Willie in the Wind

It had been a night of drinking, and an unsuccessful one at that. The scotch at the first bar had been flat and harsh, and when he abandoned the place to find another, he had slipped on the transom leading to the street and sprawled onto the sidewalk there. A Saturday night, and there were people walking by, many of whom no doubt thought that Willie Meadows there on the sidewalk was just another falling-down drunk. But he was not at that stage yet. If things improved, that would come later. Willie picked himself up and found the next place two blocks over, a dimly lit pub tucked into the first floor of a building that held God-knows-what parts of the city’s mechanisms. Offices, a shipping center, maybe a café. And at the end of each day at the bottom of the building there would be a place for those within it to drink away their own boredom. Now, on a Saturday, the workers having scattered, this place was not crowded. Willie took a seat at the bar and renewed his quest for numbness. The bartender approached. “What’ll you have?” “World peace and a bigger bank account. But failing that, the strongest scotch you can pour.” So the night went on. Willie surveyed the room, marked the comings and goings, canvassed the faces to see if there might be one, just one, who sent an echo to which he might respond. Nothing, though. People sat and drank alone with glowering expressions, or no expressions at all, and those who drank with another focused all their attention on their partner, and spoke in low voices. Willie sat at the bar alone. ‘Just as well,’ he thought to himself, and considered again the superficiality of it all, The conversations at work, the formulaic nature of his job, the lack of challenge, the ennui. Even the flailing, foolish attempts at relationships, all of which seemed to vaporize into dust at the first harsh wind. He thought then of his mother, now newly dead and freshly buried. Maybe it had all begun way back then, when he was a boy. He could never quite remember a time when he rose each day thinking of its possibilities rather than its obligations. After the fourth scotch he left the bar, consciously lifting his feet over the transom and emerging erect, or at least as much so as his condition allowed. And then he walked, not consciously or with any destination in mind. He walked to feel movement, any movement at all, an aimless wandering away from where he was. The night was cool enough, a north wind blowing down from the river, and the streets posed no threat, so Willie walked. He did not know how long it took him to get there, or how the synapses in his muddled brain had conspired to bring him to this place, but at once he looked up and saw his building, the place where his lackluster, tedious days were spent and the ostensible center of all that bored him and made him feel impotent. The Washington Post occupied the fourth floors and higher, its space leased now from some corporate giant that given this space once the paper’s original building was sold a few years ago. Willie stood outside it now, and looked up. “God damn it,” he said aloud, his words not blurred but distinct and firm. He looked around him now, down to the sidewalk and spotted near the curb a chunk of broken concrete, no bigger than a baseball. He reached down to it, picked it up and felt its weight, felt the sharp irregular edges dig into a clutching palm. Willie turned back to the building. He knew he could never reach the fourth floor, but what the hell, and with a heave he hurled the concrete upward. The rock sailed to a height, little force behind it, and bounced harmlessly off the façade. It ricocheted back to Willie’s feet. For the first time all night, Willie Meadows laughed, then kicked the stone back to the curb. Time to head home. He turned his way back to Connecticut Avenue, where it would be easier to find a cab. Tomorrow he would sleep late, then take a day to himself before the ogre of a new Monday and the same old Willie presented itself to his battered psyche.