Carl didn't mind working from home.
He disliked it at first because of his break-up. He had been lonely. He had spent too much time lying on the floor. He had eaten too many Cheetos.
Eventually he got used to it. He enjoyed not having to wake up early to commute, and he enjoyed not having to leave the house when the weather was bad.
He had hated that he had been told to be in the office for the team meetings. He didn't see the point of coming in for a whole day just for a one hour meeting that usually ended early.
He resented everyone and was miserable.
But now at least he had the bathroom notes to look forward to.
Carl had thought about asking the person on the other side of the notepad who they were, but there was something exciting about the anonymity of it all.
And things could get much less exciting if he ever found out who was on the other side of the notepad. He didn't need to know he was communicating with Lou from accounting or Gina from marketing.
He wanted to pretend he was talking to someone else.
He wanted to pretend he was talking to Brad.
He looked out the window at the tree outside his building. The tree had grown a lot over the three years he had been sitting at this desk. So much time had passed. He had still been in his thirties when the pandemic started. Now he was in his forties. He was over forty and single.
He tried to brush off the sense of despair that was building inside him.
He looked back down at his laptop. He could just send Brad a message. He could just send a friendly hello, to see how he was doing.
He took a deep breath. "Hey...How are you doing?" he wrote to Brad.
He waited.
"I'm good, you?" Brad replied.
Carl hated how distant he and Brad had become. After all the late-night talks and all the discussions about getting together after the pandemic was over, this was all he got from Brad now.
It was as if his relationship with Brad had been reset as soon as the imminent existential threat had passed.
"I'm doing OK," Carl wrote back. "Was wondering when you're in the office. Maybe if we're ever in on the same day we can get coffee or something."
Carl waited. There was no answer even after a few minutes had passed.
He couldn't take the suspense. He got up and went to the kitchen to get himself a drink.
He opened his fridge and tried to decide if he wanted a Coke or a beer. He decided on a beer. It was almost five and he was feeling terrible.
He opened the beer, took the first sip with the fridge door still open, then went back to his desk.
He woke up his laptop. There was a message back from Brad.
"I'm usually in on Wednesdays," it said.
YOU ARE READING
Missing Things - FIRST DRAFT
General FictionA first draft of a mess about a guy, a pandemic, and an empty office. It's about missing things. One of the things that's missing is a plot. As I said, this is a first draft and it's here for funsies. At some point it'll be taken down because I'll w...
