Leaving his driveway, his headlights on and his windows down to bring in the damp cool of the early morning, Parker looked at the gauge and realized he was almost out of gas.

It should have been no big deal, but these were not the best of circumstances.  It was more than the inconvenience that agitated him.  He was forgetting things regularly, overwhelmed by the accumulation of endless requirements, demands big and small.  Every day got condensed into less time and more panic.  The company he'd joined when things were good was struggling, and while they had work coming in their margins were small.  The investors were due their next payout, but that was their problem.  Down in the trenches there were computer freak-outs, copy machines that ate originals, endless meetings, paychecks delayed, and earlier that week Parker had burned his hand on a hot coffee pot.  With the tanking economy it was hard not to be worried about layoffs.  But Parker tried to stay positive.  He was a hard worker, a font of wisdom and assigned mentor to the new associates; he was a valuable asset.

His wife begged to differ.  Along with what was happening at work, some sort of critical mass had been reached on the home front.  It wasn't clear when or how it had happened, but the foundation had begun to wobble with the third kid.  Anna thought he was slacking off, not doing his share.

Because after all, where were his priorities?  Their son was being challenged by English as a first language.  Their oldest daughter refused to eat anything with a face.  The baby was still freaked out from what Parker had meant to be an inspired rendition of The Three Little Pigs.  And he wasn't sure, but his wife may have mentioned the dog needed braces, and the cat was watching entirely too much TV.  The day before he'd left work early for a change, but his boss Thomas called him on his cell phone before he'd made it very far, while Parker was stuck in traffic.  They had sent out what was supposed to be the next-to-last revision of the software user guide.  Darleen, the young consultant he was working with, had been responsible for printing it out, making the copies, packaging it, and getting it to FedEx before they closed.  It had arrived safely; that wasn't the problem.  Whatever it was, the client refused to discuss it with Thomas or anyone else on the phone.  It had to be in person.  The client had been a pain in the ass since Day One.  Parker was the Project Manager and because the client was always finding fault, he had put in the extra time and gone through every one of the guide's 500 pages.  So long as Darleen had made copies from the right files….  In truth, Parker's gloss of calm and self-control - his attempt at modeling professional behavior for Darleen and others - was a false front.  He was running on fumes.  He was one jittery step from shattering thin ice and falling into a frigid bath.

"You're late," his wife told him when he finally made it home.  He put his computer case and briefcase down.  Sherpa on Everest carried less crap.  He always did something for the job at night, also on the weekends, even if it was just e-mail.  At least he had everything he needed for the next day.

"I left early . . . there was traffic."  Looking for sympathy, he added, "I have to go to New York in the morning."

From below them in the basement came a sudden bang, then high-pitched shouts.  The two oldest at it, it sounded like.  Ah no, there was the baby too.  In spite of the ugly rumor she hadn't liked how Parker had read to her over the weekend, she seemed to have picked up on the how to squeal like a pig part just fine.

There was strong evidence they all had soured on him.  His oldest daughter ignored him and his son started crying whenever Parker raised his voice.  Now the baby also seemed terrified by his presence, infrequent as it was during the hours when she was awake.  After his Pigs' performance, he'd tried to get her into her pajamas.  In spite of what Anna maintained, Parker was as innocent as the rest of them when Marie started screaming, ran behind the couch, and peed down her leg.

Now his wife stalked him across the living room.  "What do you mean New York?"

"Well," he said.  "It just means I have to go to New York in the morning.  Some emergency."

"What about the emergency around here?"

Parker paused.  At home he'd fallen into doing and saying the wrong things.  It was safer not to move or speak.  Like a computer put to sleep, his mind went temporarily blank.  He was very tired and that came easy.  But then unfortunately his screen saver of a face started to yawn.

He noticed that brought about a pulsing in Anna's cheek.

"Rebecca's recital is tomorrow and so is Gerald's game.  You promised we'd split them.  I trust you told them."

"Them?"  Parker said, confused.  He didn't think the kids cared who was driving their cab.

"Those assholes you work for, who exploit you.  Who exploit us.  I can keep. . . .  I better keep Marie with me.  She's still too upset, which is something you and I are going to have to talk through.  When you have time.  What do you think?  You think maybe you should be there for your son's last game of the season don't you?  Make one of them at least?  Have you written down my new cell phone number yet?"

To get to the morning meeting in mid-town Manhattan Parker was going to have to get up at 4:30, and make a 6, no later than a 6:30 shuttle out of Logan.  With the ever-in-flux security procedures, even that was cutting it close.  Then it would be a rush hour cab ride from LaGuardia.  Who knew what fresh hell awaited him?  If the client needed her normal full body massage he'd be stuck there all day.  If you didn't leave the City by 3, it took forever to get out.  Then, back at the airport, under the best of circumstances, the shuttles back were a cattle call until 7 or 8, with no reserved seats, a bottle of warm beer, and a bag of old, tired nuts.

He lacked the vocabulary to properly explain it.

"Okay," he said.  "I will.  Anything to eat?"

But now he needed gas.  As dawn dragged into the sky Parker remembered there was an old gas station on Route 1.  It was two pumps and a shack that never closed, and according to the signs, had the lowest prices.  It was probably because the station didn't provide anything as cutting edge as paying at the pump.  Parker hurried over to give the kid who was manning the station a ten.

Back at his car, Parker grabbed the nozzle, flipped up the handle, and as the numerals clicked to zero, unscrewed his gas cap.  As he did, he twisted the gas nozzle around, and got his foot caught up in the black hose.  As he tried to dance out of the rubber lasso he squeezed the trigger and squirted himself dead center in the chest.

He looked down at the spreading wet gas on his white shirt, and until that moment, what he had considered, such as it was, his lucky tie.  Eighty seven octane.  The cheap stuff.  "Fuhhhuck!"  He had soaked himself through to his undershirt.  He started to feel woozy and light-headed as much from the shock of his stupidity as from the fumes.  Snapping into survival mode, conscious that no matter what he did next he needed gas, Parker jammed the nozzle into his car.  It could be worse.  It would dry, wouldn't it?  With his suit jacket on and buttoned, it might not be noticeable.  The stench of it was another matter.

He glanced at his watch.  There was no way he could drive back home, and change clothes, and still make the flight he and Darleen had agreed upon when he'd called her the night before and told her what was going on.  He thought about leaving a message at the gate for her to go on without him, to go to the client and hold the fort until he came down on a following flight.

But Darleen had only been working as a consultant for a couple of months.  In spite of its potential as a "learning opportunity," it would be putting his young colleague in a tight spot.  And depending on what the client was pissed about this time, his not being there could make matters worse.  There was an overflowing trash can between the two pumps.  He reached in and found what were the cleanest of the dirty paper towels.  He patted at the gas stain as he got in and started up the car, and moved back into the southbound traffic.  He worked at bringing his clothing back from the dead as he sped toward the airport.  The gray and red-diamond Italian silk tie looked stained forever.  His white shirt was worse, a surrender flag ready to be waved.  Parking was tight at the airport lots but he felt his luck improving when he saw Central Parking had room.  Parker made his way up to the roof level.  He jumped out of his car and grabbed his suit jacket off the hook in back.  As he went to the trunk to get his briefcase, crammed mostly with five months of ass-covering status reports, he caught the toe of his right shoe in the jagged edge of a pothole.  Parker stumbled forward and the sole of his black tasseled loafer peeled back like the skin off a ripe banana.  The bottom of his supposedly prime bovine leather bullshit shoe had ripped back to its heel.  It was ruined - he wasn't even going to be able to walk on it!  Overcome by a sudden stream of emotion, his eyes began to water.  He hobbled to the back of his car and placed both hands on the trunk to steady himself.  He straightened up, put his jacket on and opened the trunk.  If only he was going on an overnight trip!  Then not only would he be reaching in for his briefcase and computer, but he would be pulling out his garment bag fat with more clothes: another tie, a shirt, shoes.  Instead, he looked dumbly down at empty beer cans, a set of motivational audio cassettes, and his golf bag.  Next to the clubs were his golf shoes.  They were brown and white, caked with brown dirt and green grass clippings.  He hadn't had time to play all season and they'd been in there since last year.  The shoes were the ones with rubber, not metal spikes.  Parker kicked off his ruined right shoe; he considered hurling the loafer over the side of the parking structure.  He decided that the way his day was unfolding, it would drop down and conk someone, a state trooper assigned to terrorist duty no doubt, square on the head.  Then dogs would run him down as if he was fresh meat.  He tossed the loafer into the trunk and struggled into the golf shoe.  Parker looked at his watch.  Somehow, he was down to 20 minutes before departure!  He had a long way to go.  It took him a moment to get his rhythm, with the untied golf shoe on one foot, and the surviving loafer on the other.  In his right hand he carried his briefcase and computer case.  He jammed the other dirty golf shoe into his armpit.  He slung his jacket onto his left arm and shoulder, and left the other sleeve flapping behind him in the breeze.

He entered the terminal for the shuttles to New York, looking for the overhead monitors to see which gate.  Mud off the golf shoe he was holding had gotten on the side of his gassy shirt and smeared his pants.

The middle-aged woman shining shoes at the nearby stand had her back turned and the guy in the chair being worked on had a newspaper up in front of his face.  Thinking fast, Parker went over and grabbed a rag from the woman's supply.  As he hurried away, he started slapping at himself like he was being worked over by fire ants, tried to get off the dirt from the shoe.  Parker went to get his ticket.  He did the best he could with the standard questions.  ". . . .  and are you carrying anything this morning given to you by someone else?"  the woman asked him.  He held the dirty rag below the counter so she couldn't see it.

"No."

". . . did any of your possessions leave your shirt . . . excuse me, sight . . . since you packed them this morning?"

From there, Parker went to the first security checkpoint and showed his ID.  The guy in an oversized new uniform looked at Parker's shirt, smirked, and let him through.  At the next security stop, he showed his ticket and license again and laid his briefcase, computer, jacket, and golf shoe he'd been carrying onto the X-ray machine conveyor belt.  Going through the arch, he set it off twice, once with his coins, once with his keys, and ended up getting the magic wand treatment.  But he was otherwise free to go.  Two elderly women had been pulled aside and asked to take off their shoes for scrutiny, but no one seemed to care about the three Parker was traveling with.

With five minutes to go, final boarding at the gate, he saw Darleen.  She wore a gray suit and held a black briefcase.  She had recently cut her black hair short and this morning had too much red on her lips.

"What

happened to you?"  she asked loudly.  "I thought you weren't going to make it!"  "Here, hold this," Parker said, beginning to tire and needing to lighten his load.  "Are you all right?"  asked Darleen, looking at the brown and white golf shoe he had given her, then down at Parker's mismatched feet.

He followed her down the jetway.  The flight attendants snapped down the overhead bins as Parker and Darleen squeezed past to take the last available seats together, in the far corner, last row, against the toilet and at a window obscured by one of the engines.  "What happened to you?"  asked Darleen again as she started to sit down, and then, as Parker bent over and came into the small space to take the seat beside her: "My God, it's gas!"  Until then there had been a hum in the plane full of people, the majority of whom were neatly dressed, professional-type, business folk, gathering and gearing up for whatever it was they needed to gear up and gather for.  But now it was very quiet.

Then a deep murmur started up.  People tended to be on edge when they flew these days.  Heads swung around.

Darleen, who was trying to pull her seat belt out from under her ass, looked at him as she waited for him to answer.

Parker sensed it was time for some employee coaching.  "Just keep it down, will you?"  "Parker, what happened?"

"It's nothing.  Fine.  I spilled . . . a bunch of cologne.  It's new, kinda strong.  Not sure I like it.  I think it's you know . . . French.  None of this Ralph Lauren crap.  I think it's called . . . Peetroll."  "Parker . . . you're not making sense."  He felt someone touch on his arm and turned to see a young and attractive blonde flight attendant.  Unlike him, she smelled very nice.  He didn't need to look to know that her shoes matched.

"Is everything all right here?"

Parker wondered if there was anything from her training that said what to do when faced with a passenger reeking of gas, scarred with mud, and exhibiting dubious fashion sense.  In the old days, they would have just thought you were a loser and left you alone.  Now everyone was looking to be a hero.

Parker was in no mood to be taken off the plane.  He had enough problems without being the one responsible for stagnating air traffic up and down the East Coast.

"I'm with the Home Office," Parker said.  The adrenaline had kicked in and he was starting to feed off it.  He caught a whiff of gas.  A cornered rat was a creative rat.  "We're testing the ventilation system," he said.  "The vents?"  The attendant looked up as Parker twisted the wind sockets above him and brought in fresh air.

"Yes.  It seems to be working.  Let's see how they hold up."  The attendant started to say something else, but then her crew leader came on the intercom.  It was time for the Dance of Seat Belt and Oxygen Mask.

Parker settled back in his seat as the engines came on and the plane eased away from the gate.  You still got the benefit of the doubt if you were in a suit, no matter what you'd done to it.  Some of the other passengers were still turning around and glancing back.  One woman called the same attendant over, seemed to have a question, or wanted to specifically complain.  As for Parker, he was starting to get used to the smell of gas in the morning; like the man in the movie said, it reminded him of victory.  Then he grew morose: he should be so lucky.

Right after takeoff, the plane started bouncing.  The pilot came on to announce that there would be no beverage or bagel, and Parker thought it was just as well.  The way things were going, he would have ended up adding hot coffee to his ensemble and he was wired enough without it.  Darleen cleaned off his golf shoe, and handed it to him without comment.  Parker struggled in the small space and finally got it on his foot so at least he matched.  He didn't have room for the loafer in his briefcase so Darleen packed it away for him in hers.  She didn't seem to have anything in there anyway, except for some CD's and a portable player.

The roar of the engine beside them made talking a chore.  Parker was glad for the relative peace.  Darleen had a tendency to question everything Parker told her, often challenging whatever he asked her to do.  He saw it as a generational thing.  The kids right out of school all wanted to be in charge from Day One; they didn't want to hear about paying dues.  Parker found their demand for immediate gratification insulting, especially with the implication that it would come at his expense.

As for Darleen, she was smart, and could be a hard worker (when she figured out what was in it for her), but often used poor judgment on how she managed her time, and what she said to the client.  Parker tended to ignore her weaknesses, even if they caused him to have to cover for her and do more work than he should.

He looked in her direction, pretended to watch rain streak the window beside her, considered her as she whipped through the pages of the in-flight magazine.  She had come into his office one day the week before.  He needed to show her some style edits he wanted her to incorporate in the manual.  For once she seemed to be willing to do what he said.  As he sat at his desk, as they looked at what was on his computer screen, she leaned over so that her face was close to his, and then her leg pressed against him.  He got the sudden urge to run his hand up and under the short black skirt Darleen was wearing.  He imagined the firm ass under his hands.  He had to make an extra effort to keep them on his keyboard.  Then he grabbed his mouse, and they discussed bold italic, indentation, and font size.

Revisiting that moment now was a welcome distraction.  Since it had happened he was fantasizing regularly.  She looked very nice in her chalk-stripe gray suit.  He remembered the view from behind as he'd followed her onto the plane.  A little too much make-up, a heavy hand on the red lipstick maybe, but he could provide coaching.  Mentoring, they called it.  There must have been a shift in the air currents in the cabin - perhaps due to the constant shaking of the plane from all the turbulence.  She raised her eyebrows, bunched up her nose, and considered him out of the corner of her eye.

It was probably just as well.  As much as he tried not to think about it, Parker remained nagged about what the client had found fault with this time.  He felt a headache coming on.  He tried not to dwell on it, but the path he found himself on had brought him back and forth to New York a dozen times in the last six months to document an especially useless release of an accounting software program.  He'd long ago passed up the fork of high hopes and ambition that would have had him living in the City and thriving as an accomplished playwright.  Stick a fork in him, he was long done.  No, he was just another white guy in a tie.  And a stained one at that.  Three kids, the first on the way before he was a semester into his MFA.  Two cars, if you counted the mini-van.  In the attic of the new house, two grand a month mortgage, were all the plays he had written, including the one in college for which he'd won an award.  How had he ended up in the role he had now?  Who had written such a piece of shit?

Sooner than he would have liked, they were on their descent through the clouds.  Parker had been looking at his return ticket and put it back into his briefcase.

Suddenly it was like the bottom fell out.  The plane wasn't bouncing this time - it was dropping.  Everything scrambled up his throat for higher ground.  He somehow managed not to puke from this spatial hiccup, but someone nearby couldn't and the sound and smell in tight quarters set up a heaving cabin reaction.  Darleen gripped his arm like a vise..  She said his name, but he didn't dare look at her.  It felt as though they were headed straight down.  Parker flashed on rescue workers discovering a golf-shoed foot embedded into a tree, about a mile or so away from the main wreckage.  Then it seemed to be over.  They leveled out.  They were suddenly there, over the water, under the clouds, coming up fast on the runway.  Rain streamed the windows like tears.  But Darleen didn't let him go.

The plane hit the ground hard and skidded.  Parker couldn't remember if the landing gear had come down.  Some of the passengers cried out like they were in an amusement park, but then that cut off in mid-whee when they realized they had paid for an entirely different sort of ride.

The tail of the plane started to drift and it felt as if they might spin around.  The engines roared.  Luggage leapt out of the open upper compartments like lemmings.  The plane's tail came back around - but it seemed to Parker as though its nose was being lifted into the air against its will.  Parker closed his eyes and saw himself holding Rebecca when she was two months old, summer in the hot top floor apartment they had, she in her diaper, Parker naked, sitting by the window late at night trying to catch a breeze.  Holding Gerald after bad dreams, coming into his room and protecting him against the flying monkeys of Oz.  Picking up Marie, sweet-smelling, from a bath.  With Anna under the thick layers of covers as snow swept in on a winter morning, as the wind swirled a cold white cloud past their ice-cold windows, as they hugged and rubbed up tight.  The plane began to slow, to taxi what seemed normally.  People clapped and whistled.  Parker opened his eyes.  Lights flashed on and off.  The engines screamed in their upper register but then the pilot backed them down.  The passengers fell silent as they rolled to the gate.  They emerged from the plane with their fellow travelers.  Parker was surprised at how calm he was.  He could still feel where Darleen had grabbed him, but they didn't talk about what had happened.  They walked through the gauntlet of limo drivers holding up name cards, out to stand in the line that was forming for cabs into Manhattan.  It was pouring, and Parker had no raincoat, no umbrella.  At least his shoes were waterproof.  When it was their turn, they got into the broken back seat of a yellow Chevy.  Parker told the driver where they were going, and the cabbie said something in reply.  He asked the man to repeat it.  "Bridge or tunnel?"  "Whatever you think is best," said Parker, his guard stripped away, laying himself at the mercy of a New York cabbie, of all people.

"Tunnel!"  urged Darleen.

"Feweee!"  the cabbie said, turning around and looking at Parker, and holding his nose.  "I spilled something."  "Peetrol!"  said Darleen.  "Open window!"  Parker did as he was told, although this brought rain inside the car.  The cabbie glared at Parker in the mirror, and muttered as he shot away from the curb.  Parker looked at his watch.  It would be tight, depending on traffic.  But everyone got caught in traffic down here; he'd never been to nine AM meeting in New York that had started on time.

He tried to pump himself up for the meeting, but he was drained.  He still had no clue what the client was going to say to them, and he asked Darleen what she thought.  "Parker, I have no idea.  You looked at it.  I looked at it.  Over and over again.  All we were doing this draft was fixing typos and making ridiculous little changes.  She's crazy.  You said so," she accused, as if that solved anything.  He said a lot of things.  He even meant some of them.  It probably didn't matter.  He knew the manual better than he would have liked; they'd done a good job, certainly better than the job done on the software itself, which was riddled with bugs and useless functions.  He just wanted it to be over.  He remembered then a dream from the night before - Honey, their Golden Retriever, running off with the only copy.

The cabbie had a regular radio tuned to the local news, and in between the stream of loud, sudden, and mysterious utterances from the man's dispatcher, Parker heard something that made him think for a moment he had hallucinated.  "Did you hear that?"  "Hear what?"  said Darleen.

The cabbie had insisted she drop her window as well and she was trying to sneak it back up without his noticing.  Things were getting back to normal; she was also complaining about her wet hair and clothes.

"I heard . . . the radio?  There's a gypsy cab strike blocking the Mid-Town Tunnel?"  "What's a gypsy cab?"  "No good!"  put in the cabbie.  "Did you hear that?"  Parker said to him.  The cabbie ignored him.  Parker knew the way well enough to know they were now committed to the tunnel.  He must not have heard right.  What were the odds?

It took only a few minutes to realize that on this morning, they remained stacked against him.  Traffic slowed, began to back up; they were still two miles from the Mid-Town.  Parker kept himself from looking at his watch as long as he could.  Twenty to nine!  They would never make it to the tunnel by nine, let alone the East Fifties.  This was bullshit.  He realized also that in the decaying orbit of his morning he had left his cell phone in his car's glove compartment.  "Well, we're fucked," he said, as had become his habit, sounding calmer than he felt.  "No good!"  chorused the cabbie.  The news updates on the radio cycled back to confirm for them that the gypsy cabbies, protesting the fact that they were unable to purchase medallions from the City and become legitimate, were headed in a caravan to City Hall.  But to showcase their cause, they were blocking the Mid-Town tunnel and holding up traffic.  "This is crazy," Parker said.  "They have to drive illegally because it's a closed shop and the number of licenses is limited.  It's like being born into royalty to get one.  What do they think is going to happen?"  "Why don't they just shoot them?"  said Darleen, and to Parker right then it sounded reasonable.  They finally reached the mouth of the tunnel.  There were a half dozen beat up cars in the process of being towed away from where they had been left to block traffic.  Some of them had protest slogans spray-painted on their sides, and one had a metal I-beam through the windshield and jammed into the steering wheel.  Once around this roadblock, traffic surged forward and they shot for the tunnel entrance.

Two cars suddenly pulled out in front of them, cutting them off.  They were clearly the enemy: big, ratty, no-name cabs that haunted the streets of New York like the undead, and their own driver seemed for a moment to be revving up to ram them.  But then these newcomers accelerated away and disappeared into the tunnel.  "Late for the parade," Parker muttered.  In the tunnel now, they dipped into the first curve and there were the usurpers again! - blocking each of the two travel lanes, ambling like Sunday drivers at a robust 10 miles per.  It was only by split-second piss-poor luck that they were behind rather than ahead of them.  "You must be shitting me!"  Parker shouted, unable to hold back.  He'd heard the rumors, and now he was convinced: the world was a complex and brutal place.

Their driver blew his horn, and in the echo chamber of the tunnel, joined by the desperate and savage blaring of the horns of the cars that fell into formation behind them, it ratcheted the torture up and over the red zone.  Parker sank deeper into the ripped upholstery.  The completion of the ride into Manhattan to the client's - or, to be accurate, to get a full block from the client's building, as they were stalled in traffic yet again - took another forty five minutes, bringing them up to ten o'clock exactly.  He had to shout more than once for the cabbie to stop and threw a fifty dollar bill into the front seat without pausing for either change or receipt.  Then he and Darleen scrambled out and danced around cars to get to the sidewalk.  From there, it was a fast walk to the client's building, a tall brown marble monstrosity.  "Listen, Parker, I really have to go to the bathroom…" said Darleen.  "No time," he said with teeth gritted against his own floodwaters.  "We're already late… what's a few more…" "All right, all right."  Fifteen more minutes later, he and Darleen were on the ninth floor, announcing themselves to the receptionist.  While in the men's room, one quick glance at his sorry reflection in the mirror had assured him it was hopeless.  Darleen on the other hand had clearly spent extra time getting herself presentable.

He was the one who needed help.  He and his golf shoes had been drawing suspicious looks from a nearby security guard while he waited for Darleen by the elevator, and now at the client's office, the high-gloss receptionist with her Park Avenue pretension and Saks Fifth Avenue scent was giving him what they called "the hairy eyeball" when he was a kid.  "She's been expecting you," the woman told them, staring at Parker's stained chest as if he were sprouting extra nipples.

They signed the logbook and get temporary badges.  Thankfully the hallways were empty.  They passed a large grid of cubicles over which were incredible views of the City through the windows, but now was not the time.  On his previous trips there, this area had been filled with people standing up and talking, walking around.  Now it was empty; everyone in the nest must have had their heads down, at least pretending to work for a change.  The client, whose name was Lynn, waited for them at the small round table that was crammed into her office.  Books, three ring binders and unruly stacks of documents were everywhere, burying the woman's display of framed photographs.  Her big computer monitor was like an iceberg sticking out of this sea of paper.  "Hi, sorry we're late," said Parker, letting Darleen go in first.

Lynn didn't look at him.  It felt like he was walking into a darkened room and feeling for the light switch.  Two other chairs were wedged in at the table.  As they worked to pull them out, Darleen launched into a long and detailed description of what had happened to them on their near-miss of a flight and ride in from the airport.  Lynn showed no reaction to the story, which Parker took for a bad sign.  She wore a dark blue linen suit with a small silver dolphin pin on her jacket, a white blouse.  She looked as though she hadn't been sleeping well, her skin saggy under her eyes, lines around the corners.  Lynn was about five foot nothing, with thin blonde hair that was fading like old newspapers to a more opaque yellow.

It was one of those projects that had been going on so long, one found out more about the client than one wanted or needed to know.  She collected transistor radios, but only those shaped like something other than the obvious: a radio shaped like a banana, for example, or a can of Coke.  She was heavily into her Latvian heritage.  She was unmarried.  Parker, when things got even duller than normal, had made some comments and cutting remarks back at the office at her faraway expense, an afternoon's amusement for himself mostly.  Some limerick about Lynn and a jockey named Ennis came suddenly to mind.  Had she somehow found out?  Had Darleen inadvertently included a copy of that in the package she sent?  The fifth draft of the user's manual was stacked there.  With a moment to pause and consider it - well, it was an impressive job, really.  That was, he supposed, what kept him going.  It might not have been the most exciting pursuit in the world, and certainly wasn't the most necessary, but he was good at it.  He sat up straighter.

Parker was surprised to see that Lynn's pale green eyes were shining.  Was she crying about this?  What could all this possibly be about?  And besides, he should be the one crying.  Hadn't she been listening when Darleen explained what they had gone through to get there?  And she didn't know a third of it.  "I can't tell you how disappointed I was," Lynn said, drawing a breath, and finally speaking, "when I got the package and starting looking through it.  And I didn't even get through the… Table…the Table of…Contents….  Before I saw. . . .  before I saw it."  Parker was getting agitated too, but tried not to show it, falling into the blank, non-committal look that he usually saved for his wife.  "Yes?"  he said.  "I thought we had achieved the absolute nadir with the lack of pictures. . . ."  "Lynn, we went through that. . . ."  "And I still believe, as does Dwight . . . that we have compromised too much there."  Dwight was Lynn's boss, who had inserted himself near the end of the project.  He had expressed his disappointment that Parker and the rest of the band of high-priced knowledge management consultants had not given them what he was under the impression was going to be something special, something much more exciting than what he dismissed as "500 pages of words."

Caught off-guard in that particular meeting where he was meeting Dwight for the first time, Parker pointed out that "exciting" was not necessarily an option in a user guide for insurance accounting software.  When that got no response, he stated that there were pictures: screen captures for every task.  When Dwight remained unmoved, Parker launched into a verbal dance about the origins of communication: cave drawings, berry squeezings - how words really were pictures if you thought about it.  When the smirk crossed Dwight's flabby face, Parker wanted to punch it off.  "Okay," Parker said.  He knew this time it wasn't about pictures.  Lynn looked around her black hole of an office, and seemed to rest her gaze upon one of her prize possessions, a radio resembling the fake Columbian coffee pitchman Juan Valdez, and his burro.  It seemed to give her enough strength to finally come out with it.

"The font in the footer is too small," she announced.  "What?"  Parker said.

"It's nine point.  I'm sure of it.  The project standards we worked on explicitly said it was to… to be ten point.  The footer is to be in ten point Times Roman font."  Darleen started to laugh.

Was it all a joke?  Before his promotion from Project Manager like Parker to Director of Operations, Thomas had been an inveterate prankster.  He had once led a gang that filled someone's cubicle with old balled up newspaper, and when weird and outlandish e-mails were being sent around to everyone from what appeared to be the computer of a company vice president, most assumed that Thomas was the culprit.  But since he'd assumed his new role, Thomas had become a suck-up and a humorless fuck.  Anyway, this seemed much too elaborate for a joke.  And it was inconceivable Lynn was a client who would play along.  "I really don't think it's funny," she said.

Parker tried not to think of all that had happened to him on his way to right here, right now.  Not just the trip down, everything since leaving his house that morning.  His whole trip to this moment.  Otherwise known as his life.  "The font?"  "I'm very disappointed.  This is sloppy work."  Parker tasted something.  Was it that bile thing he had heard so much about?  Darleen looked at him for guidance.  He had none to offer.

This was unbelievable.  This was high-protein insanity.  He was out of his mentoring league on this one.  He couldn't coach anyone through this if he tried.  "You brought us down here, to tell us the font is too small…which will cost your company almost…I don't know. . . .  hundreds of dollars just in airfare...."  Parker started to feel detached, like he was letting go.  "When you could have told me this on the phone?"  "Didn't we agree for ten-point on the font?"

"Yes, but that's not…"

"And am I wrong?  Is it now nine," Lynn whirled to Darleen, "or ten?"  "Actually," Darleen admitted, "it's a little of both."  Lynn closed her eyes and shook her head.  Parker got what was becoming a familiar sense of slipping into a place he'd found when things spun toward overwhelming.  The screen went dark, while behind the curtain, the hard drive churned.

PARKER: Look.  You seem to be missing the point.

LYNN:[agitated] What is the point, Mister Smarty-Pants Consultant?

PARKER: This is not the finished product.  We have one more revision cycle just to catch things like this.  And you did.  Congratulations.

LYNN:[offended and shocked at the way she is being talked to] I don't think I care for your tone of voice.

PARKER: [triumphant, and beginning to enjoy himself for the first time in a long time] And I don't really give a shit what you care about. . . .  you've been nitpicking us for six months and because of it this project has gone on for twice as long as it should have and cost your company twice as much.

HONEY THE DOG: Woof!

PARKER: But who cares, right?  You insurance companies. . . .  you useless fucking re-insurance companies.  You'll just have one more excuse to keep overcharging us and ripping the rest of us off.

LYNN: [starting to cry, and peeing down her leg] You don't know, you can't know how difficult this has been, what they make me do here. . . .  who I've had no choice, who I've had to become.  Do you think I want to be this way?

[PARKER has got his own problems, thank you.  He stands up.  He puts his hands down on the table in front of him and leans forward so that LYNN pulls back.  He hopes she smells gas.  He hopes she realizes how he is oh-so-close to bursting into flames.]

DARLEEN: [extremely concerned] Parker?  Parker, are you all right?

"Parker?"  Darlene said again.  "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. . . .  yes."

"I brought the CD copy.  And on floppies too . . . like you've been telling me . . . never can be sure.  He's always telling me, 'belt and suspenders,'" she said, to Lynn.  "I had no idea what that meant for months until I finally asked some of the other people he'd trained."

Darleen had gone into her briefcase and was holding them up.  Gold CD in its clear plastic case in her left hand.  Three blue diskettes fanned out in her right.

"I'm more than happy to do it since it's my fault.  If Lynn can set me up in a cube, I'll go into each section, chapter, and make the changes.  It shouldn't take long.  And of course, Lynn," said Darleen pleasantly, "if in the meantime there's some other things you found . . . typos, whatever . . . I can make those changes too while we're here.  Okay?"

Parker stared down at his dirty brown and white golf shoes.

"Will you excuse me a minute?"  he said.

It was still quiet out in the spread of cubicles outside of Lynn's office.  At the company where Parker and Darleen worked, people called them "pits."  Thomas - back when he was always working for the laugh - called them stalls; when he was still a Project Manager and they sat side by side, he and Parker would often break into moos, especially around lunchtime.  It was weird to consider, but that was when he liked his job.

Parker decided he should call Thomas, and tell him everything was all right.  He went around the corner and into the cubicles, looking for a phone he could ask to use.  He realized then that this area was devoid of its usual activity because it was empty.  Thirty or maybe as many forty workstations were vacant.

The first ones he passed were cleaned out.  Computer power cords and phone wires were unplugged and lay curled on the floor underneath the desks, but whatever equipment that had been there was gone.  Dust rimmed the edges of the desks at the cloth-covered panel walls.

At the last row he came to, those more cherished stalls closest to the windows looking out upon the canyons of Mid-Town, Parker came to a cubicle with a keyboard and a mouse nested in an open drawer.  Two brown mover's boxes were under the desk, one filled with papers, empty three-ring binders, pens and other office supplies.  The other box had someone's personal stuff.

Parker saw a black coffee mug with "Lordy, Lordy, Look Who's Forty!"  written on its side in white.  There was a joke voodoo doll where you could stick it to the office function of your choice: Purchasing or MIS, for example.  An opened cellophane sleeve of bright orange peanut butter crackers sat on top of a color photo of a black cat sleeping on a couch with a bright green Kermit the Frog doll.

The red message light on the black phone on the desk was flashing.  Red, red, red.

Parker found himself with one of his business cards in his hand.  On the back of it was the number to Anna's cell phone that he'd written down, the night before, after everyone else in the house had gone to sleep.  There was a game being played - Gerald's last game of the season she had said.

As he considered the phone Parker heard what he thought could have been the clacking of someone typing on a computer keyboard close by.

Parker wondered about the sound.  In a cubicle down from where he was, he saw a man about his age.  He had glasses and was dressed casually, in a black t-shirt and baggy tan pants.  He wore black and white pool sandals without socks.  His black hair was long, it curled at his shoulders.  He looked like he didn't give a shit, but if he did, he'd be dangerous.  Parker wanted to ask what happened to everyone, but that would have been like going to a closed casket funeral and asking to have it opened up.

"Excuse me.  Do I dial 9 to get out?"

The man would keep moving his fingers across the keyboard.

"You know, on the..."

"If only it was that easy."

He wouldn't look at Parker, and he wouldn't be distracted by the high-rise view because he had been there a long time and he would be used to it there.  He would be used to it there, but he would be ready to go somewhere else if that's what it took.

"Try clicking your golf shoes together.  What is it . . . three times?"  Parker looked down.

"Just do it before some big house falls on you and some kid from Kansas yanks them off your feet."

Back in the cubicle, the red message light on the black phone on the desk was flashing.

Parker found himself with one of his business cards in his hand.

On the back of the business card was the number to Anna's cell phone that he'd written down, the night before, after everyone else in the house had gone to sleep.

There was a game - the last game of the season as he understood it - ready to be played.

He looked down.  He flexed up on his toes.

Author Bio

Jon Fain's published fiction appeared throughout the 80's in a wide range of publications; from literary magazines such as Maryland Review and Oak Square to what were known back then as "men's sophisticates" like Cavalier, Screw, and Gent.  After a long hiatus in the corporate wilderness, he's back where he belongs.  The story "Day One" is from his collection Lovers and Other Losers, recently chosen as a finalist for the 2003 Sandstone Prize in Short Fiction.