Simon Vanowen fled up the flight of stairs tired of waiting for the 75-floor journey the elevator had to take to get to where he was. Simon Vanowen knew where he wanted to be in this 150-floor structure of metal beams, last names and uncertain grinning faces, the very top.
Vanowen was a chubby man, and most people talked about him behind his back because of it, except for his wife and child who discussed such matters at the dinner table. The one place in which he could sit and enjoy himself; steak and mashed potatoes, meatloaf, pizza (far too much of it in fact), a cold one (also far too much of this), and a pail or two of cherry nut with mint flavor ice cream, all added to that not so trim figure of which his wife would speak so gallantly to her chattering friends, “I conquered Mount Simon last night,” her words would wobble while a giggle broke to the surface. It didn’t matter what she would say next, because it normally wasn’t funny, and it normally dealt with their poor sex life (true he wasn’t attracted to her anymore, perhaps ever) though it made her hands clap together spastically, and her friends would follow along with fits of barking laughter until their dog Patches began to howl.
Patches is what Simon called him, but his wife preferred Patch, even though it was actually Simon’s dog, and the truth be told his wife didn’t even want the dog until she found that it supposedly did more than Simon to keep the house clean when she found Patch licking up after a mess one of his daughter’s boyfriends had left behind; he had dropped the food when Simon accidentally walked in on him while taking a leak.
All this was enough to have his family address him as Vanowen instead of Simon while at home. It was somewhat problematic that a local street was also called Vanowen. Every time he was tired from work, and his wife was giving directions to somebody, he thought she was speaking to him, and would go to the grocery store, beauty salon, or wherever his wife had told her make-up caked friends to go, and would wander around for hours before realizing he didn’t know what to get.
He could live with that though. It gave him a certain superiority to be called by his Father’s name, instead of the name his Mother gave to him. It is what they called him at work. It didn’t matter to him that anytime someone called him this it was with a hint of sarcasm. What really crawled under his skin was when people at work called him by his first name. Nobody else in the company was referred to by their first name, not even that over analytical twerp Hubert. The name rang in his head, and his breath came from his mouth with wisps of flame, which heated the tears that flooded down his face as he circled another levels worth of stairs.
Vanowen had wanted to approach his boss Lebwitz; he had been planning on it for a year. Hubert had approached Lebwitz a week ago- and was snubbed. The office had erupted with laughter after Hubert was well away; everyone had even allowed Vanowen to laugh along too. This made him feel good inside. A warm blanket surrounded his trembling stomach, and many of his fears subsided. He had planned to speak with Lebwitz today. Today. Oh that word made him shudder with a sickly anger. Today had been terrible. Everything had gone wrong. Vanowen flew around another corner, his dramatic scream echoed to the top of the high rise, which approached with every step taken.
Vanowen had seen Hubert make eye contact a few days before to much avail. Lebwitz had actually caught him out of the corner of his eye, and nodded back. Vanowen had gasped with shock, his double chin hung further down than it had ever done before, and under his breath, with the lisp so familiar to his fellow workers it made them run in fear of being caught in heavy laughter, and mocking tones, and with his limp wrist waving in anger he spoke, “Thithead”.
Over the past few days he had told everybody he was going to speak with Lebwitz. Most responded with a roll of their eyes, and a “whatever Fatty”, or “whatever fag-boy”; neither was as bad as Simon, and the second, well he hadn’t so much as held a cigarette since he was 15, and he never actually spokes it when he did. Then today as Vanowen walked down the corridor, his heart fluttered as Lebwitz came around the opposing corner. Suddenly Hubert was at his side, tongue swirling around his lips, he looked at Vanowen and smiled. Vanowen slowed; his moment of hubris stripped from him. Hubert approached Lebwitz with something in his hand. It was small and black. Hubert spoke, “Good morning Mr. Lebwitz.”
Lebwitz stopped, and hesitated, “Good morning… what is it… Hubert?”
Hubert pressed something on the small rectangular thing he was holding, “Yes sir.” Click; he had pressed it again.
Vanowen leaned in a little more to see what it was.
Lebwitz’s eyes roamed around the room unsure of what to say next, “Well. Nice speaking with you.”
Lebwitz turned and continued.
Hubert rolled his thumb, and Click, his voice louder, “Thank you sir. Have a good day.” Click.
Vanowen’s heart stopped. It was a mini-recorder. Hubert had recorded his voice earlier, so that it wouldn’t crack from nerves. Vanowen slowly turned away. Hubert had stood in the middle of the aisle with a smile on his face. The bastard was proud of himself. Vanowen’s head hung lower. He ran towards the elevator, and repeatedly slammed his hand against the up arrow.
That was 15 minutes ago, and now as Vanowen rounded the current flight of stairs he realized that he should be well beyond the mere five flights he had finished or the building would close before he reached the top. Vanowen took the door to the 22nd floor, and hit the elevator button. Patiently he waited. Now that he had a chance to stop, and rest, a feeling of peace washed over him, and a wet spot grew at his crotch. He had a nervous stomach, and with all the excitement had forgotten to detour into the men’s room. He thought of his wife, and child, and how much he hated them both. He thought about his boss, Mr. Lebwitz, and how much he loved him, although he held no reasons why, and if asked, he merely stuttered until the other person left to wipe his face clean with a paper towel, and he thought about Hubert. The demon. Hubert backwards in some foreign language had to spell Satan; he just knew it. Hubert had obviously heard about Vanowen’s plans, and had purposefully crushed them. Vanowen felt the wound in his back grow as he stepped into the elevator, and hit floor 150.
The elevator slowly crept towards the roof of the building. The mirrors in the small compartment reflected him 100 times over, and little yellow lights on the ceiling created beads of light on the forehead of each reflection. Vanowen looked at his face again, but it was not his own. Hubert was instead reflected back at him, and he laughed with delight, as a proud thief would who had just finished his stolen meal. One by one each reflection changed to Hubert, and the laughter echoed into the distance. Vanowen dropped to the ground, and clenched his hands tightly around his ears, but flinched in pain as blood was about to be drawn, and covered them with his palms instead.
Vanowen rolled out of the elevator. No one else had entered the elevator (that he had noticed) on the way up. He pulled himself weakly to his feet, and slid them slowly down the hall, until he came to an open room. He slowly made his way to the window, and unlatched it. He pushed it open; a cool breeze scattered papers as it entered the room, circled and finally slammed the door shut. Vanowen was alone. He pulled himself out onto the ledge, and looked down the sheer face of the building. 150 floors up seemed a lot higher from the top than it did from the bottom, which is where he would be minutes from now, or seconds. For a moment he stopped to calculate his weight, and how many feet each level was, multiplied by… he stopped. It didn’t matter. The only thing that did was the first step.
Vanowen peeked around the side of the building, and saw Hubert’s house. The bastard had a front row seat to his climb to the top. The residential area touched the edge of the building’s square on all four sides. It had been development terror for most of the neighborhood to have a 150-story monolith built against their gardens, and swing sets; “A gray poop on the greenest pasture” Milton Serrup, one of the elderly neighbors who opposed the structure had called it. There had been a typo on the zoning order as to where the construction was supposed to take at, and they ended up tearing down a few houses so that this lifelessness could loom over the neighborhood. “The old man was right”, Vanowen thought, when looked upon from a distance the building seemed out of place, unwanted. A phallic construct hated by everything else around it. A single tear ran down Vanowen’s face, and loneliness welled up inside his chest.
He looked to the left, and as the world curved he could make out the brown paper sails of the boats in a harbor in China, and to the right at the curve of the world the Russians dancing merrily on a snow capped mountain top, and his mind opened to allow this vast space into it, and he saw how much more in the world there was than his cubicle, his floor, his wife and demon spawn which she called their child, and Hubert, and he realized his love for Lebwitz, but was still unable to put it into words, only that he wanted to travel with him to all the distant places that he could see. And as the world stretched in front of him, and the penguins waddled and waved, and the dolphins flipped over the spout of water from the whales back, Vanowen laughed. No, Simon laughed, and a surge of gaiety filled his mixed up soul. He looked down at the ground; the hundreds of people that preferred to be called by their last names were mere spots, spots to toy with, to squash. Hubert was one of those spots. He could smell his cheap deodorant from up here, and see his hand twitch nervously as a bum on the buildings lot asked him for change. There was another way to handle his situation, one far more entertaining than dropping to his death. Vanowen shivered at the thought, wet his pants a second time, and crawled back into the office shivering as Mr. Lebowitz entered the same room, his office.