Adam's Crease

Skeptical nervous Adam has been waiting impatiently for 25 minutes before Marina called him in to the dimmed gloomy room. The future is unknown to him but not anymore, not after tonight.

        Sitting there, he remembered how slight changes in his life could make him do this. Everything started from the moment that he could not find his toothbrush. There was a routine in his life about every detail and if something was missing then part of his habits had to be changed.

The second sign was his buddy, John. His neighbor was his only friend and the same day that he missed his toothbrush right after 7:20 in the morning. He knocked on his door. Normally he starts telling the morning joke but that day he was quiet and down. He barely mumbled for a minute and at the end Adam got the news. He had cancer and he did not have money for the operation. Adam hugged him. That day, he did not move and stayed beside his machine at work all day long. His mind was full of dreams. He was thinking what he would do if he was John. Same could happen to him in a ten year period but he didn’t know John’s hand. That is  something personal.

        Finally, he decided to do what he wanted to do. Everybody has a plan for life and at the end they usually are looking for more time to have pleasure and fun or even begin doing something. Revolutionary, excitement, horror and searching the meaningless were not his type. Since his relationship with girls ended up taking apart he was thinking to be a monk or follow Brahmacharia as he read lately about it from an old Indian book found in a recycling twenty five cent book shelf at the local library. He was wondering how a deep valued book like that could be thrown out! Females are weird creatures. They think about everything except metaphysics. Oh yeah, they were fascinated by Zodiacs and superstitious stuff and of course being sexy. He thought different on Zodiacs. The force that changes your life does not come from outside but maybe you can change it by beginning on yourself.

      Then he had a plan, maybe unrealistic but a narrow hope to change his life forever. He worked on it during years, piece by piece. Nobody thought about it before. That is why he was so careful to keep the details to himself. He was a hard worker and did many things to adjust his life but something was wrong. According to Adam’s encyclopedia, if you work more you will go deeper down into your problems. He was patient for more than 15 years and listened to too much bullshit as real advice from his bosses and colleagues. They could not believe in him as much as they wanted him to be profitable for them. He was an anonymous regular worker where his creativity had died three month after he started his work as a naive young employee. In a new place, people think this is it; you can not be a radical business man. They drag you down as soon as hearing” you’re too young to know anything”. Now what? He was 36 years old and back to square one. Is that luck?

      All his flashbacks were like that. He knew negativity was part of life, although what he did not know was the more you avoid it, the more it will be attracted. Slow motion frames of his past 15 years were untouched. His uneducated poor parents, elder brother and sisters were harmless and indifferent toward him. Probably, somehow somewhere he missed the point. Like you did not listen to the entire joke and tried to laugh like the audience at the end of it. You will blend in but it won’t be enjoyable. Since he was nineteen came out to live alone, but that didn’t make him stronger, that was a necessity like eating food.

    John’s condition made him even more determined for what he wanted to do. Strange odor of old books and furniture in the dull smoky room which was decorated like a tent with hanged fabrics and weird stuff made him tenser. Marina smelled like a wild animal of scented grass and soil under the fresh rain. How do you feel when you notice a tattooed woman with red hair and deep green eyes? He thought he could trust her more. She said” Are you sure about this?”.

      “Uh…yeah” Barely heard his voice.

      Marina took his left hand again and examined it carefully under the big copper case luster. She looked serious and the lines of her face were so beautiful.

Is she married? How old is she? Guess 20’s or mid 30’s.

“Ooookay? “, she broke the silence. “I agree to your request but I can not say that would be better for you”.

      She bent over to reach something under the round table. He could see her half naked breasts but tried to avoid them. She put a greenish aged box on the table and opened it. Shadows of her hair were playing on her face. She put three yellowed dog-eared papers in front of him.

      “The choice is yours,” she mentioned softly. It seemed she feel pity of him. He took the left one and folded it in his pocket. He left notes on the table and got out of the room without any word under her heavy gazing. If nobody knew he was sure that a good palm can bring a fate to you, but people don’t think over it. Those creases are like streams of adventures which magnetize luck and fortune in every curves and marks. However they are there so nobody is curious.

      He woke up early the next day. Unbelievably he slept like a bear. He always thought if you sleep like a bear then you will be calm, like you’ve hibernated for a season. It was rare not to be at work and when he gave his note for one week vacation to Tim, his foreman, he shrugged “WOW, someone in the family is dead?”

He sweated “No. I just need to rest a little bit.” His confidence was shattered, nobody believed in him for a long time.

      “OK” Tim puffed his cigarette into his face in the closed-door office.

      He had called Doctor J.K. Stanford three times already and confirmed the appointment with the secretary at 4 in the afternoon in downtown but instead, he was there since 3 o’clock. There were only two other women in the waiting room both young and pretty. He asked himself why they would be here. Beautiful, rich or at least rich looking girls. Bright futures with possibly numerous males waiting to flirt with them. Why do they want to change something in their bodies? It seemed that everything was in harmony with their soft curves. They looked at him in pity. He could feel it. He knew himself as an ordinary looking man. Comparing to them, there was a big gap. They don’t want to change their fate. They don’t want to design and set their future. They are just playing a game for fun.

Time was passing so slowly. He amused himself by reading magazines, beauties and loaded glamour creatures in luminous sceneries. Love was around and life has breathed of the fresh air. He was the last patient. Dr. J.K. Stanford was neat: Cold hands, soap fragrance aroma, white short coat and shiny black frame glasses on top of a shaved face. He was fast with what he wanted to do. His world was pricey and every second counted. He understood what Adam desired and took the envelope from him. He did not count it. He was sure the amount was exactly as Adam said.

      A soft classical music was played. The surgery took two hours and thirty four minutes. He was conscious. No feelings; sometimes just itching in his left palm. For this short time, Adam paid almost five years of his savings and Dr. J.K. Stanford was probably going to pay his dinner with it somewhere uptown.

      On the way back home he was silent and peaceful under the still sky night in the quiet city. Suddenly, people, cars and trees came into harmony and balance. They were trying to be with him. There was a petite smile on his face that night in bed. He was starving but did not want to eat anything. He did not to ruin this moment. He just looked up at the ceiling until everywhere became blurry.

      As days passed, he was happy but still alone. Whoever asked him, “Why are you happy?” and “What happened to your hand?” He would say” there is no reason. Oh, and I had a small accident but I am good and good things will happen to me.”

They thought he was definitely losing his mind. Even when he came back to his job at his old machines, they saw him he talked to them. He was chanting and whispering things. Workers were laughing behind his back. The teasing led to rumors and rumors became real. Less than a month later, he was downsized under the note of “overqualified experience” during a normal economical time of an old company. He said goodbye to his machine and put his stuff in a small knapsack. He harmed nobody. He paid all his taxes. He was not more than a number and he knew it; A number for federal tax, a number for credit card, and a bunch of other numbers for his bills. He was there and he was not there. Was it important? Who cared about him? He was thrown to this world.

    One Tuesday, on the way to his apartment, he bought a lottery ticket as usual but this time he wanted it to be the last although nothing happened to him after the surgery. Even he did not visit John. He stayed in his apartment. He could not believe why his fate was like that. He tried and he tried hard to change it. Now look at it. Well, it is better to be a laughing stock. Nowhere is better than his room. The melancholy of his live shadow.

      Adam wished he could be a flower, Short life but effective and fully straight forward. John died the same night. Someone called from hospital and his voice was like his foreman. Johnny, you did not have many relatives and died after a long doggy life like one of your long jokes. At least he was the only one who made him smile.

***

    On Marina’s round table was a newspaper with a short column and blurry picture of Adam. It belonged to his high school yearbook attached with broad childish smiling face.

“Found the body in his room ... It was pity that he won the biggest lottery ever…autopsy shows regular heart attack ….”

Marina put her greenish box under the table and sighed. She saw the fate in Adam’s hand. It was huge money right after his death but what could she do? Perhaps his palm surgery treatment was the catalysis. The three good creases which she put them in front of Adam were her favorites and they belonged to some other people.