Afterthought

Roger slipped out of the warm pub, buttoning his pea coat against the cold night. There was no snow, and the air was still, but the chill seeped past the artificial heat the beer had given him, heading straight for the bone.

In the lamplight he could see his breath, so he knew he was still alive. This thought did not comfort him.

He walked quickly down the alley to the main street, crossing to the pavement that ran along the river, keeping his head down, as if against an imperceptible wind. He was trying not to think, and finding it difficult.

He stopped in the darkest space between two streetlamps, and stood staring down into the black, turgidly flowing water, looking for a still place inside. It had been a hard day, the hardest he could remember.

Oddly, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

The same people had said the same predictably thoughtless things. The same amount of work had accumulated at his office job. The same customers had written in to complain about the usual things: all of them, obviously, his fault, and all of them his personal responsibility. His coworkers had ignored him - without knowing they were doing it, after all, they said hello - just as they always had.

Perhaps it was the cold and the early dark, Roger didn't know. But as the day had worn on, he had felt increasingly tired, as if holding up the weight of his existence had become unbearably difficult. Even a drink and a warm supper had done nothing to dispel the sense of sinking under a load that could no longer be supported.

Roger was not angry. He was lonely, and he recognised this with a mental shrug. He was often lonely, even in a pleasant crowd. Not because people visibly shut him out - he was a pleasant person to be around, a good listener, ready with the encouraging nod, the pertinent question, perhaps even an anecdote of his own - but because he felt estranged from them all, as if keeping them company were something he did to help them, not himself.

Sometimes Roger wondered idly if it were possible for someone to be there, just for him.

Somehow he doubted it.

Roger had always been like this, a little aloof, perhaps, a little to one side of the flow. He had tried not to make himself noticed while making himself useful...but everything hurt, and fighting the pain took a lot out of him.

Roger would have thought a person who judged others by his own standards a solipsist. He did not expect his neighbour to think like him, or feel like him. He didn't know how to set up his own measuring rod and call another man short.

He tried to understand. But other people hurt. Like a blow to a raw nerve, the casual cruelty of everyday human converse caused pain to him. He reckoned this was his own problem, and did his best to cope without blaming anyone else for his own perceptions.

But tonight, he was tired.

He looked down at his own hands: sturdy, perhaps too large, used to work at any number of jobs (he always had at least one), now surprisingly agile on a keyboard. He looked across the water at the lights on the other bank. And he began to cry, silently, in the cold and the darkness.

Roger began to cry because he suddenly remembered another night, impossibly long ago, when he had stood in almost this same place, looking across the river at the same lights. It had been summer, then, and he had been alone, then as now...

But he had been happy.

He couldn't remember what he had been happy about. That was why he cried.

Roger leaned on the railing and stared down into the water, his mind calm but his mood somber. He wondered...were they right when they said this was all the world there was?

If so, he had nothing to lose.

Were they right when they said there was another world, just like this one, where the same standards applied?

If so, what would be the difference? He might get a good night's sleep out of it.

Were they right when they said there might be another world, one in which ordinary kindness was returned, and someone might love you, just for yourself, and not for what they hoped to get from you?

In that case, lead him to it.

He felt the last piece of the puzzle snap into place, with an almost audible click in his head. He was ready.

He was already poised with one foot on the railing - the other already off the ground - when another thought struck him. He was surprised at himself for forgetting something so obvious, so much so that he almost stumbled as he climbed back off the railing.

Roger pulled his coat collar tighter and hurried home, his boot heels sounding a tattoo on the deserted street in front of his apartment house.

He heard the scratching at the door before he opened it. The little brown dog never barked, but transferred his pawing from door to trouser leg in one smooth motion. The furious wagging of the tail made a statement more eloquent than a sonnet.

Roger peeled off his coat, turned up the electric fire, and went looking for food for Rusty. As he ate, Roger sat watching him in wonder.

Roger knew himself as well as any man could. Once the recognition of a truth had come to him, he would never go back. He knew he would never be easy with other people. Life would always be a struggle to have enough energy left at the end of the day to find one's way home.

He stroked Rusty's sleek head in affection.

A dog does not live as long as a man. There would be plenty of time to take the plunge, after.

In the meantime, there was a reason to make it home at night.