The man languished in his red leather chair behind a large oak desk. In front of him was a stack of documents full of the details of other people's problems which he was assigned with resolving. As he began to recognize some of the names on the files, a tic acted up on his chin and he threw one of the files to the floor in despair. A remote but familiar malaise began to settle in.
The office was wide and deep but spare of furniture. The man insisted that there be plenty of space in his office. "Nope, changed my mind, don't want that. Take out that too while your at it. I need some space to breath in here. Now go on," is what he told the burly moving men.
The room was unnaturally cool for a summer afternoon, the crisp air piped into the office from somewhere else. But it seemed hot enough a day outside. The man slipped on his coat then he buzzed for some iced tea as his mind drifted stubbornly back to his work. He sifted ideas through his head: how to settle this account or finish off with that client, how to put things in order.
There was a whiteboard hung on the east wall that still held figures and diagrams from a brief meeting earlier that afternoon. He walked over to it and stared at the words scribbled under graphs--"non-essential settlements", "reduced adjustments"--but had forgotten what it was for.
The man sat back in his chair, set forcibly the problems again at the back of his mind and stared through the plate-glass window in front of him. He could see the slender whips of the willow trees move back and forth in quick, synchronized waves. Looks like there must be some wind out there this afternoon, he thought. Ivory suds ran down the glass from the outside. The light refracting through the bubbles danced glistening in summer rainbow colors on the walls of the office. He watched the water trickle slowly and crookedly to the ground. He could almost hear it dripping in to the thirsty grass and smell the perfume. Through the streaks of water and soap he could see the young man on the other side of the glass washing the window.
The younger man was deeply tanned from the sunny afternoons he spent tending the gardens of the office complex and fixing anything that happened to break down. His young muscles flexed assuredly as he scrubbed and his face and clothes were moist with sweat. He reached down into a blue bucket of water and sponged at the window again.
A secretary brought in a tray with a glass of ice tea and a plate of thinly sliced lemons from the garden. The lemons gave off the smell of summer, of things strong and erupting with life. Though he wasn�t particularly thirsty, he gulped down the glass of tea in one anxious swallow. He set the glass down.
He suddenly remembered the lemonade his mother used to bring out to him and his friends as they sat on the shaded porch in Wyoming. The slivers of lemon all around the rim of the dripping pitcher. Those thoughtless lazy afternoons with nothing to do, no responsibility, no weight.
What the hell's his name? The man wondered. I've seen that boy around here before I think. There's something damn familiar, it's the damnedest thing.
The man could see the boy's cheeks flutter in and out as he whistled but he could not hear the tune. Figuring that nobody was watching, the boy ran his finger in the suds on the window pane. He made the shape of a heart and wrote something in it but it disappeared before the man could read the name. The boy tossed a bucket of clean water on the window. The man studied the boy for a while longer as he finished. Still not knowing that he was being regarded, the boy then lay down in the moist grass, right into the soap and all, and stared up into the sky. The man could not see what the boy was looking at--he could not see the sky from his office--but he could see the contented expression on the boy's face as he propped his head up with his hands and closed his eyes for an endless moment before getting on to anything else.
The man buzzed his secretary again. He said, "why don�t you just bring me the pitcher...," he paused, "and some more lemons too, while your at it."