Someday Maybe

A/N: Here's comes my lengthy author's note. I'd love to request a Beta to read over (and possibly format) my story if anyone is interested. Now that that's over with, feel free to skip to the story.

I'm writing this story in honor of NaNoWriMo, otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month. I'm warning you in advance that I may choose to post a high volume of short chapters instead of single longer chapters.

I revel in and worship any comments you might leave me, just like any other author so please leave me lots of love, you know you want to.

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Sometimes words aren't enough to describe all the things that exist in the world. And sometimes we don't want to use the words that do exist. And sometimes we're forced to weild words that can destroy the world around us. Fortunately, destroying everything would require being able to define it and “everything” is one of those concepts for which words are woefully inadequate.

Ty shifted uncomfortably. His butt was going numb from sitting on the concrete ledge for so long with little for protection but his relatively thin black jeans which might as well not have been there for all the good they were doing him. At least his feet in socks and leather boots were better protected as was his torso under both a leather jacket and green t-shirt. He shifted, drawing up his legs to fold them close to his chest and wrap his arms around them, serving to take a little pressure off his butt but not enough to warm it up at this point.

He rested his chin on his knee and sighed. His breath misted out in tiny droplets of water that froze in the chilly air and eddied and flowed with the energy given them by his exhalation until they dissipated too much to be visible to the human eye. He narrowed his green eyes at the crowd of people on the street below. They reminded him of the water droplets the way the tide of them moved as though various uncoordinated efforts were dictating their movements and interactions.

So many different people with so many different thoughts in their heads. One girl in pink was thinking solely of how it was so very unfair that her parents would not buy her the very latest technological gadget no matter how much she whined. Another man worried endlessly about a presentation he was going to have to give once he reached the office, his fear of public speaking was enormous. Most of the people thought of one thing and then another apparently without any focus at all. Hundreds of people had to be down there. All those people and not one of them thought about looking up. Not that they’d have seen him even if they had.

Finally his attention was arrested by a heavyset balding man that was fairly unremarkable in his well-fitted gray suit, so much like so many of the other men on the street. It was interesting, however, the way that two other men in suits, both black and somewhat ill-fitting across their similar broad shoulders followed him without really appearing to follow him. Any conspiracy theorist would pick them out for body guards because that was exactly what they were. They were guarding the man in the gray suit, obviously someone more important than Ty might have expected from his appearance alone.

He shifted up to sit on his knees as he tracked the man with his eyes. His knees ached with cold as the chill from the cement seeped up into them. He shoved his blonde hair out of his face impatiently when it fell into his eyes. The man in the gray suit looked like he didn’t get a lot of exercise. Even now he wasn’t going far. From an office building to a near-by café for lunch, the same way he probably did every day in the way that creatures of habit were prone. In just a few minutes he’d be out of sight, in and out of Ty’s life forever the same way anyone else who’d passed on the street below in the last half-hour had been.

The man was sweating a little despite the chill air. Or perhaps it was because of it in a way as he tried to move faster to get out of the cold and to his meal before he became too cold. It may have been that the entire crowd was moving along at a faster pace than usual in response to some unseen eddy in the breath of the god who was breathing their water-droplet lives into existence. He frowned and decided that the analogy was inadequate now that he was trying to imagine deliberate intervention on the part of the omniscient breathers. Not like water droplets at all.

A scene from a movie came to mind. He closed his eyes and thought of the main character in the movie Waking Life as he flipped off the light switch to no effect. He replayed the scene in his mind again but this time the world plunged into darkness. At least until he opened his eyes again.

When he focused again on the street below the man in the gray suit had crumpled to the ground, dead where he lay. People were already whipping out their phones. Some were undoubtedly calling the authorities while others were taking pictures for whatever morbidly curious reasons they might have in the depths of their minds. The dark suited men fought their way to the dead man. One immediately started attempting to administer CPR even though Ty knew it wouldn’t work.

The dead man had irrevocably changed the flow and pattern of the people moving around him and soured the young man’s mood for people watching. He frowned and turned carefully on the ledge. He wedged his fingers into the narrow opening at the bottom of the window he’d exited previously and levered it up so he could climb back inside. His cold fingers tingled in the warmth of the building as he shoved the window closed and carefully climbed from the swivel chair he had dragged under the window earlier. He dusted off the footprints he’d left on the chair and shoved it back to the desk in the empty cubicle he’d taken it from.

He made his way through the unused office by the meagre illumination of the emergency lights and out into the hallway. This time of day few people were walking about in the corridor. Nobody said anything to him as he walked from the empty offices to the stairwell. He just walked with a purpose. He had every right to be there. Perhaps he was visiting a parent who worked here because of an emergency, one of them thought. Perhaps he was touring the building another thought. But none of them thought that he didn’t belong.

He made his way down four flights of stairs to the lobby of the building and by the time he did his fingers had stopped tingling and his numb rear was well on it’s way to becoming warm again. He crossed the lobby with a slight wave to the secretary he’d spoken to earlier and exited the building through the front door, the same way he entered. He looked toward the disturbance on the sidewalk. An ambulance and police vehicles had shown up by this time. It would be an open and shut case, he’d died of a heart attack. No doubt.

Still, the same curiosity that had him watching people to begin with caused him to enter the little greasy spoon café that the man in the gray suit had been headed for. He slid into a table for one tucked away in the corner, one of the few tables that wasn’t already filled with people from near by businesses eating lunch. The table had obviously been recently occupied and not yet cleared but he didn’t mind. He picked up the menu still sitting on the edge of the table to decide what he wanted.

He looked over the top of it and out the window where the crowd was still on the sidewalk. His gaze flicked back to the menu and frowned at it as the waitress swooped in and quickly cleared the table. She hurried back with silverware and a disposable placemat that she set down in front of him. “Ready to order?” She asked.

He looked up at her. She was young, maybe a little older than him with an attractive face and nicer smile her brunette hair swept back into a hasty ponytail with wisps escaping and framing her face. He smiled. “Can you guess what I’d like?” He asked and he was sure that she wouldn’t have put up with his antics if she hadn’t found him attractive. She smiled more genuinely and studied him for a moment. “A cheeseburger and sweet potato fries with a cola?” She took a stab at it. It was a pretty generic order aside from the sweet potato fries, obviously she was playing it safe. “Sounds good.” He agreed. “And a cup of coffee while I’m waiting.” He requested as well.

Soon he was cupping his hands around a mug of extremely sugary coffee with two creamers in it the warm liquid heating him up in a pleasant way. And shortly after that he was focusing on the greasy food hungrily. When he was done he slipped away and left his money on the table. The waitress watched him leave and he knew she was disappointed that she hadn’t gotten a chance to ask for his number but correctly assumed she’d be comforted by the fact that he’d left two twenties to cover his tab.

He joined the crowd still milling around as the police went into the café to finish with their cursory investigation. After a while, with nothing more to learn, he started to walk away, cold again and in a hurry to reach his destination. People in the crowd might remember him briefly. The waitress in the café certainly would at least for a few days or weeks. But in a month no one here would remember him at all. He was just as invisible here, shrouded by anonymity, as he had been up on that ledge. But only because no one ever though to look up.

By the time the news broke about the mob ties of the man in the gray suit no one would remember him with any suspicion at all and that was probably better than any invisibility cloak.