Holiday Blues

I had convinced myself that, before leaving work, I’d forgotten to turn the stove off.

Sitting in the four walls of my cubicle. Running the end of my finger over a ballpoint pen, tapping it on the desk. Had I left it on medium-high—the flame glowing blue and filling the air with the smell that always comes before the firemen arrive? I thought about the papers scattered over my desk: the pieces that made up an incomplete first novel, or what would have been my first novel, if it wasn’t curling in the orange heat that was leaving a trail of destruction as it passed through my apartment. All I could do was think about it, and I’d started grinding my teeth.

Martha the next-door angel would’ve been happy to grab the spare key in the backyard and check for me, but she was going to be gone for two weeks. I focused on the desk calendar. The 23rd of December. She’d be with her family decorating the tree, and all the while the world back home would be burning. Maybe it was worth calling anyway.

Yes… Martha? I don’t know what to do, but I think our apartment complex might be burning down.

Do you want to come home a little early so we can sing carols and make snow angels in the ashes?

She wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

Somewhere in the office, Jingle Bell Rock played over tinny computer speakers, and I couldn’t stop running my fingers long my temples. And of course, it’s today of all fucking days.

It was too much to sit there, so I abandoned station and took a walk over to the break room. Nobody was there at the water cooler to interrupt with small talk, and at least there was that to be thankful for.

Two months ago had been a different era. Two months ago I’d started writing again—an old pastime I kept between women as they passed through my life like a highway. It wasn’t easy shaking the last one, because while most drive with purpose and responsibility, this one had decided to jackhammer the asphalt before going on her way. An icy wound before the change in seasons.

“No Ryan, I think we just want different things—it’s all my fault, really.” Not a hint of sorrow in her voice as she sat at the dining room table. And it was before work. It had to have been before work.

She’d already moved all her things, and after her announcement she was on the road and taking a different exit. But at least it’s not the end of the world to realize your girlfriend of two years is a whore. That’s why two months ago I could bear going into work, and I could bear filling the void with words. I could bear keeping a smile on my face and pretending I had something to come home to after my shift—because even if it wasn’t a person, there was the project. Five hours at night: tapping at a keyboard and seeing a world unfold before me. At least with fiction, the love is always real.

But maybe it wouldn’t be anymore. Two months and two hundred pages gone with an honest mistake. And it would take everything else down with it. I thought of the last two paychecks I’d neglected to deposit—sitting on my home office filing cabinet. I thought of the list of numbers I’d written down that morning, and one of them was undoubtedly for a respectable literary agent. But mostly I thought about the words. I thought about the paper turning as black as the printed ink, and the withered memories of what I had completed so far. Would it be possible to recreate those words? Staring that in the face made me shudder. It would be like building the whole house up again from the charred wreckage. No reliable blueprint. No feeling that it would ever look like it once had.

And for this mistake, for this loss, they would want money—the insurance companies, the state, and whoever else wanted to milk the opportunity dry. They’d try to lock me up for negligence or reckless behavior if they could find any excuse.

I ran my fingers over the water cooler’s plastic top. Touching, but not really feeling. The only one left in this situation was Ben Harrison—general manager. Time off was given out like an annual lottery, and there were plenty of times where it seemed nobody was ever winning.

But I wondered if maybe he’d understand this time. Maybe He’d put a hand on my shoulder and wish me on my way—but for thirty minutes, and thirty minutes only.

So I wiped away the sweat, and I knocked on his door. His shape moved closer behind the fogged glass, and Harrison cracked the door open just enough to stick his head out, “Enslow? What do you need?”

“Uh, yes Sir, I need to leave the office for a few minutes—I think there—”

“Do you know what day it is, Enslow? There’s no time to be behind on ANYTHING.”

“Yes, I understand Sir, but I think I left my stove on.”

“Your stove? Are you trying to make something up?”

“No, no, I’m serious. I think I left it on, and I need to make sure nothing’s burning.”

“You don’t have anything to be worried about. Do you have anything on the stove?”

“Yes,” I lied, “and in any case I don’t want to risk a fire.”

“Enslow, if you really thought your home was at risk, you would just walk out the door. You wouldn’t wait thirty minutes to tell me right now. I know all the tricks, Enslow, we don’t hand out second breaks here—”

He shut the door and disappeared behind the glass once more.

If I could’ve gotten his head in my hands, I would’ve torn his jaw off with brute force. I would’ve screamed in his ear and slammed a fist down onto the bridge of his nose and beaten in his forehead. I would’ve lobotomized him with the ballpoint pen in my breast pocket. Instead, I walked back to my desk, head-in-hands. Snow beat down on the office windows, but nothing in me cared to take more than a passing glance.

Jingle Bell Rock had long passed, and in its place was Billie Holiday singing how she has her love to keep her warm.

People always talk about what they want for Christmas. They bitch about how they had to wait two hours to buy a new phone, and bitch even more when they couldn’t get it in the color they wanted. People want phones for Christmas more than they want time with family or friends. Hell, I thought more than once about calling up a buddy or two. But most people have things to come home to—even the ones I call friends. They disappear for two weeks just like Martha, and in the meantime everyone I do talk to asks me what I’m doing for the holidays. If I didn’t know better, I’d tell them I’m drinking a beer and putting a gun in my mouth.

I tell myself if only I knew a few other corporate loser scum like me, we’d make Christmas great. Day of, we’d throw roasts and the barbecue, crack bottles of whiskey, and reminisce, joke, laugh, and have one helluva time. For one night, it wouldn’t matter if we had nothing to come home to.

But that could only be a nice thought. A nice thought from someone who couldn’t stand to be alone anymore.

“Ryan, are you okay?” Carol from two prison cells down. “I just saw”you earlier, and… Well, you just seem upset.”

“I am upset,” I told her. “I’m not sure if I can take all of this anymore.”

“Take what? What did I miss?”

“I don’t know, Carol, I don’t know if I can take this job anymore. I think my house is burning down and Harrison isn’t going to let me leave.”

“You’re kidding, why would it be on fire?”

“Breakfast this morning. I think I left the stove on.”

“Well, can’t you call your girlfriend? She should be able to check, right?”

I hadn’t said anything about my ex. Not a word. And I didn’t plan to, “No she can’t, she got called to fill in another location at her job. Carol, there isn’t anything you can do about this.”

She stopped, cold realization showing on her face, and she pulled her hand away from the top of the cubicle like she was afraid I’d bite it off. “Alright then… Well, let me know if you think of anything. You know we’re all here for you, Ryan, you’re part of the team—”

“No you’re FUCKING NOT!” I said, “And I don’t understand why all of you pretend you are. You don’t understand all the shit I’m dealing with, you just fucking don’t. I’m sick and tired of all these charades and games, where we pretend to be friends, and pretend things are all so fucking great when it’s all so goddamn miserable. But none of you care about me. You don’t. I just come here to work, and that’s that.”

And even though I felt deep down that this was the end, it didn’t hit me completely until I had stormed my way out of the building and into the parking lot—feeling the fresh snow on my face as I found my car. I watched the office disappear behind me in the rear view mirror, and I wondered if it would be for the last time—as an employee at least.

Through the snow and holiday traffic, I inched through until it all gave way to my neighborhood. I drove around a block of houses twice to kill time—because there was nothing else I could do to prepare myself.

I turned the corner and pulled up to an apartment building that stood the same as it always had—parking lot empty with the time of year. I treaded up the walkway to my front door, brushed the snow that had been collecting on the knob, and went inside to a place that had remained exactly as it had been left. The carpet was still its pristine beige, and there was the lingering scent of the bacon and eggs that had been breakfast.

There wasn’t any smoke to be seen as I entered the kitchen, and looking down at the dial on the stove—the burner turned to a bold, red “OFF.”

But I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief. I didn’t fall to my knees and thank God I hadn’t made a mistake. Instead, I turned around the corner and walked to my desk. I gathered my manuscript together and came back to kitchen—removing the dirty pan on the range and replacing it with the neatly stacked pages. Then I turned the stove on to high and walked back.

I didn’t even close the door before climbing into my car and driving away. There’s a chance someone’ll find me. Some time. Some place. It could be someone from work, maybe a long-lost friend who recognizes my dirtied mug, or maybe a cop. There’s no telling who’ll find me, or if they’ll see the dull lights in my eyes. Maybe those lights will say something about what I’ve been through.

But more than anything, I hope that, for once, I’ll see someone as tired and empty as me—somebody who has just as much to come home to at night.

Only a couple days ’till Christmas.

This year I’m getting a new life.