Sunday Breakfast

He lives on the floor below mine. He isn’t home right now, but he shall be, in around two hours. I just have to find something to do until then. I pick up a book and flip through it. I can’t catch a word or form one coherent thought, so I keep it aside and start going through the books on my shelf. I try and organise them in alphabetical order but midway through it I can’t remember if the system was based on first name, last name or the title. I sweep off the books already done and look at the pile of books at my feet. Disarrayed, helpless, the books lie there, waiting for me to pick them up.

I drop down and do a couple dozen of pushups. I get up and there’s still an hour left for him to get back. I take my towel and make my way to the bathroom. Turning the shower on at the highest possible temperature, I wait for the water to assimilate to the command. I step in and feel a pressure so intense on my leg I feel I’m going to kneel over. The injury. I keep on forgetting about it. I have come to realise something sad over the last year, if there is no one to tell things to, it gets easier to forget. I can’t for the life of me remember how I got this injury but it keeps on flaring up every now and then.

I get out of the shower and towel myself off and open the closet. Sighing I stretch on the bed and feel a wave of sleep taking over me, I stop it dead in its track and ask it to either come outside of business hours or not at all. I slap myself hard across my face and feel a shadow of the beard. It doesn’t matter though, not anymore.

I put on my clothes and check my face in the mirror, there is a faint red mark of three fingers across my left cheek. I rub but it doesn’t go away.

I make my way over to the window and peer out. Looking for the man. He is a garish looking guy, not any older than sixty, I suppose. My dad was the same age. Was. The thought of having to put a was in the sentence hits me in the head and it starts throbbing, in consonance with my beating heart. I take a couple of deep breaths and remind myself why I am standing here. I refocus and try to locate the man.

I have been looking over him for a while now. I had been having some trouble sleeping. Mostly, I like the way my life is with all its lonely aspects, but, something was missing. Some element of having a life barely touching yours, orbiting around. There are no expectations. They just live and breathe. It keeps me grounded I think.

I can’t recount the number of times I woke up in the middle of the night, always past 2:30 AM. Always the same nightmare. Clutching my chest, I have let out a scream now and again too. So I took care of that. I resigned from my day job. It was getting too hard to keep up with it anyway.

The new one has me reporting at night. It’s at one of those places where you work the minimum wage to answer customer support calls for first world people. I was a bit concerned about changing my name for the job, but apparently, Chuck suits me. Their alphabetised system reeks of ‘Oliver Twist’, but my manager hadn’t heard of it. It doesn’t pay all that much, but what do I even need money for, I reasoned. It is just me now. No one to take care of. Lonely Chuck, living his lonely life.

I checked my watch, 6:30 PM, and like clockwork saw the man walking across the street. His head hung low, a bag of groceries on his arm and his office bag on his back. I couldn’t imagine the circumstances that forced him to work at this age, but then I figured, in a very sad way, all of us are going to be working a lot longer than him.

He strides across the street and makes his way to the building. A moment later I hear the lever of the elevator creaking to deliver him to his doorstep. A turn of the key later, he was back home safe. I breathe a sigh of relief, make a note of the timings in the notepad and grab my car keys.

It’s not as if I am obsessed with him. Why would I even be? It is not anything sexual. I just don’t like the idea of the poor old man dying alone in his apartment. So, every morning as I come back from work, I park my car around the block and wait for him. It’s surreal how it all lined up, you know. The time I get free and drive back, is around 8:30, the same time that the man leaves for his place of work. I imagine it to be a government service, but nothing fancy. Probably a secretary to someone important. He doesn’t seem to have the air of being that important himself.

I love driving my car around, back in those insomniac months that’s how I would while away my time. That’s how I met him the first time, coming back from one of my drives.

He was walking to his office on a Monday morning and he seemed tired. Over a period, I could see it claiming more parts of him. Like a new day moon slowly inching towards its full glory. His pains had him rubbing one or the other part of his body constantly, with his mouth a little ajar, he looks dazed. Sad, almost. He didn’t have anyone visiting. I figured that out within a month. I mean who doesn’t have people coming over for new year’s day? I didn’t, but I had a valid reason, I suppose. I don’t have any living family.

The man is my only living anchor in the real world. I don’t know what I would do if anything were to happen to him. Knowing he is out there working, and that he would be back when I wake up, is what keeps me going from one task to the next. Everything was going absolutely fine, until that wretched Friday.

I got called into the boss’s cabin. He had been in this business for a while, apparently, at one time, he led teams that would deceive the foreign customers into making payment into their personal accounts. It got out of hand and he had to move away for a while. When he came back, all of his hair had turned white. He got a second chance with the newbies that started this fine establishment, but nothing ever comes without a price. Even if it’s your hair that has to suffer.

He took it well though, I have seen pictures from his earlier days, I think he looks better now. He pursed his lips as if unwilling to let the words escape. I waited with my eyes on his face. He took a sip of water and cleared his throat.

‘I understand that you only had one condition while joining…’, he said.

‘Yeah’.

‘I am afraid we can’t guarantee that anymore, due to some budgetary constraints, we shall have to assign you some additional shifts this month’, he looked at me.

I couldn’t believe it. I had my entire life built around some specific guarantees and the timelines were a given. I was furious. I looked at his face, with its pale skin peeking through the five am shadow beard. I was pissed and started looking around for things I could throw right now to get fired. But then I realised, what would I do? Get another one of these jobs? Who knows when that will happen?

I took a deep breath, loud enough to whoosh it out of me on the way out. I looked at him in the eye and said, ‘I won’t be able to help you with that. Sorry.’

And with that, I walked out of his clunky office. I went back to my desk and asked the guy sitting next to me to make sure I didn’t miss a call. Grabbing my jacket, I made my way up to the roof of the building. I was staring at the dark, empty abyss of the dawn before the winter sun crawled up when I heard someone come in.

‘Can I borrow your lighter?’, he asked.

It was another guy from downstairs, he worked in a different team but I had heard him talk about taking a managerial position a long time. For now, I believe, he was busy licking the butt of the manager.

I nodded and handed over my lighter that I still kept. I quit, a while ago, five weeks to be exact but the phantom cigarette never really left the space between my fingers. So I thought I’d carry around the apparatus. To trick my failing addicted brain.

I breathed in some of the smoke that came off his burning stick, it would be a shame to put them on the same pedestal as that of the cigarettes, it was one of those flavoured ones.

I started to walk away, disappointed, so much for a quiet moment alone.

Just as I was about to duck out, he says, ‘Hey, I heard what happened at the boss’ cabin.’

Oh, I said.

‘Yeah, he has been bringing in all of us to have the same talk. It seems like it is going to stick. At least for a while.’, he continued.

I continued to look at him, with my hand on the door handle. If he could at least rush, I could wrap up my work to be back in time. As a matter of reflex, I checked my watch. He must have noticed that because he got the point the next time he opened his mouth.

‘You will have to come in, you know. We all have to’, he said with the most deranged form of an apologetic look on his face. His face had contorted into a different man’s altogether.

‘But, as I said before, I can’t come in. I have something to take care of’, I told him, in a voice that was of a higher note than I was expecting it to be. I saw his face change colours instantaneously and his eyes started darting from left to right.

‘Look, I don’t know much about you, you never really come out with us. But is there any way you can make it work, I’m only saying because you’re a good fit, and if you don’t get on board, it might not work out, in the long run’.

Oh, I said again. So the boss had sent him to do the dirty work. I opened the door and walked out of there. I went downstairs and did my work in the brief spaces of time I wasn’t thinking about the problem. All because the stupid company couldn’t keep up. I must have taken a lot of exasperated breaths because everyone kept looking in my direction.

There was just no way I would be able to live off without having to work. And this was an okay one. Paid decent and didn’t demand much, until today of course.

Walking out the door that morning, I made a quick detour and told him I will do it. He looked a little scared at first, but then his face broke into a smile. ‘Great, I will share the schedule with you.’, he said.

Now, I had some planning to do.

I waited around the block as I usually did. Walking the old man home, hearing the click on his door, I took off my shoes and slumped on the bed.

***

It was all going to be fine, I thought to myself. Even with the new timings, I would be able to make my rounds and ensure that he left all right and made his way home in one piece. Frankly, I was proud of myself for having made that work, just had to call in for a few favours from the people who worked on my floor. But it wasn’t that big of a deal, I am certain most of them were glad that I had spoken to them.

Life was going on all fine, with my routines perfected down to the minute, I was happy and relaxed. I knew every time I went back home that there he would be. Walking down the stairs, crossing the road. Slouched back, carrying his bags.

It was all going smoothly, until the fifth of April that is. The day started in the usual manner. I watched him walk off to his home. I heard him key in and turn on the television like he always did. It was Saturday night and I had an unfortunate shift to cover for a deadbeat employee who couldn’t bother coming in. I was a little grumpy but I figured it would be fine by the time I came back. On Sundays, he would wake up early, mix up pancake batter with vanilla and have it with syrup. I could tell by the smells that wafted up to my kitchen. He would listen to the radio, the old tunes in particular and I would be transported to the childhood I never had. I loved every part of it, and I guess that’s what made me pissed off about having to go to work before it.

I went in, did my time anyway. But by the time I came back I was in an even worse mood somehow, so I desperately needed the cheer from the radio tunes pancake world that the man had conjured up beneath my flat. The second I walked in, I just knew something was off. It was in the air somehow, the lack of the radio static before the jockey locked in was deafening.

It drove me crazy to think that something bad could have happened to him. I spent the first hour with my ear on the floor. I couldn’t go downstairs, I couldn’t just knock on his door. I knew there weren’t many rules to this, but to stare at someone’s face as you try and explain what you’re doing there and what business do you have with their life, was not ideal.

I held my breath and shut off every gadget I had in my possession. I cussed at every car that chose to honk below the building in that time. I waited and waited, but there wasn’t anything to hear. I talked myself into just walking by his place, to see if he was even inside. I knew this man better than my own blood. He didn’t have a place to go to. Not one. I knew he was supposed to be there downstairs, radio in the background, possibly with an apron on, cooking some pancakes. But he wasn’t.

I went downstairs and tried to ascertain if he was inside. I tried to look nonchalant but every time I heard the elevator creak I would rush back. When I finally made it to his floor, a bunch of people were blocking the view and it wouldn’t seem all right for me to just casually walk by someone’s house. Not in front of the neighbours. So I thought I would wait some more. I went back into the house and tried to think of another way to know where he was.

He’d do this too, you know. One of my therapists said I had some abandonment issues I hadn’t dealt with. I went for a while before it started getting on my nerves. I constantly felt like I was talking to a phoney friend I had kept around only to vent out a couple of times a week.

Contrary to the therapist’s beliefs, I think I dealt with it the best way I knew how. I'd clench my fist, my jaw, my body and anxiously wait for him to come back. I’d make arguments up in my head and have a reasonable answer ready for each of his excuses. But nothing ever happened. He’d never bring it up and well, I didn’t try. I wouldn’t talk to him for a few days before being all right with it. And that was all. Until it happened again. Those few days in between, I felt the most anguished I have felt. Even thinking about it now makes the ball of fire in the pit of my stomach come back.

But time has a cruel way of making everyone pay, doesn’t it? He had to come back. Back to me, without having anyone else to turn to.

I feel the same anguish building up inside me as I waited for him to come back. I didn’t eat, couldn’t really. I waited that entire day. By the nightfall, I was driving myself crazy pacing the apartment and his floor. I couldn’t take any longer. So I downed a large quantity of alcohol and went to sleep. Wishing he would be back tomorrow.

He didn’t show up for three days. There was no explanation for it. I couldn’t do anything. The sheer force of the helpless knocked me down to my knees.

I hadn’t eaten, slept, or drank anything except the bottle I cradled in my lap. I was giddy when he walked in. He struggled for a while, but I explained my reasons to him and I think after a while, he got extremely cooperative, just like my dad.

After all, it’s hard to argue if you’re dead.

***