A New Life Begins

(…a whole bunch of unrevelaed story…)

“Bolding.” A tall man with wide-rimmed glasses and a thin layer of hair on his head filed a few papers onto the table in front of him. The back of his hands actually had more hair than his head. “Bolding,” he repeated, because Alex was still typing, meaning to finish his sentence. Alex turned to face him squarely, but did not answer. “I need someone to run the offset printer.” And that someone would inevitably be him. “Dave didn’t come in today, and I tried to call him, and he didn’t even answer�"Rob isn’t available and no one else knows how to run it, so�"I need you to. Here is the outline. Ehm…” he licked his finger and held it daintily in the corner of the current page. Then he tossed it aside onto the floor, and continued stacking papers down.

“I still have this document to format. I won’t be able to finish.” Alex was very curt, only because these unexpected requests were starting to irk him strongly.

“Leave that for tomorrow. I may get to it. If not, hm.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The newspaper has to get printed, I can call that client and just tell him there’s been a delay.”

Alex made a call on his phone. When he finished, Mr. Youtryvi was zipping up his jacket.

“Riley, I may have to say no sometimes.” Alex said in monotone, because what he really wanted to do was raise his voice with exuberance, so instead his voice hit the volume ceiling he wouldn’t allow himself to pass with each word.

“You’re always in the market for a promotion.” Riley flashed a plastic smile. “Goodbye, Bolding.” The office door clicked closed, and then the main entrance buzzed as it did with every entrance or exit. Alex was alone at his desk; but that’s how he preferred to work anyway. He shuffled through the papers Mr. Youtryvi slapped on the table. There wasn’t anything interesting for tomorrow’s news. Top story was covering the local college Basketball team’s victory over Tennessee. He noticed that everytime the local paper ran with the top story being about sports, it was a telltale sign that they’d had nothing noteworthy for the day. The sports section was for sports victories, not the front page. He gathered up the stack of papers and headed toward a door in the back of the room�"and stepping on the paper which Mr. Youtryvi threw to the ground, he stopped to read it. It was a “Culture” page insert titled “Hometown Chocolate Ganache.” It was only a personal preference. The printing company which Alex worked for was the proprietor of this particular newspaper, and Riley saw it fit to sometimes crumple up articles or pages he didn’t like personally, without first notifying the editors. It was very foolish. Were they ever to find another avenue to print, they’d drop his manager’s services in an instant.

The door in the back of the office was metal with a little glass window; on the inside stood four large offset printing machines. These were each as big as a small car, and in fact, this room was twice three times the size of the other room.

Alex set his stack nearby a large chrome copier machine, and reloaded the each of the four printers with fresh paper. One by one, he scanned his stack of papers: each one was about two feet long and two feet wide in length, so that, when folded over each other in fours, they’d form into the booklike structure of a newspaper. Each scan was entered into a queue, and the last step was simple enough: open up the appropriate program on the computer which ran the printing and click the “execute process” button. The moaning and humming begin, and now he simply had to sit and make sure nothing went wrong. Tomorrow, very early in the morning, someone would transfer all of the copies to the “folding” machine, and the papers would be ready to distribute.

The problem was now, he could not go home. He promised their client that he’d be finished spell-checking and formatting their flyer by the next day, so he had to do it. He did not leave the building until after midnight.

He knew Jade would be devastated. He was going to call her again, but just wanted to focus on getting work done and so didn’t bother. He rolled his dirty coupe up the stripped part of land near the left of their house. He could see Jade with her face against the window. When he opened up the door, she wasn’t there. Playing games, was she? But there she was in the kitchen eating leftovers from the night before.

“Why are you so late.” She was stirring her spoon around in the bowl and didn’t look up.

“I was going to call�"but�"you know. I let it go. Was focused on what I was going.”

“I see.” Alex doffed his coat and placed it in the closet nearby the kitchen. The famer’s wife had left them the stove, refrigerator, microwave�"pretty much everything, even a few bowls, spoons, forks, knives, and plates. These were the same plates the two ate on now.

“I really like this…what is it again? You cook it really well.”

“Goulash.”

“Yeah, that.” He put his fork back into the food, making sure to pick up a piece of everything, and took a bite. “We never made this. I heard of it, but I don’t remember ever trying it.”

“You should just quit this job.” Said Jade in a quiet unconfronting way; she didn’t even look up from her food. Alex tinked his fork on porcelain.

“This is a good job. Heck, I’m grateful I even have this job. I mean…for the experience I’ve got under my belt, I’m getting paid more than I’d expect. It’s not a whole lot, but you know, I’m satisfied with it. If we�"“

“You just don’t get it.” She stared him in the eyes now.

“Apparently not.”

“We never do anything together anymore. You just go to work and waste your time, and I’m here doing nothing. What am I supposed to do?”

“There’re are a lot of things to do. Oh, have you tried crochet? Watch some videos online and see if you like it; I bet you could learn quickly.” Alex sipped his mug and sat there. And she sat there looking vexed at him. Then she looked back down. Alex leaned on his knees and stayed his gaze at her. “Sorry, Jade. What is it?”

They had a good, long chat. Jade felt a little better afterward, but she hadn’t really said what she wanted to say.

“What do you think about the 12K next week?”

“Wait and ask me next week.” She smiled.

Alex always went to the coffee shop in the morning to read a book, and just allow himself to relax before his work day put stress on him. On days when Jade had something planned�"for example, watching a movie at the theater, shopping at a few boutiques, etc.�"she also joined him. (A few miles inland was a village with all of these amenities, including Alex’s job, which is called MintPrints). It was more of a friendliness thing, for they had a coffee brewer in their house. On days after Alex produced the local paper, he’d stop in front of the paper stand in front of the coffeeshop, grab one, and that would be his reading for the morning.

Whenever Jade joined him, they’d play a little game, which is what they were doing now. Alex typed the words, “What r u doing 2da?” on his phone, and slid the phone across the roundtable under the paper blocking his face, without looking, over to Jade. She jotted out a reply and slid it back. He read it: “Going 2 aquarium with friends.” Alex tapped his chin. He typed back, “Which friends,” and slid it back. He wasn’t really reading now behind his paper, only waiting for a reply. Her answer back was, “i dont no. I just texted them 2 ask.” Alex responded back, “If u invite Bobby…” he peeked over the edge of the paper, meaning to be inconspicuous. When Jade’s eyebrows curled in, he threw down his newspaper and finished outloud, “…tell her boyfriend to get a life.” She chuckled a chicken cluck chuckle. “She can’t come anyway, because she had an appointment.”

“Oh…oh, I have to go. See you later, Jade.”

“Bye.” She was having fun; she didn’t want it to stop.

Today was a busy day at the print shop. Upon arrival, Alex was alarmed by a few impressive men bearing suits waiting near the counter. Not in line, but over to the side. A man�"a fat bellied man, may I say�"with black hair, a wide nose, and today a green sweater wagged his finger at Alex; he was clearly bidding him to come over. Alex scooted around the line of customers which folded on itself and wrapped around the line-markers.

“Rob. Hello.”

“Bad news. Interesting news.”

Alex raised his eyebrow.

“You know the company that outsources their newspaper to us. They’re out. That’s why their people are over there by the counter right now.”

“Oh, so that’s why they’re here.”

“What kind of sucks is that we’re doing a remission.” The word reminded Alex something about sins and the Bible, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Remission?”

“Boss asked me�"well us�"to go to every single location and empty out the dispensers. Every location.” Alex found himself stomping into the office room, where he knew Riley would be, and yelling, nearly screaming, that it was stupid and useless to drive around and purge the place of newspapers. Riley walked up to Alex without saying a word, on the way stopping by his desk and quickly slapping off some notecards, and flicked his head over to see where his hand was, and grabbed colorful circle pads. Alex didn’t notice, because he was so focused on his eyes.

Riley stopped in front of him, and Alex could see his glare was glazed over. He was clearly trying to act gentlemanly. Raising a green circle to off to his left over his shoulder, and the other to his right, he spoke moving the green circle: “You are on your way to a promotion, Mr. Bolding.” His head twitched over to the side as he said this. His neck was clenched, his lips right. “You will stay from a demotion if you continue to work well and do what I expect of you.” He wagged the red circle. He pulled the red circle down tightly to his hip. “Continue to be a good example in the workplace. We are sorry?” Whether or not that was a question, Alex had no idea. It sounded like a duck’s quack.

“Yes…we are sorry.” Alex echoed.

He went immediately to the white delivery van where Rob was waiting. This was his first and foremost occupation: to deliver products to clients. In fact, this was his van; that’s how he saw it. He drove it to work and drove it home and drove it to many non-work related places with Riley’s permission. It always smelled like whatever he had for breakfast, or lunch, or dinner that day, so one could figure out Rob’s diet, and to that extent much of his life, because as they say, “you are what you eat.”

Alex knocked on the driver’s side window, and it rolled down. “I only need a few bins from the back to put in my car. If we drive separate it will go quicker.”

“You want to use your gas?”

“I don’t have time for this. I have another deadline today, and this is…” He heaved up the cumbersome plastic bins and went to his car.

“What streets are you taking?” called Rob over the humming truck motor.

“Westbay, Scott, um…wait.” He reconsidered. He was planning to make a stop on his way out, as he’d be stretching into his lunch hour anyhow. “Here, you take the west side of Oracle Rd., I’ll take the east.”

“You know I’m not very good with north, south, and all that!” Rob called back. Okay then. Alex strode to where the street which MintPrints sat on intersected with Oracle.

He yelled, “You take this side.” He held his left arm out. “I take this this side.” He held his right arm out. He was barely audible over the zooming of cars. On his way back to his coupe, he sung toward Rob, “The sun rises in the east and sets in the west; you can start from there any figure out the rest.” As an afterthought, the sky was cloudy grey without a hint a blue, and Rob was probably trying to figure out which way was up, so to speak.

Alex finished his rounds as fast as he could, because he was strongly looking forward to his lunch break. After he finished, he stopped parked his car into the mall parking lot. His destination was parlor glass window at the tailor shop. He walked straight to the window and just stood there. In the window was a beautifully hand-sown dress, and a little sign under it read “made to size.” He took it in, and with each breath, thought deeper and deeper about this. The dress was weaved of pure silk dyed a burning fiery violet. It was resplendent, almost alive, and so beautiful. Silver and white satin ribbons adorned the waist and sleeves, and the chest was crested with a silver and royal blue lattice threaded with gold. Real gold. The beauty took away his breath every time he saw it. This time he really wanted to take it in; he went into the store, got up close (and got over his fear of what people would think of him for walking into a women’s store. That’s why this was the first time he got a good, long look at it). For lunch he enjoyed a coney dog in the food court. All the while he marveled in his mind at the dress.

And on his way back to the office as well. Today he couldn’t get his mind off of it. “Bolding!” his manager had to snap him back into position like a LEGO brick, because he would be staring into his computer screen or doing something else unproductive. Each time Mr. [boss name] lowered his voice and assertively said, “Stay focused, please.”

He was glad when the day ended. On his desk he found a brochure on his desk. “I thought that may be of interest to you.” It was Riley’s voice behind me. He refastened his glasses and said, “Eh, just take a look at it and see.”

“Sure, Riley,” Alex mumbled.

Alex waved goodbye to Rob on the way out; he was thoroughly enjoying a Big Mac over his desk. Thankfully work was over early today!

Jade wasn’t home. She was probably still out with her friends. Sure enough, later that night she came home with bags�"clothes bags. Alex craned his head over the only sofa in the living room to greet her. She threw something over his head before he could say anything. It flew past him, onto the floor.

“Oops, missed.”

Alex crouched down to pick it up. A hat? Oh a fedora. “What’s this?”

“A hat.”

“I mean�"for me?”

“Put it on.”

He snuggled it over his moppy hair. “I like it,” he smiled. “Did you see me at the mall today?”

“No.” Phew. “But what do you mean? You can’t like it yet.” She held up a mirror that, apparently, she had purchased as well. The young man squinted and turned his head about to get the view from every angle. He refitted it on his head, then took it off and brushed his hair down with his fingers, put it back on, repeated the process, and plopped it straight back on his head, as straight as he could get it. “I do like it. And orange is my favorite color.”

He stood up straight again. “You look…more Alexy maybe?” she suggested. He couldn’t help it. He went over and hugged her tight.