Millionaire Man (Part Three)
As we go through life, there are small moments and people that impact us the most. These are the pillars that sturdy the foundation we are so used to in our everyday life. When one of the pillars that keep us strong breaks, or we somehow lose the moment or person, it’s hard to find a viable replacement. My mother was my only pillar that kept my foundation from falling apart.
As I lay on the floor of the apartment my mother helped take care of, I sat shaken, breathing short breaths. My anxiety had built more in the last days and there wasn’t a lot I could do to calm myself. The sign of depression was imminent, but I knew I couldn’t fail. Mom would have wanted me to stay positive even after all seemed to fail for me despite my imposition.
So the next day while I was at work my emotions stayed masked by a plastic personality. The normal customers that showed up had no idea my mother had died, well, I wasn’t going to share even if they did. Instead, I shut down the emotions that I normally had and left them behind. The dead look I gave myself was masked through my perky, happy personality.
On my break I went out to smoke next to the pizza shop. I breathed in the cool relaxing smoke and sighed. I could take out the garbage or start closing the shop, but I was tired. The more I breathed in my fumes, the less and less the taste of the nicotine helped my pain.
“Are you the owner of this shop?” A calm upbeat voice said while my head sank in between my legs. Obviously my pain had to wait. I looked up at a man staring at me with a calm demeanor. I looked at him in quiet confusion.
“No,” I humbly replied, “Are you hungry? I can get you some pizza.”
“That would be great,” the man smiled, still composed. I took an extra deep breath of the nicotine, and threw out my cigarette before escorting the man in the pizza shop.
“What can I get you sir?” I said with a plastic, salesman like attitude. The man smiled slyly, as if reading my cards before I played them. I couldn’t help but notice the briefcase he carried around his shoulder strap, like a duffel bag. The man looked up at the menu and stared deeply and with contemplation.
“Hmm, what’s your favorite?” The man asked with a flirtatious grin. I took a step back in retreat and self consciousness, only to feel the strange magnetism to this man. One I couldn’t understand at the moment. Instead I chose to avert the question in my head to answer the one the man left me.
“I love the basics, Pepperoni, Cheese or Sausage is my favorites. I’d stick with something simple like that.”
The man smiled with a contemplative look.
“Let me get a pepperoni then.”
The man sat quietly while I sat behind the counter. He ate his small pie with ease. His laptop sat with a quiet hum playing pictures of a small screen movie. He was content watching the movie and chewing on his food. Every few moments he would look into the distance or at me, but only for a moment. He would then turn back to his movie and chewing.
By the time I had cleaned up the pizza shop, the man was finished with his pizza. I walked up to take his plate. I smiled at I grabbed the dirty dish. The man smiled back.
“That was delicious, thank you. I like your taste.”
The Man began to walk away from the counter, and toward the exit. He looked back just for a second to see me sweeping behind the counter only to walk away.
“
That Night, I cried. I missed my mother. I had no family, no friends and no one to turn to. I felt like the shadow of my mother’s regret, and no direction of hope. I had minimal lighting. After reading my favorite book for the fifth time in the last six months, I stared at a blank wall in sadness. I wanted to kill myself, and end my pathetic life. I had no use in this world, and I definitely wouldn’t be missed. For all anyone would know, I would be a forgotten within hours. I shrugged my shoulders. “Well I’m not getting any happier alive, maybe dead will do the trick,” I thought in my blinded state of unhappiness.
So that’s what I did. I watched as the bath water poured into the tub violently. It had no direction like I did. No, it just swished across the tub without inhabitations, spreading back and forth, and from side to side until losing hopeless momentum. The water, the stained bathtub was my deathbed.
As the water poured, so did my short lived memories of hope, happiness and a better life. All the dreams I wanted to share with my mother were gone and it was all her fault. She shouldn’t have died. I could hate myself just as much though. I blame myself for doing too much when I knew she could only do so much.
The tub was full, and I was in it. I could feel the slime at the bottom of the tub rub gently on me like algae against a sea floor. “This is where I ended up with my life,” I thought to myself, “An old tub, working at a struggling pizza shop.” I sighed I took the razor that would save me from my pain and prepared for my own salvation from this hateful world. I closed my eyes as I felt the blade touch my skin. “I’m sorry for failing you mom,” I whispered.
As I began to cut, the burn of friction between my skin and the blade only pressed me to push harder and stronger. The pain then sharply hit deeper, and I stopped. One of my other senses was alerting my curiosity. I could hear something in the background, quietly knocking. I looked down at my wrist. My wrist was still bleeding, but now I was interested in the indecent. “I can’t even kill myself right,” I huffed. The gently knocking, stayed consistent, like a woodpecker hitting my door.
“What the fuck?” I got out of my deathbed of a tub and grabbed a dishtowel to wrap my injured wrist. My hand was still bleeding after I walked down the hallway. The know only got louder as I headed for the door.
I opened the old door…
