“I’m taking my toys and going home.”
Paul looked at these words on the small square of paper and laughed softly to himself. He put his initials beneath them: PR. He set the note down and walked from the desk across the cool wood floor to the open window. The street lights rolled a soft yellow glow across the ceiling, covering the walls with sharp angled shadows. Leaning out he stared for a moment at the six inch concrete ledge right below the window. It was gray and spotted with pigeon shit. He could smell kerosene in the breeze. He let his gaze move to the street
It was four am. The street was quiet and empty except for a taxi that slid by in its own yellow light. The street was six floors below and the taxi made no noise that he could hear. It was like watching bad TV with the sound turned off. The low rumbling of a far off train was faint in his ear. Paul turned and sat on the sill of the open window and lit a cigarette from the pack laying beside him. He turned and watched his wife sleeping in the bed a few feet away. She slept close to the far edge and seemed to cling to the bed. Like in a panic. She had all the blankets wrapped tight around her. Paul thought his side of the bed looked very empty. Like snow before the footprints.
That’s typical, he thought. There she is taking what is mine to keep herself warm while here I am getting ready to lean back. That’s how I’ll do it, he thought. I’ll lean back. Like a diver plunging off a boat, heavy air tanks pulling back, flippers overhead. I’ll just plunge backwards into whatever comes next. He thought about the note again and smiled. That would really piss her off. That would be so stupidly flippant in the last moment. She would want a long and dramatic note about a life of pain and how none of it was her fault and despite her support he could not go on. She wanted a note that outlined careful and clear reasons. Reasons that she was not a part of. He would not give her that. He would not let her excuse herself from this event. She would read the note and feel anger and guilt. He hoped it would never leave her.
He remembered for a moment a conversation they had the night before. She said to him that if he were to beg for a job with the enthusiasm with which he was begging for sex perhaps he would have not been unemployed so long. And perhaps, if he had not been without a job for so long, they could have afforded to go on the ski trip with her friends. He didn’t like her friends, or skiing for that matter, but that had hurt. He came here for her. First she wanted school. Now she had a job and was moving up. After seven months he was sure that there were few Ad people in the city of Chicago who had not seen a copy of his resume. He’d left a good job to come here. He knew how much she wanted school. His business was tougher now than five years ago. Despite all his efforts he had gotten only a few call backs in the past months. No offers. She kept this in his mind. He continued smoking, lighting one off the other as he got down to the filter.
Lung cancer was not a concern for someone in his position. He liked his position. There on the window sill in his boxer shorts. He would watch the early morning sky as he fell. A cigarette in his mouth all the way down. And she would find the note. But what if the note wasn’t just right? He didn’t really have any toys, symbolic or otherwise. What if her pure, stupid confusion derailed the anger and guilt he was looking for? He got up and went to the desk. Taking the note he had written he folded it neatly into four corners and dropped it into the waste basket beside the desk. He looked around the small apartment and ran both hands through his graying hair, cigarette clenched in his teeth. Then he smiled. He picked up the pen and wrote
“Here, by the grace of God, go I.”
She would hate that. Really hate it. He signed his initials and went back to the window to sit down.
He sat for a long time not thinking anything in particular and listening to the growing sounds in the street below. It was almost six o’clock and delivery trucks and early morning commuters were moving in the street below. Soon his wife’s alarm would go off and a routine would play out. Like every morning for the past few months he would get up after she went into the bathroom and throw the note away. Then, before she was finished in the shower, he would be wrapped in blankets still warm from her body. He would sleep, or pretend to, until she left. His days were the same. He would leave the apartment around noon and spend the afternoon following up on job prospects and reading the paper on the bus. He would usually ride around for an extra hour or two. He wanted to be sure she got home first. When he walked in, his ass sore and eyes tired, from reading on the bus, she would inquire about his day. No matter what had been accomplished that day, an interview, a new lead, it would not be enough. She would not say it outright. She would ask questions.
”Did you call back so and so?”
”No.”
And then she would nod. There was so much in that nod. Judge and jury with no hope of retrial. There would be little conversation that evening and then, after she had gone to sleep, he would begin his ritual of writing notes.
The alarm went off. He lit another cigarette and watched her stir awake. She pushed herself up and sat on the edge of the bed without looking at him. Her hair was stuck to her face, running parallel to the lines left by the sheets. She stood up and pulling on her robe and stepped in front of him.
“I have an early meeting today. I’d appreciate it if you could drive me to work.”
Her tone was cool and without appreciation.
“And could you pick up around here today? I live here too you know.”
She turned and walked into the bathroom. She let the door snap shut behind her and he noticed that it was a few seconds before he could see the bright florescent light shining under the door. He sat without reaction and finished his cigarette. When he was done he went to the desk and threw the note away. Then he slowly put on the suit that hung on the back of the chair at the desk. He selected a tie from his closet. One that he had not worn in a while. One that she found particularly offensive. He sat back at the window sill and smoked while she walked around getting ready for work. They did not talk. When she was ready she picked up her purse and looked at him.
As they left the apartment Paul paused. His wife grew impatient.
“What is it.” She asked.
“I forgot to close the window,” he answered, “it’ll just take a second.”
She paced darkly back and forth in the hall way outside the door. She hated to wait for him. As she grew more and more angry, a crowd gathered on the street below.