Twenty-Nine Cozy Bears

33

DC, USA, CISA Building

Doug padded his washed face with paper towels to dry off, threw the wad of towels away, and then looked into his own eyes through the mirror on the restroom wall. There was a vacancy in his gaze, an empty space inside the windows of his soul. He didn't address the world with a vacant stare, he wasn't going dull. But part of him — part of him no longer engaged the world. As if part of him now resisted. Part of him was no longer willing to be an agent of the juggernaut the country had become. It was like a singularity — a hole with malicious nothingness inside. The black hole of his soul.

He grinned. It did feel a bit much — too much drama.

And yet, the empty space was there.

He understood the trouble he was having in shaping this emptiness to suit his life. There was a lack of congruity. A lack of pieces to fit into the puzzle. Actually, there were only a handful. He failed to grasp what bothered him. He refused, apparently, to throw effort into the action of figuring that out.

While it was true, that the question was the important part of the equation, answers did present a threat all on their own. The question was important but answers could kill you.

He turned away from his reflection calculating that there were so many other stages an answer could render on the unaware — before death was the final choice. Doug didn't want any of them.

Except that, he wanted to live.

The dangerous curve, on the road he traveled right now, was that his refusal to work could be noted and called Treason. It would be wrong to call his actions or charge him under those terms — but what was he suggesting right now? Such a possibility could and should not be ignored.

Every attempt to name or describe how he felt only resulted in answers which were too dull to support specifics. Words like hypocritical, or pathetic or inhumane. He suspected this result was actually caused by his own beliefs about the reality of his assessment, and his naive beliefs about government.

Taking a moment longer, he started rolling up his long sleeves to cuff up just under his elbow. He decided that no, he had not accomplished any forward momentum with this mood he had been in, but he did feel better about the situation. He felt that there were answers down this path.

The restroom door opened, and he glanced in that direction using the reflection of the room behind him in the mirror. Samantha's excited face appeared. "Doug? You in here? Doug?"

"Right here," he answered and then turned to face her. "What's up?"

"They were attacked. In Iran," she told him, her voice rushing out of her to inform him.

"What? What was it, a bomb?"

"No, Doug. They were the target of the attack. Looks like a hit squad caught him at the library in Tehran."

"What?" he barked, and snatched his phone off the sink ledge and briskly walked toward her. "But they've only been there two days?"

"Right? It gets better," she said, her excitement clear in her glistening eyes. "He fought them off with a song."