Empty

He wore a simple shirt and chinos everyday.  He had four such shirts and two pairs of pants and the laundrymat was just under a mile away.  His house was a small box – an entrance right into the “living area” behind which sat a kitchen and eating area.  Two rooms and a bathroom down a small hallway.  At 6 AM sharp on Monday-Friday he opened the door to usually crisp, cool air.  His car, the aging Mercury Monarch, was serviceable and clean and he arrived at work in 45 minutes or less.  He dreamed of moving to the city.  Of a simple apartment and a walk to work.  Of a White Owl on the way home on cool nights.  Never on the way in, he doesn’t want to smell of cigar when he arrives.  On the way home.  He rarely sees anyone immediately after work, and even if he does manage to grab a fast-food dinner, so what?  If he were to see someone or have a date or event, he’d shower first, anyway. 

 

It concerned him that no one really was out downtown after about 6PM unless there was an event or something.  Kind of odd, really.  A big city with mostly empty buildings for 12, 14, 16 hours a day. 

Monarch

The office is in a building that is 100 years old.  116 years old, really.  It’s a brick building, painted over several times.  Two quick-service restaurants are in the lower floor.  The bathrooms are only accessible with a key because a number of homeless people hang out in the small park just across the street – if the bathrooms were publicly accessible, homeless men would clean up there.  Or live there in the cold or hot weather.  Not really good for business.  But it sucks to have to tell your clients they need your key to use the bathroom.  On the plus side, it is easy to schedule a lunch very close to the office. 

 

The building smells.  Like old paper.  The businesses inside vary.  Lawyers in solo practice.  Medical billing firms.  Some very small production companies.  A jewelry repair shop.  A shoe repair shop.  The building owners also run a company that makes “smart” water, whatever that is.  You have to use the elevators to go upstairs.  This is also to protect from homeless people.  Plus, once you are on a floor, you can only exit via the stairs to the ground floor – again, for safety. 

 

The building locks at 6 and requires special entry via a digital “key.”

 

His office is 125 square feet.  The rent is very low for downtown.  The location is ideal for a number of the occupants.  Rent payment is generally flexible.  His business is somewhat slow – but the office is a nice (and mostly quiet) place for him to write, to think, and to masturbate. 

 

He started seeing clients there recently.  Clients of a vaguely defined business enterprise.  Most paid him in cash.  One particularly exasperating project earned him a year’s supply of free frozen yogurt and $25. 

 

Most of his client engagements lasted two to three months.  He couldn’t quite explain that phenomenon.  But it paid the rent and his bills.  You know food and the cost of maintaining a red Mercury Monarch.