Sometimes if he took too many his vision blurred in a pleasant way, the world smearing like watercolors, Impressions of people and places, a Suggestion of reality in the warm smudge of street lamps, and Finn too was just a smudge moving along the wet streets, always forgetting his umbrella, always feigning the civilized thought of buying a new one at the next convenience store. Oh, this again, Finn? Come, come. You're better than this.
He stopped outside a 7-Eleven, bathed in the halo of its fluorescent sign.
Was he?
The rain had already soaked through his suit jacket, climbing by capillary action up the hem of his trousers. He should mind. But the summer rains were warm, and he was after all just an Impression of reality standing in the street, a grassroots movement of molecules organizing in the Shape of Man, maybe just to spite universe for its chaos—a Shape that had, in its own turn, in the cyclical nature of things, betrayed its origins and returned to entropy—the circadian rhythms of birth and death and rebirth—Finn destructing, Finn deconstructing into less than the sum of his parts.
A smudge.
A blister of acne across the face of the business world.
Finn could see the row of umbrellas through the glass doors—could imagine himself dash inside to grab one, gliding effortlessly through the aisles of the konbini, impressing fellow late-night shoppers with his flawless Japanese—
"Can't believe I forgot my umbrella at the office!"
or
"It's really coming down now, isn't it?"
Finn, with a smile, foregoing the cashier's offer of a plastic bag, then bowing, heel-toeing out into the streets once more, a young hoofer quickstepping his way to bigger and brighter things. If only for a moment, he'd be all things to all cashiers everywhere—effortlessly charming, the sublime semblance of a man about town: businessman and visionary.
He should care.
About the umbrella.
About the rain seeping through his jacket.
About tomorrow's meeting and next month's quarterly and the inevitability of year-end holidays.
About the little details that gave his days structure and purpose.
He should feel something.
Right?