Part 1 The telemarketer - Glimpse II

She was screaming at the top of her lungs about what a disappointment he was, how she should have listened to her girlfriends and never married him.

Her red curly hair dangled as she shook her head in desperation, the intensity of her fury somehow did not permeate his world and her verbal blows seemed like a distant echo.

Broken promises …unwilling to rise and move on …

But who was this woman and was he really married to her? He looked puzzled at his finger for the proof and suddenly a wave of rage came over him and he was yelling just as loud at her, he wanted to hit her, he really did. To strangle her so she would shut up.

He had fallen asleep in his chair again; the old secretary slammed some boxes into the door, and they fell on the floor. She was always clumsy and disinterested, like everybody else there. Still, he hoped she would manage to do what he asked her so that he could keep his promise.

After wiping his face with his hands, he blinked a couple of times, his neck hurt from sleeping in an uncomfortable position and his eyes were dry. He then stopped to look at his left hand as though to make sure it was all a dream and that he wasn’t married …oddly enough his finger felt a phantom constriction, so he massaged his hand so shake away the creepy feeling.

Today was the 3rd of January, it is his mother’s birthday, "I should call her and maybe say something nice … yes … that would be polite". He convinced himself. 

As he got up from his cubicle, he noticed with the corner of his eye his chinese colleague was taking down a dragon knitted toy and putting up an adorable little goofy looking snake, which made him recall his colleague’s daughter liked to knit toys. "How can a child have so much patience?", he wondered.

The snack machine was faithfully waiting for him with cheap hot coco and some sandwiches. Salad still looked edible even after a long day, so he pressed for one as well, after inserting his card. The artificial lighting of the building was oppressive and clinical, but up on a side wall, some old windows let in the fleeting twilight sun. And he imagined how the fresh air may smell. Maybe some rich homes had a fireplace that still burnt wood and they would fill the cold winter air like in some childhood half-forgotten memory. That would smell so much better than the moldy, dusty office he was working in, the sweat of his peers and old food. 

While he waited for his order, he looked at his wallet; a picture of his little sister and niece stared back at him with a big smile. He wished he had a happy family like in the shows. "But where the money for the house and everything?", was constantly oh his mind. He didn’t even have a girlfriend, not that he would dare anyway, he couldn’t even afford a first date let alone to ask anyone to live like him. 

His mind wondered in a sleepy haze from his adorable niece and how he would love to have a daughter as well to the daughter of his colleague and her dragon toy.

His colleague told him once that in a few years it would be his year, the year of the dog and that, that would be his lucky year. He would be 36 then, so unless a big bag of money fell on him, from the sky, he doubted anything would change. There had been women who liked him enough, maybe even loved him enough, to offer to provide for him, but they never wanted kids. "Maybe I wasn't convincing enough that I would love and care for our children?", " How did it fell apart?", "Where did it all go wrong?".

He was in the habit of asking himself these kinds of questions, but he never really wanted the answers to and so he just starred at his reflection in the machine’s plastic waiting for something to happen, waiting to wake up from this life he felt wasn’t his, but a dream, a bad dream.