Working Late

The thick boardroom curtains licked at her ankles as they danced with the late night breeze. It was a slow, deliberate dance, the wind leading the drapes in a hypnotic two-step away from the window and back again. Away and back. Away and back.

She stood, silent and alone, with the city folded out in front of her — a picture of streetlights and dark outlines. The gale that had blown all through the day had subsided, and now the wind was content to be playful. The curtains drifted out again, caught her bare toes, and then retreated to rest against the high window. Somewhere above her a nervous moon watched.

She had lived ten years in this city, but in the five minutes she had been looking out of the window she had counted twelve buildings that she couldn’t remember ever noticing before. They had always just been a part of the skyline, like the notches on a piece of wood or patterns on a carpet. Unless you actually stopped to look at each of them individually, you never saw them as anything other than just part of the bigger whole.

She broke from her thoughts as a cloud drifted in front of the moon. She watched it float lazily across the sky, briefly changing the lunar glow from yellow to dull orange, and then back again as it carried on its way.

Slowly, she turned and walked towards the heavy mahogany table that filled the room. The scratches and coffee stains of a thousand caffeine-propelled meetings looked up at her from its sombre surface. She lifted a hand and ran the index finger along a particularly deep scratch that broke the smooth tabletop. As her fingertip brushed over the ridge she thought of the fortune-teller who had traced his finger along her lifeline just last week. The old man had sighed and smiled at her creased palm. Through yellow teeth he had whispered that she would have a long and fulfilling life. He had said that she would know great-grandchildren before she died.

His words still caused her to shudder.

Releasing her hand from the table she picked up one of the high-backed chairs and carried it back to the window. Her movements were measured and steady, her body working almost too perfectly in rhythm. Carefully she placed the chair on the thick carpet with its back to the window. In an apartment room across the road someone turned off their light.

She sat down on the chair with her chest against the back, and drew a cigarette from her breast pocket. Carefully she lit it and lowered her head onto her arm resting along the top of the chair. The sweet tobacco smoke drifted with the curtains as she inhaled deeply and then blew out careful, perfect rings. She had a slim figure, still well-defined enough to be considered young, with loose, dark brown, shoulder-length hair. Her navy blue business suit was neatly tailored to fit her body, and her discarded shoes and black leather briefcase were propped up in the door frame like three drunks in a downtown bar.

She suddenly caught herself smiling as she played with the cigarette packet in her fingers. “Smoking can kill you.” She had read the surgeon-general’s warning so many times, but it had never appeared funny before. Now she wondered why the same warning didn’t appear on all sorts of other things: “Cars can kill you.” “Gas stoves can kill you.” Her mother’s womb should have carried a warning for her to read before she came into the world: “Living will kill you.”

Her smile faded as quickly as it had appeared.

She hadn’t slept in two nights. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s dinner. Yet here she was at a few minutes to three in the morning, feeling neither tired nor hungry, testing the uneasy waters off the shore of life. She lifted her head off the chair and looked at the road below. Twelve storeys down, the streetlights lit up bare sidewalks and dirty tar. A nasty fall, with no-one around to see or hear. No-one to notice an individual stepping out from the crowd.

What is it that gives someone such distaste for fate? That raises in one a seemingly unquenchable desire to overcome all that would control and order one’s life? She felt that she had lost herself, that her movements, her desires, her thoughts, her passions were no longer her own. It seemed that there was always someone else. Always someone giving orders or asking for love or demanding attention. It’s all the same.

She put out her cigarette and brushed her hand against her thigh. It was a habitual movement — something her father had always done and she had come to imitate. Even twelve years after his death she still thought of him every time she did it.

Lifting her eyes, she looked down at the road again. Her attention was caught by a large piece of newspaper being sent cartwheeling down the road by the wind. Like a great cat toying with its dinner, the breeze whipped up the parchment and then let it fall, only to catch it just before it hit the ground and then throw it into the night sky once more. She pushed herself off the chair and stood slowly, her eyes never leaving the pavement. Even after the helpless white sheet had been flung out of sight she continued to stare, perhaps waiting for it to come back, perhaps wishing that it wouldn’t. She wasn’t sure which would be worse.

Eventually she turned and walked cautiously to the near wall. Like huge hollow eyes the two paintings that hung against the plaster watched her come closer. They were great, disastrously ugly post-modern pieces that she had never liked. The chairman had bought them when the business moved into these new offices, so no-one had ever dared to suggest that they be replaced. More ironic, then, that he had privately confessed to her that he couldn’t stand them anymore and wished someone would take them down.

Yet tonight, somewhere in the deep recesses of their artistic mayhem,she saw a new life. She saw freedom in their stark lines and liberation in the colours that had been flung across the canvass. If they had voices they would be screaming like poltergeists released from years of confinement. She still didn’t like them, but perhaps now she could relate to them.

She was still returning the ghostly stare of the two pictures when the clock at the city hall began to strike three. Three hollow chimes that washed over the quiet city. The sound resonated all around her as the echoes ran through the alleys and skipped between office blocks, flirting with the night air. It was her time.

She turned, with her hands wrapped tightly around one another, and headed back to the window. For the first time that night her steps stuttered, her feet offering one last protest against her suicidal desire. Her hands had begun to shake in front of her and she could feel her heart beginning to thump so violently that the skin all over her body seemed to vibrate with its every beat.

But still she continued on her deliberate path towards the window, marking her every pace, willing her feet to follow each other, step by step. She reached the curtains, now resting and still as the wind had died completely, and with numb hands pushed the glass open wider. Pausing only briefly to catch her breath, she stepped out onto the ledge and into the night. All around her the city lay in dead silence. She didn’t want to hesitate longer than she had to.

Her hands clung to the window frame behind her as she closed her eyes and offered one last prayer to a God she still wasn’t sure existed. She prayed for her mother and for her alcoholic brother. She prayed for her friend Lucy who had just broken up with her fiancé, and she prayed for the guy who sold her coffee in the morning and his wife who had just been diagnosed with cancer. She prayed for the children of Africa and for peace in the Middle East.

She did not pray for herself and she did not pray for her soul. Freedom was all she had ever required for either. That was only moments away.

Her eyes opened onto the empty street. Her mind filled with the images of the pictures, the boardroom table, the curtains, the cigarette box, the chair and the scratch on the table. Her legs tensed, her toes curled against the ledge and her fingers started to fold away from the window frame.

Suddenly she remembered the piece of newspaper. Where was it now? The wind was quiet.

She caught herself just as her grip was beginning to slide and threw both arms around the window’s wooden supports. The moon breathed relief. Still shaking, she clung to the window for a second longer, her eyes locked on the road twelve storeys down. Carefully she pulled herself back inside the boardroom and climbed onto the soft carpet. Only as her feet touched the floor did she realise how cold she was. She was tired too, and hungry.

She collapsed into the chair with her back to the window and closed her eyes. She allowed a few warm tears to drop off her face before wiping them away with the sleeve of her jacket and rubbing them off on her thigh. She had been so close to death. So close to the ultimate expression of her individuality. She was crying because she had had to go that far. But it was at the second that she was about to let herself fall off the ledge and allow her spirit to be crumpled on the tar that she had felt it. Something more powerful than she had ever felt before. Something she had been denying herself all her life. Her tears were of unknown pain and of indescribable relief. That feeling may not last, but its memory would stay with her forever.

Brushing away a few final tears she picked herself up and, without turning back towards the window, moved past the table and on to the doorway. She did not lift her head to return the gaze of the pictures as she passed below them. She didn’t need to. Her feet moved quietly through the carpet until she stopped at the door. She slipped on her shoes, feeling relief at their warmth. Then, as she bowed to pick up her briefcase, something made her turn back to look at the window. The chair still stood there, standing proudly apart from the rest of the table. It was the only sign that anyone had been in the room.

She picked up the case and took a step out of the door where she stopped once more. Her hand lifted up to her breast pocket and dug out the box of cigarettes. She lifted it to the light and read the warning again.

“Smoking can kill you.”

She stood for only a moment longer before her hand fell to her side and the packet fell from her fingers. Without looking down, she picked up her stride and walked back into a new life.

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