He’s loud tonight.

There’s an epic marathon of unfortunate, low budget action films on TNT blaring obnoxiously from the television; all clunky, ineffectually delivered one-liners and grossly overblown action sequences. He’s leaning back in the weathered beige recliner, which he inherited from an uncle in Youngstown: The one which has a metal frame teetering slightly to the left and a sunken seat cushion. It shuffles against the scarred wood of the floor every time he moves to holler at the television, and when he releases a testosterone heavy “whoop” and air punch when a particularly large explosion occurs.

You hate it. It’s a large beige stained blemish on your relationship and you wish you could somehow sponge it out. It has never fit the vision of where and what your life is supposed to be. And Roy, by welding himself to the seat, only attaches himself further to that sentiment tonight.

 His right hand is curled around a can of Coors: The same can you set out for yourself when you finally arrived home, because it’s already the end of the week.

Correction, it’s the highly anticipated end of the week of your first genuinely pay-rolled job. And you couldn’t be dreading Monday any more as it inches closer, second to minute.

It’s not what you expected. Correction, it’s what you never even dreamed of expecting.

Your boss is a tactless, immature blowhard (that’s what she said) of a man-boy who has an authority-regimented sycophant for a lackey. You think you should have acknowledged the signs when you first arrived for your interview almost three weeks ago: He ripped your resume from your hands and fed it to the office paper shredder, claiming to want to know the real Pam. There are impromptu conference meetings that masquerade as company relevant, but end up being the reason there is a broken window in the conference room (basketball as a metaphor for employee morale, anyone?). There is judgment from a small woman in Accounting whom, you are fairly certain, was a Victorian era nun in her past life.  And you detect slightly sinister stares delivered your way every few hours by the elderly man lurking in the back.

What was his name again? Clive? No, Creed.

New people. New places. They make you nervous, and it’s an unfortunate trait that you’ve subscribed to all your young life.

But if the last few days are the worst they could have been, there are some things that may have gone right. You are getting paid abundantly more than you were at your last job. You snagged the last donut in the break room without anyone resenting you for it. And…

Jim.

Jim is nice. Nice enough. He demonstrated how to ratchet up your company issued office chair-seat a few notches on the first day, when you basically plummeted to the speckled, Berber floor carpet. You noticed he had an errant cow lick protruding from the back of his head when he bent over to retrieve you from the ground. It was the one moment your day actually lightened and you internally reassured yourself that ‘No, it wouldn’t be so bad being here’.

But it’s barely been five days. You hardly know the guy, you internally berate yourself.

“Hey babe?”  His voice is low and throaty coming from across the room and your concentration is broken. As you turn, you expect the statement to be followed up by a “I need another brewsky.” or the perennial “Can you order dinner? I’m starved.” You think you should count off, creatively, the number of reasons you are not so inclined to heed his every wish right now.

You wonder if Jim spends his nights in a stained recliner, hand nestled comfortable beneath his pants, and eyes glued to the wall. You’d like to think he doesn’t.

You really want to rail into Roy tonight, rebound off of him a fraction of the overwhelming dissatisfaction that you’ve had with all aspects of your life this week. You find he makes it easier for you to do so by just fulfilling your expectations of the man he is, rather than the man he could be. As you turn to do so, you catch sight of his unshaven cheek turning slightly and rubbing into the backseat cushion. His eyes are dark. Too dark.

You glance hesitantly towards the television. It’s muted while an advertisement for Purina Dog Chow reels on wordlessly.

 He was waiting for a commercial break.

You find yourself realizing he doesn’t want food or beer and something awful curdles in the pit of your stomach. It’s sour and nauseating and you’ve never reacted so strongly to the prospect of him before.

His large white socked feet are broad and flat at the end of the recliner, and he maneuvers his legs a little further apart in order to provide inadequate space for you to climb on. He continues to appraise you with a cocked eyebrow, as he runs the palm of his left hand down the buttons of his blue-collar shirt. He doesn’t even move to put down the beer can.

He might as well have ‘Wanna Screw?” tattooed in bold, 30 pt. font across his forehead.

You look him over disbelievingly, wondering when he became a caricature of the boorish boyfriend – or when you started to view him that way.

The thought of doing that in that chair depresses you so completely, that you think you might as well straddle his still sweaty, unwashed body (he hasn’t showered today) and plunk yourself down on his hips. He’s not drunk yet; he’ll make fast work of whatever he plans on doing with you.

You find your face warping in disgust, partially with his proposition and mostly with your consideration of accepting it.

The car keys are suddenly very appealing, dangling restlessly on a wooden knob by the front hallway closet. The itch in your palm radiates outwards to the tips of your fingers, until you’re concerned that if you don’t flee fast enough, your hands will move of their own accord and wrap themselves violently around his neck.

You can’t help it. You’re appalled, though you try to screen your reaction from him.

Honestly Roy? While you’re watching Steven Segal attempt to act his way out of bag in ‘Belly of the Beast’?

Then you remember the first time you ever became intimate lasted fifteen minutes in his family’s living room. It was ever more hastened by the fact that his mother would be back from work soon and the Steelers pre-game was already a blur of yellow and black on the television set.

So you release five different excuses in succession. They’re not tied or coherent in any way, but the one about Target sounds the most plausible, and you choose to elaborate on it. You blurt that you need to buy a few storage containers for under your desk at work. The deluge of excessive faxes necessitates that fact, and your desk is also littered with sealed stacks of unopened, 8.5x11 letterhead stock that were ‘accidentally’ delivered to your desk due to an aborted sale.

You both do, after all, work for a paper company.

He is confused and slightly irritated at your sudden impulse to run errands, and suggests you just swing by the warehouse on Monday and search through a few broken down cardboard boxes from previous shipping orders. You roll your eyes subtly that he hasn’t taken the hint, and are already yanking your arms through the sleeves of your winter coat that was never fully dispatched from your body. You flippantly throw out an excuse resembling ‘I need something more substantial’ while he groans loudly over the fact you aren’t eagerly scrambling into his lap.

You try to comprehend why you ever even entertained the thought.

You’re already marching through the door into the bitter February cold, when he hollers out to you that the he’s running low on Coors, and while you’re out – .

You slam the door, cutting off his words, and it rattles uneasily in its frame while you pretend to not have heard him.

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Attention  shoppers, the perfect gift idea for Valentine’s Day is right here at Target. Choose from our discounted selection of cards, candy, books, and music and make it count for the one you love. For all your Valentine’s Day needs, it’s easy to expect more and pay less at Target!

The overtly bright and cheerful reminder of Valentine’s Day blaring over the store intercom hardly registers, as you attempt to steer the metal cage of the cart away from a book display.

The books at half price had genuinely caught your attention, but then Roy’s voice had unwittingly intruded on your perusal.

‘Pam, you’re spending money on these? That’s what the damn library is for.’ and ‘Can’t you just wait until the movie comes out?’

You can’t remember the last time he dragged his ass to a movie theatre to sit through an hour and a half of good cinema for your sake.  

 The wheels choose to buck against your intended direction, and instead lead you to a reverberating crash with a case of featured and newly released plastic CD cases. They scatter and you frantically reach down to pick them up, erstwhile avoiding the surreptitious stares of fellow Scranton consumers boring into your back.

You curse yourself because the cart is large, and rusted, and fore mostly- unnecessary.

You never planned on purchasing storage containers, not this early anyway, and you’ve been rolling aimlessly through the store, not exactly certain what it is you’re looking for.

It’s how you think your life might appear from afar, dead ends awaiting you at the finish line.

It was supposed to be different, you silently scowl as your reach for another case and your dropped keys. But the irony that you’ve done nothing to make it different is not lost on you.

So you sigh and lift up the last case. There are defined cracks spidering from the center of the plastic cover.

Damaged goods.

You hide it behind a row of copies brandishing the face of Michael Buble, and hurriedly steer in the other direction.

You force yourself past a sale on Teflon treated cookware and turn the corner with a screeching halt, but this time the cart refuses to remain unstuck. You roll and it squeals.

As you entertain the idea of just leaving it at the mercy of Target employees and admit defeat in your quest for a new life (in a bulk commodity chain store no less), you give an upwards glance to determine where you are. Your vision is filled with an answer.

I guess that cowlick never really flattens out, you muse.

He’s traded in khakis and tie for a tan sweater and jeans, but his hair is as endearingly messy as it was before. And he’s blocking any further access down the aisle. Your only escape route is sans cart, should conversing with co-workers outside of the workplace be a major social faux pas you’re not privy to.

Jim.

You think that he looks different, in a way that’s good and painfully unexpected, when your eyelids refuse to shut and your eyes begin to water with the sight of him rummaging through drinking glasses.

He’s smirking slightly as if reminiscing over some silently remembered joke. You recall that the high strung one, Dwight, who sits next to him in Sales, recited the German alphabet this morning at Jim’s bequest. You laughed when he feigned mispronunciation on ‘sch’, just to force Dwight to state that it was ‘sh’ as in Schrute. He grinned at someone in Accounting as Dwight finally hit his boiling point, and then turned when you accidentally caught his eye.

You’d like to think he’s recalling the way you rolled your eyes and grinned, too.

Even if he doesn’t have a reason to.

You could give him one, you internally suggest.

The statement breaks free from a distinctly resentful recess of your mind, reserved for days like these. The realization that you don’t find it entirely implausible, strikes like a blow to the chest.

Suddenly, the mere thought of disposing of your comfortable beige, Roy blotted existence for something new and shiny hits you with its overwhelming enormity. Your chest constricts with one last stream of air escaping.

Yes, you convince yourself, run.

That is fear rushing through you and overriding any multitude of attractions or desires you may or may not have. It doesn’t feel right; the ease in which you would be able to stride up to him and make the hypothetical man you constructed in your head more than he actually is. Making a potential something out of what you can only characterize as a deeply and inappropriately displaced sense of adventure. 

He begins to turn his head in your direction and your feet ultimately make the decision for you. He’s left staring at an abandoned cart which eerily gives off the palpable presence of a phantom driver, behind it not just a minute ago.

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When you arrive back home, Roy is asleep in his chair, his head lolling off the back cushion. But the spicy aroma of shrimp fried noodles is lingering over a half open, takeout bag on the kitchen counter. He’s eaten but he’s left you with an extra order of wontons; the ones you think he doesn’t realize you order and sneak out of reach before he has a chance to see.

He’s even deposited his beer cans in the blue recycling bin in the kitchen.

A pained smile ghosts over your lips in thanks and the tinge of guilt that you’ve been suppressing coils around your previous annoyance and chokes it.

You don’t feel anything but how empty the space in and around you is.

  I could be so much more alone, you warily remind yourself but your thoughts betray that you could also be happy. Not relatively so, not more or less, but just… happy.

Roy is the comforting hum of a car driving at night and you should be nodding off to sleep in the passenger seat, in the glow of the dashboard. It should be enough.  

But all you can remember is how exhilarating it was to have the frantic pace of your heart match the staccato slap of your sneakers as you ran through the automated exit doors. Contemplating the idea of turning around.