It came in heady, intoxicating tides; like the first sip of a glass of whisky coursing through his veins, tracing a trail of heat and strength and invulnerability. He observed his handiwork; less for checking it for flaws than to have an excuse to have another look at every subtle detail of the loving effort he'd put into it. Fewer things in life had that high of being good at something. It was a feeling he'd missed when he was laid off from work, a feeling he hadn't even realised that he'd lost, until tonight he'd found it again.
Serafeim had never been one that panicked. He had that supernatural ability to keep a cool head even as the world burned down around him. When Roberts, his manager, had called him to his office the year before to give him the news, it wasn't panic that he'd felt. It wasn't anger. Anger, he'd found, was an emotion that rarely visited him, and when it did, it took the form of cool, subdued hatred rather than rage.
So when Roberts had delivered the news that he was to be laid off work, he hadn't yelled. He hadn't taken it out on the various nearby inanimate objects as, by the looks of it, previous now former employees who'd been given similar news in that office had. Instead he'd studied the face of his manager for a sign that he might be talked, bargained, threatened out of it. He'd found none.
"I see," he'd said at last, turning his attention to the grease congealed on his work gloves. As he scraped absently at a patch of it, a flurry of scenarios had played in his head of what he was going to do next, all at once, keeping the creeping despair at bay.
Despair, also, was not something that he'd thought he'd been capable of feeling, but over the past year it had found ways to test his resilience against it. First it had been the humiliation of confronting his wife, Zainab, and what little family he'd had. Then it was the job interviews. At first he'd taken his time to dress for them, to present himself in the best way he possibly could. He'd woken up with the first light of every day, put on the suits at the back of the closet that he'd never needed for work. But every day had been another door shut in his face. Every rejection, every condescending interviewer, had gradually chipped away a little bit at a time at his confidence, until in the end, there was nothing left of it.
Money had run out, in spite of the increasingly inventive ways he and Zainab had found for stretching her income, which now supported the two of them. First it was selling things, odd things he'd found around the house that somehow barely brought in enough money to make the end of the month. When he'd run out of things to sell around the house, he'd resorted to selling his plasma. He worked odd jobs fixing things for his neighbours, who he suspected only offered him to do so out of pity. All the while he could sense his friends running out of charity, even though he'd never asked for it, as quickly as he was running out of money.
Another thing that was fast running out was Zainab's patience. Through it all, her disapproval had hung over him like a cloud, the impending storm almost tangible in the background, quietly brewing just over the horizon. He'd started to read the signs long before he'd smelled the thunder or heard the crackling of the storm; her increasing irritability with the little things, the way she'd snap at dinner, and finally, the way she had gradually deserted his bed. When she'd moved back in with her parents two weeks ago, it was only relief that Serafeim could feel, that it had finally happened and he wouldn't have to worry about it happening any more.
He had thought it was over. He might find employment again, but he had lost a part of him that he knew could never be recovered. It wasn't about Zainab; he had never really loved her, and over the past year he had come to realise how little about her there really was to love. He had lost the feeling that he had any kind of power in the world.
It was around at that time, at the exact edge of despair, that He had found Serafeim.
The night chill had fallen. Somewhere in no particular direction the sirens of an ambulance wailed and faded into the distance. He'd always found something inexplicably peaceful in city nights; in the subdued orange glow reflecting off the starless skies, in the spilled trash smell of the sidewalks, in the quiet occasionally interrupted by the passing of a car headed who knows where or the footsteps of another haggard, lost soul that the city had grinded into the dirt.
"Got a cigarette?"
"Only if you've got a lighter."
A man with a red face peeling off in chips was standing at the edge of the sidewalk staring at him. Without thinking, Serafeim reached into his back pocket for the half crumpled cardboard pack, then presented the man with a slightly bent cigarette. The man took it with an overly gracious bow, patting his own pockets for a box of matches. Dirt had caked around his nailbeds and inside the cracks of the calloused skin of the man's fingers, Serafeim noticed as he took the matches, and lit a cigarette for himself.