At the end of the day he sighs, slumps into the love seat nearby and grabs the remote control. A click on his wrist seems to remind him of something as he gestures before switching on the flat-screen television he says is his best investment in recent times. Perhaps an expression of regret rather than an appreciation of novel technology, that he has to jump a few times in front of the television to steady its images would be unlikely inspiring at a moment he seems so flustered.
But jump he does to reach for the phone. It is as if the call is his license to what he most desires, which may indeed be so given the tone of the brief conversation. He smiles sheepishly and walks briefly toward the fridge in the kitchen. He opens it still clutching the piece of paper he retrieves from his breast pocket every few minutes and glances at nodding his head lazily.
A mouthful of orange juice gulped momentarily, its leftover cleared from buccal crevices with a booming cough, after which the paper, folded finds temporary abode under the flower jar on the center table, as it soon returns to its place on his contorted palm an object of intermittent gaze that precedes a heavy sigh, as he paces increasingly noisily, the tension he seems to radiate persists.
It is getting dark. He looks out through the window from time to time, even walks toward the door as if about to open it to let someone in. He peers at the television that continues its saccadic operation in glaring resignation yet expressly coy hope that it delivers. Moments later, he turns on the radio, effectively adding to the noise level about which Kit, his aging Alsatian sprawled in one corner of the living room its eyes hitherto partially lit each time he gets too close does not seem thrilled.
As if he reads its mind, he turns the television off, sits next to the radio leaning over as if expecting to hear something of great importance. He checks his watch that just clicked again and looks across the room in the direction of the phone. It does not ring. His apprehension is plain. He gets up and starts pacing yet again, almost knocking the glass vase on a side table over as his focus on the paper becomes more intense.
Two hours since being back home, another since the meeting in a remote restaurant in the outskirts of town and sequestered in an empty room in his basement in total darkness breathing heavily and mumbling something to himself, with Kit barking unremittingly, it appears to be nightmarish for him to leave the room even as his phone now rings again. Then, hastily, he goes upstairs but the phone is no longer ringing.
He puts on a table lamp in his living room, checks the phone perhaps to see who made the call, then sits near it gazing vacantly ahead. He is clearly sore, emotionally and struggling to maintain his composure mumbling to himself, nodding, sometimes shaking his head as if in concordant and at odds respectively on some vital matter. For how long he would stay up when after midnight he is still patently apprehensive of what appears to be a great expectation, likely features prominently on his mind as he is checking his watch and the wall clock again and again.
At last he seems to give up waiting. He goes into his bedroom and takes his shirt off. He sits at the edge of his bed in apparent contemplation, his jaw sunk in his cupped palms. Moment later he slams supine on his bed, still wearing his shoes. He gazes at the ceiling for a few minutes and then closes his eyes, his mouth slightly agape his breathing slower but louder sprinkled with even louder squeaky sounds.
He startles as impish footsteps herald an imminent presence. It is Kit. It settles at the foot of the bed after apparently making sure he is okay. He gets up and strokes it for a while, perhaps at last atonement for ignoring it all evening, or may be even the balm his clearly tormented soul needs, one that tethers it seems on the brink of disintegration, powerless to ward off the demoralization it suffers albeit in cryptic hands.
He must have dosed off at some point having crawled back into bed almost an hour later. With a sudden jerk as if an internal alarm is at work, he rouses and heads straight for the living room, still patently in a daze. But it is as if he must get there, and that what he seems to wait for so intensely is right there delivered by some goblin in the middle of the night. He lifts up the flower jar and seems to freeze on the spot, terror etched on his drowsy face.
He then rummages though the chest of drawers in the massive oak table that serves as his work area at home but there seems to be nothing there of substance. He is by now sweating, fretting plainly, rattling inaudibly, and seemingly increasingly desperate to find what he is looking for, but to no avail. He goes back into his room, puts on the light and within minutes the room is as if touched by a tornado.
Next it is the kitchen, the fridge, the microwave, the pantry, and even the dishwasher. Then he runs downstairs to check the empty room, and the other one next to the bathroom. He is soon back upstairs panting, Kit behind him as they both run around the home, skipping, and scaling overturned furniture and manoeuvring round piles of clothing, even garbage, toiling it seems in vain, looking for something of critical value.
Then he notices that Kit is nowhere around. He pauses, and then looks back. Kit is there, with something between its jaws, a wrinkly piece of paper, that moment, no doubt the harbinger of a massive emotional rush that his spontaneous energetic struts on the spot that break into a mêlée of dance steps, antique and modern, must manifest. “That’s the magic formula,” he screams repeatedly to which Kit responds with its trademark barks and whines.
