NaNoWriMo – Day 20 (11/20/2005)

Sara

I can’t believe I missed the damn bus stop. How stupid can one person be? Now I’m going to get there and I’m going to be damp and sweaty … who the hell is going to want to hire me looking like this. What a joke. I should just go back home and forget it, maybe come back another day. I can’t believe I did that. And, of course, the bus going the other way passed me just as I got off. Figures.

Only I could have ended up not only missing my stop, but also missing the next stop, and the next one after that, until I was basically forced off the bus when we got to the end of the line. ‘Unless you want to come with me into the depot?’ the driver had said. What a pig. As if I’d want to have sex with a fat, ugly, bald guy who sits on his ass all day. And in some hidden corner of a dirty old bus depot no less. Gross. Although I guess some girls will do stuff like that. And it’s like my dad used to say, ‘You won’t know if you don’t ask.’ I don’t think he was referring to illicit propositions when he said it, but I guess it still applies.

Gotta go back uphill, too. Figures. This just isn’t my day. First me and Bobby split and now this. At least I have a place to sleep tonight—thank god Jenny was home when I called this morning. Her place is pretty small but it’s better than sleeping on the street, that’s for sure. Hey, isn’t that—

—“Simon?”

He’s just walked out of a bar and it’s only—I glance at my wristwatch to be sure of the time—a few minutes after twelve. He stops and looks around, first in the opposite direction from where I’m standing, then slowly all the way around until his eyes finally come to rest on me. I’m not sure that he recognizes me.

“Yes?” he says. It comes out ‘yesh,’ which means he’s been in there for more than just a quick bite for lunch.

“Hi,” I start, walking over to where he’s standing. “Do you remember me? From this morning? We met on the bus.”

“Oh yes,” (yesh), “of course. How are you doing now?”

“I’m doing okay—a little better. I have a place to crash at least … my friend Jenny is going to let me stay with her for a few days.”

“That’s good. So, what are you doing down here?”

“Well, I was coming to see you at work actually and, stupid me, missed the stop. Three times, actually. I ended up at the depot down the road. I was just trying to decide whether I should actually walk all the way up the hill in the drizzle … I’m not very presentable for an interview now, am I?”

“You don’t want to work there anyway.”

“Oh. I just thought from what you said this morning …”

“That was then, this is now,” he says, rather abruptly. Maybe I misjudged him from this morning. He doesn’t seem like such a nice guy, all of a sudden.

“Oh,” I say again, feeling more stupid and foolish by the second. “I see.”

He looks at me and his eyes soften a little bit. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve had a really bad morning.”

“Me too,” I tell him pointedly. “Me too.”

“I know. Let me buy you some lunch and a cup of coffee and we can talk about it, okay? There’s a place not far from here that we can go and get some pretty good food for dirt cheap. It’ll be a little busy this time of day, but I don’t think anyone from the office will be there, so it won’t really matter just as long as we can get a table. Interested?”

I don’t know if it’s the best idea to go along with him, I can smell the booze on his breath, but he was so nice to me this morning … I can’t say no. I don’t want to say no.

“Okay,” I tell him, “but only on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You let me buy the coffee—to replace the coffee you gave me on the bus this morning.”

Smiling he says, “You’ve got yourself a deal. It’s Sara, right?”

I smile back. He remembered my name. “Yep. Sara—with no ‘h’.”

“Okay Sara with no h, let’s get some lunch.”

He holds out his arm in a gesture of mock chivalry, or at least I think it’s mocked. In any case, I link my arm through his and together we start walking. It feels so good to be with a nice person … a nice man, I could just about cry.

“So. You’re staying at your friend Jenny’s. Is that a permanent arrangement?”

“No,” I tell him, “she hasn’t got a whole of space. It’s a small artist’s loft. It’s really only got the one room and her bed is up on a raised platform. Like a bunk bed, but there’s only the top bunk. I’m going to stay on her couch for a little while, but it’s going to be a tight fit.”

“Sounds like an interesting place though.”

“Oh, it’s a gorgeous apartment. Jenny’s got all of her painting supplies there and she gets incredible light. It’s got sixteen foot ceilings or something like that, and the windows are just about floor to ceiling. Exposed brick—it’s awesome. I wish I had a place like that.”

“Why don’t you get one?” he asks as we turn a corner. It’s a little busier here. Not so … dirty and dungy as it was around the bus depot.

“I’d love to but there aren’t any vacancies in her building. And even if there was an opening, I can’t afford to live on my own. That’s why I was coming to see you about the job you mentioned. I was hoping to get back on my feet again, get some bills paid and be able to find myself a new place to live. A permanent place.”

“I’m sorry I can’t help you out with that anymore,” he says, looking at me for the first time since we linked arms and started walking. “I don’t actually work there myself anymore.”

“Really? What happened?”

“It’s a long story and I’ve had to tell it a few times already today. I’d rather not get into specifics, but it’s enough to say that they were going to fire me, so I quit before they got the chance. It really wasn’t a very good place to work anyway,” he tells me. “I would have been doing you a disservice if I’d gotten you a job there.”

Part of me wishes he’d have let me be the judge of that, but he didn’t know I was actually going to come in and see him. Plus, he’s got his own situation to think about and if he was going to get fired, I guess he’s got his own bones to pick.

“Here we are,” he says, turning into an entranceway. “Doesn’t look too busy yet … we should be able to get a table, no problem.” He pulls the door open and holds it for me so I can go in first. I’m conscious of the fact that he might be looking at my bum, so I pass a hand down to smooth the fabric of my skirt. I realise that I want him to look and I’m glad I’m ahead of him because I can feel myself blushing.

The warmth of the diner is the first thing I notice after being in the damp drizzle outside. The heat of the building, the people and the cooking food, along with their various odours, create an atmosphere of familiarity. The aromas wafting from the kitchen remind me immediately that I haven’t eaten yet today—I’m starving.

“Hi, table for two?” asks the hostess, walking over to us and I nod. “Follow me, please,” she says, grabbing two menus and heading back into the diner. Stopping about halfway to the back she asks, “Table or booth?”

“Booth, please,” Simon and I say in unison. Smiling he motions for me to sit down first, letting me choose my preference. I remove my jacket and sit in the side facing the front of the diner, trying to smooth out my hair as I do but only succeed in messing it up further. He sits down opposite me and his foot brushes against my leg causing me to blush again. I reach for a menu to hide behind. He slowly takes his own menu and opens it up, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth as he does.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

It’s the waitress. She’s been standing there the whole time and I blush again. She smiles at me.

“A couple of cups of coffee, please.”

“Comin’ right up.”

We sit in silence, each looking at our menus, until she comes back with our coffees. “What can I get for you?” she asks and Simon motions for me to go first.

“Umm … I think I’ll have the spicy chicken salad please. With Italian dressing.”

“Sure thing, hon. And for you?”

“I think I’ll have the beef dip.”

“Fries, salad or slaw?”

“Fries I guess. Can you put some hot sauce on those for me?”

She makes a note on her pad. “You got it,” she says and heads off to take care of another table.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, looking around the place and seeing who else is here. There’s a lot of business men here for a quick lunch before heading back to the office. I notice that a lot of them are drinking beer, which strikes me as a little odd. I wonder how much work actually gets done in the afternoon if everyone is having a beer or two with lunch. I know I wouldn’t be able to accomplish very much. I notice that there’s a lineup at the door now, about ten people deep, and more people outside looking like the might want to come in.

“We got here just in time,” I say, looking back to Simon. I’m surprised to find that he’s looking right at me and I blush, yet again. Trying to distract him, I nod towards the front door and he turns to see what I’m pointing at.

“Business lunches,” he says.

“Yea, and over a few beers too!” I smile. “I don’t know how they can go back to work and actually get anything done.”

“They don’t,” he says, smiling back. “Half my office used to do the very same thing. They’d get nothing done in the afternoon; they’d just surf the internet, check their personal email, and call their wives. Anything but work. And I’m the one they wanted to fire.”

“Doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun,” I say, trying to keep the topic moving but not wanting to directly ask about what happened.

“Not a whole lot of fun at all. But that’s beside the point. Right now, we need to figure out where you’re going to find a job—from the sound of it you’re going to need something a little more quickly than I will.”

“Well, I’ll find something I guess. I could always go back to being a waitress if I absolutely have to. Not the best job in the world, but it pays the bills, you know? Especially if it’s a nice place and the tips are good.”

“There’s not much point in doing something that isn’t going to get you where you want to be,” he says. “At least not for very long. The problem with a lot of these kinds of ‘make work’ positions—the jobs you take because you need to earn some money—is that that need never goes away and it becomes harder and harder to get out of the situation so that you can actually go after your dreams. Know what I’m saying?”

I nod. I know exactly what he’s saying—that’s how I’ve been living my life; going from one pointless job or relationship to the next, just because I think I need the money or the companionship or something.

“I’ve decided it’s more important to risk everything you have and lose it, than to risk nothing and keep it. Because what are you keeping, in the end? Nothing at all. We all have our date with destiny,” he says, “and when that day comes there isn’t a thing we can take with us.”

He’s talking about death. “Do you believe in destiny?” I ask him.

“I believe we’re all destined to die. Other than that, I think it’s pretty much wide open. Destiny or no, all-powerful god or no, I can’t prove it either way so saying that I believe it doesn’t do any of us any good. And, if you ask me, it actually does us harm.”

I’m fascinated by his ideas. I grew up in a strict Catholic family and God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit is all I really know. As far as I’ve been told God has a plan for each of us and we are following His plan, whether we realise it or not. I’ve never really spent much time thinking that there might be another option … that maybe my belief in God is unfounded; that it might be doing me more harm than good.

“How so?”

“Think about it. How many crimes do you know that have been committed in the name of one god or another? Look at how fractionalized we’ve become not just in our own society, but in the entire world. The dawn of the internet age has created an awareness and access to information that is entirely unprecedented in human history. We have the ability to understand more than we ever have before about cultures that exist around the globe. But when we turn on the television all we see about those other cultures is strife. We hear about the Muslims attacking the Christians on September 11th. Bullshit. You had twelve men—not an entire religion—twelve men flying planes into buildings in the United States—they didn’t attack all Catholics—they attacked the US.

“We have even less understanding than we did before because most people don’t bother to open their eyes and actually look at things for themselves. They thing that the television gives them all the information they need in order to get by in this world, and they think that because they believe in god they will go to heaven. They think they can just coast through this life because they’ll have everlasting happiness in the kingdom of heaven. But what if that doesn’t happen? What if this is all there is? I tell you this: you and I will never know what happens to us when we die, until we die. It’s as simple as that.”

“Who had the beef dip?” a busboy interrupts and I point across the table to Simon. He puts the plates down and asks, “Can I get you anything else?”

“Some Tabasco sauce please.” Looking at Simon I smile and add, “I like my chicken spicy.”

Without talking, we both dig into our meals. I didn’t realise how hungry I was until I smelled the food when we came in, and ever since my tummy’s been rumbling something fierce. I douse my salad in Tabasco, salt and pepper and pass the Tabasco to Simon, remembering his request for hot sauce on his fries.

As I chew my food I consider what he’s told me about religion and 9/11. I’m not sure I totally agree with him about that; I think there was something more to it than just twelve men. There is an entire group out there who hate the Americans, along with anyone else who is associated with them, but I understand his point that the media has made it an ‘us against them’ thing, which hasn’t helped the situation any. And the point about not knowing for sure what’s going to happen when we die, until we actually die I can definitely relate to.

Swallowing a mouthful of my spicy chicken I ask, “So you believe there is no such thing as destiny? That everything is random and if good things happen to you it means you’re just luckier than other people?”

“No, no,” he says, putting down his sandwich, “not at all. The point is, I don’t know anything about fate or destiny. For all I know, it was destiny that brought us here today to have this very conversation. Of course, it could also have been pure coincidence, a totally random occurrence that simply … happened. Does it mean anything?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him truthfully.

“Where does meaning come from? Do you think that things have meaning, or that we give them meaning by our judgment or interpretation of them?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it before.”

“It’s worth a look,” he says, looking down at this food. “Does the life of an animal have any worth? And how do we define that worth? Take a horse-lover, for example. Someone who loves horses sees a baby colt and envisions the majestic stud he will become. They see the horse galloping through the trees and meadows, doing what a horse was meant to do. Now look at it from a farmer’s perspective. The farmer sees a baby colt and sees the workhorse he will eventually become. He sees how the horse will eventually be able to support the farm and ‘earn’ his living. He sees the inherent value of the horse as being a worker and envisions the horse doing what it was meant to do. So, which of them is right?”

I haven’t been able to chew my food. “I’ve never looked at the world in that way before,” I tell him. “I just assumed that everyone saw things the same way. I guess a lot of people probably think that too, don’t they?”

He nods. “Everybody has their own set of filters through which they see the world. The farmer, using the same example, sees the world one way. It is a harsh place where one needs to earn their keep. Work is a fact of life and no one gets to escape it. He gets up at five o’clock in the morning, every single day of the week and tends to his animals. That’s his responsibility. Their responsibility is to pay him back for that tending by working in the fields, or providing food for his family.”

“Whereas the horse lover sees through their own filter, where horses are beautiful and majestic creatures whose purpose is to simply be a horse?” I ask.

“Exactly. Neither is right or wrong, necessarily. Right and wrong don’t even exist, except in our minds.”

Now he’s lost me. “Right and wrong don’t exist? I’m not sure I agree with that.”

“Well, give me an example of something that’s right or wrong and we’ll see if we can figure it out.”

“Well, what about your bosses wanting to fire you for no reason this morning?” I suggest, happy with myself for finding a way to bring the conversation back to this topic, at least in part.

“Okay, sure. What about it?”

“Well, it seems pretty obvious to me that they were wrong to try and fire you without having a good reason.”

“Why is that ‘wrong’?”

“Because it’s illegal! They can’t do that, not without a good reason.”

“Aha! So legal and not legal can tell us what’s right and wrong?” he asks.

I get the feeling he’s going somewhere with this, but I can’t see where. “Yes, I guess that’s as good a place to start as any.”

“About a hundred and fifty years ago it was legal to own slaves—is that right or wrong? Less than one hundred years ago, women were not given the right to vote on local and national issues, including the presidential elections in the United States. Is that right or wrong?”

“Well …”

“The point is that many things that are considered right by their legality have eventually been seen as erroneous and the laws around them have been revised or overturned. The law cannot accurately tell us what is right and wrong. You must remember that laws are created by people and people can be wrong. They also tend to do things that are self-serving, that will benefit them.”

“Okay,” I concede, “so the law can’t tell us what is right and wrong, at least not in all cases. What about religion? The ten commandments are pretty clear about what is right and wrong.”

He is in the middle of taking a bite of his sandwich as I say this and almost chokes on it. I have to get up and pound him on the back as he chews and swallows in small doses, taking sips of his coffee every few seconds to help wash it down. He soon has himself back under control and I sit back down on my side of the booth.

“Religious laws are worse than legal laws,” he says, “for the simple fact that they cannot be challenged. At least the legal system can be changed, but the bible? I don’t think so. Changing the bible would be tantamount to admitting that Jesus was wrong or, at the very least, that his disciples were wrong. That alone would destroy the basis for the entire religion. No, religious laws are not a very good estimate of right and wrong.”

I’m starting to see that he’s got an answer for everything, but I’ve got one that he won’t be able to talk around. “What about murder? Murder is definitely wrong.”

“How do you define murder?” he asks.

“Killing someone. Taking someone else’s life.” I think I’ve got him cornered.

“If killing is wrong, what about capitol punishment? Should the jailor who follows the law be held accountable for injecting a convicted killer with his lethal dose? And if so, given the law, he should also be killed and the circle perpetuates itself. Or what about war? I don’t personally believe in war, but there are many who do. Are they all wrong? And if you think they are, what do you think they’d say about you if I asked them the same question in reverse? Of course, the answer is that they would believe you to be wrong. So who is right?

“What about the person who kills someone in self-defense, because they themselves were under attack? Is it okay to kill someone who is terminally ill and who has asked to die? You see, the killing itself cannot be right or wrong. The act is simply what it is. The circumstances around the act, the intentions of the person committing the act, these are things that begin to give us colour and clarity and yet still they don’t answer the question. We have different punishments for people who mapped out and planned a killing versus those who kill accidentally, or in self-defense. We look at the circumstances surrounding the action before passing judgment on how wrong they are. There are circumstances where one person can kill another and never even be charged with a crime.”

“I think I understand what you’re trying to say” I tell him, ‘but I can’t get it out of my head that certain things are invariably … wrong.”

“Of course you can’t. And that’s perfectly natural. You’ve been taught all your life that certain things are wrong. You have the programming inside your head—what we call a belief—that this or that is right or wrong. But even if you look at the things you would consider ‘right’ you can find anomalies.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like doing something you believe is ‘right’ because you know that others are watching and you want to create an illusion. You give a homeless person some money so that the person you’re with will think you’re kind and generous, or so that you’ll be able to get into heaven. Doing ‘the right thing’ in order to get some kind of reward isn’t doing that thing at all. Sure, the homeless guy gets a couple of extra quarters and he probably needs them too. But the action isn’t actually to give him money; it is to delude someone else into believing that you’re giving money to the homeless. The money is simply a side-effect of your true intentions. Does any of this make sense?”

I nod, unable to articulate the thoughts that are whirling around in my head. I am starting to see very clearly that I’ve been duped for most of my life.

“I feel like such a fool,” I tell him. “I’m twenty-six years old and I’ve never even thought about this stuff. I feel like someone’s pulled the wool over my eyes.”

Laughing, he tells me, “That’s because someone has. A lot of someone’s actually—you’re parents, your friends and family, the media, your culture. But don’t blame them for it because they don’t actually know any better … well, except maybe the media. For the most part, especially your parents and teachers, they’ve just been doing the best they can with the tools they have to work with. It’s the same thing with the slavery question … back then, people thought it was okay because it suited their needs and they didn’t actually know any better. But then some people started to think, ‘Hey, maybe we shouldn’t be treating people this way,’ and the awareness grew. Now, one of the first things children learn about in school is that slavery is bad.”

“That makes a lot of sense, Simon. So tell me, if you’re so smart about this stuff, why were you working in an office buiding?”

“That’s a very good question, Sara. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to that one.”

Today’s word count: 4365
Cumulative word count: 32,026