Obsession Chapter 2

Amid the piles of papers strewn about on the cluttered desk, the phone rang. Rays of sunlight filtered through the blinds, illuminating motes of dust suspended in the smoky air of the third story office, casting its warmth on the sleeping form of Donald Ruthers. A single sixty-watt bulb hung from the ceiling, adding it’s meager offerings to the light in the room, swaying slightly from the drafts of wind that snuck through the aged building.

Donald Ruthers began to stir, oblivious to the ringing phone, a groan escaping his lips as he sat up in his chair. Without a thought he took a drink from the flask of whisky still in his right hand and then settled back in his chair. He let his arms drape over the sides of the chair, the flask hanging limply from his hand, loosely held between his index finger and thumb. His chin buried in his chest, Donald’s mind began to work, intrigued by the obnoxious ringing noise.

With a start, Donald jumped from his chair, dropping the flask of whiskey to the floor. Recklessly, he shuffled through the papers on his desk, seeking the phone. Digging through months of work and cases he once worked on, he stood up, throwing papers he didn’t recognize to the floor, out of his way. Thrusting a hand into a mass of papers and folder, Donald rapper his knuckles on something hard and plastic and pulled his fingers back, comforting the sore knuckles with the other hand.

The phone continued to ring. With a sweep of his hand, Donald shoved aside the papers to expose the phone, and he picked up the receiver. “Hello?” He managed to croak into the phone, his lips cracking with the movement. He licked them, tasting blood.

“Donnie!” Came an exuberant voice from the other end, bright, cheery and friendly, “ Donnie, where’ve you been all day? You’re late.”

In the few moments after waking, Donald’s mind wasn’t as sharp as normal, and he ransacked his memory for any appointment he could have missed. Drawing a blank he hoarsely replied into the phone, “ Late for what?”

“For work, Donald. What? Have you been drinking again?” The voice on the other end sighed and continued, without leaving time for Donald to answer, “ Of course you have. Hold on, I’ll be by in a couple minutes to get you. Make sure you’re ready.”

Donald shook some of the grogginess from his mind in time to hear the last of what the voice on the other end of the line was saying, finally realizing whom it was that called him. “Walter, wait…” is all he managed to choke out before he heard the click of Walter hanging up the phone. “Fuck!” he cursed into the phone before slamming it down on the desk. Licking his lips, again tasting blood seeping through the cracked skin, he bent down to pick the flask up from the floor.

After unscrewing the cap of the flask and taking a draw from its stout neck, he replaced the cap and walked to the window behind the desk. Donald pulled up the blinds, squinting against the bright, midday sun that suddenly assaulted him, at the flower shop across the street. Without a thought, he took another drink from the flask, draining the canister of it’s potent alcohol. As he drank, he stared down at the flowers in front of the shop.

He had always liked looking out this window in the morning to look down at the rows of blue flowers that decorated the outside of the flower shop. The vibrantly coloured flowers had been growing there since he moved into his office some ten years before, and each morning since they’ve brought a smile to his lips. Today however, not even a hint of a smile played across his drawn features as he looked at the flowers, and the many brightly dressed people that walked by. Sighing, Donald pulled the cord to blinds, letting them drop, shrouding the room in the hazy dark in which he awoke.

He slumped down in his chair, the one comfortable piece of furniture he owned, letting his body sink into the softly padded vinyl. The heat of the day had already managed to seep into his third story office, which normally stayed cool on these hot July days. Sweat had begun to bead on Donald’s forehead, which he wiped away with the bottom of his white cotton T-shirt. His normally messy hair stood disheveled in a multitude of blown rings sticking out at every angle, some strands sticking to the vinyl of the comfortable chair. The room had suddenly gotten stifling hot.

Again, feeling restless, Donald stood up at the desk to look around the room. He was sure to push his chair under the desk as he stepped up from behind it. Walking around the desk, he dug in his pockets for his cigarettes, not finding them on his person, and anxiously searched the floor for the blue package. He dropped to his knees, shuffling through the papers on the floor, under the desk. Crawling on all fours under the desk, he managed to find the package of cigarettes, half covered by discarded papers and cigarette cellophane. Without rising, he pulled a cigarette from the package and lit it with the black lighter he kept with his smokes, taking a deep inhalation of the poisonous smoke.

The door of his office slammed shut, the glass in the door rattling as if it were about to fall out of the window, as it had for the past five years. Donald stood up and turned suddenly, slamming his head into the bottom of the desk, dropping him to the floor. Face down under his desk, his rear end raised up in the air, Donald heard his friend laugh. “Oh, so that’s why you’re a bit late today. I guess I can understand, we all get a bit lonely…” the voice joked as Donald extracted himself from under the desk, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, the smoke wafting up around his head. “One thing though Donnie,” the tall black man who stood in front of Donald continued as he made a show of looking around the small office, “Where’s the other guy?”

Mimicking his friend’s laugher, Donald chuckled comically, his cigarette dancing around on his lips, leaving trails of smoke to waft up in the air. “Very funny Walter. You’re a regular comedian, maybe you should go on tour, far away.” Although he wore a scowl, Walter knew his friend Donald would be lost without his company, and support.

Walter stood a full head taller then the slender, disheveled Donald. They were the complete physical opposite of one another. Walter was tall, dark, good looking, muscular and well-groomed while Donald was plain in appearance, short, pale and his wild hair always seemed to be leaving his head, but never knowing which direction to go. Donald smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish; Walter did neither, but had sympathy for his friend when he wrestled with his vices.

Laughter still dancing in his eyes, Walter tilted his head towards the door questioningly. “You look as ready as you ever are, shall we be off?” he asked Donald, who was hopping around the room, looking for an ashtray to knock the end of his cigarette into.

Nodding absently, Donald picked up a small glass he used the night before and knocked his ashes into the murky brown liquid that lined the bottom of the small vessel. “Yeah, I suppose,” he ran a hand through his messy hair, combing it back on the right side of his head, wisps of hair sneaking away from the rest, “Let’s go, the sooner we get there, the less chance I have of losing my job.” He put the glass down on his desk and started for the door, pausing to grab his gray baseball cap from a hanger by the door.

Walter followed his friend out into the hallway, shutting the door of the office behind him, taking care to lock the handle. The floorboards of the old building creaked under each step as he followed his friend down the hall to the stair well. At the top of the stairs, he could hear the phone in Donald’s office ringing.

When he joined his friend outside, Walter bumped into a large woman in a giant floral pattern dress carrying an armload of parcel, causing her to drop them all over the sidewalk. Donald never noticed as he climbed into the cab of Walter’s red Ford pick-up truck parked on the side of the road. Walter excused himself, received a grunt in reply and helped the obese woman gather her belongings before walking around the truck and climbing into the driver’s seat. He looked over at his friend in the passenger seat, who sat calmly puffing on his cigarette, tapping the ashes outside the rolled down window, and shook his head.

“Donnie, you know this has to stop.” He started flatly, looking directly at his smaller friend.

Looking confused, Donald held up his cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke into the cab of the truck, “What, this? Don’t be a hypocrite Walt; you smoked up until a year ago. We had our first smoke together.” He took another drag off the cigarette before flicking the butt out the window into the sidewalk to be crushed by some pedestrian.

Walter shook his head, “No Donnie, you can smoke all you want, you know what it does to you as well I do, but I’m not going to stop you… that’s your choice. You have to stop doing this,” He paused to search for the words as he turned the key in the ignition, bringing the diesel engine roaring to life, “You have to stop missing work like this. Three days in a row you’ve been late, you showed up for lunch time yesterday and then took off to do who-knows-what. You’re going to lose your job again. You have to stop drinking, you know what happens when you don’t say no. Donnie, it’s no good for you.” His large brown eyes scanned over his friend.

“Yeah, ok. I’ll try Walt,” Donald offered non-committaly with a slight wave of his hand as he looked out the window, scanning over the sporting goods in the storefront window the truck was parked in front of. He rubbed some sleep from his eyes and wiped his hand on the same denim pants he wore the day before. He couldn’t remember if he wore them they day before that but figured it didn’t really matter, they would just get dirty again today.

Walter sighed again, it seemed to him that too often he had a reason to sigh when it came to Donnie, and he stepped on the gas, driving the pick-up truck down the road; west, towards the Harbor.