Jean Louchanon was glad that she worked in the lab on the second floor. From here she could see the other second story windows across the street. And from those in the afternoon she could see a million suns staring at her blankly. Though, sometimes they winked playfully, enticing her out.
But she only looked up and considered the walk outside perhaps once a week. Besides these moments her gaze was unblinking and never wandered from her fingertips. Her contacts swiveled on her bulbous eyes, attempting to distract. But alas, her work enveloped her mind. Tilt the beaker; fill the cuvette; remove all particles and grease and water. Place the cuvette carefully in the warmed spectrophotometer. Place the technician’s warm body in to protect the cuvette from any harm. Allow the rays to penetrate all negative thoughts, scattering them like the dust particles scatter the evening sun. Once, she had attempted to make love to a cuvette, but it did not warm to her touch and she had lost it in the heat of her passion.
Every morning as she walked into the still dark cavern smelling of clean a tingle rushed through her neck, prickling her head with excitement. She was not an academic. She was a lab technician. She had struggled through those introductory chemistry courses almost balding from boredom, surviving only by the grit of her pen doodling in her notebook and the imagination of her eyes watching with an unerring gaze the muscular buttocks of her professor, for one reason only. It was a means to survive.
If, perhaps, the man who worked in the office above her, ever noticed her enough to ask her if she enjoyed her job she would most likely say yes. She would be watching the corners of his lips pinch together as he talked, a slight smile forming there. She would be wondering as she always wondered why he was smiling clinched down like that, or why he wore bland, collared shirts that were always too tight around the shoulder. She had watched once, as he stretched, the thick material rip cleanly against his muscle and fall off his body completely. He had not been upset though; out of his gym bag he had pulled another, a green one in fact. (He very rarely wore green.)
She wanted to touch, but like the glass windows at the aquarium, she knew she could not. And so she would have been thinking about all of this, even about how her favorite fish was a cowfish when he had asked her if she liked her job. She may have even been imagining banging her greasy forehead against the glass of the forbidden just as she did on her yearly trips to see that over adored cowfish.
A meek shrug and a nod of the head would have most likely been her answer. “Of course I like my job,” she would say, allowing a bit of confused laughter enter her voice, “Don’t you?”
She would know that his question would not have been so much about her and her job, but more about his job, and the fact that he was dissatisfied. She knew he was dissatisfied by watching him walk home from work as her bus crawled alongside him at exactly the same speed. She knew how many steps it normally took him to get home, because they lived on the same floor in the same apartment building. And she could tell from his confined stride and his blurred eyes that he was dissatisfied. She could also tell that he did not realize that is was dissatisfaction eating away at his shirts and baring his back to the sun on many occasions.
She would laugh thinking this. Thinking about how much she knew about him, and about how much he longed for a woman without knowing it. There were other times when she would have tried to satisfy his unknown loneliness and give him insight into his own soulless body. She would have spread her body wide for him, just to answer his unasked questions about her, but there was a cuvette lodged somewhere now, and so she did not tantalize him with soft smiles and ruthless words.
Other than this slight distraction of a man, she enjoyed the nine to six hours of her job. She thrived on the independence of having a lab scattered with her things only. Piles like dunes lined an unknown ocean, frightening to all except the creator. And she, she was the creator.
Thus, although her answer to his question would have been an answer shaped only for his ears as the answer he desired without knowing it, it would have still been the truth. For she liked not totally liking work; she enjoyed having something to complain about to her friend at the spa. Just as she enjoyed the fact that this man with the bulging shoulders would probably not see her nicely shaped calves and still alert breasts because his eyes were too clouded with dissatisfaction. She would also fill the enjoyable hour at the spa complaining about this man.

Isaac Herschmov was the name of the man often complained about at the spa. He too worked in the 24 story building three blocks east from a construction site. And as he sat drumming his fingers against his top lip in front of his large computer screen he was thinking only about his computer screen and the shapes and words that lay there. He certainly was not thinking about the woman that he saw almost every evening in the elevator. He did not even know her name. He did not think that he needed a woman’s company, or that he was dissatisfied in any way. After his father’s death he had resigned himself to a life of grey slacks and brown loafers. And today like any other day he set off down the darkening street at six-o-clock.
The street was actually no longer darkening. It was the darkest it would ever be. Soon, the lights would turn on, and the brightly colored people would come out clinging to one another, laughing and crying and strutting. Isaac Herschmov was no longer a colorful person. When he was in a bold mood he would wear a green shirt. When he was in any other mood he would furrow his brow and clench his smile. He would never cry; he detested crying because wherever his tears landed a weed would spring up through the cement or hardwood floor spreading like a mold. His father had taught him from a young age not to cry because Isaac’s family had had to move out of several apartments due to the mold-like weed. The rest of the knowledge and advice his father had attempted to bestow upon him, Isaac had shoved out the window with a blasphemy.
Isaac never stayed out in the street long enough to see it begin to lighten. Inside of his eggshell white apartment he liked to fool himself into thinking that is was dark outside. He would draw his curtains after expelling some advice from his father down to the street below and resign himself to his couch for dinner and perhaps a radio show.
On this couch he would often think about himself, about his retreat from life, his left handed resignation. For, he had once been a colorful person. He had once gone by Hersch and thrown paint at a canvas because he liked the color. He had sculpted himself, chiseling away at his abdomen, plucking the hairs from his face, creating such a masterpiece that tears threatened to burst forth when ever he looked in a mirror.
When he had been a colorful person he had always slept next to a shapely body. He had touched everyone and everything. His hands were never clean; they were colorful. But when his father died he was left with a canvas unable to be painted, for it had been his father coursing through his veins, moving his hand in defiance. He realized that his thirty years of self discovery had left him without a recollection of his actual unfettered face. And his father had left him all the money he needed to pay off the debt that had naturally accumulated on the artist’s back. And so Hersch was free: free of his father, free of his debt. All Isaac Herschmov knew after his mother’s voice clicked off on the answering machine was that he didn’t really like painting, and that he extremely hated the extravagant man who shared his bed and his life. So he stopped trying to define himself and pulled on a pair of nondescript leather shoes and went out and got himself a job.
Isaac no longer looked in mirrors. He no longer dipped his long fingers in paint. All trace of colorful globules had disappeared from his life, the color draining out of his face and out of his hair, sinking down to collect in his brown leather shoes.
Now Hersch went by Isaac, and Isaac (not Hersch) liked the dark time of day when the shadows crept ever higher on the tall buildings, and the cold air began to whip through the streets. This grey and orangey time got Isaac through all the green and blue shapes and different font sizes and colors he looked at during the day. As the sun retreated, the buildings began to blend together, melting into the streets, and the streets melted into the walkers. The people would accidentally walk through a building and emerge thoroughly confused on the other side in a street they had never seen before with an array of life they had never known. And some would come back. (Isaac Hercshmov always did.) But others would stay forever, a new life pounding through their veins when the sun rose.
During this daily ritual of walking home through the increasingly undefined chaos, Isaac made a detour three blocks west into the sun, before turning north towards his apartment. He only risked the three blocks of blinding sun because he enjoyed walking by a car garage which blasted classical music from its walls. The notes would drift at times lazily or purposefully out onto the walkers below. The crescendos and diminuendos soared ever more eagerly over the rooftops of the honking throng below. At times a skateboarder would grab a hold of a melody and drift his skateboard across the street, landing peacefully next to Isaac for a quick hello. Isaac would nod and try not to cry. Weeds in the sidewalk might cause the beautiful skateboarder to fall. It might even cause the music to stop, and Isaac lived for this music with its structured meter pulling against the freedom of the melody, reining it in, how he, himself, had been reined in by reason and the higher call of society.
For the past month there had been another attraction on this musical corner. The children’s museum was being renovated and expanded. With a lot of dollar bills all of the dead animals were being removed to some other grave and new hands-on projects were being installed. The red brick walls were being replaced with light grey stone. A new wing was being added, a round wall, and a modern roof resembling bird feathers. As usual, the demolition of the old walls was proving more difficult than expected. They clung to the skeletal structure of the building with such a force that the construction company was ten days late in meeting their first planned deadline.
Isaac Herschmov had at first hated the intrusion of the loud, irregular banging and high pitched beeps and screeches, but now he paused with the 14 year olds and greasy wife-beater wearing men to watch the brick peel away from the steel framework. He paused to watch the arm of the machine rise carefully and clench its iron mouth around a pile of discarded steel and plasterboard. Isaac and the other loiterers were fascinated by the innards of the building spilling outwards. One wall had been completely removed and inside the steps ended in midair, the banister curling around into empty space.
On this particular evening Isaac Herschmov found himself watching a woman. This was unusual for Isaac. He had not touched a woman, except by accident, for twenty years. He had not even touched himself with the thought of a woman or man in mind for fifteen years. His mind had been vacant of thoughts of others for a long time. It was now only him and his father dueling in the dusty dungeons of his subconscious. All others had been expelled, until this insignificant moment.
His cheeks became flushed. Hers were also, though for a different reason. The jack hammer vibrated through her, shaking her sorry excuse for a mop of hair. It stood an inch from her head and quaked with all its might. Sweat slipped up the back of her bent neck and collected in a red bandana draped across her brow. Her bare arms were muscled and her blue jeans were worn. Thousands of orange suns beat down on her from the thousands of windows above.
Through this violent eruption of sweat and dust and sun there emerged a dimpled smile playing about her lips. Isaac was engrossed with the happiness she exuded. He couldn’t remember the last time he had enjoyed anything as much as she seemed to be enjoying how her body shook with the strength of the buzzing and clanging and clamoring about her. It was odd for him to find beauty in this sweaty, muscular woman, but she was happy, and happiness is riveting. Isaac stood, cemented to the sidewalk, unmoving yet moved as the clouds brushed across his balding head.

On this evening when Isaac became absorbed by the construction woman, Jean had decided to walk home. The thousand suns had called her forth to enlighten the man who did not remember her face. She packed her laptop into its bag and threw it over her shoulder. She was tired of imagining conversations with Isaac, of what she would say, of what he would say, she just wanted to say.
And so she set off on his path, three blocks west before heading north. Sometimes she surprised herself with her knowledge and her daring. If only men were capable of such surprises she may have been a different woman, in love with a person instead of an office. She saw him there, that evening, staring at the shaking woman. And her heart leapt. She could see his cheeks flush, his hands flutter by his side, unsure. It was her moment to strike while he was aroused, to brush past alerting his senses to her smell, her touch, her lips. She paused, calming her own fluttering bird, and wondering at how little it took for a man to become engrossed in a woman.
But then she saw it too, the happiness snaking through the chain link fence. It wrapped about her like a python, squeezing the cuvette from her depths. The cuvette popped forth and rolled off the sidewalk to smash under the wheel of a passing car. Jean could not help but drop to her knees and cry out for the smithereens of the glass she had birthed. Her wail was smothered by the tremble of the earth below the traffic and the jack hammer, by the soaring melodies of the car garage, by the yelling of the children’s children crossing the harrowing street.
Jean stood. Mourning her losses, but looking around in hopes that no one had noticed. No one had. She turned back to stare at the powerful jackhammer woman and realized that her plan was flawed. Jean could not arouse in Isaac the emotion that the woman breaking down and building up the museum could. Jean was the creator in her lab, but not here. She was a faceless, computer bound, cuvette-less loiterer here.

The orange sun, growing redder, settled onto the peak of the still-standing half of the children’s museum. The machines had stopped, the cloud of dust had settled a bit, the light scattered through it. Construction workers milled about leisurely. Isaac Herschmov and Jean Louchanon still stood outside of the chain link fence, both lost in their separate worlds of intimacy. There was a group of teenage boys near them; among them were two skateboards they were scraping along the pavement. The phone in Isaac Herschmov’s shoulder bag rang. Startled, he dropped the bag to the ground and fumbled through it.
“Hello?”
Jean was distracted by his commotion.
“Hi, this is Sam Marshall,” said the phone to Isaac, “I tried you at home where the office said you would be, but you weren’t there so they gave me your cell number.”
“Oh, right, Sam Marshall.”
Hunched over his small phone, Isaac Herschmov caught sight of a little girl and woman walking down the sidewalk towards him.
“I really need to talk to you about the new website your company just launched. Is now an okay time?”
“Yeah, yeah, just fine,” Isaac lied.
His eyes were fixed on what the little strawberry blonde girl was holding. It was a toy of some sort. Her mother huddled over her, helping her wind up what seemed to be a paper airplane. When the woman stepped back the girl let it go. The wings flapped, making a clapping noise. The mechanical bird rose into the air, circling and dancing. After a moment of wonder, the wings stopped and the bird slowly drifted down to the sidewalk to land four feet in front of the girl. She ran to it and lifted the precious object into her hands.
“Uh, huh,” Isaac mumbled into the phone.
Jean had also turned to watch the sight of the mechanical bird. She clung to the fence, suddenly dizzy from the street, and the construction, and the small bird she had eaten at lunch. It flapped roughly, trying to join its mechanical cousin in the sky.
Sam Marshall’s voice continued to crackle across the connection to Isaac. The little girl released the bird again; her head tilted upwards, watching her prize soar ever higher. Isaac watched her and marveled at the smoothness of her neck, at the graceful arc. But then he caught sight of the bicycle. It was soaring towards the girl, coming around the corner in its reflective metal spokes and whipping blue jacket.
Jean saw it too, the smoothness of the arc of the girl’s neck. She also saw the motorbike rounding the bend, a demon in blue. She imagined how it would be, the girl and biker becoming a mess of rounded wheel and sharp metallic spoke, of hand and angled elbow, of soaring life and crumpled moment.
She could see in her mind’s eye, the mechanical bird floating above the accident, the wooden wings clapping, the sun glinting against its painted sides. The thousand suns would set, their red beams flowing down over the city, down the sides of the swaying buildings, dripping off of the ends of the entangled wires and pipes which hung out of the walls of the under-construction-children’s museum. The red light would flow through the straight meandering streets and over the sidewalks and into the little cell phone that would lie abandoned on the sidewalk crackling, “Isaac, Isaac are you there? I’m losing you. Hello?”
For she knew that an accident such as that would pull Isaac from his shell of self absorption and force the red of the light and the blood through his lazy gaze.
Sam Marshall would crackle through the phone, “Isaac, are you still there? Isaac?” as Isaac’s face froze. His heart would jump into his throat. The man that had listened and responded promptly to every customer call, every bill, and every stupid remark for the past 15 years would remove the phone from his ear. He would move, dropping the phone behind him. He would crouch over the mess of biker and girl and sob.
Jean, meanwhile, would pick up his cell phone, still warm from his hand. And the sun with the shifting buildings and the gallant musical riffs would weave in and out and around them all, building them up and breaking them down. They would be stuck there, between each other, not touching but looking with such intensity that their eyes would be endless holes. And the full color and sound and smell of the city would free Jean’s bird to soar over and out with its mechanical replica.
At the end of it all, after the ambulance came and everyone had dispersed, Jean would hand to Isaac his phone, touching his moist hand ever so slightly. They would walk home together and go up the stairs and Jean’s mind would be blank as they fucked until she was hoarse in his eggshell white apartment. And she would be lost in a sea ornamented by books she did not know the authors of and radio shows she detested. And he, he would passionately share this foreign knowledge with her, bathing her with his forgotten youth and battering her with his unknown love…
But instead instinct guided Jean’s hand as she reached out and pulled the little girl out of the way. The mechanical bird landed beside them as the girl’s mom said thank you to the fence post and continued along. The biker said nothing; he was gone. But for a moment they all, even the skateboard scraping boys, tasted how Jean had almost handed Isaac his phone amidst a jungle of weeds sprouting up in the monsoon of tears.