Event in Progress

Chapter Twenty-Two

McKnight walked back home. He stopped by the Raven's Tail Café, but Christine had already left for the day. April was there though, smiling her cherubic smile. He thought of what Fielder had told him about practice. If he asked out Christine and she told him to go to hell, he could always ask April instead. That took some of the pressure off, didn't it?

He wasn't sure. All he knew for sure right now was that he pretty much hated his emotions. He liked being cold and logical rather than gripped in the whim of a stupid chemical imbalance. If emotions could be subtracted, he'd simply be able to pick a woman (and without emotions it didn't really matter which one) and say: "Logic dictates that for the continuation of the human species, children must be created. You and I are logically compatible insofar as we are both able to copulate, the end result of which would be progeny. This process of procreation is essential to the continuance of the human species. Therefore, logically speaking, we should go back to my place-or your place, hell right here's a logically suitable place, come to think of it-and then we can Get It On."

Yeah, that would go right to a woman's heart.

Sean sighed and thanked April for the coffee. He left and walked through the afternoon sun back to his apartment. He could see the Visions and Dreams building there. He was supposed to have gone back to work that morning, but he had called and asked if he could take another week off. He told Elaine Richards about his appointments, and she was nice enough to grant him the request. Sean was sure the only reason he hadn't been fired yet was because the summer months were slow months. Since Visions and Dreams was a non-profit, the highest volume of donations came in at the end of the year when people tried to beat the December 31 IRS deadline. He had one other factor in his favor. Tomorrow was the Fourth of July, so he'd only be using four vacation days, which was good because after this week he'd have none left.

When McKnight got to his apartment door, he saw a notice posted on the frame. This time, it was an Eviction notice. An actual real eviction notice.

Fear gripped his heart, and with trembling hand he pulled the paper off the door. "Vacate premises by July 17," it said. They had given him two weeks.

He unlocked his apartment door, pushed it open, tossed the notice on the cardboard box where it disappeared in the pile of everything else he had tossed there. He surveyed his apartment as the door latched shut behind him.

The place was a dump. An absolute mess. Chaos personified, perhaps. He looked at his bookshelf containing mostly Stephen King novels. He saw the end of his bed, the dresser overflowing with papers, his TV hooked up to his video game console, his computer.

All this useless junk. It was all garbage. None of it meant anything to him now. He could torch the whole apartment, lose it all, and he wouldn't give a fuck. No sir, and don't you mind the insurance policy. No one was crazy enough to insure the shit Sean owned.

He sat at his computer and sipped on his cooling coffee. Two weeks. But where could he go? His parents lived in Europe so they couldn't help, his brother and sister didn't want much to do with him (or maybe it was the other way around). That pretty much settled it, didn't it? No use thinking much further on this because he already knew.

In two weeks, he was going to be a street person. Then he could join Nolan down by the 7-Eleven and shout obscenities at the imaginary soldiers. Wasn't life grand?

To think, he had actually started to feel a little better. But it was all an illusion after all. His depression never would go away, not for real. It might retreat a bit, hide out in some little corner of his mind...but it would always be there. It was waiting for anything, any little setback in his life, any excuse to burst forward to steal the spotlight once again.