Part One can be found here.
I am asleep and I am dreaming. I stand in the center of a vast snow storm that covers all the land. The wind whistles and shrieks all around me, but the cold doesn’t touch me. It can’t reach me where I am. Snow falls from the clouds above in big, white, fluffy flakes. The ground is covered and I’m standing in snow up to my feet, but still the cold and wet doesn’t touch me. I am surrounded by millions of snowflakes and I hear myself say in a voice I don’t recognize, No two are alike.
“But there are so many,” I protest. “Surely in all of these thousands of thousands there are two snowflakes that are the same.”
No, the voice that is almost my own answers. Each is unique, special, worthy of notice and attention. Each snowflake carries a pattern that no other snowflake will ever know. It will never be repeated and it will never be seen again.
I stare around myself and try to imagine such a thing as the voice speaks of. I put my hands out to catch the snowflakes that spin and wheel their way down to this frozen earth. There is no way I’ll be able to tell one from the other with my naked eye, but still I put my eye close to my bare hand and try anyway.
They look the same, alike, perfect copies of each other. A small mound of snow collects in my palm, nestled up against my lifeline. The truth that each is special, unique, all that that voice trying to pass as mine says wanders through my mind, but I do not believe it. I can’t.
Adam woke up, but kept his eyes closed. He knew that there wasn’t enough to look at in his bedroom to warrant opening his eyes. He had no plans for the day, nothing pressing. He had no projects on his plate and no deadlines looming over him. The whole day was before him with no appointments and no demands on his time. Only instead of the day being free for whatever he wanted it just looked empty.
Eventually the need to visit the bathroom got him out of bed. When he was done he stared at it, but walked into the kitchen instead. He didn’t have much in his cupboards. The part of his mind that was good at math and logic took note of this fact and filed it away under “Not Good”. What was in his cupboards was just enough to make a cup of bad coffee so he did. He took it to the table where his notebook rested next to the pen that always leaked. Adam sat down and stared at the notebook and pen. He took a sip of coffee and made a face at its bitterness. He briefly rested his hand on the pen, but all he got was more ink on his fingers. He finished his coffee in a swallow and went to see about a shower.
Adam left his house half an hour later and let his feet carry him where they willed. He didn’t know why he was out in the day, but he knew if he sat in his apartment much longer he would do irreparable harm to something. So he stepped out into a gorgeous autumn day and set off, pausing only a moment to shake his head in disgust at the cheerful weather. He wandered along the street paying just enough attention to his surroundings to avoid offending anyone or getting killed by a passing vehicle. He’d grabbed his satchel before he’d left and stuffed his notebook and pen into it out of habit. It’s weight on his shoulder was comforting as he walked.
He supposed he would have to give up the satchel soon. There didn’t seem much point hauling around a notebook to jot down thoughts and observations if he was never going to be a published writer. After all, there wasn’t much call for the thoughts or insights of janitors.
Adam stopped walking. His feet had carried him downtown and he’d been walking through the lunchtime press of people. Important people with important jobs walked here and there in their fancy suits. They clutched their take-out coffee and gossiped about the most recent office scandal. Business men and women, their secretaries, lawyers and accountants all brushed past him there on the sidewalk. They were the employed and the well-employed; all of his hopes hung on becoming a janitor.
A crush of self-pity fell on Adam as he watched the bustle and press of people. It felt so heavy he almost staggered under it. He would do well at being one of those people with one of their jobs. He knew if he could just earn one of their lives somehow he would do quite well at it. He’d tried for it. More than once and more than twice, but his every attempt had ended in failure. Sometimes more spectacularly than other times, sometimes almost comically, but always failure and rejection. His dreams of being special had slowly crumbled and his ability to try again had melted all away. He hadn’t understood at the time that the job at the newspaper was the last chance he’d given himself, but now he did. Now he knew that all his hopes, all his dreams, all of what might have been called his aspirations had hung on getting that job or one like it. Now, he’d lost his chance at that job and he’d run out of time and money to search for another like it.
There was a bench close by so Adam slumped into it with all the weight of failure on his shoulders. In the heat of the sunny day he began to remember a dream he’d had the night before. He remembered snowflakes and wind. He remembered a voice close to his spouting nonsense. Adam raised his head and stared at all the people passing by. The words ‘special’ and ‘unique’ floated through his mind.
A woman walked by talking on her phone. She was wearing a gray business suit that fit her like a tailor’s dream and high heels that evoked thoughts of anything but ‘comfortable and practical’. Her dark hair was cut short and perfectly styled. She was arguing with the person on the other end of the phone about tables and figures, arguing with a cold fury that made Adam glad not to be speaking to her. She had to wait for traffic to pass before crossing the street, but even then couldn’t be still. She paced back and forth, her heels clicking on the sidewalk, speaking coldly into her phone, the hand not holding it stabbing at the air in front of her.
Adam watched her cross the street and knew that he was nothing like her. They shared some basic similarities in the same way that all snowflakes are made of water and cold. They were both humans, both breathed air, both walked on their feet and not their hands, and, judging from her energy, both drank coffee. But his coffee had been made out of stale grounds by a battered coffee maker in a dingy basement apartment. Her coffee had probably been made by someone with a special title whose job was to make coffee. It had also probably cost as much as a good-sized meal. For all their similarities, Adam knew that he and the woman were nothing alike.
Adam turned his gaze to other people. They moved like a snow storm, swirling and spinning around each other, but somehow never crashing or colliding. Each was unique. Adam was sure of this somehow. Each person was his own world full of hopes and brokenness, always in orbit around the people close to him, but never coming close enough to touch down. And just as he was suddenly sure of that he was suddenly sure that nowhere in that great press of people was anyone who was exactly like him. He stared at the retreating back of the woman on the phone and knew beyond a doubt that she and he were not the same. He watched a man hail a cab, saw two people walk hand in hand down the street and knew that they had pathetically little in common with each other and even less with him.
Loneliness rose up and clawed at his mind. He felt more alone in that small moment than he’d ever known before. Adam was well acquainted with the many flavors of loneliness. There was the loneliness when you are completely alone. No one else is in the apartment and you can feel the silence like a physical thing. Every noise echoes hollowly and reminds you of your solitude. Then there is the loneliness of a room full of people. You wander from one conversation to another, always on the outside, on the fringe. You can’t walk straight for the crush of people and yet you don’t feel their weight. All you can feel is the slow crush of loneliness as it pins you down in the middle of a crowd.
Adam felt pinned to the bench as he watched all the people pass to and fro. His chest grew tight and sweat stood out on his face as each breath came with difficulty. Adam watched as a wave of dizziness formed on the horizon and then crashed over him. He closed his eyes, but that only made the bench begin a slow spin that quickly picked up speed. His stomach lurched and Adam wondered if he was really going to be sick here on this bench in front of everyone.
The bench jerked as a weight dropped onto it. Instead of making the dizziness worse the sudden motion brought Adam back to himself and made the sidewalk under his feet stop its wild dance. Adam looked to his left and saw a pair of much-used brown work boots. He followed the boots up to the legs of a pair of dark coveralls and from there up to the torso of the coveralls. His eyes caught on the name tag and stuck there. Jameson. It was like a rope had been thrown to him from the shore. His mind settled and he found his breaths coming easier. The name he was staring at wandered around Adam’s mind without sticking to anything, but just its solid sound helped steady him. Adam was just about to decide he liked the name when a voice cut into his revery-
“I gotta say, this is a new one.”
Adam turned his head a bit more and looked at his fellow bench-sitter. He was an old man, grizzled and wrinkled, but still powerfully built. Bushy hair that couldn’t decide if it was gray, black or white covered his head and blended into a beard of the same confusion. He was holding a sandwich halfway to his mouth and looking at Adam with an amused expression on his face. What parts of his face weren’t covered in beard were darkly tanned and well seamed with laugh lines.
“I mean,” he went on, “I’ve seen my share of you younguns staring at chests, but I’d've never thought one of you’d be staring at mine.”
He took a bite of his sandwich and chewed, a smile behind the beard and twinkling in his eyes. Adam’s brain finally processed what he’d heard.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Adam rubbed a hand over his face. He was just so tired. “Really,” he watched the old man take another bite, “I didn’t mean anything. I was just-”
Here he trailed off because he hadn’t figured out yet what to tell himself about recent events much less some random stranger. Some random stranger who was still staring at him and chewing. Some random stranger who probably deserved an answer.
“Sorry,” Adam said. “I was just… it was… Sorry.”
This didn’t seem sufficient to Adam and now the man was smiling around another bite of sandwich. Adam was beginning to find that smile a little grating. If the man had simply been angry for being rudely stared at Adam would have known what to do, but this amused reaction just confused him. He knew he needed some sort of explanation, though, so-
“Panic attack,” he said finally.
The man, Jameson, nodded. “Yeah, I’ve heard of them. Your body goes all weird and starts acting like you’re being chased or eaten or some such.”
Adam had never heard a panic attack described like that, but found it oddly appropriate.
“Yeah, something like that.”
By now Jameson had finished his sandwich. He pulled an apple from one of his many pockets and begun polishing it against his dirty coveralls.
“So, what do you do when you’re not panicking on a park bench?” he asked mildly.
Adam was normally a very private person. He kept his emotions and thoughts carefully guarded behind his public face. His writing was his one true expression; any interaction that couldn’t be undertaken over a long distance was very difficult for him. He usually found himself falling back on formality as a defense against people trying to figure him out. He was almost impossible to get to know in person while being completely transparent in his writing. It was his touchstone with the world outside of himself. Which he would now have to give up to be a janitor.
Adam looked at the man sitting a mere bench width away. The man stared back with a mild expression on his face and a sharpness in his eyes. For a moment so brief he thought he’d imagined it Adam saw a snowflake superimposed over the old man’s face. And then, to his surprise he opened his mouth and began to talk.
“I was going to be a journalist. I was supposed to be a journalist. Ever since I figured out how to write I knew that’s what I wanted to do.” Adam was saying more than he’d planned to, but couldn’t stop himself. “I was going to write stories about, I dunno, important things. And, y’know, since I was in print people would listen to what I had to say. People would listen to me.”
Adam looked down at his hands, one still sporting an ink patch from his leaky ballpoint. He rubbed at it, trying to get the ink off. “It’s all gone now. My plans. All my work. It’s all just gone.”
The man next to him hadn’t looked at him once since he’d started talking. He just sat there crunching away at his apple.
“Where did it go?” he asked through a mouthful.
Adam just just shrugged.
“So,” the old man asked again, “What do you do?”
“Nothing,” Adam said in disgust. He was starting to lose what control he’d entered the conversation with. “I just lost my one chance to get into the business and I gotta eat, y’know?” Adam dropped his inky hands and said, “I took a job as a janitor.” He glanced quickly at his bench-mate to catch his reaction.
Jameson hadn’t reacted at all. He was finishing up his apple with relish. He chewed the last bite thoroughly, swallowed, wiped his hands on his pants and then looked at Adam as if he’d just remembered he was there. He waited quietly for Adam to keep talking, a politely quizzical expression on his face. When Adam stayed silent he said, “That’s good work.”
All of the frustration and disgust Adam had been feeling at himself burst out of him. “No, it’s not good work,” he said. “It’s menial work. Unskilled labor requiring no more thought than a- a-” Adam couldn’t think of an occupation low enough. He glared at this man who had show him nothing but polite interest. At the moment he made a great focal point for all of Adam’s rage and despair. “It is not good work and it’s certainly not for me.”
Jameson sniffed and stared off into traffic. “Somebody’s got to do it.”
“Well, that somebody shouldn’t be me.”
“Oh?” The old man watched a car pull into a parking spot while Adam seethed next to him. Still looking off into the distance he asked, “Why not?”
Words were still pressing to come out of Adam’s mouth. The part of his mind that liked logic and had noticed the cupboards weren’t full began asking why this strange old stranger cared so much and why in the world Adam was explaining himself. But that part was not very loud and was easily overwhelmed by the rest that so badly wanted someone, anyone, to talk to. There was so much that Adam had been wanting to say and now was his chance.
“Because I’m better than janitor work!” He as almost shouting. “I have thoughts, I have ideas; I think about things, y’know? And then I write down my thoughts and maybe I make things better, nicer. Or maybe not, but the point is that I’ve put my thoughts out there and people listened. People sometimes listen to what a journalist thinks. Nobody cares what a janitor has to say!” Adam glared at the man again as if daring him to contradict him. “They stay in the background, just part of the scenery. They don’t stand out. They don’t…. do things. They make sure the toilets are cleaned and the floors are all mopped. I- I’ve got, I dunno,” Adam was beginning to run out of pressing emotion so his words were slowing down. “I always thought I had potential for something better,” he finished.
Jameson had sat under the force of his outburst unphased. He hadn’t taken his eyes from the cars passing by, but Adam got the feeling that for all that he’d heard more than had been said. Now he took his eyes off the traffic and turned them on Adam.
“So, what you’re saying,” he said in a gentle tone, ”is you always thought you were special.” His tone and his expression were mild, yet for some reason Adam felt the intensity of a laser hiding behind them. “Yes?”
Once again an image of a snowflake floated into his vision and then gone again. The words “special” and “unique” came to his ear as if carried by a cold wind. Adam nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “I always thought I was special.”
Jameson nodded as if it was just what he’d thought. He got to his feet with some stiffness and grunts. Adam just watched him. With careful, deliberate movements Jameson gathered up the few scraps of debris from his lunch and stuffed them into one his pockets. He locked eyes with Adam, suddenly no longer mild or distracted. Rather his eyes were now like spotlights shining on all of Adam’s assumptions.
“Where is it written that working an honest job means you aren’t?” he asked. Then he walked away.