Glass and steel skyscraper. Pink and purple lights flowers outside main entrance. Strange furniture that benefits no one in the lobby. Elevator. Bing-bong. Eighth floor. Glass dividing reception from offices. Patch of carpet also dividing. Small crack in one of the panes that walls the corner office. A woman back there shaking her head. A man inside shaking his. A second pair, a man and a woman too, on the other side of the desk back there, nodding. This goes on for a while, the shaking of two heads, the nodding of two others. Return to reception. Turn left. A coffee maker hisses nearby. A man crosses through a small corridor to reach it. His sight is failing. He brings a cup to a woman whose blood is iron-poor. She drinks it and then goes to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She is readying herself for a meeting. She does not yet know who she will be meeting with, or what ailment or adverse condition that person hosts or harbors. The discussion in the corner office is still going, though the nodders and shakers have switched places, nodding man now shaking, shaking man now nodding, nodding woman now, nodding woman now. The woman with iron-poor blood has started her meeting, which is with a man she has met before, who in fact she knows quite well, but not well enough to know that he is suffering from mixed dementia. The meeting is going swimmingly. Return to small patch of carpet. The crack lengthens. Eventually it will run the length of the windowed wall, which will then shatter, showering glass pearls on both couples, who will neither be nodding nor shaking their heads but clutching one another with garish fear. This will be their affliction, from that moment on, for all time.
©2020 Ben Greenman / Stupid Ideas
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