The writer, Baskin, sat in his cubicle. He felt terrible. He was a novelist, not an analyst. He ought to be wearing a beret and tapping a keyboard in some rent-controlled NYC apartment shared with two sultry women, moody and irritable, also writers.
His wife, Margaret, might have had something to say about that.
So he did what he could. Between entering SVX data, he stole time to write. But they were paying him to work, not write. He felt terrible about that. So he concentrated on work, not writing. Which made him feel terrible.
And around we go.
The clock hit 4:30. In this condition, a saloon was called for, and McCarthy’s was right across the street. He barely made it. He not only felt terrible, he was doing terrible.
“How ya doing?” Stuart Harley shouted from the bar.
He was the last person Baskin wanted to see. A fellow SVX employee, Harley was a man with the outlook and goals of a fourth grader.
Baskin told him he felt terrible.
“Oh, is de widdow baby tired?” He had all the wit of a Howard Stern.
“I’m not tired,” Baskin said. “I’m just sick of not achieving more in life.”
Harley sat with his mouth open, lips protruding. He didn’t do serious.
Baskin ordered a beer. “Listen, Harley. Don’t you ever worry about being an input analyst? Doesn’t it seem like a waste of something?”
“Waste not, want not.”
He pretended to consider this. “I just don’t want to commit myself to work I don’t believe in.”
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
“I guess.” He asked Harley what he wanted in life.
“Only time will tell.”
Baskin stared at him. “I see.”
“After all, what goes around comes around.”
They talked another ten minutes, but Harley’s chatter was all the same: Don’t cry over spilled milk. Here today, gone tomorrow. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. And finally, All’s fair in love and war.
Baskin finished his beer. “I gotta go.”
“Put on a happy face!”
He said he certainly would, feeling much better. He might not be Baskin, the writer. But he wasn’t Stu Harley, the cog in the machine either.
There was a small victory in that.
Richard Donnelly lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Classic flyover land. Which makes us feel just a little… superior. He publishes a weekly column of essays on the writing life at richarddonnelly.substack.com