Novel: The Plan (cont.)

[The office is warm and the drifting breeze from outside is pleasant as I let my head sink for a moment, Pressing a close-shaven cheek to the equally cool polished oak grain of the desktop. Settled in a nest of my own two arms.]

Safe.

Dozing.

From out of nowhere, I see my father through the window. I can smell his cologne. I am eight years old playing outside in the shaded back-lot of our old Brownstone. At first I want to call out to him. Then I see the terrible anger on his face and I am shocked into silence. He is never home in the middle of the day. I hear my mother yelling. Upset. Then crying. Screaming. He is standing over her. Crying. Cursing. I am frozen in fear. Eight years old and I can smell my father's cologne from the open window now mingled with the stink of my own urine running down my bare leg. Then, I see the object of his cursing. His anger, and grief. And involuntarily eject warm grape Kool-Aid and peanut butter sandwich, spattering the half digested chunks on my feet.

[ Dr. Troy wakes from his mid-afternoon terror with a sharp cry, and tears in his eyes. He feels the sour bile rising in his throat. He barely has time to pull his head clear from the desktop before being sick. Watching what is left of his expensive catered lunch, now puddling around his $775 Burberry leather footwear. ]







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