YD6~31: Yael And The Demise of Michael’s Art Metal

 After completing my courses, the sting of a B score on my final examination, a wound on a much older scar. I’m cautious, and shy that the crack of every door opening will reveal my innermost. flinched under the weight of my past — Like a Furtive on the run from my crimes. A self-made man wrestling with the ghosts of my dead brother, whose name I bear. The school dropout, to the family poultry farm, Kyalami. Until my sixteenth birthday qualified as a bricklayer’s apprentice, callus my hand
s on Thursdays at a college bench.

 With doubts plaguing me, I’m driving the Oldsmobile Cutlass. sailing along the familiar highway from New York with an awakening suburb's soft hues, the first cars joining the familiar stretch of highway. Watching the speedometer against my tendencies cheating my foot weighed on the throttle. As I ponder an audacious scheme to maneuver the CEO, Mr. Gates III’s verbal promise resonates louder in my head. “If you have all A’s, I’ll pay your tuition fees.” 

At the purr of the car engine, I’m rehearsing why I should be forgiven for my insufficient “A” notes. Bringing the lecturer, and Libra control freak’s injustice — He who bragged, while responsible for overseeing the Twin Towers’ construction. The amount of a subcontractor’s due, great, to a financial strangle until he compromises or dies. The lecturer’s mindset speaks volume. ‘_He gave the class a list of 100 dictionary meanings, to tag with a vocabulary word. A sheer unfairness, in my excuse to Mr. Gates III. 

As the highway gathers, the passing awakening suburbs’ cars fume the exhaust tail pipe warm up, amounting to trickling traffic as I cross Connecticut. Until I shed the highway, slip into West Haven’s meandering streets, park the car, enter the office lobby. Walking down the hallway to the rear office, where the old estimator would soon arrive and sit at his blueprint table. I’m settling in the small back room, behind the IBM PC livening the monitor with MS DOS executive files streaming text, booting up. 

Outside my door, the old estimator arrived, and as I lured him to provide me with labor man-hours of information for the tender. Lisa, the young secretary, took her post at the shared desk, between estimating and engineers. As I’m seated at the IBM PC to the screen, Lisa, the Pisces inexplicable, approach over the weeks resonated in my mind. Until obvious, as the full song hummed in my mind.. ‘_You’re so like the lady with the mystic smile. Is it only cause you’re lonely they have blamed you? . . Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa . . ._’ 

Through the following days, I sought that break for upcoming New York University’s new year inscriptions, and compelled Mr. Gate III, to keep up his promise. 

My ex-Erin’s set a precedent knotting the strings of destiny. I left the office track on my way to New York, parking in Greenwich Village. Crossing Washington Square toward the brownstone sculptured portal. I prepared for a new year’s inscriptions. I pressed the heavy wooden door to a flurry of students lingering in a dim yellowed hallway. I retracted my eyesight from the curious, and distant confusing blur. Spotted a young woman halfway down from a slight cathedral light shaft, shadowing her back, turned a pointer at the somber opposite wall she left. Focusing on what she could have walked away from, she marked a crack. I approach a counter-ledge sculptured to the somber wall engraving, a combined classic door. Stepping up to the hatch window, clearing the bright secretariat office where the woman’s profile, after turning away from the departed student.

Peering through the hatch window, I watch the plumpish woman facing the wall, my anxiety in cutting through the system. She doesn’t rush returning to the hatch. I mumbled a question about enrolling in courses. “Which course?” without fundamental qualifications. She slid a form through the hatch’s ledge. My dyslexia clashes with a page of text, a form’s blocks to complete. ‘_This will take forever,_’ I thought, telling myself. ‘_Now you need a magician! _’ I had scouted out the place, with a déjà vu wash over me. Walking away. ‘_Stupid! I can’t memorize vocabulary forever. I just want to learn how to write!_’ 

‘_I can’t walk away from a form that wasn’t designed for me — I don’t have sufficient qualification?_’ I thought and insisted upon the secretary. She rolls her eyes, waving to walk from the hatch, through the corridor. Further, and deeper past the light shaft. At my pace, the secretary’s words echo in my head. ‘_At the end. . ._’ I approached a facing wall. ‘_The end then, right!_’ To my stupor a door opens in the offside's corridor depth. As a man storms out. He approaches with long escaping strides from the office closing door with a few students’ gazes fixated on the professor.

‘_If I ever want to get a word in..._’ I thought. As the professor approached the intersection. escaping strides with two students flanking him, in a feverish debate. The professor passes the intersection, the students. Hanging on the man in flight traversing my path. I seized my chance, with words ducking and diving past the two students. “Are you the professor?” I blurted. He spun around.

“Yes.” The professor replied.

To my relief, as the professor pricks ears, to pause, I act fast with a barrage of words. He acknowledged the students locking in his long strides.“I wish to join your courses.” 

My story weighs too with words coming to mind, ‘_In collaboration with the University of the Witwatersrand’s Department of Quantity Surveyors. . ._’ My hand raises the format of the computer paper, a yellow folder to the professor’s eyesight. Emblazoned on the cover: “The Broes Construction Data and Pricing System.” The professor’s eye taking the book, flips the cover, gleans over a page. His gaze snaps back to me. ‘_Did you write this?_’ He flip pages, rifling faster, with an eye into the leading corridor. “Come and see me — ‘_Arrange for an appointment at the front desk,’_” he mutters. Shoving the folder back into my hands. I detached from the fleeting professor with glutinous students. 

At a slow pace, with a surge of hope, I turn around, Increasing my pace, tracking back to the light crack. reaching the corner to the main corridor, I walk through the soft hazy daylight shaft of the distant massive exit door. Pausing by the hatch, speaking to the secretariat. Upon the approach of the secretary, I requested to schedule a meeting with the professor. Offside, she fetches a diary. I repeated what the professor had said, before stepping to the street. I backtrack to the Oldsmobile, to head home in Queens. 

Yael’s voice purred on the phone, pulling my focus from my intensive work haze. In my mind, Yael’s spent a weekend trip. I step out downstairs to the street, and drive away. I map in my mind a maze of roundabouts to Brooklyn. I’ve narrowed down to shortcut routes, my way to Yael’s place. Until, I’m shuttling through amazing arteries. driving narrow concrete barriers lining the median, squeezing the leading two lanes. I’ll borrow, weaving through the woods with sight on the upcoming weekends, riding the verdant channel, shedding my week’s stress. The roadway screens distant suburbs, embraced by high arching foliage. Screening the city bustles that never sleep, to reach Yael’s modest house in Brooklyn.

‘_Admit! Yael, you’re the social butterfly —_’ My co-driver leads us driving into a Neighborhood Hub’s night traffic. When a cinema’s canopy, fluted lines and neon signage’s ageless charm on the street corner. Where Couples trickled, arriving and departing from the ticket booth. I turned away from Yael’s pointing regard, with an urge to catch a lucky break. Pulling up, wheeling in a puddle where the curb vanished under the last rains. Stepping out of the car to the asphalt, I poised the grip of the open door. Yael catches in my poised regard. She scootch along the front bench, with a brief grip of the steering wheel, to a stand by and turned for the neon signs casting a reflective gleam on the wet streets - smack - the door closed behind us. We weave through the sparse traffic. Reaching the classic Movie Theater, I purchased tickets. We sidestep, to head on and past the doors into the cinema’s gloomy little crowd. 

Stepping out of the cinema, after the Israeli comedy “Ha-Muvtal Batito” (The Committed Candidate), a down-on-his-luck man uses unconventional methods to win a political election. My earlier luck transformed to a pang of disappointment — in a stark contrast to the narrative we’d just watched. The film’s unemployed man, whose luck changes after he breaks into the home of two labor organizers — With a pang, at the thought of Mr. Gates III fleet car. I pull the parking ticket from under the windshield wiper. In silence, schedule time to pay before it reaches the office. I cursed the overzealous traffic officer, while scanning for unknown street signs in the vicinity, to find at my feet I missed a yellow line running alongside the curb through the puddle. Unlocking the Oldsmobile, leading Yael to the driver's seat, scootch to the passenger side. I lower myself, pull the door - smack - turn the ignition, heading away to her place for the night.

On Monday morning, the previous weekend, a blur. I tossed my feet to the bare carpet, but Indian-seated on the mattress with crossed legs. Gazing over the bare apartment, after a night spent buried in my textbook. I rise, descending the stairs, tracking my latest arrival home in the Oldsmobile, preemptive, stalled across the street. The crisp air rasps my skin under my shirt, drunk by my overcharged brain. I walk in a diagonal crossing up One-Way street. Seeking beyond taillights among the train of cars. Wondering about my sanity, reaching the far corner house to warp the sidewalk, projecting the street cars under a film of mist. 

slowing my pace down the side street, I mentally replayed  my last homecoming before the weekend. I stepped past a vague deja vu spot, without the Oldsmobile. Doubt gnawing, I passed the vacant lot screened-off overgrowth between the townhouses -- bizarre to sight, a crane truck double-parked in the street.  the boom hovering over the Oldsmobile, hooked straps treaded the undercarriage. The front and back bumpers unhitch from the vehicles on either side.

As the Oldsmobile’s space, taken up by a blatant small biscuit colored car, and another white car imposter. Too absurd, with my mind in turmoil. I attempt to see through the blur of my mind, clearer images to last Friday’s return after an evening’s downtown lecture. My homecoming refused to connect. The neat neighborhood, of mixed style single-story houses, lends itself to sleeping windows in harmony. My blood rushes through my veins. Frantic, expanding my search further down the street, after pacing up and down on the talking spot. I’m breaking into long strides, venturing. crisscrossing the nearby intersection into far-stretching streets beyond the bounds of the familiar neighborhood. 

I backtrack to the screaming prison wall of pressing foliage — Thickets of leaves reaching out, grasping hands through the mesh of the high fence. My mind raced. ‘_How did two compact cars get into the Oldsmobile’s spot?_’ I answered myself. ‘_There must have been reshuffling cars parking along the curb?_’ Thoughtful, I reel in ideas, I scuffle back home, in fear of the spark that sets off a powder trail to my job. I enter the front door, climb the stairs, fumbling for the phone book. Bring to the kitchen worktop, flip the white pages, to fall on the description. I dial. “City traffic police,” the man’s voice mumbled, thick with sleep. 

With a pounding heart. “Have you impounded my car?” I blurted out. Then, bearing out, the sleepy quiet man, awakes interrogating me. “What street?” He mumbles. I swallow my eagerness, rein in my runaway mind. Calm the flow of my words. Gave him an overview of the neighborhood.

“No, we didn’t program any tow-aways in your area,” the man replies. Disappointment crashed over me. I hung up,  after spelling out the city impound yard.

I dialed the number scribbled on the corner of the earmarked white page. “City Impound, can I help you?” a woman answers, picturing her inundated in a sea of cars, as she stands with a clipboard by a gateway cubicle. Taking a deep breath to quell the urge to shout. I’m giving her reason for enquiring, onto describing the Oldsmobile coupe, and the line went silent. After what felt like an eternity, the silence stretched on. I hoped for a tow truck ticket, rather than left in  limbo. Her voice returns. “No, there is no such vehicle here,” she muttered.

‘_My life can’t stop over here,_’ I remind myself. Abandoning the comfort of driving to work. I head off to the streets, descend into the nearest subway mouth. When I emerged, I’m in the hall of the Pennsylvania Station. Disoriented, I approached the attendant behind the glass to the booth. Her bored expression, doing little to ease. She muttered something as she handed me a train ticket, before I turned away. Weaving through a flurry. Onto a barrier and throng of oblivious people, eyes glued to the directory. To find the platform, board the train, my wave of resignation washing over me. ‘_Fate, I’m in your hands!_’ 

Helpless against the whims of fate, I watch commuters on distant platforms blur. To emerge from the underground to open skies. cityscape’s jagged skyline surrendering to the open skies. Thinning out as ahead, the suburbs roll in, and slip by, yield to the monotonous woods. 

Helpless on a surreal zombie ride, I surrender to the rhythm of unyielding, graceful leading rail tracks. Weighs eager to sit behind the IBM PC. — That teenage cyclist in me, pushing myself in a race, feet revving up those pedals sprinting. Then behind the finishing line, shoe clips tapping the asphalt, weaving my road-bike among riders, even the winners exalted. “This is for the birds!”

A veil of longing descends upon me. My thoughts lingering lines of code, the thrill of cracking the complex puzzle. My mind doesn’t sleep, nettling parentheses, to test the complex performance across multiple formulas, save to micro-files. As pangs resonate, the tender’s submission deadline, looming the CEO’s heavy expectations in the air. Yael’s infectious kindness wisps through the cracks of my sportive mind.

Lost in thought, I drifted. ‘_What would become of her vibrant outings?_’ Yael deserves, few weekends earlier, she wanted to visit “the Russian community.” 

Parking the car on a narrow street. We headed across the neighborhood’s warm embracing street, miserable in the streetlights shadows, worn out from the first settlers, pulsed with life from local strip stores. Yael presses the weathered door, to a dimly lit but energetic band playing. Past a single row of stooped figures, their faces etched with time, sat slumped across from each other at the worn tables. Short of the depth’s playing band. Yael found a vacant table. A sloppy barkeeper lumbered over, taking orders for a drink and food, with a practiced indifference. 

As I sipped my drink, Yael thrived in the atmosphere. Her energy added to the buzz, lifting the spirit of the band with her infectious enthusiasm. Near closing time, Yael perched on my lap, her figure leaning into mine as the three musicians serenaded a few romantic melodies. 

Through the train window, highway sections materialized from the woods. Clenching my jaw, staring, flowing traffic closing in from a distance to realize I’m riding on a lagging train. On a theme, of glittery swallowing dense foliage. Persisting. Shaking the memory of Yael at the closing bar door. Fading emerging into the cool night air, driving Yael home in the Oldsmobile for the weekend. 

The rumbling train relays the highway glittering flow of traffic into vegetation. Surge upfront the window i a constant approach burst acceleration, to a blur of greenery slipping past. coalescing suburbs, successive and wasteful delays pulling into stations. Oblivious to the stream of traffic, until crawling departures from the suburbs, into the woods. I’m seeking to hang on finding the traffic flow, as a waste of valuable time mounts to desperation.

Pulling into New Haven station, the train lurched to a stop. I disembarked to join a few travelers. Walking the leading platform to a meager flurry of students in the hall and across the exit to the taxi rank. I pull the door grip. “West Haven,” I called out to the crew cut driver, lowering to the seat - smack - the door closed. Gazing out the window, leaving the station. daydreaming amid a trickling traffic skirting the city. The artery heads outbound, and a vast courtyard that unfolds milled sparse youthful figures. I ignored the distant embracing stone buildings, dwarfing a central stone statue that stood sentinel. 

Seeing, and triggering, a wave of triumph washed over me — when Igor and I, as children refugees, stuffed into the stone chill interior of “Collège Notre-Dame de la Tombe, Kain.” The memory underscored the catholic chapel big. I mean big — The grandiose stone cathedral monument, silhouetted against the midmorning sky. Fixated on the stone sculptured poetic gable wall, to a hefty wooden door. 

‘_Yale,_’ echoed in my head, to a short-lived elation. No sooner did I cross paths with history than the roadway jutted through arching canopies of ancient trees. To dread a forthcoming route commuting to work and wince at the expense. 

In sight of crossing the countryside, and in mind mapping the cab backtracking the railway line. Skirting West Haven’s city sprawl, before pulling up beside the fashion brick entrance. Etched above the door in transom glass, “Michaels Art Metal Works.” peering at me, ghostly, the CEO’s eyes?

Stepping out of the cab, I climbed the few elongated brick steps. My reflection in the plate-glass door is a stark reminder. Glancing at my wristwatch. ‘_Ten o’clock!_’ Spikes in mind, before my palm presses the plate-glass door. projecting my thoughts where I left off on starting the IBM PC. I weave past the looby’s elaborate planter, through a reigning silence, heading down the hallway toward the rear. Through the glass partition, the chief, engineers, and a collaborator huddled over one of the architectural drawing boards. I veered short of the angelic Lisa behind her desk, greeting her surprise look with a strained smile. ‘_Where have you been?_’ 

A sliver of amusement cuts through my volatile Oldsmobile dilemma. believing Aetheria’s serene aura hovering, burgeoning disruptive, puppeteering streaks, nudging these young at hearts. Oblivious in Aetheria’s subtle cosmic language. inconceivable witchy, every third swear word, beautiful and adorable — listening to the fiery Leo-woman’s romantic flowering, her emotional heart teased —.

In the offside doorway light, the old estimator, silhouetted against the window, with a constant inquiry about his brain surgery. ‘_Does brain surgery mess with how you think?_’ but rush telling the figures stooped over a wave of blueprints, the page number in the title block, the “born on” date of the sheet, and various milestone issue dates, that underline the Zeckendorf skyscraper project, before reaching a construction site. Wiping his questioning eyes. “I’ve lost the company’s fleet car!” He grins in return, a flitting regard as I’m processing to catch up on a three and a half-hour loss of progress in my work. As I lower myself behind my IBM PC, flick with a blank stare at the blue screen. Lisa’s voice calls me to her standing in the doorway light. “Mr. Gate III wants to see you immediately in his office,” she purrs, laced with a hint of a crier’s urgency.

I’m bantering Lisa staying behind at her desk, the young fierce Leo woman in relay I’m following down the hallway. Diverging as I crossed Whitey, the sturdy company’s salesman. Coming up from the entrance door’s filtering light. As I’m facing the yellow translucent screen, which rises from the planter’s elephant leaf plants. I’m followed by his jovial, questioning eyes. “What’s up?” he muttered.

I proceed toward the peeking end of the white crest couch past the planter. Where I lost the CEO’s secretary, but walked into the doorway light, up to the imposing fiftyish man. Mr. Gate III, behind his large executive walnut desk, holding a stern traffic officer's silent interrogating glare, to stop. Then, waves me to a traffic ticket for my Oldsmobile lying on his desk pad. “How do you explain this?” Mr. Gate III mutters. I had no reason to doubt him. The version of the ticket, to my utter surprise, didn’t coordinate with mine. 

“I don’t know!” I blurted, in a frantic search, but I didn’t have the foggiest Idea of the ticket’s issued district. “I haven’t got the foggiest idea!” 

Mr. Gate’s eyes narrowed, as he scrutinized every word, searching for signs of deception. Ready to pin, ‘_The negligence of using a fleet car on me._’ I presumed. After a long stare, withdrawing his hand slips away the orange slip of paper from his desk. “I’ll settle this one,” he muttered. But I’m baffled. ‘Where is the Oldsmobile now?’

I commuted from the office riding home meeting up with dusk. after a sleep, at dawn heading to the office. A taxi to West Haven deposited me at the office door. Press the plate-glass door to the lobby. The hallway leads me into the fluorescent lights. Cast a sterile glow over the IBM PC. I lower to my chair, boot up, seeking to fill cells on my spreadsheet with anchor’s man-hour data. A plan forming in the back of my mind, propels me out of my chair. pass Lisa’s desk, our usual banter, as I head further into the depths toward the factory. 

Approach along the flank wall to a fire door. Pressing into the restricted area. I’m greeted by a silence, clearing the metallic staircase to a cavernous factory. One of the few men in blue overalls roaming the floor, follows my call, moving toward the flight of stairs. The factory foreman climbs through a dinosaur’s template framework, to a sweeping stainless-steel handrail in the making for a staircase. At the threshold, I greet the foreman, questioning the man-hour to mount a curtain wall’s metal anchors to the concrete structure, and track back to my IBM PC.

Hunched over the keyboard, fingers piano. When a shadow dimmed the light in my cramped office, pulling my attention from the IBM PC’s monitor. I glance at the intruder, Whitey, Mr. Gate’s right-hand man’s sturdy figure in my doorway. 

 “Mr. Gates the-third,  wants to see you,” Whitey announced.

I’m rising from my seat, following Whitey past the elderly estimator, casting me a curious look ’_What’s going on?_’ over his trusted calculator out in the hallway, stifling a glance from Lisa. Whitey and I walk down to the planter’s translucent screen. We divert from the entrance door’s filtering light. Brushing with the nippy end of the white seating. Whitey retracted, offering me the doorway to proceed inside Mr. Gates III’s office. ‘_Here I am?_’ I poised, exhausted from the past few days in the doorway. 

Mr. Gate III, is seated beside the coat tree, his beige cowboy hat hung high. Still behind his executive desk, arrowing eyes in diagonal across the corner from reaching me. With his piercing silence, torturing me. ‘_whoa!_’ I thought. He reined in his eyesight, to a faint, unsettling smile on his lips. Drops a few antagonistic words. “The car was found — Stripped . . . ‘_To a skeleton!’_”

Excused by Mr. Gates III, a surge of relief drained the tension from my body. Turning on my heel, my spirit sprang back, lifting the weight. I track back bantering Lisa, sidestepping into the doorway to meet the skeptic estimator’s gaze. I updated him on the unfortunate fate of the Oldsmobile, while gathering production data. I turn away, with an eye-dive on the IBM PC’s monitor, figuring out where I left off. I lower myself to sit, I proceed with data input. 

Escaping the office on Friday afternoon, I took a taxi to New Haven and boarded the monotonous train to New York. Crossing over bustling platforms boarding the F train, rumbling spent riding Manhattan’s underbelly a couple of hours. Emerging to the leafy streets of Brooklyn. Walking by rows of suburban houses, soon, I arrived at Yael’s doorstep. 

On a whirlwind weekend without the Oldsmobile, we walked to a unique original dinner, savoring a delicious oven-roasted trout served on a stretch plate. Saturday found us strolling along the beachfront, exploring a World War II gun battery. Sunday, brought a change of pace. Yael, adventurous, suggested a bike ride. We set off together, but after venturing a few streets, she unsaddles. She is surprised when I ask. “What's up?” 

Yael gives me that girlish grimace. ‘_I’m over and done riding this machine. . . I need you in proximity!_’ walking her city bike, chilled and moaning in silence, I joined her walking a short distance before turning back. 

After the weekend, grinding to New Haven by train, taxi ride to West Haven, and back behind my IBM PC, through the week until Friday, a wave of relief washed over me. When Mr. Gates III, with a kidding smile. “The car is fixed,” He mutters.

By evening. relief washed over me as I slid behind the wheel of the nickel-restored Oldsmobile, Tweaking the ignition key, I pulled out the parking lot and weaved toward the highway. Seeking for signs of the railway I abandoned to a trundling train, as I’m comfortable driving to New York, home. 

Reaching Brooklyn, I pull up and stall the car. Walk across the street toward the stoop to Yael’s house. Behind the crack of the door, Yael’s voices, “Niagara Falls,” in a soft purr. As I step in, the name conjures vague images, but fuels a long, distant drive. 

The following morning, Yael, my co-driver, pointed out the road signs upstate, While I welcomed driving, a feast for the eyes, in an unfolding landscape keeping my mind stimulated. She speaks of visiting her family in Buffalo. The monotony grate. An itchy frustration to pressing the gas pedal. 

In the morning, we walk out of the motel. Reaching the riverbank’s breathtaking plateau of water rolling over edges, disappearing with a thunderous roar. The next day, a boat cruised brought us into the raining base of the majestic crescent waterfall, as a trip further to buffalo faded from our minds.

By Monday, I’m eager and glued to my IBM PC monitor, eyes burning, as I hunched over the Zeckendorf tender formulas. Days blurred into each other, as I’m juggling on my chair, my body calling for a break, a snack, a drink, into the next week. I hunched over my formulas the night before the tender submission. I flicked the switch, shut down the IMB PC, spare a glance at my Citizen wristwatch’s hands near the notches of 3:00 AM, with a sigh, over exhausted. I know, stepping out of the office, I needed to be fresh in the morning for a final run to verify and need be, make corrections, before printing the tender. 

The danger of a stone-drunk collapse lingers as I’m driving away from the parking lot to the street, scanning the shadowy woods pierced by distant neon lights. In a roundabout way of finding just behind the office, raised the emblazoned glowing sign, “Motel.” I pull up in the parking lot,  stepping toward the reception glare. Behind the door, bizarre, the yellowed-brownish fluorescence reeked of a forgotten era. 

Without option, I trudge toward the slumped figure caged in behind a reception counter. I paid weary of the night. Given a key, with a head wave, I walked into vague light and sour, the corridor marked by sentinels of doors. unlock one of the first doors. My mind drops to shield a room consumed by a prostitution traffic. ‘_The night will be short!_’ I’m telling myself. I dive under clean sheets, pulled into the arms of Morpheus.

As I’m awaking, I kick my feet; I jump from bed, in a frenzy threading trouser pants and shirt sleeves, and slipping in my shoes, I step away. Closing doors behind, sinks to mind the brothel. ‘_At least the bed sheets were crispy clean!_’ I’m telling myself, washing myself from feeling dirty. 

I step into the Oldsmobile, drive away, steering in a roundabout to park the car. Crossing to step up the brick stairs’ glinting sunlight. Push past the plate-glass door, to walk through the night chill lingering in the air, past the reception lobby, the end of the hallway, through the estimating office. I step into the small office, a fresh mind. With a flick of my wrist, ‘_eight o’clock!_’ and launching the IBM PC. 

Distant murmurs of staff arriving, their livening spirits, a welcoming warmth, as I finalize, a meticulous review. “print” I hit and watchful over the dot matrix rifling flowing paper folding the Zeckendorf’s tender. I gathered the stack of paper. hiding my sense of accomplishment, I head past the elderly estimator, bantering Lisa, and beside the CEO’s office, I place the stack on the Leo-secretary’s desk. 

‘_it is the best I can do!? _’ I’m telling myself, turning away.

Relief washed over me as I left the office together with the office staff that afternoon. I head for the parking lot, slip behind the wheel of my Oldsmobile. Pulling out the parking lot, onto cruising the Connecticut highway, A stark contrast to the usual ten o’clock night traffic across a three-lane stream of rumbling semi-trucks and trailers. I’m blissful in a trickle of cars, the long-haul truck patient beasts waiting to be unleashed from the massive roadside rest area before plowing for New York. 

On an uneventful stretch of highway, a hulking car loomed in the far left lane, motionless. Spikes to mind, ‘_slammed brakes!_’ screech on an ice pad’s acceleration sailing, burning rubber. Spikes to mind the median concrete guard wall, and in fear of swerving right in the oncoming flow of traffic. My mind rushes with nowhere to go. I lay flat on the front bench, bracing for impact from lunges. blind to the roadway, a crash, the tangle of metal, my car lurched forward, to trundle to a halt. I lifted my head, peeking by my flexed knees out the driver’s windows. On a precursory course, to the demise of a man’s torso hanging face onto the hood, through the passenger gaping hole breaching the windshield. 

At every glance, slew of erratic trucks, plowing through cars and vans. Distant sirens wailed, a crescendo as fire engines and blue lights flashing to an eerie silence. The passenger door opens at my head, shadowing a figure on the right road, shoulder grass, to a voice raising. “Are you alright?” a kind face in an emergency responder uniform brushed a gentle examination for injuries. Hurrying away to vanish amidst the chaos of piled vehicles spread a barrier across the roadway. A tow truck moving in, hitching up the Oldsmobile, the driver called me to the passenger’s seat, and rode away and dropped off at the nearest railway station -- to proceed my ride home.

Arriving later than usual, after a train ride, and a taxi dropping me. I entered the office with a quip for Lisa as I headed for my IBM PC, oblivious to a backstage development. I’ll learn later that the Oldsmobile underwent repairs, and crossing the old estimator vanishing around the doorjamb into the leading hallway, a notion mushrooms in my mind. ‘_Ahead, something is up?_’ 

A shadow ducks the doorway brightness, to pause, a teasing look on the IBM PC dominating the wooden desk. I’m perceiving Lisa’s curiosity beaming eyes at my screen. Unveiling her thoughts. ‘_What are you doing buried hours on that screen?_’ A sense calling me away from spreadsheet cell text, I’m documenting for a sustainable program. I glanced into her eyes. Her gaze flicks. “Mr. Gates the third wants to see you._’  she purrs, laced with a hint of amusement.

Confident by the staggering sixty two floors concrete skeleton behind me, The young Leo-feline padded in her suite down the hallway. I glimpsed the pool of vacant drawing tables. The chief engineer is a reminder of the sheer weight of steel anchors needed to secure the skirting glass curtain walls to withstand blustering winds. 

The Leo-secretary veers away from the hazy entrance of daylight, peering alongside the lobby’s planter. Past the adorned rich wooden worktop, pragmatic, Whitey, the Libra salesman, repurposed in front of the translucent screen wall. The day he unfurled blueprints, and I had the honor of glancing at an upcoming new project. 

The Leo-woman, edges toward the shadowy left floor wing. Reaching Mr. Gates III’s doorway, she ushers me inside, cornered in a burning hell. Stopped in my step, skeptic. eyes beaming at me. Mr. Gates III’s seated behind his desk. The old estimator sought protection. He stands close by. Ironic, with Mr. Gates III’s cowboy hat high behind him.

Without a place to hide, in the disruptive Leo-woman, I stole a brief break for a reflection, breaking off Mr. Gates III’s gaze. Following her feline grace around me. cracks  the doorjamb light past Whitey’s hovering dumfound gaze, to disappear with a swish of her figure. 

Mr. Gates III breaks the wax figures’ looks  booming. “How many generating power plants did you quote for?”

I remember being flabbergasted by a whole middle floor dedicated to the emergency group of generators. “Two.” I asserted. 

Mr Gates III dismisses me. Dejected and confused, without explanation, I turn away and into the doorway light. I couldn’t help but overhear Mr Gates III scolding, “You see, there wasn’t just one!” 

Walking back down the hallway, I’m pondering over the old estimator’s intellectual property — crisscrossing over the years with a fellow estimator, setting a man-hour standard, for drilling concrete. Rawlplug steel wall plugs, affixing a bracket and tightening the bolts — as I’m thankful he’s been providing countless crucial data. Returning behind my IBM PC’s screen. ‘_Could the old estimator’s mistake be key to winning the contract?_’

The next day, by mid-morning, Lisa’s voice breaks the kick-a-click of my fingers on the IBM. PC. keyboard. With an Impish delight in her eyes. “Mr. Gates III, wants you in his office,” she utters. 

Lisa leads back to her desk. I’m striding the hallway, crossing Whitey, standing by Mr. Gates III. I saddled my skeptic Warthog in me. Cross the threshold, meeting Mr. Gates III’s gaze. “Your professor at NYU is in charge of the Zeckendorf project. Isn’t he?” his voice clipped.

‘_The old estimator told you!_’ surged to mind, as I stood silent. “Can you speak to him?” Mr. Gate pressed.  

‘_This can only have implications for my relations here at work!_’ As I walked away, having declined their eagerness to secure the contract. But rumors floated in the air. A mysterious accountant, the new owner of Michael’s Art Metal Work, skimmed the company’s cash flow. Knowing myself, I’m the wrong guy for underhanded deals.

The day the CEO tells me to return the car, he affords me driving away for the weekend, without voicing as much, is telling. ‘_The company is in liquidation!_’ That evening at Yael’s place, I’m emptying the wooden crate in the Oldsmobile’s trunk of my belongings. Wrapping in two carton boxes to Yael’s basement. Of the apartment block she moved in, vacating her father’s house.

Driving north, the country scenery’s welcome green forests into the evening. We stopped at a charming roadside outpost with a rustic allure. Beckoning us into the midst of lumberjacks, a charming evening with wives, and children in a dining hall. Yael, with her natural charisma, weaves out stories over a steaming dinner — we headed on. 

After the lush green forests of the Adirondack Park, my restlessness on the throttle, arising with the veil of shadows descending into the night. Tranquility shattered by the five red Light Emitting Diodes, (LED) radical dancing, I slam the brakes. seeking zip across the median, the potential lonely headlight of a patrol car. I sense Yael in the passenger seat, tap her head and freeze. ‘_What’s going on?_’ She gasps. The upcoming headlight sweeps off trajectory, quiescent crosses the grassy median, lies a beam across our paired lanes.

But the startled radar detector’s red LED rifles doubt. ‘_You missed that by a hair!_’ I’m telling myself, as we’re passing by in all justice. While pondering over the precursory warning. Our headlight burrows into the darkness, as the red alert surrenders to a waking mode, by the gentle hum of the engine, until ignited from the foliage of a beacon of lights.

Awaking by a scent of pine needles in the amazing thick log room. We step out, leaving the cozy Marine Village Resort Motel behind, mingling with families exploring paths of dappled sunlight filtering through the leaves overhead. In the afternoon, in city clothes, weaving through the throngs of people strolling along the soft sand of the lake beachfront, and  into an evening dinner in the resort.  

Hitting the road again, the border loomed ahead, my hopeful passage. Reaching the Canadian border. A stern border guard dashed our hopeful passage, inspecting my visa, expiring in three days. The man stands in front of the car, waving us through a U-turn, to step out and walk into the US’s customs border office. 

A stern-faced officer with a watchful gaze scrutinized my passport, his suspicious pricked. “Have you got a wallet?” he booms. I reach for my pocket, a hand over the counter, snatches my wallet from my grasp. underneath glaring eyes, he spills the contents onto the counter scrutinizing the contents. peppered me with questions turning to Yael. Suspicion abating as he scrutinizes my New York University student ID card. Relief, tinged, letting us  proceed out the office, to step into the Oldsmobile and heading back toward New York.

On Monday morning, I’m surprised of crossing Mr. Gates III, his cowboy hat perched on his head, in the lobby of Michael Art Metal Work. To my surprise, offering me a ride into Manhattan. He stalls the pickup, Escorts me into an office building to a busy first floor. Introduces me to a reluctant man, and leaves me with a cryptic, “It’s up to you now.”