“I’m in a severe state of _______. Why did this have to happen to me?”
Approx. 866 words
That Feeling of Joy!
©2003 by W. E.
Lopez
I’m in supreme
state of joy! How could I have ever been
so lucky? It happened about
“Hey, did you hear
about Nina’s car? The police were
chasing a van down
What luck! Nina Brown had worked at Netware Providers
for nine months, before being promoted as my team lead. I’d been here for three years, never been
late, never missed an assignment, and never taken a sick day. It probably didn’t hurt that Stu James, head of operations and fifteen years her senior
had been seen out and about town with her.
Can you say, “Sleeping your way to
the top?”
Three months ago
Nina had gotten the promotion I so richly deserved. Right away she went out and bought a
pearl-gray Mercedes convertible and began parking it in the slot reserved for
her as team lead, while I was left to find a space as best I could, perhaps
ten, twelve, or fifteen rows back, if I were lucky.
And now Nina’s
choice new Mercedes was toast! Talk
about a vengeful God, someone up there really knew what it would take to make
me happy.
For the rest of the
afternoon I tried not to gloat. I
avoided Nina’s car when ever it was mentioned in conversation. “Oh, that’s a shame,” I said. “And she just bought that after her
promotion. I’ll bet it didn’t have a
thousand miles on it yet!” Inside, I was
secretly giggling and I could barely keep a straight face. If anyone ever deserved to suffer at the
fickle finger of fate, it was Nina as far as I was concerned.
I kept to my work
schedule, writing and testing over eight hundred lines of a code module for the
new Shooting Star accounting
software. “Your accounts receivable will shine like a shooting star!” was the
slogan the head-shed had come up with to promote this new package. At
Naturally my route
to the parking lot had to veer past executive row so I could feast my eyes on
the object of my satisfaction. I turned
left outside the main door and strolled down the esplanade toward the covered
parking where I could get a good look.
Nina’s car wasn’t there! Her
space and two others on each side were empty!
A telephone repair van was parked sideways, filling all five spaces,
with bright orange cones set out front and rear.
Slender gray cables
led from the van to the access door leading underground to the Netware
switching hub. “It stands to reason,” I thought, observing the soot and ash on the
awning overhead, “there must have been
some damage to the phone lines and management pulled the cars out right away to
make room for a maintenance crew.”
Thwarted in my
attempt to witness the scene of my most recent victory, I headed across the
burning asphalt, not much above ninety-five now that the sun had sunk low in
the west. Where was I parked today? Row K, Section 7, wasn’t it? I surveyed the light standards arrayed like
birthday candles on a cake until I spotted Row K and began trudging to my car,
three hundred yards away.
It was still scorching
in the late afternoon sun, I paused a moments at Row D to remove my coat and
sling it over my shoulder, only two hundred yards to go. Perspiration dripped
from my forehead while spots began to spread below my arms. It was no wonder a shirt could only be worn
once in this heat before being sentenced to the cleaners to await parole next
week.
Fifty yards to go,
and I could see several heads above the line of compact cars ahead of me. Drawing closer I could see Nina, and Ralph, and
two or three others of our team.
In a moment I could
see my Volkswagen Passat, only nine months old,
charred to a cinder and sitting on four burned tires. Next to it was Nina’s Mercedes, and a Ford
Pinto on the far side!
“Jesus, Christ!” I
said. “What the hell happened?”
“Oh, Marty, I
thought you had heard,” Nina said.
“Someone crashed into all three of our cars trying to get away from the
police. I’m afraid they’re totaled. I just finished talking on the phone with my
insurance agent and it’ll be taken care of.”
“Yes, I heard, but
I thought you normally parked over in the executive row?”
“Usually I do,
Marty, but the phone company was installing some new cable this morning and I
had to park way out here. What an
unlucky break for me!”
Moments ago I had
been gloating with joy, and now I’m in a severe state of grief. Why did this have to happen to me?