“Vanity! Vanity! All is vanity!”
The able-bodied and trouble-minded gentleman ran through the south entrance parking lot with his briefcase opened and papers abandoned to the westerly wind. Should a pack of stampeding bulls have followed from behind, orchestral swell looming and motivational trumpets sounding the alarm, it wouldn’t have surprised those in attendance. Men and women of the lot lifted their eyes from their screens to feign solidarity but carried on unchanged. Stephen Chou, a notable subject in our examination of events, bore witness to what might be considered an inciting incident. Such a sporadic outburst in the parking lot was not out of the ordinary for the dedicated workers of Voer Corp, but the phrase this wild man used was. Stephen had heard it before but couldn’t place it. A quick search on his phone led to the book of Ecclesiastes. He had never considered himself a religious man, but was not too proud to ignore the significance of the Bible as a force to be reckoned with.
His favorite novel had long been Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and so it was a pleasant surprise to find that its origin stemmed from this very Ecclesiastes and not his prior theory of solipsism. Because it was his favorite book, he had avoided—to the best of his ability—any comprehensive examination of the text. There are some books meant to be experienced and not understood—at least not fully. Who can understand those rogue planets left wandering the universe without their anchoring sun? Stephen and his co-workers were those very lost wanderers, found and rescued by Voer Corp, the monolithic corporate anchor of the lot. Ah, but it wasn’t long until they found this star to be dying, and its pull too strong.
Though usually twelve minutes early to work every morning, he was now more than twenty minutes late, scrolling through lines of text in a frenzy. He didn’t know the Bible had passages like this. It was futile. It was hopeful. It was poetic. It was blunt. It was expansive. It was a lingering hunger that he had forgotten existed in him. He wondered if Hemingway felt the same. By the time he was finishing up the last lines on his phone, Stephen trembled.
“Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgement, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.”
“Ay yo! Stevie.” A woman’s voice called out.
Stephen snapped out of his fixation and locked eyes with Dina. Her green plaid shirt and boxed glasses signaled a sweet sense of safety that only a closer friendship could denounce. She cocked her head slightly to the side and smiled. Until he deciphered it was in jest or admiration, he returned an insignificant smirk. When he didn’t answer, Dina sighed and pulled out her pocket watch, tapping on its face.
“Oh, shit.” He slipped the phone in his back pocket and hurdled the bench he was sitting at.
“Oh, shit indeed. Tardy boy!” Dina laughed and whooped as he ran ahead.
Dina’s confusion was warranted, as Stephen was a creature of habit. His routine early arrival to work wasn’t due to earnest dedication but rather a looming paranoia that some unseen force would seek to destroy him. Traffic was too obvious. He could more or less predict that. There are some shades of darkness in the world that form independent of light. They plague the mind and spread in spurious words. As a writer, Stephen was patient zero.
Exercise was not part of that routine. It was part of that darkness in his mind. He sprinted through the office lobby and lost the quad strength to stop, crashing into the security desk. Rhonda was unbothered. She held up the clearance puppet and asked for him to register his identity. A puppet of a middle-aged man choked in Rhonda’s Kungfu grip. It was a reminder to never forsake the corporation. Stephen headbutted the puppet and looked over to the screen. It read “Stephen Chou – Narrative Examination Officer.” He would normally be off by now, but Stephen was bent over and taking in as much air as his lungs could manage. After a minute, Rhonda pulled her glasses down and frowned.
“You’re free to move along, Mr. Chou.”
“It’s actually pronounced Shoo. Like a shoe. On your feet. Or when you wave away an annoying bird. Not chow like a cow.”
“Mhmm.” She pulled her glasses back up and shook her head. “I’ma shoo you if you keep breathing on me like that.”
Stephen glanced over to the security monitor and saw his employee photograph, a bright young man with hope still in his eyes. There were elements of himself he still recognized, but he wondered how many pieces can one leave behind until you become a new person all together? The piece he missed the most was strength. Perhaps he could revitalize something dormant in him. He popped his collar and threw on his sunglasses. Rhonda tried not to laugh. She tried.
“You stay classy, pretty momma.” Stephen winked behind the safety of his sunglasses and made a dash for the stairs.
“Boy...” Rhonda started, but he was off.
It wasn’t until halfway up the fourth flight of stairs that he realized what he just said to Rhonda. The sweat was causing a sort of fever dream in him. By the time he reached his desk on the fifth floor, he figured his body would fire him before his boss could. He turned on his desk fan and sank into his chair. Even his butt marks were impressed with the sudden change in intensity. A cross armed executive named Roger was not. A bead of his sweaty spite dripped onto Stephen’s lips and formed an unholy bond between them. Stephen knew he was there but would not dare open his eyes. If it was the end, let him go in darkness.
“Mon petit Chou,” sighed Roger.
Oh, the intimacy. How it burned.
Stephen tried moving the fan closer to his face without Roger noticing. Anything to ease the pain. Roger pulled up a chair and folded his hands in his lap, pursing his lips and letting a more pronounced sigh taint the fan. His breath was a mix of garlic bagel and gas station coffee. Judgement had come upon him. You see, Roger was a walking contradiction, which is not something you tend to admire in management. His middle-aged gut had developed its own personality, and the fake tanner he sported never seemed to find a way to his ears. His reputation as a stud in his younger years always gave Stephen a new opportunity to solve that mystery when he looked at him. Surely, somewhere, there must be some truth in the glory of a past no longer. His pale white ears might as well have been white flags of surrender.
“I never expected such a betrayal from you, Stephen,” Roger continued. “I’ve never had to worry about you. You’re the safe one. That’s what I call you, the little sheep. My little cabbage.”
“I’m very uncomfortable sir,” he gasped.
“You and me both brother,” Roger sighed and stared out the window. It was then that he noticed something. An aberration. He rose from the seat and pulled out a seventeenth century spyglass. It was his proudest possession. Inscribed were the letters JR, which he took as destiny to pass along to his son one day, Roger Sinclair Jr. Roger peaked through the lens and smiled at the tomfoolery happening in the southern lot.
“Ah, but all is forgiven! Stephen, little cabbage, come here!”
“Will you please stop calling me that?”
“Yes, yes, hurry!”
Roger waved his free hand in a menacing summon. Stephen feared for a moment he might pass out, but to fall into an unconscious respite might be the only escape available. He smiled with drunken fervor and tore the spyglass out of Roger’s hand, hoisting it to his eye and scanning the parking lot for signs of life. Roger was too excited to scold him for such a violation.
“Look! Look! Next to column M5.” He was practically squealing with delight.
Stephen navigated the tar-stained landscape and found the objects of Roger’s fancy. The Ecclesiastical gentleman and the infamous Nudy Rudy were dancing around a weathered Bentley and scattering the remains of what little paper our former employee had left. The juxtaposition between a well-tailored citizen and a wild maned drifter, dressed only in impeccably white briefs, was striking. If it wasn’t for their common dance, one might think Nudy Rudy was taunting him, but no, the other man danced back. He improvised. He shook his hands, his feet, his rump, and whatever could be shaken. He commanded let it be shaken, and so it shook.
“Just another day, sir.” Stephen smiled and handed back the spyglass. Roger frowned. “Nudy Rudy is always a bit of a case. Someone always joins him for a taste of folly. I see it all the time.”
“Folly,” Roger’s frown was short lived. A wry smile took its place. “An enchanting word. I will spread it. Yes, Stephen, I’m sure you’re right. Folly indeed. You will have to stay an extra twenty minutes today though to make up the time.”
“Even though I arrive twelve minutes early every day? It’s not like I get to leave twelve minutes early.”
“I just thought it’s because you love us so much.”
“I don’t even know how to respond to that sir.”
“Folly!”
“Not quite. Keep trying.”
“I’ll look it up. No, better if I don’t. It’ll stick. Twenty minutes, mon petit Chou. You sexy wrinkled vegetable you!”
Roger bent over and gave him a kiss on the crown of his head. It was at this moment Stephen wished Voer Corp had an appropriate HR representative. That’s a lie. He wished for it almost every day. But he hated that he wished it. The last thing he wanted was another invasive force shadowing the actions of the fifth floor, but there came a time when freedom went too far, and it turns out it was in the expression “You sexy wrinkled vegetable you.” The man hired to work HR was promoted more as a formality than any planned utility. Jason Maki was the ghost of Roger’s past, and both of them revolved around one another like binary stars. Jason, the younger athlete, and Roger the older teacher. That’s how they saw it at least. Their mutual gravitation was the same delusional mirror.
All is vanity.
Once Roger was out of sight, Stephen returned to the window and watched Nudy Rudy with the ex-employee. He named him Bob for convenience. If they could give Rudy a fake name, why not Bob? If false identification wasn’t the company brand of Voer Corp, he surely couldn’t think of an alternative. Bob and Nudy Rudy had quit their dancing and were now hugging one another. It wasn’t strange to him though. Normally he would look away, but there was a strength in it that he had never seen before. Rudy was no longer mad and Bob was no longer wild. They were brothers. They had each discovered something, and Stephen couldn’t figure out what it was.
He rolled his chair back over to his desk and pulled out his personal laptop. Roger was already playing foosball with Jason, which meant his attention would be occupied for at least an hour. There was something about that book in the Bible that made him itch. He pulled it up on his laptop. “And I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is grasping for the wind.” Most poetry he knew was rooted in nothing. It was like grasping for the wind, that was exactly it. Was there more nobility in being aware of the folly? In mastering it as opposed to being its servant? Stephen itched at his neck.
He looked behind him, side to side, and pulled out his journal. It was a leather-bound journal gifted to him by Roger at the most recent company Christmas party. Also inscribed with the initials JR, it was obviously part of a larger 17th century collection that Roger had picked up at some yard sale, or perhaps stolen from a museum. It was the nicest thing Roger had ever done for him. It also carried the looming insinuation that Stephen too may be considered a “junior” and surrogate son for Roger’s fantastic legacy. He shuddered.
Very few pages were left for him. Most of them had been torn out and mailed to an online archive of writers and readers who were determined to save whatever remnants of authenticity existed in the literary world. The machine was crafty. Humans would have to be craftier. Stephen decided he would write two this peculiar morning. One for him, and one for the archive. He unsheathed his custom pen from its case and hummed, admiring the sun’s gleam from its silver body. The moment before pen touched paper was one of few that allowed him to feel the rush of a life undetermined. There was no going back.
“Hello Archivist. I believe a change has begun.”