A Kind of Courage

                  I suppose it began when Benjamin died. It was July the Eighteenth, and I lumbered into the office to discover Delores and Jeremy embracing in the hall, Delores bawling her eyes out. Mr. Gray presided over them, his face somber but unshaken. It came as a shock, though, to be honest, my baser senses reveled in the break in monotony. I, especially, could hardly believe his absence. My first day at the office, he seemed less like a person and more of a store bought fixture, like the creaky desks, the motivational posters or the unconvincing plastic plants that Miguel watered anyway.
         The duplex Benjamin shared with a Mexican family was, as it turned out, now nothing more than a roof atop a rather large mound of smoldering ashes. The Vazquez family had gone out of town that weekend, leaving the quiet, curious Mr. Bristow as the only victim of the early morning blaze.
“Poor bastard didn’t even make it out of bed,” I heard someone mutter from the break room.
         In a word, most people would describe Benjamin as an odd fellow. He wasn’t by any means eccentric, though. If anything, what made him so curious was the almost inhuman consistency in which he lived his life. He wore four different suits a week, never once breaking rotation and I can only imagine that he detested casual Fridays. He never would say so himself, however. Benjamin was never one for conflict. He sat at his desk every day, working in a manner so meticulous that it belied the mind numbing boredom of our work. Up until his funeral, I doubt any of the youngest members of the staff even knew his first name. It seemed that, at his very essence, Benjamin Bristow was a product of the tragically mundane and disconnected corporate world. He had spent his life climbing the mountain only to find that he had nowhere else to go. And so he lived in quiet acceptance of his station.
         All I really knew of Benjamin’s life was what I gathered from his obituary. He was raised in Tacoma, attended Washington State University for two years before being selected to defend his country in Vietnam. He did so, in some capacity, until the end of the war, when he returned to college and got a degree in what they now call business administration. He never married and both of his parents were deceased, it said, and they were the only family mentioned in the small, almost unnoticeable box of text. I still don’t know who could have possibly called the paper; had it not been the result of an awesome inferno, I doubt his death would have been noticed at all, at least for a few days.
         A few days after the fire, the whole of the office mixed in with a select few solemn faces to pay their last respects to the departed- A closed casket affair, of course. Riding with Jeremy, he regaled me with stories of numerous, recent sexual conquests that seemed to belie the miniscule population of the town we lived in. “Bro, I was, like, hittin’ that shit so hard…” he continued. “Shut the fuck up,” I told him. “We all know you spent last night sobbing and jacking off to network TV.” He paused for a moment before, completely oblivious, laughing boisterously and punching my shoulder. “Aw, dude… You had me going. I was like ‘we gon’ have to throw hands or what?’” he said in a high-pitched attempt at black dialect. I had meant what I said and could only hope to ‘throw hands’ but, hoping for a quiet ride, I played along and socked him back. “Yeah, dude.”
We arrived at the cemetery and took a seat on the fringes of the small group of mourners that surrounded Benjamin’s casket. An oppressive rush of sunlight shot through the trees surrounding Keenan Memorial Cemetery, thoroughly baking the black-clad mourners as a half-hearted eulogy was delivered by a priest who seemed to know nothing about Benjamin. During the service, I met eyes with a man I believed to be Benjamin’s brother, a mortician who shared Benjamin’s creepy, Vincent Price quality. Mr. Gray stood across from me, his face occupied by his best sincere face. It was curious and disgusting in its failure.
Delores said she had seen Benjamin’s headstone, that it was really nice and simple. It read:

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. . . . For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.

I’ve never been much for religion, but it did sound nice.

         “Mr. Mironov.” Creepy Vincent Price brother had somehow, just after the service, maneuvered behind me without me noticing that he had moved at all. Further, I haven’t the slightest idea how he knew my name. “Hi, uh…Mr. Bristow,” I responded, extending my hand.
         “Hey, I’m really sorry about your—“he cut me off. “Ooooh, he’s in a much better place Dmitri.” Each time he said my name I shuddered a bit, and he smiled curiously, his teeth wrapping around his face and coming to two distinct points under his ears. I turned and he was gone.
         At the behest of the Apathia Corporation, we had the rest of the day to grieve and reflect personally on the loss that had befallen our ‘family.’ I grabbed a coffee and headed to the movies where I saw “Seoul Man”, a major studio comedy about a wacky black cop who teams up with a no-nonsense Korean cop. Together they take down Seoul’s preeminent crime boss, who has kidnapped a little girl or something like that. It was alright.
         The next day, it was business as usual.
Shitty traffic. Work. Lunch. Work. Shitty traffic.
Though I didn’t realize it at first, Benjamin’s death had had a profound effect on me. Benjamin and I were very much the same person, I thought. The only difference is that he had a twenty year head start on me in this greased swine-race.
Was I becoming Benjamin Bristow? The man who died in a conflagration fueled by Belgian furniture and clever, store-bought art? I felt like screaming “No” at the top of my lungs, but the more I reflected the less I could deny it.
I spent the rest of the week slumped over my desk, laboring mindlessly at the litany of paper work that seemed to grow by the hour and wishing I’d had a different major. Mr. Gray would swoop by every few hours or so and deliver an almost inaudible ‘m-hmm’ to signal his approval.
I began to feel a loathsome sickness rising up from within me with every passing day. It became increasingly difficult to get out of bed every morning, but that’s exactly what I did, because that’s what I knew. It didn’t seem like a new feeling, necessarily, but one that had lay dormant for years, waiting patiently to explode when triggered. Driving home one afternoon, the aggravating rush hour traffic of 635 baited me into a state of pitiful self-reflection.
In college, I lived like a rock star, or, perhaps, more like a wannabe rock star. I was perpetually broke, I drank cheap swill-beer, and I slept on a couch that was undoubtedly covered in unconscionable bodily fluids. I had nothing. But everyday brought something new and I was content.
Looking back on those days, though, they seem less like personal memories and more like a movie I saw once about a man I knew nothing about. Still, I admired this stranger. He seemed to possess every characteristic that was admirable and absent in myself. The more I reflected, the more I grew to hate myself and, still more so, hate the structures that would nurture my change.
The detestable monotony of my life grew increasingly intolerable, and I met each coming day with growing despise. Mr. Gray did his best to nurture what would soon become a delirious and vicious revulsion. He wore small, circular spectacles that magnified his doughy eyes and made them at least a bit more proportionate to his chubby cheeks. His eight-dollar haircut was never out of place and his cuffs seemed to always struggle to reach the tops of his shoes. His appearance would have been more comical than bothersome if he hadn’t had such a keen penchant for condescension. He once said that if I work hard enough, that I might take over the office when he retires; that I ‘remind’ him of him when he was younger. Without hyperbole, I can say that’s the most detestable thought that’s ever crossed my mind.
The next few weeks, I slipped gradually into a restless state of misanthropy. Looking at Mr. Bristow’s replacement, a man about five years my junior, I decided that we had ceased to be human beings. Rather, we were easily replaceable cogs in a machine driven by ruthless, greedy curs. He worked diligently, of course, just as I did when I was his age. I felt like screaming at him to get out, but it was too late. He was already part of the machine.
On Tuesday morning, my solitaire game was interrupted by a raucous series of thuds and squeals coming from the door to the parking garage. Delores had slipped and fallen down the stairs while making her way to the door. I wasn’t there to see it, unfortunately, but I heard she tumbled down an entire two flights of concrete steps only to be stopped abruptly by the steel guardrail. It all sounded quite amusing. I thought about feigning concern for a moment but, ultimately, decided that my game was too enthralling.
         Sometimes, I would sit at my desk and fantasize about bursting into Mr. Gray’s office and killing him in some sensational fashion; kind of like an eighties action movie. These homicidal fantasies became increasingly frequent and soon, my favorite hobby, besides maybe golf.
         In my favorite scenario thus far, I kick down the door to Mr. Gray’s office, remove my tie, and choke him to death with it. I dig my knee into his back and make sure I’ve tied off his corotted arteries sufficiently. I usually end up out of breath, chuckling at his nasally voice as I exit that Dilbert-sponsored version of hell for the last time.
         This isn’t to say, by any means that this is the only scenario. In my mind, he’s been shot, stabbed, burned at the stake, and poisoned…I’ve even thought of locking him in a room full of angry wasps, though that one struck me as a bit cartoonish. Each time I would slip into my fantasies of office-regicide, the scenes would play more vivid and intimate. However, I was always shaken back to reality by some external annoyance, only to find that my hands were clean and I was breathing normally.
         That Thursday, I had just finished calmly hacking Mr. Gray to bits with a hatchet, when the victim interrupted. “Dmitri?” He inquired, in a flat, parental tone.
“What is it?” I responded. I had purposefully ceased calling him ‘sir,’ though I didn’t want to be so disrespectful as to hint at the fact that I fantasize about his end.
“Well, your production’s been a bit down of late. Is everything ok? Everything good at home?”
Yeah, fucker. My houseplant’s dying. My big screen has the mumps…
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“Ok, well if you ever need to talk… We just want to those numbers back up to a more ‘Dmitri-esque’ level…Ok?” he said, chuckling.
Dmitri-esque? You son of a bitch.
“Yes sir.”
Shit. I slipped.
         I couldn’t stand it anymore. Another Monday would certainly kill me. The fantasy would come to fruition tomorrow, I thought, lest I spend a spare moment in this hell. In retrospect, the decision seemed almost natural. I had quietly snapped.
         I began coming to terms with my impending jail time. I’d try to escape, obviously, though I doubted my ability. I was, after all, a novice to the crime world. In my delirium, though, prison didn’t seem so bad. I’d be able to read and lift weights. I’d even get to see some gang fights. Sure, the thought of sodomy was a bit off-putting but at least I’d never have to see another Garfield cartoon. ‘I might even join a gang’, I thought. ‘I’m not really into white supremacy, but I’ve always wanted to get a tattoo.’
         I fell asleep that night to the calming lull of the Golf Network, forgetting completely to pack up any implements of destruction for the next day. When I awoke, I showered and dressed before frantically throwing together an ad-hoc arsenal of hammers, screwdrivers and kitchen knives. I threw my weapons cache into a duffle bag and drove to work for the last time. The traffic was terrible as usual and every radio station seemed to have devoted the morning entirely to annoying commercials, save one tejano station that I listened to for a good five minutes before shutting off my stereo altogether.
         I finally arrived at work, attempting to drive through the parking garage without arousing the attention of Jeremy, who was getting out of his Corolla.
“Dmitri! D-Meat! What up dawwwg?!!”
Fuck.
I thought for a moment about abandoning my plan completely and savagely beating every last ‘bro’ out of Jeremy, but this would be rather amateur of me, so I opted to be amiable.
“How are you?” I said dismissively.
“Aw, you know. J-Bone’s always doing it right. Dude! I almost forgot. I went down to Phineas O’Finnegan’s last night, right? There were these twins… Like Scandinavian, I think. Anyway, I—“
         If anything, I understood that Jeremy’s narrative would push me from being cold and calculating to sloppy and maniacal; and that’s not my game. I’m not a Postal worker.
         Jeremy continued to blather as we approached the door, but I refused to allow him to become a distraction. Swinging the front door open, I was met with a hobbling, tearful mess that resembled Delores, somewhat. I shuddered as she grabbed my shoulders and buried her caked face in my chest.
         “What the hell—“
“It’s Mr. Gray— he…he…”
         At this point, I had created distance and Jeremy had stepped in to console her. “What is it, babe?” he said. He called all women ‘babe.’
Her failing attempts to pull herself together only disgusted me further, as number two on my enemies-list wrapped his arms around her. Finally, she mustered words:
“Mr. Gray had an accident. He’s…dead!” She exploded again into a cacophony of wailing and choking on her emotions.
         Without a word, I turned and left. I thought again that I might as well kill Jeremy, but now it just seemed pointless. Driving home, the highway was empty, almost pristine. The parking lot at my complex was empty, save for a few old, offensive heaps that never moved, anyway. I pulled into my garage, closing it behind me, and took of my Seiko, laying it on the dashboard. I unbuckled my seatbelt and closed my eyes, listening to the seconds tick and fade away.