Mikey and the Chickadee

Chapter 2 - Part 1

Disappointment does not ask permission to enter one's life; this was the irrefutable truth with which I was comfortably familiar. What I had forgotten was its stoic disregard for any pleasantness that may have entered before it.

Later that morning I had trouble focusing on anything besides the conversation that had transpired during the meeting with my supervisor.

She had smiled continually, to the point that her face no longer appeared amiable. "We're asking you and a few others whom we have not yet chosen to be moved to the offices in Fern Hill. This branch has taken on a few new senior-level employees and we're short on room. You'll have six weeks to prepare, and relocation costs will be accommodated."

Work passed slowly today. It marked the first time in recent memory that I had even glanced at the clock before lunch. Late-morning hours normally spent careening through paperwork were chained down by the unsettling nature of our exchange.

"Thank you," I had said. "Thank you so much for finding a place for me. I appreciate this opportunity."

The thought of waking each day in a small town four hours from the city, removed from all of this fantastic mayhem, proved difficult to digest. Six weeks would allow plenty of time for digestion, but a new and strange impermanence had already crept up over the edges of my desk and anchored itself there so that my job as I knew it, my livelihood in this city, that which I had finally trusted enough to hold onto, had transformed into something only temporary.

In a sense it was not unlike my summer abroad, constrained by two dates, bollards bolted into stone, one marking the birth of an experience onto which I would tether myself, the other signaling an inevitable end. I now had another ending date, the terminus of next month, to ponder in quiet contrition during the days leading to its arrival.

I'm certain my productivity for the rest of the day could have been measured as inadequate, but I would imagine, given the circumstances, that no ruler was held up against me. I drifted through the final hours in lazy irresolution. Of course I would go. It was the natural path forward for anyone whose career was as young as mine. I realized I had yet to assert this change as necessary and valuable not just to my career, but to my personal growth and wellbeing. Maybe once I discovered how to do that, I would find peace.

I exited the building and made my way among the boundless flock of commuters, beneath cliff-like faces of stone, glass and steel, coming nearly to the bus stop before I remembered. Were my problems so immensely important that I had almost forgotten? Frustrated with myself even more than with the latest developments, I sat gloomily on a bench near where he had dropped me off and waited.

I couldn't have sat longer than a minute before his silver Honda halted at the curb just feet from where I rested. His wild-haired form and broad smile, visible through the passenger window, compelled me into motion. The whole of me desired simply to be back in the car, returned to that shared space with him.

And I was. The roar of the city died away and we were alone.

He shifted the car into first gear and turned to me. "I'm Mikey, by the way. Sorry I didn't introduce myself earlier."

Mikey—such a fantastically handsome name, and somehow it fit him perfectly.

The car began to move and he steered out into traffic, so I did not try to shake his hand. "I'm Wyatt," I said, "and don't worry; I didn't either."

"Wyatt," he said. "That's a good name. Guess I can't call you Chickadee forever."

"You can call me whatever you want. It's just a name," I said in a tone more downtrodden than I expected. In this moment, still fettered by the idea of endings, forever sounded like a beautiful, superb length of time. Feeling a bit reckless I said, "Actually, I like it when you call me that."