Solitary: 4

The morning head of steam dissipated into the still office air. Josh slumped into his chair and rolled into position. His back ached in a distant way. He squirmed. He envisioned his spine and a time-lapsed vignette of X-rays tracking its compression over years of sitting. No one ever sat this much. He stared down at his desk, jumping along its speckled laminate surface. A little like cookies-and-cream. Been a long time since I had any ice cream. Faintly audible voices mumbled in either frustration or excitement. Being inside the confines of his workstation was like being on the brink of fainting. The sound-dampening batting behind the cloth of the cubicle walls muffled all sounds beyond his perimeter.

This isolation reminded Josh of being inside an igloo. From years six to eight, he and his father built crude structures out the snow removed from their driveway. Snow is on the short list of most exciting events in a child’s life. The cancellation of school was no less relieving than last-minute clemency granted to a death-row inmate. After rising from the sweet rest of sleeping in, Josh wanted nothing more than to play in nature’s time-sensitive embellishment. The world became an amusement park and a battlefield when a white blanket descended upon his neighborhood. So much was newly possible: the sledding and the slippery surfaces, the laughing and running and heaving lungs constricted by icy air, the nose red and dripping like a faucet to be absent-mindedly tongued or wiped with a sleeve, the hurried scooping and packing, the close-calls and the cold melting down your shirt, under your gloves’ cuffs, and clinging like ice-cubes around the ankles of socks. At least, those were Josh’s dreams.

Dad and lad, with age-appropriate shovels, created a mound on the western side of their north-south slab of concrete. After the best the Midwest had to offer in the way of blizzards, the final products would be taller than Josh. They looked lumpy like mashed potatoes, except with undertones more blue than brown. Carefully, young Josh dug a hole in the center of its base. This was his bunker. Once the cavern was sufficient to contain him in a fetal position, he outfitted the fortress. He carved out tiny enclaves to house a secret cache of snowballs in expectation of an attack. This was his arsenal. Once completed, he army-crawled inside and waited for the siege to begin. He felt safe at first. He thought it was like being a part of mom, dark and warm with body heat. Inside, nothing beyond respiration could be heard. He had made it. Mission accomplished. The kids would come and he would be ready. Now he would be protected. Even more, he would be victorious. Who else had an igloo? He waited for his chance. He laid on his stomach and felt the chill seep through his black snow-suit that swished when he walked. It was so quiet. No cars, no air conditioning, no dogs or television made noise. Dad went inside. There was nothing to do. There was nothing to look at. Everything was the color of graphite ahead of him. Looking around his puffy red, blue, and yellow coat, he saw the glow of light by the mouth of the mound. Were they out there now? Why was he in here? Excitement fooled him again. Nothing happened. He had no friends. The neighbors’ children never welcomed him into the fold when he moved onto the block. The snowballs sat in their spots. The silence became antagonistic. He was deaf to the world. He felt consumed. Within fifteen minutes, he grew hopelessly bored and frightened. He started to panic. Josh was lost (in the sense of not knowing where he was going rather than knowing where he was). He retracted from the orifice like an inchworm. Defeated, he went inside and dried off by the floor vent, thawing on the carpet. Mom made hot chocolate with swollen marshmallow icebergs in it that clung to his lips mid-sip. He looked out the front windows with their droplets of condensation at the igloo, a monument to disappointment. After a day in full sun, the forlorn structure would start to sag. Often it would be trampled on by the kids he wanted so badly to play with when they returned from escapades unknown, laughing, with ruddy cheeks and sleds in tow. If left alone, the igloo would stay longer than the rest of the snow. It melted and froze into the consistency of a snow cone. It would be soiled with the little bits of dirt that floated in the wind he learned about in science class. In his ninth winter, he heard of a similar structure collapsing on a child and suffocating him. He imagined the terror of being trapped inside that scary place—unable to see, hear, or move. The danger, coupled with recollections of previous attempts, was enough to prevent him from doing anything with the subsequent mounds Mr. Stevenson confusedly built on his own. Poor dad.

For all this thought of snow, Josh felt colder. He rubbed the sides of his arms quickly, making his hands tingly. His eyes were open, but he paid no mind to his visual field.

While on the clock, it never looked good (i.e., productive/profitable) to have translucent neon bubbles floating across one’s screen or pipes stochastically elongating and bending atop a black backdrop. Accordingly, Josh disarmed his screen-saver. His monitor’s steadfast display suggested he was never far away from where he should be and never stopped doing as he should be doing for more than ten minutes. It was a simple move to ingratiate himself to the “powers that be” (wherever they were) should they ever pay him a visit. Moreover, it prevented the wandering eyes of passersby from gaining compromising intelligence. The ploy was not without drawbacks, though. First and foremost, the cursor blinked indefatigably. It never stopped. It seemed impatient like a mother tapping her foot. By the end of most days, its throbbing was reminiscent of the tell-tale heart. It made Josh feel guilty. The blinking black line would not let him forget the job he had to do. It was waiting for him, taunting. It could keep this up all day. It was going to outlast him. Presently, Josh saw it pulsate confrontationally. Damned machine. Clocks do the work for you. Cursors, though…they won’t do a thing without your effort. He rubbed his chin, which felt warm and slick in comparison with his cold, dry hand. He wondered how many times in an average day he derided himself for daydreaming. Come on now. Back to work. He swigged his tepid coffee. It did not satisfy. The aftertaste was not unlike burnt toast. At least it’s strong.

Josh grabbed for the mouse. He ran his circuit around four websites. He checked his personal email (nothing), his profile (nothing), his blog (nothing), and then his preferred news outlet (nothing). He sifted through local scores and half-heartedly read a recap of a recent hockey game. He was not interested in sports, but hometown allegiance was an easy position to act upon when idle. For grins, he perused the “most popular searches” feature of his standby search engine. Apparently an actress announced immanent plans to take a sabbatical from the screen and spend the summer in a recording studio. She enthused, “I just think music is great and I really love movies still, too, of course, they’ve been good to me. But I’ve always wanted to sing ever since I was like a little girl. I think I can now, you know? I want to make something really special, you know, that people will want to go out there and buy and connect with. I’m really excited! I’ve got a bunch of ideas for album covers already.” This is what people are interested in. He withdrew from the mouse, pushed down on his heels, and rolled back a little. A faint sound, either laughter or sobbing, briefly interrupted the silence. Josh looked about himself. Kleenex. Mug. Calendar. Papers. Kinda barren. I really should put something on the partitions. A thumb-tack would go right through that material. A print? Cezanne? Would need to cut off the bottom title. Tacky. Why do they put those titles on there? It detracts aesthetically. Better to not know than to detract from the art. Why are people so concerned with the title or who made it? The art stands alone. Is it just curiosity? People naturally want to know. Misses the point of the artwork, though. It’s not for knowing. Still, credit where credit’s due. The point of art, though—what’s that?

The musings were arrested by footsteps. His adjustable gooseneck desk lamp quaked in anticipation. Here comes Ralph. Ralph Metcalf, chief supervising engineer and elitist in residence, was neither good nor bad. He was simply large. Everything about him was large—his bovine face, his booming voice, his splayed and bulging wing-tips, his mile-long parabolic ties that never managed to descend beyond the dark concavity his gaping navel created beneath his shrink-wrap-like dress shirts. Given his girth, the ground announced him before he could announce himself. The steel girding of the high-rise flexed with each stride. Upon noticing this phenomenon, Josh had visions of the Cretaceous period. The ever-so-slight jiggling in his fleshy parts could well have been the sensation of concussions produced by some great lumbering reptile. Like a vulnerable-yet-savvy herbivore, the tremors caused him to scamper to safety. A thought of Pavlov’s bell raced across his consciousness, but he let it dart by. Josh drew near his desk, opened the folder again, and began to rattle off more letters. Mr. Metcalf hollered, “Stevenson!” as he passed. His matter-of-fact tone implied the utterance was merely to identify what he saw, rather than to greet or scold it. A force of nature. Although his shoulders drooped and he exhaled after the thuds receded, he did not stop working.