The Grey Haired Man

The grey haired man stood, staring out the 12th story window, blinds opened to flood the room with the evening light. Massive panes of glass, across the room, made believe they were invincible, guardians against the city lights. The setting sun turned shadows from the buildings into darkened claws that would no doubt consume people, cars and streetlights, feeding them to a black monster past the horizon. The desk behind him, normally so tidy, the product of obsessive dusting, polishing, arranging, now so lonely, covered in crumpled papers stained by coffee rings and an untouched nametag. Jeremiah Kingston. He hadn’t slept in the last three days, showed in his in his bloodshot eyes and worn face. Dark stubble on his chin had begun to thicken. Three weeks- three weeks of writing and signing and calling and heaven knows everything he’d worked on. And it ended in nothing. The deal had been broken by the associate company. There had been full out war between corporations, with Jeremiah at the front lines. He told the directors that he had the upper hand, that he had an unbreakable case. But with such surety in his company comes the risk. If someone is that certain, stakes inevitably go upwards in the hectic, business defined world of Wall Street. And someone like him- at the height of his game, at the peak of his potential- he wasn’t allowed to fail. He knew there would be consequences worse than death in this gambit. The city outside was hushed, and the earth began to slowly recede from him. Up here, in the darkened New York skyline, he was alone, a failure society had thrown in the windy cloudless summits. A knock on the door behind him. A pause. The man didn’t turn to look and see who entered without invitation. It didn’t matter. The sound of a paper sliding onto his desk, then the click and knock of the door closing once more. The man had one more thought. He wondered how simple it would be to break the window’s reinforced glass.

Written at Writer's at Harriman