Well That's Where They're Gonna Be

The shitty office building. It was set back from a street, probably classified as an "arterial highway" by the DOT but right now it was mostly quiet. Each car that passed had it's own twenty seconds to make him feel like it was special. But none of them were special, he knew that. Because the one car that was was parked like an asshole, halfway in the handicapped space right in front. He knew it was special because Steve had told him it was. It was the only one there. He leaned against the trash enclosure in the parking lot of a shitty medical plaza next door, the blacktop flowing all the way around it and across the property line, probably poured continuously after the two neighbors came to some agreement about how it made sense to just do it all at once and split the bill. They probably split the bill for striping the parking spots too. He realized he was daydreaming of this reasonable relationship between two strangers because of the how unreasonable the current situation was. He stood up straight, shook out his legs like he was getting ready for a race, traveling some distance. But it couldn't have been more than sixty feet to the front door, and he knew it was only another seventy-five to the rusted "security screen" door at the back that masked a category D security door.  It was just a habit from when he was younger that he had carried over. He wondered why none of the other stuff had made it. A rooftop A/C compressor unit he didn't notice had been on suddenly turned off and it was crystal stillness. He shifted, maybe to remove the daydream that despite the heat he was stuck in ice alone halfway to the bottom of a lake surrounded by plastic bags and shipping pallets. But he didn't go inside. He walked and put the medical plaza between him and the office building. He wasn't hiding, exactly. He was stepping out for a bit, out of the line of travel, he didn't want to say fate but he could say the flow that was carrying him to that fucking office, four rooms, a hallway and a kitchenette. Every step he took around the far side of the lot made him feel like he was pissing off some teacher, some boss, some fucking bully and it made him a little giddy. He suddenly had an affinity for the medical plaza, like it was a friend holding back something awful, keeping it at bay while he caught his breath.