'Kindred'

A Short Short-Story

by Jay Gillard Jr.

James was a going places kind of person.

He was a tall and serious professional, who ignored all of the emotional and personal discomfort caused by his relentless pursuit of the perfect consulting career.

At work, his direction was uphill, his activity was battling in the trenches, and the speed was pedal to the floor, twenty-four by seven.

The title of 'Corporate Yes Man' and 'Trusted Business Advisor' seemed, to me, to be the best description of how he did things.

He dressed the part, he drove the car, and he lived the life. Stress was fun for a person like James. He lived to get work-related things done, and had made a name for himself because of it.

He valued productivity, exceeded business expectations, and knew that nothing in this world is free, not even value added services.

He almost liked it.

He knew of the ulcers and heart palpitations. He thought he was the only one who knew. He knew the physical response to situational stress. Thought he was the only one affected by them.

He knew he had a shark's simple find-and-devour soul; the sad part was that he accepted it. It subleased a sub-section of space that his previous soul had occupied in the past.

The long distant past.

The just after college past, when dreams and ideals still held sway over greed and arrogance. Too long ago to remember.

He thought burning out was what other people did. He never even saw it coming for himself.

There he was, unwilling to recognize his displeasure with every continued success, fed up with every drawn out meeting that burned lifetime yet accomplished nothing. You never know how burnout feels until it is too late.

Change requires considerable effort when you are leaving something that you think works.

His job description, 'Senior Corporate Business Consultant specializing in E-Business Strategy". This required that he fly to different cities during the week in order to ensure his clients made gobs of money and his consulting firm made their forty-five percent returns on the investment of his time and know-how.

He booked twenty-hour days six to seven days a week, and that was excluding the hours he worked but didn't charge in.

Big time profits from an endless string of win, win, win situations, but at the cost of the corresponding stress of utilizing someone else's money. Someone who still didn't trust him even after repeated successes, even after five years of forty-five percent returns.

He told himself the partners truly cared for him as a person.

He made a lot of money. Way more than anyone needed, but less than he wanted.

The company you keep determines the ruler for which you measure lifestyle things. Partners live big.

He made quick and numerous superficial friends. He did it with anyone and everyone he worked with, even the plastic ones, ensuring that his interpersonal conversations were also, for the most part, work focused.

He had to stay sharp.

The man would think about project deliverables and task prioritizations during sex to expedite the point of climax. He was sick.

James was just pretending to be a real person, and he didn't even know it.

However, this could all just be my opinion.

Nobody calls corporate strategy consulting a job or career. The lifestyle moniker came from the all-consuming demands. It seems to me, that this lifestyle had finally worn him down.

About time, I thought, I do not think I can take much more of this.

There I was a thought-to-be impartial player. An oft-ignored part of James's life, standing behind him in the middle of the men's room on the fiftieth floor of the IDS tower in downtown Minneapolis Minnesota, USA.

The wallpaper was silver and dully reflecting the sun, the mirrors reflecting James and the empty stalls in the background.

The breeze was nice, the smell less so. It was something to the tune of an irresponsible cocktail of Jasmine, mint-bubble-gum-spice, and half a gallon of freshly jettisoned coffee-infused urine. All remaining fingers not stopping up my nose, pointed to facilities management letting the place slide.

Things were finally starting to get interesting, and I just could not sit idly silent any more, not with a potential epiphany on the horizon.

No more of Jay being an excluded non-issue. No more being an ignored secondary party. Even James had to admit that I had everything to gain or lose based on his next few moments.

He was standing on top of the sink looking down. It was deal-closing day on a late Saturday afternoon. He was dressed in his Sunday best, not that he ever had time for church.

"If you are going to go," I said, "I won't try and stop you. Actually, come to think of it, I am all for it. Seems fitting."

No answer.

I think he was still trying to ignore me.

"Come on man, you can do it. You know you want to, otherwise we wouldn't be here."

The wind from the wrecked floor-to-ceiling window tossed James's well kept, but hyper-conservative hairstyle back an forth. The smell cocktail, still violating the room in closely spaced gaps, danced in tandem.

"Seriously," I say, "What do you have to look forward to anyway? Retirement? Your next burnout? It is all just fixed income and incontinence in the end, bro. It's, thinking about how we tried to change the world, each in our insignificant little ways. We are all just kidding ourselves. What are your intentions on that sink?"

James stood there dejected and looking down, his thumb flicking a remnant of plexi-glass still attached to the window frame. The crystal-like shard looked like the cracked southern part of Texas.

I think he was crying but I could not see his face or hear any evidence of sobbing with the gusting wind filling my ears.

The big wuss, I thought.

Here we were so close to closing the deal or getting some kind of break through, and he comes down with pause-o-citius with complications of do-nothing-ness.

I had better remind him of his options, I thought.

I had to be creative; it is almost all I am good for.

"You know you are going to have to answer for the window and the chair?" I asked, "Not to mention all of the damage of that chair falling through the solarium roof below. Big time damages. Legal troubles."

I smiled while he looked like he was physically wavering. He was hanging on by the flicks of southern Texas.

"Plus, your clients in the meeting room are going to wonder what that sound was. That or they will be angry that they had to wait a few minutes longer than the predetermined ten minutes break in your presentation. It could go either way, but I'm betting they are pissed."

Regardless of success, clients usually were pissed most of the time. I was stretching a bit with the whole consultant as doormat thing. He had already heard that from me before.

James had locked the bathroom door when he entered with the chair. I saw him do it and the window, with my own eyes. The clients, or anyone else for that matter, were not going to be getting in here without facilities' help, and only God knew where those people were.

"Do something." I yelled, "I can't unlock the door, and I don't want this smell in my nose. Come on, here is your 'Owner of a Lonely Heart' video moment! You'll have instant regional notoriety. Make a splash. Change a witness's life. Just go. Decide. I am sick of waiting. I am sick of all of it."

"He doesn't have to listen to you," came a dry voice to our left, "This is a hard enough thing to overcome without you around muddying the waters. You are so selfish and irrational."

It was Junior. Out of nowhere, the little cuss popped in. He was sitting Indian style on the floor between the two urinals wearing his usual kakis casual sweater and smug smirk. He was reading chapter four of, 'How to Make Friends and Influence People.'

"We don't need you weighing in, Senor Buzz-Kill-Joy," I said, "Don't you have anything better to do?"

"As a matter of fact I have a sincere and vested interest in James over there," he said, now reading, 'Success for Dummies' in his right hand, 'Getting to Yes' in his lap, and, 'Practical Time Management' in his left hand.

I hate how Junior tries to pass regurgitation off as original knowledge. Despised it in fact, because James actually bought it, most of the time. Drives me nuts; their complete lack of imagination.

"Come on James," I implored, "two-thirds majority baby. You know that I am right. Go. Do it, now."

James turned to look at Junior and me over his left shoulder. He kept flicking southern Texas on the frame. He had been crying.

Holding a book called, 'A Lifetime of Second Chances' Junior locked eyes with James and said, "You can change. Anyone can change. It's okay."

I stood there shaking with my fists clenched.

Goddamn Junior, was always trying to spoil what little fun I get while I am inside James's head.

Junior would have James doing the same crap forever, if he had his way. His whole change thing was just a ruse. He have us back doing the same crap within the week.

Junior regards me now holding a book called, 'Victory'. He smiles and says, "A piece of coal versus a refined diamond."

I instantly knew what he meant. He was implying that I was coal, only good for burning and that he, and all his little books, was the diamond. I guess that would make James the man with the choice.

At that, I lost my cool and decided that bookworm needed his face decorated by the angry heal of my boots.

Kicking Junior and screaming at the floor is how I spent the next few minutes.

James did not move from his perch on the sink.

Flick, click, flick, click, went his thumb on the shard.

Junior takes everything I give him.

I stop to catch my breath.

Broken, Junior asks me if I feel better.

Tired and heaving, I tell him no and kick him one more time, knocking the latest book called, 'Passive Resistance' from his clenched hands. His stacks of books lay scattered across the wet sticky tiled floor.

I turn to find James had vacated the sink and windowsill, and was patting down his hair, and moving towards the door past me.

Unfair, I thought, as he loosened his tie with his right hand and reached for the door lock with his left.

James smiled and said to me, "I am putting in my two weeks, right now."

Junior let out a thankful sigh though a broken smile.

I want to hit James in the face, and physically throw him out the window.

Sadly, I don't work that way. I can't.

"I need you both," he continues, "You coming?"

Breathing heavily, I turn to shoot a glare to Junior, but he is already gone. His books are all gone too, as if in that brief moment he had never been. Not one bit of evidence corroborated his ever being there with his little kernels of wisdom. His blood on the wall, on the floor, and in the urinal, was also gone.

Maybe I was losing it?

Maybe James's decision was for the best.

Maybe Junior and I each served our own purpose, each from a different level of refinement. Coal and diamonds are both made of the same stuff after all.

James brought himself through it and we were just along for the ride.

A collective paradigm shift, if you will.

I got what I wanted, I guess. James chose to change. I could care less which way he did it.

Now I will have to make good with Junior.

Naw. We are better in contrast anyway, more productive for James.

Maybe I am starting to think too much. Paralysis by psychoanalysis.

"I guess I'm looking forward to what ever change of pace you have in mind." I say with a long pause.

"Let's go."

"Come with you?" I continue, "It isn't like I have a choice, do I?"

James smiled for the first time in a long time.

It looked genuine to me.

"You don't, but it will be okay." he replied.

Together we walked out of the bathroom into what ever comes next.