He was a young man with his mind made up. They could see that immediately. Why he drove that simple-looking Volkswagen to work every day, though, they didn’t understand… Maybe the explanation would become clear at some point. Until then, they studied him, trying to figure him out. Clean-shaven, tailored clothing. He was good looking – slightly overweight, but wearing clothes that were custom-tailored to hide the imperfections that lesser-paid men couldn’t afford to hide. His Volkswagen – despite being a Volkswagen – wasn’t shabby either, although it certainly didn’t quite fit in with the crowd. The fact that it had started blowing out insulation from inside the vents wouldn’t ever be known by anyone who hadn’t actually ridden inside the car. And he made it clear that his wife drove a Lexus and he had paid his way onto the Tesla wait list. Nothing to be ashamed of. Just a matter of time.
They watched him press the gate opener on autopilot and pull in next to the Lexus. His pocket – though silent – was laden with weight. How much did an email weigh? This was something they had yet to learn. Upstairs, the smell of melted cheese and heavily salted brisket – take out, again – incentivized him to change quickly into something made of jersey fabric and not requiring ironing, and the weight was gone, for a moment at least. It returned quickly, though (in the name of fun, or out of necessity?) – just in time for stories and lights out. The room glowed with the pale light of the screen as the young boys snored quietly, draped over him on both sides because time with mama was a dime a dozen. Answering nine o’clock questions. Analyzing immaterials. Vegging out.
Downstairs, she poured him some wine and he sat back, pleased with the flavor and with how many bottles he knew he had left. $80 a month was worth it to air condition these crushed grapes in their own storage unit – especially since they were used to cool, evening California air. Nothing wrong with a little pampering. The golden wine barrels he had photographed with his expensive lens hung on the wall in their custom frames to remind him that his mind was capable of more than just work and gratification. Artistic expression had once mattered. Did it still? Another question they hoped to answer.
Day after day they watched him, studied him, tried to talk to him, but he couldn’t seem to hear. Was he purposely ignoring them? Or was his life drowning them out? He repeated the same patterns they had noticed that first day. He seemed lost in his routines. He and the the woman bickered, but never really fought, every Saturday morning. She wanted out of the house to forget their routines, but fleeting moments interspersed throughout the weekends were all he had to enjoy their space. After all, that couch and projector alone had cost him over a month’s worth of days. And the instant access to scores and the latest updates on the politicos silenced his nagging brain as long as that blue connectivity light stayed on in the closet. Of course, he appeased her once in a while – she was on his team, after all – which often allowed him the satisfaction of slamming down that plastic (although he preferred the metal) card and feeling like he had made it in life. He’d bought himself a ladder. Each rung had cost…how much? Where was his calculator?
It wasn’t until the white coat came down that sterile white hall after he and the woman had waited an hour longer than they had been told it would take that their whispers became audible to him. The littlest boy lay in an invisible room, out of sight, coated in an unnatural paleness while the nurse monitored his tiny wrist and waited for his eyelids to begin twitching. Something wasn’t right, they could tell. They felt sick to their stomachs. The battery on his device died that day, although this time not from overuse, but because he forgot to plug it back in. “Pathology report” was tattooed in invisible ink across his forehead – but only they and the woman could see it. He barely functioned all week long. He and the woman cried in each other’s arms, wrapped up with their boys and a patience and wonder that had gone dormant, but wasn’t quite gone.
The days passed and he resumed his Volkswagen rides up the dark, winding ramp to the spot he had claimed near the elevator. But they noticed that now, his energy was gone. The emails weren’t just weight in his pocket – he reacted to them some days with blankness, others with fire. Those glowing words and deadlines, not to mention the vegging, had snatched moments away that couldn’t be recovered. He brewed with anger and regret. They tried again to speak to him – the new him – and this time, he whipped around when he heard their strange voices echo through his home.
He was finally ready to listen.