How, he wondered, did she get into this dream of his? A peculiar dream, but then isn’t that what all dreams are like? Stranger than what ever happens in life. Leaving you afterward, if you even remember them, wondering what might occasion them, what deep, dark recesses of your mind harboured such thoughts to spring into a mysterious shadowy kind of life in your mind, while you’re asleep. And here he was, quite clearly but slowly awakening from one of those dreams. Perhaps more like a nightmare. He would have to reserve judgement until he knew more about what his sleep-fevered mind imagined.
And why was she crying? That kind of distortion of someone’s face, even someone as young as her, made it difficult to recognize her. But he did. He had never before taken close notice of her features. Other than to note how plain looking she was, poor thing. What people used to describe as homely. Well, he didn’t mind, he was homely in appearance himself. But she was a nice, pleasant young woman, always with a smile on her face, and anxious to please. He knew her as the cashier at the local coffee shop. Where he was often asked to drop in, to pick up a few special orders.
He didn’t drink coffee himself, the jolt of caffeine didn’t agree with him. He had, his late mother had always murmured, a “delicate constitution”, and it’s true, his stomach was easily upset. Which was why he always had his lunch at the Green Diner. Regular as clockwork, twenty past noon he would exit the building, walk down the block to the same place he took his lunch for the past three decades. People who knew him even slightly in the area, claimed they could depend on his daily stroll for lunch to inform them of the time.
She was pale, and weeping, her grey eyes swimming in tears. And he wondered why. Wanted to ask her, but the words wouldn’t form. It was always like that, in dreams. You wanted to respond, intended to do something or react somehow to what was occurring in the dream and you just could not. As though you were not meant to. Because you were a spectator, imagining that you were an integral part of whatever was happening. And obviously that was the case now.
He could see her mouth moving. She wore no make-up; her features were pleasant enough, but somehow placed in an irregular manner on her face, giving the impression that whoever designed that face was in too great a hurry, poor girl. He couldn’t make out what her lips, forming the words, meant to convey to him. For whatever it was she was saying was obviously meant for him. There was no one else near him. And he was in a very strange position. It was dark, yet it was light. He was lying on his back, nothing surprising there, since he always slept on his back. But it soon became hazily evident to him that he was not in his bed. He was, rather, in the out-of-doors in an area vaguely familiar to him. Familiar, yet unfamiliar, since this was a streetscape he had long known bipedally. Never had he scrutinized it in a daze, lying on his back.
The dark portion of his perception was occasioned by something very large, mechanical, metallic, filthy with detritus, with layers of icy snow, looming over him. The light was that of the ordinary light of a winter day seeping under the dark and heavy object stationed over him. And the girl was there, kneeling, beside him. What a peculiar set of circumstances, what an odd staging; what were they doing there? He became dimly aware of a high-pitched sound scraping through a dull roar in his ears. The sound finally coalesced into words he could distinguish: “Sir…Sir…are you all right?” Why would he not be, although he was grateful for her concern. Why was she so anguished? For him…?
“Sir, hang on, please stay with me“, he heard, and wondered what on Earth she was going on about. Stay with her? Why? Mind, he liked her immensely, though he did not know her personally. She addressed him in a respectful manner; Sir, she said. Of course, she didn’t know his name, his first name, using it disrespectfully, without his permission like the young new office manager. Who addressed everyone, even the senior partners, by their first names. He’d known them a long time and out of respect and courtesy would never dream of addressing them other than formally, using their surnames. He knew his place; she obviously did not recognize hers. He should, he mused, introduce this nice young woman to that other one, the new hire, whose presumptuousness so irritated him.
He felt so burdened. As though he was being crushed. He hadn’t felt that, before. That noise, that incessant roaring sound was increasing, and he could no longer hear the weeping young woman’s voice, though she was still there, still urging him to do something he could no longer fathom. He felt unutterably chilled, colder than he’d ever felt before. And then he remembered, he’d been running late, hadn’t taken his scarf, his gloves, his hat. The only part of him that felt some warmth was his hands. She was holding his hands in hers. Her small, warm hands warming his, pleading with him to “hold on”. Why? She was holding on, there was no need for him to….
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He would never know that Fortune had conceived a grudge against him. Why him? He would never ask that, either. Would never believe, even if he were to have been advised, that this had all been diabolically planned by Fortune. How could anyone? After all, Fortune was supposed to be beyond bias, visiting good on those who deserved it equally with those who clearly did not. And bringing ill to those who had lived exemplary lives, just as readily as she did to those whose lives brought horror to those of others upon whom they preyed. Fortune had no care about the outcomes and destinies of peoples’ lives. She impassively directed them to the right or to the left, and whatever might descend upon them to uplift or to condemn them simply occurred. She was the blindfolded messenger, and no one ever sought to blame her. On this occasion she was not blameworthy, for she had taken note of this man’s daily perambulation toward his lunch site. There was something about this inoffensive, well-tempered and very ordinary man that had obviously offended her. She had instructed fate to send toward the intersection just as he was crossing it, a great, lumbering beast of a truck. Whose driver, an unwitting witness to a very discrete and unfortunate accident, sat at the wheel and directed its passage, unable to forestall the little tragedy. And he sat in his cab, quivering in huge distress and disbelief. He too, had been used and abused by Fortune. Who went on her way afterward, dispensing her often unnerving, sometimes celebratory happenstance of fortune upon unwary humans.
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In the following day’s issue of the local newspaper, much was made of the heroic efforts of firefighters to free the man who had been pinned under the double-sized dump trunk. The office manager of the law firm which had employed the man who had started there at the age of 20 as a file clerk, was effusive in her praise of the young woman who had given comfort to the man who was so beloved of everyone who had ever worked with him at that law firm. He would be missed, they said. His cheerful presence, his willingness to take on any task required of him, however small. His good-natured reliability. Their office would never be the same again.
In his obituary it was implied that he had lived a solitary but exemplary life. He had no close relatives. He hadn’t even a domestic pet. He had his job, and he had his routine. And now he had need of neither.
