His first thought was that it was Tuesday.
For a while, he just lay there, sprawled across his couch and content to exist in the darkness behind his eyelids knowing nothing else. Then a stray shaft of sunlight hit his eyes and, jerked back to his dull surroundings, he sat up, blinking slowly, before shuffling to the bathroom.
Looping his tie around his neck, he leaned heavily against the wall, rubbing his temples. A tune pierced the air, and he flinched, waiting until silence enveloped the room once more to push himself up. Taking his phone out from the breast pocket of yesterday’s blazer, he felt his heart sink.
He had forgotten about six o’clock.
Reaching for his wallet lying on the counter and then for his coat hung on the wall, he made his way to the door. He still had two hours until he was expected to arrive, knocking on the door to a house he used to have the key to.
But it would be enough.
It was ample time to buy a card and a present and, during the half-hour drive, he would steel himself.
Then, at six o’clock, he will knock.
They will usher him inside and ask him how he has been, smiling at him tiredly, clinging to him excitedly.
But then the three of them would reach the threshold to the kitchen and there would be a man cutting potatoes next to the sink, who sees them in the mirrored pot and turns, running thin fingers through disheveled hair two shades lighter than his.
His daughter will rush into the kitchen, clutching her new toy. His ex-wife will rush forward because she said to slice the potatoes, not dice them. And in that slight transition between moments, the man will gaze at him steadily.
And, stranger to the present, all he will do is look back.
Opening his door and stepping out into the dimly lit hallway, he smiled a little.
He was unemployed and lived alone in a bare two-room apartment at the edge of the eighteenth floor. It was as if he had gone back to his early twenties when all he had were the clothes on his back and a desperate need to run free.
And still he dreamed of simpler things.