One of Those Days
Sometimes, things don't get better. Take a deep breath to get the full experience of this poignant short story by Damian Tarnopolsky.
Just one of those days, she thought, when the search bar revealed no hits in her Inbox when she searched up her own name, when the same thing happened with her colleagues’ names, though it was kinda weird that when she restarted Outlook it was no better, no, it was actually worse because now there were no messages in her Inbox or any of her other folders, and when she restarted her computer the icon chuntered circling stalled and gave up the ghost and she thought okay, just one of those days, so she did what she usually did when this happened, she stretched and stood and forgetting her moth-eaten tatty purple work cardigan she went to get a coffee from the machine in the break room, though it did come into her head that yes it must be one of those days because she’d had the subway delay this morning too on her way in, the delay on the train in the shallow tunnel, and the announcements coming through comically utterly garbled and half-inaudible like crackling ancient recordings of some nineteenth century governor-general’s great-grandparents speaking from Tutankhamun’s tomb about the curse of the Pharaohs but actually in ancient Egyptian or something like that she smiled unconscious, at her own imagination, she should post that, and she was smiling still at the guy next to her she realized but she kept smiling as if to say something like none of us understand the message, we’re all in this together and he scowled because people got so angry they cursed and shouted what happened to this city it used to be possible to live here people used to be Good you know but you couldn’t know what was going on with someone we’re all fighting a battle she reflected as she looked away and what was she even doing here living here stuck underground like this she sometimes thought, when all she’d ever wanted was to live in the country in the quiet a quiet life like a farm maybe or at least the exurbs half farm half house but the point was none of this no subway no tunnel no delay maybe have a few horses yeah right if she won the lottery someday but she wasn’t she lived in a rented condo down off Yonge street and took the junky subway four stops southbound to work and even before then on the platform the screens hadn’t been working some issue with XML it said revealing information about itself that was supposed to be private she reflected standing now in front of the coffee machine just tired her pink mouth opening wide to yawn and of course it was out of order when she was so tired already because she remembered now one of the legs supporting her old bed last night had snapped for some reason throwing her down at that crazy angle though of course she hadn’t been sleeping anyway, worried about Tibby, worried about the vet’s bills, unaffordable like everything these days, in this economy?, Bryan said over his swollen belly when he snuck up on her holding a latte from downstairs but what was she supposed to do, old cat from when she was a kid breathing like a dusty accordion now and everything Tibbs ate she just puked up so she’d tried to find some of her old hardcover books about cosmology to prop up the bed for now just like a bridging loan they called it analogically metaphorically or whatever it was in the finance sector what was wrong with her head why couldn’t she remember words any more when she’d been to university well it’s four in the morning take it easy on yourself she’d said aloud and carried the cat to the litter box in the washroom let’s try this at least she’d said and then some time later weirdly found herself waking on the tiled floor there like she was still in college only with the sick cat her mom could no longer look after breathing into her nostrils an inch away staring and her shoulder aching and her elbow twisted the wrong way and whose breath was worse was it his or Bryan’s, Oh Tib, she’d said aloud in the half-light, You’d be happier in the country chasing mice, she remembered as she wondered actually cursing aloud now because of course as she turned to go down to the main floor with just the one thing in her head just coffee Bryan was standing above her with his pickleball and his late night?, and his where are you off to?, like he thought this was flirting and his have you completed your updates?, and you couldn’t decide who the people were that you had in your life you had to be Good but this time she couldn’t for some reason today it was just one of those days perhaps and she actually just walked by him this time because could you not just grab a coffee without being leered at without being loomed over without having to talk without having to pretend was it that much to ask to just go down to the main floor just to be a fucking person in the world without having to deal with this nonsense no this bullshit and no of course you couldn’t because between floors three and two the elevator stopped and lurched up and then stopped with enormous silent finality as sometimes she’d heard happened to her colleagues but never to her not until today and why today and then after standing there like a child for twenty minutes she found she could physically pry the doors apart like Wonder Woman and had come out on unfamiliar eerie dark floor two with crackling on-off fluorescents made her way following the same geography or was it topography or just interior design like there was really no great difference between her floor full of workers and this empty one so she’d made her way into the emergency stairwell smelling of urine like a Green P parking lot stairwell full of rapists she was lighting the way down by her phone no service here of course and took a bad step and wrenched her back and dropped her phone as she grabbed for the green banister and on days like this she felt like there was something wrong with her wrong with her body that it wasn’t Tyb that was sick it was her hands her shoulders her guts something wrong with the very machinery she was made of or was it her receptiveness to just life to just being here on this planet today on this particular planet because when you don’t sleep it’s like you’re living on Titan under the pressure of six atmospheres every step you take takes an hour and the snowflakes fall slowly like they don’t really fall each snowflake just hangs there like there’s something wrong with it hanging there not really hanging there falling six times slower than they do on earth or was it raindrops was it methane it had said on the science podcast she’d been listening to on the bathroom floor until her phone died of course and when she’d woken she’d gone to plug it in was her charger not working not it was a power cut no power I mean it was just, she had to shower in the dark, choose an outfit in the dark, get dressed in the dark, her hair would freeze on the walk to the station and how were you even supposed to do this, when had she agreed to any of this, and what was it like to live on Titan, was it better?, and perhaps that was why she’d received no messages all morning the power cut maybe it was affecting the network because she’d received no messages not one not from her mom with her are you ok dear? every morning I mean it was sweet but she was an adult she wasn’t going to die a crib death every goddamn night no other messages nothing not from her supposed boyfriend don’t even get me started on what the fuck is happening there with his ghosting her now after three months I mean there was no Goodness the moment you said the word Exclusive they ran into the hills and really she’d thought you know really they were starting to but you know what no don’t even because maybe it was better no thank god I mean really what is it with people is it the city is it psychology is it capitalism is it being squeezed between steel plates like this this life so that all you long for is just a moment just give me one moment to taste a raspberry say or a fucking sip of coffee seriously or your cat not to be suffering on the webcam mewling his despair but finally down at street level through the enormous dirty windows look there was this streetcar off the track sitting so awkwardly broken like a paralyzed pig once she’d seen a dead pig lying there on the lakeshore inexplicable with the people stuck on board waiting looking out at her like baby penguins at the zoo all diseased so sad and others on their phones calling for help then staring at their phones frustrated and no emergency vehicles seemed to be attending as all the birds in the sky seemed to collect into a single ball somehow all together and then shoot out in a million different directions all alone all at once so she stood there bystanding for a while wondering what to do and no one was helping some were jumping out of windows no one was easing their fall and what if you were old or what if you were sick but what could you do really it was just one of those things, just one of those days, so she turned back to go into Ciccone’s still no signal she noticed and finally her phone gave out using the flashlight maybe killed the batteries dead and she suddenly knew with absolute cosmic clarity it wasn’t her body that wasn’t working she suddenly knew it was her mind or no not her mind at all it was some other larger part of her she didn’t know the name of something larger than her but still her she knew but wait none of her coffee serving friends were behind the counter there the place was empty half-eaten croissants crumbly on their plates as if waiting to be picked up again next moment snap out of your head Candace she suddenly thought because she’d kicked the cracked tub of biscotti across the white tiled scuffed floor biscotti everywhere now like dead parents like your broken dreams of how things were supposed to be it was as if everyone in this place had been summoned away suddenly just a moment ago to an important meeting like just before she’d walked in everyone except her and they hadn’t even bothered to take their phones or their purses or their jackets let alone tell her about it and she suddenly noticed how silent it was inside and out how utterly silent except for a kind of murmuring or murmuration perhaps yes was that the word something bigger than a whisper she noticed when coffeeless foodless and definitely a little concerned about the nature of things now she pushed out through the door that held itself hard fast against her and didn’t want to open because it didn’t want her to go out there it might as well have told her No as people thousands of people more and more people wandered aimlessly past her streaming out of the office buildings quiet and unpanicked asking empty questions as if their souls had left their bodies in fact it was like that moment in Ghost she remembered her aunt Agnieszka watching on the couch when she’d babysat and covered her eyes but she’d sneaked a peek through of course you always did and she’d seen the ghouls coming up from the subway grate to pull the evil bodies down and what came into her head was Tibs what was Tibs thinking had he puked again they hadn’t said goodbye even as an Ornge helicopter slid wrongly to its left nose-first spinning wildly oh dear that looks bad instead of slowly descending and then it crashed into the corner of the roof of the hospital above her and it took too long it took three seconds for the sound to reach her that didn’t make sense it was silent still silent and then it was the loudest blackest sound she’d ever heard and girders were falling and rotors and bricks and she ran because still no firefighters were appearing, no police, coastguard, anyone?, I mean could they possibly have something more pressing they had to deal with here or had they all given up to home to their families their cats and dogs and kids she’d never have kids she thought now it’s decided it’s final I’ll never have kids as a sinkhole opened up beneath her cavernously large and larger still large enough to swallow up first the bike lane the Tories’ll be happy she thought but then cars and taxis and Ubers and minivans with disabled parking licenses on the dash and then her whole frickin’ office building started crashing down into it bit by bit was that Bryan clinging to a desk then all at once as if it had been designed to collapse in this way like an old man lowering himself gradually into his chair and then collapsing fully finally into it with a last lurch and the next door hospital and university office and the Faculty of Mining and the bank too and more buildings followed and this whole downtown neighbourhood and all her obligations with it she realized running faster now through steam rising through shit sluicing up through hospital alley into Kensington where the floor was lava and the street signs were bending over double as if to do up their shoelaces like that would help and now she had to leap from garbage stand to newspaper box to bike post past cheese shops and fish shops melting into Chinatown like neighbourhoods were no longer neighbourhoods because the sky was purple now and full of screeching pterodactyls she couldn’t film it even because she’d dropped her phone somewhere and her cardigan she realized back on her chair which was probably literally toast by now maybe Bryan was clinging to it like Leo DiCaprio in the cold cold cold Atlantic ocean still thinking about her naked probably and what about Tybalt who was going to rescue him as the CN Tower collapsed exactly like a redwood falling slowly forwards slowly surprisingly slowly taking out a good chunk of the downtown core with it condo building falling onto condo buildings like so many dominoes first the Lakefront then the Sheraton and finally hers with the green balconies so what could she do she she said a sad silent farewell and she kept going you had to it was just one of those days she thought as Lake Ontario broke its breechings its moorings its buffers its whatever you called that part of the world that stopped other parts of the world from doing exactly this washing away what remained of Harbourfront, dead pigs and all, so that all that was there behind her over her left shoulder was a sad lilting marshy swampland made of memories and she kept going leaping running twitching jumping past the crowds melting away behind her no cat no phone no job no city as the crowds melted away hopeless falling away and dying and giving up the ghost behind her unexpected tears drying until it was just her walking out the long way out past Brampton out beyond Mississauga into the counties into the woods out into the green, out into the white, into the trees, out there with the owls, out where she wanted to be, just the wind and her, out she kept going until at last at last at last the sun set, and at last at last at last she was free.
Damian Tarnopolsky’s most recent book is the linked story collection Every Night I Dream, I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster. He is the author of a previous book of short stories, a novel, a play, and the chapbook A Friend to Words.
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