He finished visiting her in her office, went back to his to pick up his coat, and then hustled to get to his car. Rush hour was looming, a dark cloud on the horizon of his mind. He welcomed it, in a way. He would make the most of the long drive home. He needed time to think. He needed time to think about her. He would turn the radio off, or turn it on to news voices he could filter out like the ink marks on paper that came from trying a pen to see if it still worked. Grooved concrete shot by as they descended in the glass elevator. He liked the phrase. He smiled, turned it so it caught the light. But just as he started to appraise it he was seized by the idea that he had read it somewhere. Did that mean that it was not his thought? Or perhaps, by resurfacing the thought, he had established a claim upon it. No one else in the elevator was thinking the same thing. Within the elevator, he was the author of that thought. But he knew this was a dodge. It wasn’t truly his. It had come from his memory, not his mind. He hated himself. He was nothing, a mountebank, a flop. What had she ever seen in him? Of course it was just a fling, as she had said. Of course it made no sense to rattle their home lives, as she had said, or to jeopardize their careers. It was a risk only worth taking for a man of originality and value, and he was neither. He saw that now. Someone in the elevator passed gas. Someone else faintly whistled a reggae tune. He closed his eyes and melted invisibly into a corner. The elevator drained out into the parking garage and he followed. His legs felt numb. He listened to music on the drive home because what was the point? There was nothing open for discussion anymore.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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