A Composer's Book

The cars on the interstate, northbound, pushed and prodded each other forward
with jarring honks and aggressive tailgating. Whenever a gap formed, the line
surged to fill it, and the gap would propagate backward, in a wave of frenzied,
minute progress. In the west, the sun set unnoticed.

Chet stepped on the gas, stepped on the brake, stepped on the gas, stepped on
the brake. He imagined driving this way through an open field rather than in
bumper-to-bumper traffic. Picturing his car lurching and stopping like that,
over and over as if uncertain, amused him. That sort of mental entertainment
kept him sane through the day, from commute to cubicle and back again.

Behind him, a puny blue sedan honked plaintively.

"Must be a wreck ahead." He mused to himself as he slid marginally forward.

Ribbons of traffic stretched out as far as he could see, tied into a neat bow in
the distance, as far as he knew. The sight struck a kind of terror in him that
overrode his practiced, listless patience. Veering left, he sped up the shoulder
of the highway and exited. Into the sunset he proceeded, leaving the constant
battle between home and the workplace to the dedicated combatants behind him.

Meandering through suburban streets on a path to his house which a child might
have scribbled onto a roadmap at random, Chet saw men moving from car to family.
Some trudged, and he wondered if they'd rather had stayed where they'd been.
Either way, all of them, even the ones still stuck on the interstate, made their
way home with inexorable certainty. Chet wound through neighborhood after
neighborhood, with a flagrant disregard for the extra time.

When he finally pulled into his own driveway, he did it slowly, just to draw out
his reckless tardiness. The house was dark, and on the kitchen table lay a brief
note.

"Waited up but decided to take the kids out. Hope everything is okay! -- M."

With a heavy elation that his detour had bought him time after all, Chet
wandered through the empty house. He sat on his bed and considered sleeping, but
something old was tugging at his heart---something old, and hidden under his
dresser. He swore to himself he wouldn't. He couldn't interrupt the pendulum
swing of home to work, work to home, home to work.

"Tick tock," He said aloud, his eyes fixed on the dresser to his left, "like a
metronome."

Outside of time, outside the mindless rhythms, music was playing somewhere in
the back of his mind. Recklessly he stood, walked over to his dresser hands
first, and pulled from underneath it a dusty old book. It was oblong, like a
photo album. Chet's eyes began to ignite with a youthful energy made manic from
disuse, and he opened the book to the next free page. Row after row, plain
staves crossed the sheets. It was a composer's book.

Chet carried the book reverently to his desk and turned on his light. He
carefully selected a pen from a drawer. Musical ideas began to swirl around in
his mind, along with images of packed concert halls. Already in his mind a whole
symphony began to take shape, and quickly he uncapped the pen to capture the
idea. Just as he brought the pen to the page the front door opened downstairs.

The pen tip hovered, quivered, just above the sheet. Chet held his breath.

"Honey? Can you give a hand with the groceries?"

Stricken, he closed the book. He imagined its discovery, decades after his
death, and the critical acclaim that last symphony might have elicited. He
pictured music teachers shaking their heads, telling their students romantically
what a shame it was that he'd only written one piece. Imagining these things
comforted him, so he pulled himself together and saw to his family, but his
composer's book lived thenceforth untouched, under the dresser.