Ah, But The Pardons Never Come From Upstairs, They're Always A Moment Too Late,But It's Entertainment, Keep The Crowds On Their Toes, It's Justice
--"It's A Hit", Rilo Kiley
ORDINARY MOMENTS IN HIS ORDINARY LIFE
a story by e. patrick taroc
He’d been stood up again. Much in the same way the first fourteen times had stung, he was feeling the sting of her betrayal now. It was a dull ache, stemming from the inside of his lungs and extending to his outer extremities, and, as such, he didn’t exhibit any of the signs of man who seemed troubled. In fact, most of the people he had passed his way out of the office building hadn’t noticed anything amiss. What they had seen was a man in his late twenties who seemed very focused on his task and very impatient to get to it. They would have seen what they wanted to see, the world in its place for everyone other than themselves.
Yet he was troubled and his erratic driving towards the McMillans’ house bore witness to that. He had a job to do, but something in the manner in which his day had began had confirmed that today was going to be a long one.
Of course, he wanted to call her. He wanted to find out what exactly her excuse was. He knew better, though. He knew that would only serve to antagonize the relationship further and he knew that he was better off waiting patiently, as he always did, for her to make it up to him.
He reached the McMillans’ house without incident, however. Nice house, he thought, as he stepped out of his black Lexus and onto their front lawn. The house floated comfortably on a sea of green, a lawn obviously well-maintained and cared for. It was flanked by hedges that seemed to be more natural extensions of the house itself than mere decoration. As for the house itself, it was a humble home—well, as humble as a three-story Edwardian residence can be—painted in ashen grey hues and trimmed with forest green. It was exactly the kind of home he had hoped to own someday—if he could ever find the right time to ask her to share it with him, that is.
He rang the door bell and was escorted inside by the lady of the house as if he were royalty. When he sat down she offered him high tea in the most unique teacups he had ever seen. They were dainty with an illustration of a grasshopper on each one so life-like he imagined that they could come right off the cups at any time. He accepted. Also, when she offered him the scones she said she had baked herself, he had no choice but to accept those as well. He watched as she took a sip of tea herself and sat down.
“I really must apologize for my husband. He’s rather kind of upset about today and this whole business about why you’re over here,” he heard her say, straining at the pleasantness he figured on a normal day would not be so forced.
“It’s understandable. It’s rough work for both you and me, I assure, ma’am.”
He smiled and she smiled. They sat in silence, eating their foodstuffs and sipping their tea, for a moment before their silence was broken by the clanging of the grandfather clock in the front hallway.
“Two o’clock already?” she asked. “Where has all the time gone today?”
“I know what you mean, ma’am. I’m counting the moments until my day is done.”
“Did you have big plans?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, yes,” he told her. What he didn’t tell her was that those same plans had been cancelled an hour ago. He also didn’t tell her that now he would probably go back to his empty townhouse and risk calling her all night. He really didn’t want to pick a fight, but he also wanted her to know that he felt it important to keep plans once they had been made. He thought she knew this already so his debate arose out of whether or not one more reminder would be too many.
“Plans are good. My husband and I have always been big planners.”
“Have you?”
“Oh, yes. Every night is an adventure with him, as they say.”
“That’s good. It’s always good to have that excitement in a relationship.”
He took another bite of scone. He looked around the parlor. Even it was decorated meticulously. A baby grand was placed in the corner of the room facing the window and in the opposite corner was a bureau, where upon its surface were placed at least a dozen photos of the lady, her husband, and their teenage daughter. Even the frames on the wall, amid the fine paintings by artists he had never heard of, contained other pictures of the family. Little moments of bliss surrounded by ostentatious presentations of their impeccable taste. He thought it rather like living in a museum, where the spectacle of artistry was accentuated with small touches of homelife. He envied them for their precision. They knew exactly how everything was supposed to look and feel, everything so carefully designed to put forth the best possible image.
Yet here he was to shake up the image. There were times when he felt like the villain in the story and today was beginning to look like one of those times.
Just then, the woman’s husband decided to join them. He came with weariness in his eyes, the red in them unmistakable. There was a softness about him that the man hadn’t been expecting. It came with the job, the sadness, but after seeing the lady of the house’s resolve, he had assumed that the man of the house would employ the same tact. He stood up, shook the man’s hand, and the three of them sat.
The husband started directly with the discussion, wasting no time with pleasantries.
“How can you live with yourself, doing what you do?” he heard the husband ask.
“Honey, now’s not the time,” she tried to say.
“It’s alright, Mrs. McMillan. Your husband has a right to be upset. It’s understandable,” he repeated again calmly for their benefit. “This isn’t an ordinary visit and it usually requires a bit more than ordinary explanations.”
The strange part was it was an ordinary visit for him. He made eight to ten visits like this every week. It was part of his job. It was part of his routine. It was a good deal of his life. Yet to tell them that he’d been through this procedure hundreds of time in the last few years would be insensitive of him. He needed them to know that he had a heart and that he didn’t relish intruding upon their happy life. He had a job to do. They had agreed to what had to happen. It was all nothing more than business.
“Sir, I don’t take any sort of pleasure in my job other than the satisfaction of a job done well. I don’t particularly like hurting others or even inflicting pain on anyone. I’m a decent person and I’m just trying to do the decent thing for all parties. I have been tasked by my employers to fulfill a certain role just as you have been tasked by your honor and by the contract you signed to fulfill your financial obligations. I am not asking for anything extraordinary or even expected. I’m just asking for what’s owed to us. I’m just asking for the process to move along as painlessly as possible.
“That’s how I live with myself. That’s how I do what I do. It’s nothing personal against you nice folks. It’s strictly business.”
At this the husband proceeded to get off his seat and pick up one of the cups. He then threw it at the man’s head, missing by a matter of inches.
“It is personal. You can’t say it isn’t. You’re ruining our whole lives here. That feels personal to me. That is personal to me.”
“I can’t control that, sir. I’m only the humble employee of the company that you agreed to do business with. I didn’t ask for this job, just as you didn’t ask for the situation to be as it is. There are a lot of things in my own life that I wish were different. But I do what all of us must do, endure whatever trials are set before me with a modicum of discipline.”
As he came to the end of his sentence, he felt his cel phone ring. That’s when he saw the familiar name across the display.
“Excuse me, I must take this,” the man said as he retired to the foyer.
It was her. She had messaged him with a few sentences, but those few sentences spelled out a small sign of hope that today would not be as bad as he originally envisioned:
i’m sorry. will call later.
He texted her back quickly that there wasn’t any big hurry and that he loved her. He wanted to tell her a dozen other things, but he was still on the clock and he still had a soon to be distraught couple to deal with in the other room.
He stepped back into the parlor, sneaking a quick glance at the wife now doing her best to calm her husband down. Her wrinkled hand spoke of how much her marriage had taken out of her, but her weathered smile spoke of how much it had given her. When she spoke, after the man had sat down, he knew she was speaking for both her and her husband.
“We’re not begruding you your job, Mister. We’re merely trying to get accustomed to what our new life is going to be like, how we’re going to fill this hole once it’s there.”
“I know what you mean. Every time I do this it never gets any easier. I assure you we’ll take good care of her and maybe in a few months’ time the three of you will be reunited. I have high hopes this isn’t going to be a permanent solution.” He smiled.
“I’ll get her ready,” the husband said, trying his best not to lose it all. “I think she’s almost packed anyway.”
When he had left the room, the wife attempted to explain their situation to the man.
“It’s been a rough few years. We fully intended to keep up with our payments, but sometimes God has other intentions for your time. No matter what we tried, we just couldn’t come up with the money. We should have never taken out that loan with your company. It was reckless of us. The price was too high. But we were desperate. We only wanted to do what was best for her and we thought we had. This house, this life, we’ve only ever tried giving her the best.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything, Mrs. McMillan.”
“Do you have somebody in your life that you’ve been so desperate to take care of that you did the most foolish things in order to accomplish that?”
He thought about it for a second, but he already had the answer in his mind.
“There’s this woman I know. She doesn’t always show it, but I know she loves me a great deal. In the last few years it’s been hard finding the time to always be with her as much as I’d like. It’s been hard realizing that things are never going to be as comfortable and as exciting as I’d like them to be. It’s never going to be perfect.
“Yes, I’ve done some foolish things, committed some foolish deeds and said a lot of foolish things to her, but I’ve never wavered in my dedication to her. I’ve never been so desperate to keep her that I would ever think of…”
“Sacrficing her?”
He sighed. This was always the hard part. This was always the part where the customer’s desire to do what was best met his own perspective on what was right and was wrong. He couldn’t wrap his head around the notion of loving someone so much that you would put their well-being into someone else’s hands.
“Well, yes. I’ve been at this job awhile and I can’t understand why any of you do it.”
He watched her come around to his side of the coffee table.
“You’ll understand someday. You’ll understand that sometimes it’s not about doing what’s comfortable or what’s ordinary for a person. Sometimes, to show someone you love them, you have to be willing to reach for their extraordinary even if you lose everything, including them in the process.”
He nodded his head, but inside he was shaking it.
Nothing. There was nothing in the world that would ever lead him to conclusion that it’d be okay to use someone as collateral for a better life for all of them. There was nothing in the world that could convince him that someone he loved was able to used as a commodity under any circumstance. It was beyond his understanding.
However, it was his purview to make them all understand. There are consequences for actions and, when you flirt with desperation, sometimes you lose more than you bargained for.
“If it’s all the same to you, ma’am, I’ve made my peace with the ordinary life. I’ve made my peace with having someone in my life who I can’t give the extraordinary to. Because, you know what, at the end of day she’s still there and I’m okay with that.”
Just then the husband brought his daughter down the staircase. He watched the wife immediately run over to her and hug her. Their were tears in the girl’s eyes. He was sure they had explained the situation to her in the days leading up until today, but for her the reality of the situation never really sank in until now. He had seen this same act play out a hundreds of time—the teary good-byes, the promises that the circumstances would be rectified fairly soon, all of it. He did his best to smile, but it broke his heart every time.
After a few minutes, he interrupted the family.
“It’s time to go,” he said simply.
The couple turned around quickly, not even bothering to say good-bye to him. Perhaps they thought it was easier that way. As it was, he would have preferred shaking their hands and reassuring them that was a temporary arrangement. It was the one part of the job that he did enjoy, doling out that hope when the customers had none to speak of. It left him with the feeling that he was the good guy when everybody else out there was out to make him the bad guy.
As he took the girl’s hand in one arm and wheeled out her large suitcase with the other, he did his best to show his best upbeat demeanor. They walked out to the car together. He began to think of how long it would take him to get back to the office and then again of whether or not he would see her today. He decided that he would wait till nine or ten. If she hadn’t called by then, he would call her.
Just then, he felt the girl tug on his arm, trying to get away. He increased his grip on her and said a few words to let her know he wasn’t the bad guy here.
“Don’t be scared. Your parents love you and you’ll see them again in a couple of months, hopefully.”
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
ORDINARY MOMENTS IN HIS ORDINARY LIFE
a story by e. patrick taroc
He’d been stood up again. Much in the same way the first fourteen times had stung, he was feeling the sting of her betrayal now. It was a dull ache, stemming from the inside of his lungs and extending to his outer extremities, and, as such, he didn’t exhibit any of the signs of man who seemed troubled. In fact, most of the people he had passed his way out of the office building hadn’t noticed anything amiss. What they had seen was a man in his late twenties who seemed very focused on his task and very impatient to get to it. They would have seen what they wanted to see, the world in its place for everyone other than themselves.
Yet he was troubled and his erratic driving towards the McMillans’ house bore witness to that. He had a job to do, but something in the manner in which his day had began had confirmed that today was going to be a long one.
Of course, he wanted to call her. He wanted to find out what exactly her excuse was. He knew better, though. He knew that would only serve to antagonize the relationship further and he knew that he was better off waiting patiently, as he always did, for her to make it up to him.
He reached the McMillans’ house without incident, however. Nice house, he thought, as he stepped out of his black Lexus and onto their front lawn. The house floated comfortably on a sea of green, a lawn obviously well-maintained and cared for. It was flanked by hedges that seemed to be more natural extensions of the house itself than mere decoration. As for the house itself, it was a humble home—well, as humble as a three-story Edwardian residence can be—painted in ashen grey hues and trimmed with forest green. It was exactly the kind of home he had hoped to own someday—if he could ever find the right time to ask her to share it with him, that is.
He rang the door bell and was escorted inside by the lady of the house as if he were royalty. When he sat down she offered him high tea in the most unique teacups he had ever seen. They were dainty with an illustration of a grasshopper on each one so life-like he imagined that they could come right off the cups at any time. He accepted. Also, when she offered him the scones she said she had baked herself, he had no choice but to accept those as well. He watched as she took a sip of tea herself and sat down.
“I really must apologize for my husband. He’s rather kind of upset about today and this whole business about why you’re over here,” he heard her say, straining at the pleasantness he figured on a normal day would not be so forced.
“It’s understandable. It’s rough work for both you and me, I assure, ma’am.”
He smiled and she smiled. They sat in silence, eating their foodstuffs and sipping their tea, for a moment before their silence was broken by the clanging of the grandfather clock in the front hallway.
“Two o’clock already?” she asked. “Where has all the time gone today?”
“I know what you mean, ma’am. I’m counting the moments until my day is done.”
“Did you have big plans?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, yes,” he told her. What he didn’t tell her was that those same plans had been cancelled an hour ago. He also didn’t tell her that now he would probably go back to his empty townhouse and risk calling her all night. He really didn’t want to pick a fight, but he also wanted her to know that he felt it important to keep plans once they had been made. He thought she knew this already so his debate arose out of whether or not one more reminder would be too many.
“Plans are good. My husband and I have always been big planners.”
“Have you?”
“Oh, yes. Every night is an adventure with him, as they say.”
“That’s good. It’s always good to have that excitement in a relationship.”
He took another bite of scone. He looked around the parlor. Even it was decorated meticulously. A baby grand was placed in the corner of the room facing the window and in the opposite corner was a bureau, where upon its surface were placed at least a dozen photos of the lady, her husband, and their teenage daughter. Even the frames on the wall, amid the fine paintings by artists he had never heard of, contained other pictures of the family. Little moments of bliss surrounded by ostentatious presentations of their impeccable taste. He thought it rather like living in a museum, where the spectacle of artistry was accentuated with small touches of homelife. He envied them for their precision. They knew exactly how everything was supposed to look and feel, everything so carefully designed to put forth the best possible image.
Yet here he was to shake up the image. There were times when he felt like the villain in the story and today was beginning to look like one of those times.
Just then, the woman’s husband decided to join them. He came with weariness in his eyes, the red in them unmistakable. There was a softness about him that the man hadn’t been expecting. It came with the job, the sadness, but after seeing the lady of the house’s resolve, he had assumed that the man of the house would employ the same tact. He stood up, shook the man’s hand, and the three of them sat.
The husband started directly with the discussion, wasting no time with pleasantries.
“How can you live with yourself, doing what you do?” he heard the husband ask.
“Honey, now’s not the time,” she tried to say.
“It’s alright, Mrs. McMillan. Your husband has a right to be upset. It’s understandable,” he repeated again calmly for their benefit. “This isn’t an ordinary visit and it usually requires a bit more than ordinary explanations.”
The strange part was it was an ordinary visit for him. He made eight to ten visits like this every week. It was part of his job. It was part of his routine. It was a good deal of his life. Yet to tell them that he’d been through this procedure hundreds of time in the last few years would be insensitive of him. He needed them to know that he had a heart and that he didn’t relish intruding upon their happy life. He had a job to do. They had agreed to what had to happen. It was all nothing more than business.
“Sir, I don’t take any sort of pleasure in my job other than the satisfaction of a job done well. I don’t particularly like hurting others or even inflicting pain on anyone. I’m a decent person and I’m just trying to do the decent thing for all parties. I have been tasked by my employers to fulfill a certain role just as you have been tasked by your honor and by the contract you signed to fulfill your financial obligations. I am not asking for anything extraordinary or even expected. I’m just asking for what’s owed to us. I’m just asking for the process to move along as painlessly as possible.
“That’s how I live with myself. That’s how I do what I do. It’s nothing personal against you nice folks. It’s strictly business.”
At this the husband proceeded to get off his seat and pick up one of the cups. He then threw it at the man’s head, missing by a matter of inches.
“It is personal. You can’t say it isn’t. You’re ruining our whole lives here. That feels personal to me. That is personal to me.”
“I can’t control that, sir. I’m only the humble employee of the company that you agreed to do business with. I didn’t ask for this job, just as you didn’t ask for the situation to be as it is. There are a lot of things in my own life that I wish were different. But I do what all of us must do, endure whatever trials are set before me with a modicum of discipline.”
As he came to the end of his sentence, he felt his cel phone ring. That’s when he saw the familiar name across the display.
“Excuse me, I must take this,” the man said as he retired to the foyer.
It was her. She had messaged him with a few sentences, but those few sentences spelled out a small sign of hope that today would not be as bad as he originally envisioned:
i’m sorry. will call later.
He texted her back quickly that there wasn’t any big hurry and that he loved her. He wanted to tell her a dozen other things, but he was still on the clock and he still had a soon to be distraught couple to deal with in the other room.
He stepped back into the parlor, sneaking a quick glance at the wife now doing her best to calm her husband down. Her wrinkled hand spoke of how much her marriage had taken out of her, but her weathered smile spoke of how much it had given her. When she spoke, after the man had sat down, he knew she was speaking for both her and her husband.
“We’re not begruding you your job, Mister. We’re merely trying to get accustomed to what our new life is going to be like, how we’re going to fill this hole once it’s there.”
“I know what you mean. Every time I do this it never gets any easier. I assure you we’ll take good care of her and maybe in a few months’ time the three of you will be reunited. I have high hopes this isn’t going to be a permanent solution.” He smiled.
“I’ll get her ready,” the husband said, trying his best not to lose it all. “I think she’s almost packed anyway.”
When he had left the room, the wife attempted to explain their situation to the man.
“It’s been a rough few years. We fully intended to keep up with our payments, but sometimes God has other intentions for your time. No matter what we tried, we just couldn’t come up with the money. We should have never taken out that loan with your company. It was reckless of us. The price was too high. But we were desperate. We only wanted to do what was best for her and we thought we had. This house, this life, we’ve only ever tried giving her the best.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything, Mrs. McMillan.”
“Do you have somebody in your life that you’ve been so desperate to take care of that you did the most foolish things in order to accomplish that?”
He thought about it for a second, but he already had the answer in his mind.
“There’s this woman I know. She doesn’t always show it, but I know she loves me a great deal. In the last few years it’s been hard finding the time to always be with her as much as I’d like. It’s been hard realizing that things are never going to be as comfortable and as exciting as I’d like them to be. It’s never going to be perfect.
“Yes, I’ve done some foolish things, committed some foolish deeds and said a lot of foolish things to her, but I’ve never wavered in my dedication to her. I’ve never been so desperate to keep her that I would ever think of…”
“Sacrficing her?”
He sighed. This was always the hard part. This was always the part where the customer’s desire to do what was best met his own perspective on what was right and was wrong. He couldn’t wrap his head around the notion of loving someone so much that you would put their well-being into someone else’s hands.
“Well, yes. I’ve been at this job awhile and I can’t understand why any of you do it.”
He watched her come around to his side of the coffee table.
“You’ll understand someday. You’ll understand that sometimes it’s not about doing what’s comfortable or what’s ordinary for a person. Sometimes, to show someone you love them, you have to be willing to reach for their extraordinary even if you lose everything, including them in the process.”
He nodded his head, but inside he was shaking it.
Nothing. There was nothing in the world that would ever lead him to conclusion that it’d be okay to use someone as collateral for a better life for all of them. There was nothing in the world that could convince him that someone he loved was able to used as a commodity under any circumstance. It was beyond his understanding.
However, it was his purview to make them all understand. There are consequences for actions and, when you flirt with desperation, sometimes you lose more than you bargained for.
“If it’s all the same to you, ma’am, I’ve made my peace with the ordinary life. I’ve made my peace with having someone in my life who I can’t give the extraordinary to. Because, you know what, at the end of day she’s still there and I’m okay with that.”
Just then the husband brought his daughter down the staircase. He watched the wife immediately run over to her and hug her. Their were tears in the girl’s eyes. He was sure they had explained the situation to her in the days leading up until today, but for her the reality of the situation never really sank in until now. He had seen this same act play out a hundreds of time—the teary good-byes, the promises that the circumstances would be rectified fairly soon, all of it. He did his best to smile, but it broke his heart every time.
After a few minutes, he interrupted the family.
“It’s time to go,” he said simply.
The couple turned around quickly, not even bothering to say good-bye to him. Perhaps they thought it was easier that way. As it was, he would have preferred shaking their hands and reassuring them that was a temporary arrangement. It was the one part of the job that he did enjoy, doling out that hope when the customers had none to speak of. It left him with the feeling that he was the good guy when everybody else out there was out to make him the bad guy.
As he took the girl’s hand in one arm and wheeled out her large suitcase with the other, he did his best to show his best upbeat demeanor. They walked out to the car together. He began to think of how long it would take him to get back to the office and then again of whether or not he would see her today. He decided that he would wait till nine or ten. If she hadn’t called by then, he would call her.
Just then, he felt the girl tug on his arm, trying to get away. He increased his grip on her and said a few words to let her know he wasn’t the bad guy here.
“Don’t be scared. Your parents love you and you’ll see them again in a couple of months, hopefully.”
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
posted by mojo shivers @ 4:41 PM
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