Birthday
Rob groaned as he looked at the calendar on his cluttered desk. It was tomorrow. How had tomorrow come around so fast again? A wise old master at his school had once, in a rare glimpse of humanity, explained that as you age, though units of time remain the same, fractionally they become far shorter. Which was how it was tomorrow so soon. Too soon.
Sighing, he noted that the desk before him needed to be cleared. Memos needed to be read; sent; and shredded. Letters needed to be read; sent; and shredded. E-mails needed to be read; sent and deleted. Later, drawers would need to be emptied. Boxes filled. His working life would be decimated into the space of one or two boxes; the size of a case of wine or a delivery of printer paper. So much to do.
It would be somebody else's desk. Toying with the idea of leaving it to be somebody else's mess as well, he rose from his chair with the agreement of the clock. One last meeting with upstairs. Was this how she'd felt? It was years since she'd left; years since he had seen her. Gerry's seventieth? Yes, he'd seen her then. Hardly to talk to though.
Blah after boring blah after achingly dull blah. How had he worked for these idiots for so many years? They weren't the same idiots that had been above him when he'd began reporting to them. Those idiots had already moved on. These were younger, more moronic shadows of them. He should have been reporting to people like Jack Halford. But people like Jack Halford never became pen-pushers and administrators. Why was he thinking about Jack again?
Coffee. Then the boxes. Pulled out a cupboard where he hadn't been aware of their presence; their contents ejected uncensored into the bin; placed on the desk. Refilled with the few mementos from around the room. Things sporadically positioned to remind him that there was a world outside of this office. A world that he needed to find his place in once more. No longer as a young man, just starting out; but as an old man, with eyes that had seen too much of the world to be excited by the prospect. He was tired. Too tired to be afraid. Tired enough that the exhaustion masked the thing he was truly afraid of. He was alone.
Everything was ready. He'd only needed one box in the end. Forty years of his life equalled one box. He could write forty volumes about just one of the days he'd spent at work; that would be just enough to give justice to every moment in that day, every feeling felt. Perhaps he should take up writing.
A knock on the door. A familiar face, a much older face than his, asking if he was going to bail on them. No, he'd see them down the pub. In fact, he was just about ready. He was done.
"Right, well there's someone here to see you, so I'll just go get me coat and meet you down there," Gerry Standing grinned awkwardly, stepping aside and letting another familiar face take his place in the doorway. Sandra.
"Hi," she said shyly. "Happy birthday."
She was older. But so was he. It had been ten years since she'd left UCOS. Ten years since she'd left him. Time had not been kind to him. He was a shadow of the man he had been; still a pillar of the force; still a formidable face in the fight against crime; still the broken, lost, expression of a man that he had been the day that she had walked out on him. But she was here now.
"It's tomorrow, actually," he responded quietly. Was this an apparition? "Sandra? Is that really you?"
Her oceanic blue eyes, her sunshine gold hair, her deeply feminine way. All of it unchanged since the day he'd last seen her. That day when she'd walked out of his life forever. Forever Never Lasts.
"Yes," she replied, matching his level. He was changed. When he'd first become her DAC he'd been younger, full of drive, of ambition. Now, she found him a man betrayed by fate. Left behind by his wife, his children, his friends. A man who'd settled behind the desk he'd become accustomed to. A man with no thought of change. The man she loved.
"We're just off to the pub," he tried to inject some of the enjoyment that he should have felt at such an occasion. What occasion? His birthday? His retirement? Six o'clock? Friday? Endings, all of them, endings.
"We?" she queried gently though she already knew the answer. Gerry, the last man standing in a UCOS changed beyond recognition since the day she had ripped the hand-written 'new crap' sign from their door, had filled her in the moment she had arrived; he'd barely allowed her to set foot on English soil. Somehow, over the years, Gerry and her former boss had become firm friends. Off the record.
"Yeah, erm, Gerry and the UCOS boys reckon they owe me a drink," he suspected that the light, jokey, tone he wished to achieve had fallen flat. When had Gerry become his only friend? Had he pushed everyone else away? Or had they simply left him behind?
"Do you mind if I join you?"
"No," he replied, so quietly that it might have been his last breath.
