Descent...

Cancelled meetings with Cleo, sleepwalking through erratically rescheduled R&D sessions, then racing to my living room to await my daughter’s return, each day hoping against hope that something might have changed…that was pretty much my life. My worries weren’t just slowing our research, but were actively undermining it. Always before when I’d had problems, I’d buried myself in my work. Why was this so different? Cavett and I had felt we were getting close to presentation, but now we were going backwards. I made programming errors, then couldn’t find them for days because my mind inevitably returned to my problems when I tried to focus on the code. I scanned hundreds of lines before realizing I didn’t know what I’d just read, then started over, and made it just few lines further before my eyes and my brain parted ways yet again. I trashed three day’s worth of data collection by forgetting to turn the unit I was wearing ON. I kept trying to conquer my distraction, and I can’t blame Cavett for a thing, but his silence was also damnably conducive to excessive reflection. I’d have discussed putting the project on hold for a few weeks and returning to our regular work, but I feared a worse disaster there. At least, as it stood, I was only sabotaging our own efforts, not botching jobs for less-than-understanding, paying Non-tech customers.

Ashamed of my behaviour and still at a loss for what to say to anyone or how to fix the mess I’d made, I could stand the entropy no longer. I had to break out of this cycle.

‘Cavett, do you think you could carry on without me tomorrow? And maybe Monday as well? I really need to take care of some things.’

Again, his single raised eyebrow invited further explanation, but I had none to give. My best plan at that moment was to drink my way to the first solid sleep I’d had in weeks…rinse…repeat.

A long, silent moment passed, and the eyebrow finally descended to its resting position. ‘I was wondering when you would ask. I might get more done on my own.’ A slight smile as he looked at me over his shoulder added ‘no harm done,’ but I knew I left MUCH harm in my wake. And probably more in my path.

***<>***

The dimly lit corners of my home seemed to leer back at me as I emptied the contents of my pockets onto the kitchen table. The metallic sounds of coins, pens and keys making contact with the cold glass echoed back to me as if from miles away. Every muffled sound accentuated the solitary silence surrounding it. I definitely couldn’t stay in. I laid a brown velvet Nehru jacket on the bed and selected a cream-coloured cotton shirt and pants nearly the same shade. I placed a call to Cleo, left a message and had a glass of wine as I got dressed.

Mentally, I perused the catalog of all my favourite haunts from the years before the kids. Many were in parts of town I hadn’t seen for years. Of the few I could picture still in existence, some had cycled (probably at least twice) to a younger crowd as my peers and I outgrew such social indulgence. Sadder were those establishments that had not cycled, but had, instead grown old right along with their ever-dwindling stream of lonely, now-middle-aged patrons.

I felt genuinely sorry for myself. Incredibly alone and passed-by. No partner, no prospects (well…none I would allow myself to consider)…abandoned by my daughter…alone. Completely alone and tired, so very tired. Directionless. Like a lost child. At once ancient and a child, Things, perhaps, I should have felt when my wife died, or any time in the intervening decade-plus. Every feeling I should EVER have felt gathered around to crush me that night.

The silence was too much. I went to the credenza in the living room and took the cover from the phonograph, an heirloom museum piece I hadn’t touched in decades. When the dust settled, I examined the mechanism in detail. It appeared serviceable. I opened the left-hand door of the credenza and smiled as I saw the brown box of 78’s festooned with the wax pencil scribblings of a long-dead child., possibly my great grandfather, or even his father. Carefully, I tipped the box toward me and gently flipped by the first couple records. I stopped on one I recalled as having been one of 4-year-old Joshua’s favourites: Jelly Roll Morton’s “Jelly Roll Blues.” I wondered why I’d never played the records for Kaite…and what else I had denied her.

I smoothed the dust from the ancient grooves with the corner of my jacket, turned the crank and nudged the needle past and early skip. As I sat on a footstool watching the only-barely warped vinyl spin, absorbing the noisy, distorted, but still defiant energy of the old blues man, I made a decision. I looked at my watch. I’d have to change quickly, and hurry to catch the train.

***<>***

I carried the blue jacket under my arm folded lining-out as I trotted to the platform. In my haste, I knew I wasn’t monitoring the crowd as carefully as was my wont, so I purposefully entered a middle car to start. Once the train was in motion, I scanned for any known persons, and, finding none, passed to the next car back, and the next and the next, donning and buttoning my jacket as I went.