He fumbles as he unlocks the door to his apartment because he’s not really used this new lock system. He pushes the door open, flips on the light and tosses his keys on the side table. He walks down the two steps into the living room….his living room. He has to keep reminding himself that this fully-furnished corporate apartment is his. That’s his lamp and his bowl of potpourri and his leather couch. Those are his granite countertops and his flat screen television. That’s his incredible view of the city…all lit up at night.

Well, these things are his for now. Up until recently they had belonged to Jan Levinson.  When he got her job, he got her place and that’s cool and all, but he really doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He’s spent the last 3 days in meetings and filling out paperwork. He’s learned corporate procedures and received about 7 binders full of policy memos. He had to sit through both a diversity workshop and a seminar on sexual harassment.  They were incredibly boring….but at least they were corporate and not some installment of the crazy Michael Scott psycho show.

He kicks off his new loafers and takes off his tie, throwing it on the sideboard. It hooks over a silver candlestick. He makes his way to the kitchen, opens the stainless-steel freezer and takes out an ice cream sandwich. He perches on a stool at the breakfast bar and peels back the paper. As he eats, he surveys his new surroundings again.

Everything in the apartment is some shade of brown or silver. If he knew anything about art, he could probably decide if it was painted taupe or beige or ecru or sandalwood. Maybe he could research that. It would give him something to do in his free time. He looks down at his snack….even his food is brown and white.

He had thought that living in the city would be full of bars and girls and bands. There just hasn’t been any time for that. He gets home every night at nine….exhausted and drained. This weekend….his first weekend that hasn’t been full of moving and driving back and forth to Scranton…he has to go to some corporate team-building retreat in New Jersey.

He finishes the ice-cream and throws the sticky paper away. He reaches into the fridge and pulls out a beer. He wanders over to the desk in the corner and pulls down one of his many binders. He’s supposed to complete a calendar of proposed branch visits before his meeting with David Wallace tomorrow and he’s only half finished. He opens the calendar, peruses the sales numbers and his stomach flips a little when he realizes that he needs to pencil Scranton in the square for next Thursday.

He grabs his beer and walks out on the balcony. There are a million lights out there, Het notices, though, that there’s very little color. Everything is white and shiny, but it’s a little boring and a little blinding. He realizes that what’s been missing in the last few weeks is color. He goes back and forth from his brown apartment to his brown offices. He wears tan and grey and black and walks to work through a sea of people wearing the same hues. It’s been a while since he’s seen a glimpse of aqua or purple or pink and he misses it. Probably more than he thought he would.

He sighs and pulls his cell phone from his pocket and starts to dial and then curses when he realizes that it’s long distance now…that he needs to enter a 1 and area code. He punches in the digits and waits.

She picks up on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Hey….it’s um. It’s me”

“Hey.” She’s surprisingly calm. He had been holding the phone away from his ear in anticipation of the squealing and shrieking he had anticipated. “I knew you’d call.”

“You did? Even after I told you we were done? How did you know?”

“Because….Ryan Bailey Howard...you need me.”

He looks through the sliding glass doors back into an apartment that isn’t his and a life that doesn’t seem to fit right and realizes that she’s right. Just the way she says his full name in that lilting rhythm of hers makes him think of yellows, reds and greens.

He laughs into the phone and leans against the railing, watching the lights in front of him twinkle and shine.

“Maybe I do. So....what’s going on around there?”

“Oh my God….have you heard about Jim and Pam?”

And as she starts to talk and fill him in on office gossip, he smiles. It’s always so easy with her. He had thought he needed to cut her out of his life in order to become Mr. Corporate Climber, but he was wrong and he knows he’ll make it up to her.  He figures she can tell him what exact shade of brown his apartment walls are…she can do that when she visits. And maybe he’ll convince her to leave a sweater or two there….to hang over the back of a chair….to brighten up the place.