Only twenty-four hours earlier, I was sipping a mocha latte, and preparing the sheaf of papers that would end a man's life. And I didn't much care.
Signing the last of the repossession documents, I carefully clipped the papers, placed them into my leather case and shut the top with an audible click, which seemed unnaturally loud in the sparcely-populated Starbucks. The afternoon crowd was thin, consisting primarily of students working on laptops and chugging their Vendi non-fats.
A quick stop at the dry cleaners, a call to Mom so my light and water-starved houseplants would get some attention in my absence, and it would then be a quick trip to Butt-fuck, Kansas -- or whatever the name of that hick town was. As usual, the company arranged both the flight, and a rental car, but they could not manage to speed up time or allow this transaction to take place over the phone. It would've been easier to destroy a man's life long-distance, I think. I would have a two hour drive out in the middle of nothing but corn, cows, and more corn, just to go through the motions, and hand the condemnation to a man whom I did not know, nor would I ever care to know. It was enough that this was taking so much of my time, and the life I put on hold during these out-of-town forays.
Then, fate decided to spit in my latte but good. Twenty-four hours later, the rumbling echoes, from what had once been Denver, vibrated my glass of gin and soda off the bar in the podunk tavern in this hell-spawned version of Mayberry. Thus began The Day, and all days after it. The man whose farm I was ripping away from him, his life's work, his identity -- everything that would have diminished a life so unremarkable before The Day -- he saved me. He saved us all.
I have another chance to build a real life now, but some days, I do miss the latte.