The man who was certain that nothing was surprising woke, brushed his teeth with a new toothpaste that disappointed him slightly as he knew it would, shaved with a motion that he had learned over the years would leave an errant patch at the back of his left jawline, conducted various ablutions and evacuations that took no longer or shorter than he expected, made himself eggs that he believed would be not quite fluffy enough (they were not), got into the car to go to work, drove the route he believed would put him at his desk by nine, confirmed his belief. He had several meetings that day, all of which played out according to…not to plan, because there was no plan…according to the rhythms of inertia, a point made by a junior member of the team, echoed by one boss, mocked by another, the opposing reactions working to erase the point as if it had never been made. Work ended, as always, around six, and he drove the route that be believed would put him at his kitchen table by seven. He never expected the fully purple cabriolet shooting from an alley, piloted by a rotund man, a recently minted lottery millionaire, so fully enmeshed in his tiny phone screen that he never looked up from the purple-leather wheel. The cabriolet, broadsiding, turned the vowel of the man’s car into a consonant. The evening was erased, the next day too, and all days after that. A funeral was scheduled. Here, finally, a surprise.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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