Ben pt. 2 - Anita

"...The recent troop surge back into Iraq is coupled with the bloodiest week since the beginning of the war in 2003. The military is stretched thin and is asking that all news programs encourage their listeners and viewers to volunteer. Also, in Washington, talks of a draft and broadening the rules for hiring private security firms have taken the front seat of political debate. With the election year coming fast and approval ratings at an all time low, politicians across the board are scrambling for a ray of sunshine in these dark times..."

-

Anita Clackson heard Joannie Turmonghastanti reporting from somewhere. She wondered why news casters always seemed to have such unbearable last names as she towel dried her hair and then looked in the mirror. The puffy around her eyes wouldn't do. Anita hung her towel up - on a shower rod, her shower had a curtain. Her fingers tapped the tops of an assortment of medicine cabinet standards: aspirin, Midol, razors, toe-nail clippers, and there, right where she'd put it back, face cream. Anita did not want to go into work, at 100 Avalon Square, with the puffy around her eyes. Her boss expected more of her, of everyone.

She popped the top with her close cropped finger nails. Unpainted, plain, if she had her way her nails would be just a little longer and she'd have a different color for each day of the week. But she didn't mind being plain, she had a good job and good pay. So what, if she was approaching thirty with no husband? So what, if her old baby stuff, a crib, a blankie, an old rattle toy, sat collecting dust in a storage shed out by the freeway? She could bear it and continue saving her money and building a not-so-plain portfolio. Only, the portfolio wasn't doing so hot lately. Export from China had slowed to a trickle, the stock market fell to a new record breaking low and with each deployment of military forces to some corner of the globe, the deficit went up. Anita's finances were hanging in there, she had put a large portion of her money directly into Avalon Inc. Soon to be the only stock that saw gains of any kind. So what, if she didnt' have anyone to share this with? So what? 

She overrode the loud farting sound the face cream bottle made when she squeezed it, AHHH! Her shout bouncing back at her from the slightly discolored shower tiles sounded like someone else. Anita never yelled or threw things. She threw the empty bottle now. What's wrong with me? she thought, Just what the heck is wrong with me? It must be the lack of sleep from the night before.

All night her Black Berry rattled against the top of her night stand. She set it on vibrate, a naturally light sleeper, Anita knew she would hear the rattle if someone tried to call the direct office line at the top floor of Avalon Tower. Few calls came through that line during business hours, an ensemble of automated, 'speak your selection' menus and a slew of secretaries stood in the middle ground between the phone on Anita's desk and the phone some impatient person pressed firmly against their ear on the other end. But there was a number, one number that dialed straight into her phone. Her boss didn't give this number out, he had no family to speak of, no wife or serious girlfriend - kind of like me, Anita thought sometimes. Anita synced her Black Berry with her desk phone so that after business hours, when the computer voice stopped asking questions and gave a simple directive - TRY YOUR CALL AGAIN DURING BUSINESS HOURS - whoever might dial directly to her desk could reach her through her cell. The only time it rang after hours was when her boss called to tell her about some big to-do the next day. Some meeting they'd be flying across the globe to. And he never called to ask her how she felt about it, never asked if she wanted to go, only to tell her what color suit she should wear, or how she should fix her hair. He was so cold, almost robotic, but Anita adored his ability to soak up everything around him, his unfailing optimism. Not optimism in a future for Anita - she'd stay as long as she was useful - but optimism in the big picture. Anita tried to follow suit, although, this morning Anita didn't feel optimistic at all. Those damn phone calls.

Each time she got to the phone and looked at the number, the vibrating ceased. She didn't recognize the number and they, whoever, didn't leave a message. Wrong number, was her first thought, but after the third intrusion on her feather weight sleep she wasn't so sure. Maybe it's him, but that was just her, that was just Anita being overly optimistic. No, no, it wasn't him. 'He' never called her, not just her boss, any 'he'. Anita had no knight on a white horse ringing her bell spouting poetry. She knew it wasn't her boss, but a quick Google search of the area code confirmed the notion. The number was from some speck-in-the-road town in the south: Sowell Pike.

The name tickled in the back of her head. She pushed it away along with the big comforter and got out of bed. The sun hadn't come up yet, but she could see that storm that threatened to move in out of the west. She could see the infected mucus colored sky just starting to lighten. None of the news stations (what else were there, nowadays every station was news) reported anything about the weather. Sure the meteorologists would spit out highs and lows, any mention of rain gripped a portion of the viewing area, where as it infuriated the other portion. Anita pushed all that aside with her sleep clothes and took a shower.

Now, with the empty bottle of face cream in her hand and the puffy all over her face, her angry outburst dieing in the little bathroom, Anita began to cry.

Ben pt. 1 - Don't Worry

Soaked in cold sweat, Ben tossed and turned in his enormous bed. He rolled this way and that until the moist silk sheets tangled around him in a coccoon like embrace. His salt and pepper hair matted at the back of his head. When he became sufficiently wrapped, like a restless child on the operating table, he stilled. Only his eyes under his closed lids moved, back and forth, back and forth, almost as if they wanted to continue the chaotic bed sheet dance a little longer. Ben's muscular body, curled in a fetal position, suddenly went erect. Or tried to. The sheets snapped taut and his well manicured toe nails made deffinate lines where his feet tried to point at the foot of the bed. Had they been inexpensive discount cotton sheets, Ben would have ripped through them like the Incredible Hulk growing out of his normal sized clothes. But these sheets were top shelf, these sheets were imported, and these sheets held against his straining body.

His blue eyes snapped open the same moment his body tensed. He tasted blood in his mouth, probably got the inside of his cheek when his teeth came together with a click. Ben was greatful, though, the nightmare had ended.

Before the water rinsed the night sweat from his body the nightmare was long gone. In fact, he never remembered dreams, pleasant or not. Ben wasn't one to go about having his palm read or gazing into crystal balls. Ben had made his money through good old math. He excelled in Statistics and Economics in college and put what he learned to lucrative use, even before his third year. By the time he had his degree he had amassed enough money to dabble in the rocky soil of venture capitalism. A lot of people lost their ass shelling out large sums of money or credit to help a fledgling idea become half as succesful as Yahoo! Not Ben, Ben didn't gamble, Ben studied and calculated and never put down a dime without the garuntee of ten million in return. And it worked. It worked so well he didn't need his stunning good looks to fill the empty side of his bed, he didn't need credit cards to buy those imported silk sheets or to stand in a shower that had mood lighting and needed no door, no curtain - it was really that big.

He dried himself and put on his robe. The coffee pot would be done and he needed some of the special exotic brew - stuff that would make Starbucks patrons weep at the price. He'd never been afflicted with chronic hangovers, he didn't have a perscription for Ambien and he only needed, at most, six hours of sleep to feel refreshed and reenergized. All that changed when the nightmares started. He didn't remember them but when he woke with the feeling that he'd been hit by a Mac truck, well, he knew something was going on.

Sitting at his marble counter, Ben sipped his coffee and stared out the window above the sink. Two birds sat on a power line. They flipped and flapped against the wind. Ben was sure they were chirpping at each other although he couldn't hear them through his top-of-the-line energy saving multi-pane windows. He thought idly about how birds always made happy sounds. Birds only made sweet music, no death dirge, no funeral hyme, no achy-breaky heart. He was positive they were singing in the morning with love ballads, shakespearian sonnet songs.

Under the yellow sky - it was yellow all the time now, except when the sun was low, either rising or setting, then it was a yellow that burned - the birds sang but didn't fly. They hadn't risen from their pirch in three days. Somehow, they made sugar coated songs in their misery.

He got up from his seat and set the coffee cup in the sink. One of the birds, Don't Worry as Ben had named the one on the left (the bird on the right, of course, named Be Happy), fell from its pirch.

Despite the nightmare and the declining stocks, his dwindling portfolio, and now the bird - Don't Worry - lying dead under the worsening sky, Ben wasn't worried. Not one bit.

Perhaps he should have been.