Alexander's Gift

The Soldier- 5

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It didn't seem real how one minute Dick could be one man, and in the next be a completely different man simply because of a slip of paper. As if for the first time, Dick gripped the edge of the desk to turn himself slowly around in a circle as he sat on his revolving chair, taking in the entirety of his office: it was a large room that he got to have all to himself because his parents pulled strings and he had done well in college before being drafted, with muted colors of green-blue and yellow-orange comprising the couch, carpet, desk, and waist-level bookcase. 

Turning his chair towards the window that to Dick's disappointment provided only a view of the skyscraper next door, Dick leaned back and propped up his feet on the bookcase, closing his eyes halfway against the bright morning light. Feeling too lazy and inexplicably morose to work on anything at the moment, he just sat like that for a while, moving his slitted eyelids a little so he could numbly watch the distorted light fragments that danced across his vision. 

Everything in his mind just sort of went blank for a while as he sat there motionlessly until all at once his consciousness returned to him, and he blinked dazedly. Pulling his legs back from the bookcase, he hissed at the stiffness in his knees that protested. He stretched his shoulders as he wheeled the chair back to face the desk, and couldn't help gasping aloud when he read the time on his clock. 12:00! How was that possible? It had just been nine . . . had he really been staring out the window for three hours? An uncomfortable feeling grew within him as he tried to recall the past three hours but found it all foggy in his brain.

Swiping a hand tiredly over his eyes, Dick stood and made his way out of his office- he needed some food. As he passed through the larger general office set up as a maze of cubicles that he stood above, he walked like an adult in the midst of a crowd of children. He was ignorant of the employees that watched and whispered as he passed by them, having heard of the man who was conscripted on his way to working at the bank, and whose friend was tragically killed before even getting to fight in the war. 

Stepping into the marble-floored elevator with an unnamed tune hummed under his breath, Dick took passing notice of the woman inside with a faraway look in her eyes and a disgruntled expression on her face. The elevator doors clicked shut, carrying them up through the building. With hands shoved in his pockets, Dick leaned casually against one side of the elevator and looked at the woman more closely; she was really very good-looking in a curious sort of way, for she had an innate maturity and sensuality to her slender face and figure, but at the same time she didn't come off to Dick like the other pretty young women he was accustomed to seeing around New York, who were trying to be sensual, and trying to pick up a beau. No, this woman was utterly in her own world, unaware of the beauty she had and its power.

Dick was jerked from his ponderings by the elevator shuddering to a stop and staying closed. It was stuck. Knowing that the servicemen would come to their aid within the next fifteen minutes because it was a prestigious bank who was very much aware of anything that would hurt its reputation, Dick just sighed quietly and returned his focus to the woman. For a brief moment alarm flared in her dark, thickly lashed eyes, but then it abruptly vanished, leaving only a slightly cold expression.

Dick cocked his head to the side curiously- once again another surprise, for the women he'd met had always been fraught with nerves and panicked easily. He liked her.

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"Alright, guys, next round's on me, you greedy bastards." Deep, rowdy laughter filled the dimly lit booth the group of Dick's coworkers were crowded in to. The generous fella, a short and stout man who was loud and fancied himself a comic to make up for his stature, snapped his fingers into the smoky air to get a waiter over to the table. 

Dick laughed alongside with the others and finished off the bottle of beer already in his hand, not caring if he understood what was going on or found it funny. He just liked to laugh along with everyone else and smile- the actions themselves were halfway there, right? He stubbed out his cigarette in a nearby drink, in a daze watching the thin wisps of smoke that rose from the amber liquid. Dick didn't particularly like his coworkers, but he didn't dislike them, either. He felt that everything else in his life was like that- not too good, but not too bad. 

Two beers later, Dick was participating in the group's gaiety with a genuine heart, for the first time in a very long time feeling weightless and joyful. Consciously he didn't necessarily feel unhappy at other times, but if he were to really take the time to probe the depths of his soul when he was operating mentally off all cylinders, he would have found that ever since Hunter's death, a heaviness had settled upon him. 

But it had settled so gradually and so formlessly over Dick's life that he had hardly even noticed it, only seeing that as time went on it was a little harder to smile. A little harder to see the good in things and feel strongly about them. It was like a dark shadow that had sneakily crept in from the corner of Dick's world, spreading and festering like a disease until it blocked the very sun from shining through the sky . . .  so that Dick lived blindly. He lived in the dark.

But with three beers in his system, the alcohol throbbing hotly through his blood, the darkness dissipated briefly, the weight lifted from his shoulders.