The day had been challenging enough without forgetting the house alarm code, Jamie thought. But there he was, standing perfectly still, hoping the breeze blowing in wouldn't trip the motion sensors. With his fingers hovering over the keypad (3425? 2543?), he quietly remembered how long his day had been, beginning with leaving his mobile on his bedside table.
Then Ami decided she would take the car to work. Jamie wanted to take the car to work. "No," Ami said, "You can take the train." Jamie stood on the platform and listened to the voice telling commuters that all the trains today would be delayed . . . indefinitely.
At work, a "very important project" landed on Jamie's desk. "We need these projects displayed as Gantt charts by 3pm. We heard you knew Photoshop." When middle managers and project managers say "Photoshop," they mean "miracle-working." They continued, "We saw someone do it once in PowerPoint, but we need to print this out and have it take up the whole wall." No matter how many times Jamie explained the concept of bitmaps and pixels and their relative inflexibility, they wouldn't budge.
Jamie had to work through lunch. By the end of the day, a knot the size of a lemon had formed beneath his shoulder blade (on a side note, he now truly empathised with Ami).
Then Jamie couldn't find the right book for Ami's dad's birthday. The extra time he took going to a third bookstore made him late for his train home. He boarded the 6:00 and waited for it to pull out. After it had moved 500 meters, it stopped, and reversed back to the station. "We're sorry," the announcement apologised, "but all trains are delayed . . . indefinitely." Without a mobile, Jamie was forced to hunt down a pay phone. He found one tucked behind the station's pub, near the rubbish bins, but soon discovered it wouldn't take his credit card. He rummaged through his pocked and found some change. Ami didn't answer. She was at a going away party for a friend. Sitting in a loud bar, she never heard it ring. He left a message, but lost his change for it.
And now it was 8:00. He was standing in his hallway staring at the alarm's keypad, his mind a complete blank. He imagined he might be able to sneak, spy-like, into his room to recover his phone and thus ring Ami for the code, but realised he'd never make it. No--he was lucky to have walked this far without tripping the sensors. 1325? 2531? He leaned his head against the wall and wished he was on a beach in Australia.
No comments:
Post a Comment