Chapter 1

PAUL TALKACHEV, poor, poor, Paul Talkachev. Though it was only 9 a.m., his eyes were heavy, the weight of a dreary life. So young, yet already past the bloom of promise, feeling he was well into the wilt of his declining years. He yawned, this young man, tired even in the morning hours. Woe was the soul that was twenty-seven years old and had given up on most joys.

It didn’t help that his job, like most jobs these days, was the opposite of purposeful. Long hours under the glow of artificial light in row after row of pens where adults toiled in the never-ending quest to seem busy. Paul had never been there, but was certain that in hell there would be a particularly vicious, cloven-hooved demon with a bass harmonica that played the sound of florescent lights buzzing overhead to torment the damned for all eternity, just like at his work. Paul had worked at the same job since leaving his university five years prior and still didn’t know, in a grand sense, what he really did every day. Data came in through emails, he entered it into appropriate columns, the program then put the data through an algorithm, and if the result came back in red, he called the respective client and informed them they were a “risk” to his firm.

The client, in turn, usually yelled, “What do you mean?” Paul would apologize and tell them a “contract is a contract” and that they signed it. Defeated, the customer would sigh, reluctantly agree, and hang up. Then the process repeated itself all over again. All by design.

“Oh, Paul…” said his boss, an attractive and chipper twenty- something, immune to the soul-crushing rat race that was the corporate world, “we’re going to be burning the midnight oil tonight with the Hanover deadline to meet. Can’t you just feel the overtime?” Her eyes beamed as she smiled wide, but to say her smile was disingenuous would be wrong. With the fervor of a convert, she truly believed every passive-aggressive and demeaning word that came from her mouth.

“Can’t imagine what I’ll do with all the money,” Paul replied.

Without a single change in her facial expression, she twisted on her heels and smartly walked away. Moments later, Luke, her secretary, a roving, helpmate thing, dropped a monstrous file on Paul’s desk. Luke was never far behind his mistress, dealing out death to social lives everywhere. The file made a resounding “thwonk” noise as it hit Paul’s desk. But really, who was Paul kidding, he wasn’t going to do anything that night anyway.

The minutes turned into hours, and hours felt like years, and yet, all of those experiences at work were filed away in his mind under tedium. Great epochs of time in the majority of his adult life, so unremarkable and dull, though excruciating to suffer in the present. One day, they would account for only an instant in his recollections.

Work was over soon enough. The last email was sent, last file put away, and Paul marched out of the building, making sure not to avoid but, in fact, to stomp in the puddles gathered from an early afternoon rain. After the short walk home, Paul arrived at his apartment door, released a sigh, and looked over his shoulder at the office building where tomorrow he would spend another lame day in a box grinding away.

“I should move farther away from work. Then maybe the distance can put my mind at ease,” Paul said out loud to himself. Paul lived in an unremarkable red brick triple-decker with two vacant lots on both sides. The lot to the right had a concrete foundation of a demolished building that would never be rebuilt. His building had a common entrance, and Paul lived on the first floor. He opened the common door with one key and then fumbled with his apartment key, inserted it into his apartment’s lock, and turned the knob. But when he tried to retract the key, as he has done a thousand times before, the key snapped.

Paul slowly lifted the head of the severed key to within inches of his nose, examined it, and sighed. Figures. Paul was used to bad luck and was never one to let it get him down. Great, it will cost a fortune to get a locksmith to come out. And what was worse, the door lock was now stuck in the open, unlocked position. Paul stepped inside his drab, though neat, apartment, looked around, and reassured himself that his flat was so lowly and void of taste that no one would even bother to rob him. Paul shut the door behind him and let out a sigh so loud that even Paul felt it was a little melodramatic.

Well, better get some dinner. He went to the stove, boiled a cup of water, and added a can of condensed food. It came out of the can, still retaining a gelatinous, cylindrical shape. A red and green noodle concoction slowly melted away in the boiling water to become something like soup. Several slow stirs with a wooden spoon, and it was ready.

Paul didn’t bother to put it in a proper bowl, no. Why dirty a bowl when one can eat from the pot? He simply turned off the flame, gave it a moment to cool, and enjoyed his dinner standing in front of the stove. “Aah,” he sighed aloud, with the last spoonful consumed. And only one pot to clean. Satisfying and simple, two of Paul’s favorite things. The joy of the meal was short-lived though, as dread began to overcome Paul. Now started the most awful part of Paul’s evening. The hour and a half to three or so hours after dinner and before bedtime. This was a time often full of anxious thoughts.

Paul had a contingency plan for those thoughts: puzzles. Paul was a very bright, though awkward fellow, and puzzles relaxed him. He had books and books of all the most popular puzzles, crossword puzzles, Sudoku, Arrows, Connect the Dots “High Level.” His eyes honed in on “BAZAR.” Ahh, yes, that one, he thought to himself. Only the most serious puzzlers knew it. Like magic, the time melted away. Paul began to tire until a loud yawn came from deep within. He did the puzzles because he felt it affirmed his mental and intellectual superiority over all the people seen and unseen in Paul’s life, the people who ruled over him.

If only an honest shot were given to an “everyman” like him, the world would be a better place. Yawning be damned, Paul continued to grind through the puzzles. This had been a particularly boring day, ripe with bad luck, and unmet expectations. He was going to show them. So, he moved on to 7×7 KenKen boxes in under eight minutes and the world would now be a veritable heaven on earth, every pen stroke a strike against wickedness. “Ha,’’ Paul exclaimed aloud after besting a particularly difficult word jumble.

He ended the night on a good note because he was exhausted. He changed into pajamas, and despite all his efforts, the anxiety still came creeping in. Lying awake, Paul thought to himself, how much longer is my brother going to be in the Air Force? Why are we still in Afghanistan? I’m twenty-seven. Should I be married by now? How old can one be and still have fun playing with kids? I’m terrible with kids. Am I going to be the new crazy uncle in the family? I have three wristwatches, and two of them don’t work, and I have no idea how to change the battery. Will they be broken forever? In a system of interest on loans, will I ever be able to pay off that staple of modernity, the small apartment?

It bothered Paul to think that in fifty years, he could be carted out of his pea-sized apartment stiff as a log on a coroner’s gurney, having worked his whole life at that miserable place, and still be in the red owing payments on his glorified closet. “Usury, usury!” Paul exclaimed out loud from under the blanket of his twin bed, for subconsciously, Paul never thought of ever having himself accompanied in it. With this final exertion, he drifted off into a restless slumber.