is it? She can’t put her finger on it. 17. The pain in her chest starts to subside. 16. What form of magic is this that can stop a panic attack? 14. She’s digs deep into her memory for this long lost sensation. 12. She’s got it! 11. Holding hands! 10. But who would be holding her hand in this elevator? Surely not her dreaded boss! 8. She dreads to look, but she has to. 6. She peaks timidly down at her hand and to her shock there was no mans hand there at all. 4. There is a little delicate hand instead. 3. She looks up slightly to see to whom such a delicate thing could belong to. 2. There is a small girl in pigtails smiling back at her, With one hand in hers and the other in her fathers. Lobby. She looks into the girls eyes and is overwhelmed.
She could stay in this moment forever. After four years she had been stuck in the darkness with nothing but bitterness and cold. She was sure she would never be able to find her way out again. She had become sure there couldn’t possible be any goodness anywhere in this world. Life can sometimes seem very simple when you are staring at a monster every day. Yet with the simplest of gestures this tiny little girl to bring her back from oblivion. This small gesture to a woman in distress had within it all the warmth and compassion of the Hollywood movies she liked to rent on Saturday nights.
A sharp shrill whistle startled both Brenda and the little girl. The man was tapping his foot and snapping for her to follow.
“I have to go” Brenda said to the little girl, while fighting back tears. She went to let go but the little girl held fast. She motioned that she wanted to tell Brenda a secret. She bent down. The little girl cupped her ear and whispered “I don’t like him. He’s mean.”
“Yes he is.” She smiled back at the little girl as a single tear rolled down her face. The girl let go of Brenda’s hand, and Brenda waved goodbye. The little girl smiled back as the elevator doors closed.
“Jesus fucken Christ, can you take a little long with your stupid little nothings!” the man was shouting in the middle of a very crowded public lobby. “Move your ass; we got a lot of shit to do.”
They crossed the threshold of a set a very high glass doors marking the entrance to the building. It was a beautiful summer day, the bluest the sky’s looked in years she noted. The restaurant he has decided on was only three blocks away, so he started off at a brisk trot. Paying no attention to cars or crosswalks he walked between cars and right out into traffic. Cars slam on their breaks and nearly avoid hitting him. The man becomes furious and slaps the hood of the car screaming obscenities. Brenda has become far too used to this behavior and steps out right behind the man and apologizes the car. They seems to accept her apology but is reluctant to takes his eyes off the man. The man is not making it easy to walk away, calling the driver in the car every name in the book. The next block they get to, the man again walks right out into traffic with total disregard for the law. This time the cars have to swerve to avoid hitting him. Car horns are blazing and the man is making extremely offensive gestures with his hands. The woman rushes to catch up with the man once again apologizing to those that have successfully stopped. She just finishes apologizing when she turns around to the man once again crossing into open traffic against the law. She once again rushes to the curb to apologize to any poor soul that gets in this lunatics way. Suddenly there a loud crack followed but the screech of tires, and a meaty thud. She looks up only to find a car where her employer was walking just a moment ago.
In the time it takes a person to walk from the front door of their office building to a restaurant, a mere three blocks away, how many people laugh? How many cry? How many lose someone so special to them that they couldn’t imagine life without them? How many people kill? In the expanse of time how can such a minuet blink be so important?
Strange as it may seem, all you really need are those precious moments. All you need are the Christmas mornings, throwing a frisbee with a good friend in the park, washing the car with your father, baking cookies with your mother, your first kiss, your last kiss, the kindness of a stranger, and all the other moments between them. These are what we remember. These are how we’re remembered. Maybe your memory won’t live on forever, but I like to think it will live long enough.