Lint in my navel.  Gotta get my eyes checked.  Message light blinking.  She hasn’t called this week.  Too much salt.  High blood pressure.  175 over 90.  Heat index through the fucking roof.  I need a cigarette, but my smoking break is ten minutes away.  Diarrhea.  Headache.  I might be dying.

“Hey bro, nice tie,” Mike says, leaning on my cubicle.

I look down.  It’s the same one I had on yesterday.  Shit.  I gotta stop hanging them on the bathroom mirror. 

“Six coal miners are trapped in Utah,” I tell him.

“Really?” he says.  “I didn’t know they had coal mines in Utah.”

“They have coal mines everywhere.”

Silence.  He looks surprised.  Fake surprised.  He wants something.  Sales guys always wanted something.  Reports.  Numbers.  Rottweiler puppies.  New Range Rovers.  And they all had good eyes.  Married.  Kids.  Homes.  Probably never got the shits.  The wheel was always rolling with them.

“Well listen,” he began, “you remember that line review we had with Stanburger last year?”

Here it comes.  He’ll try to sugarcoat it, then shove it down my throat.  Why didn’t she call?  Was she mad?  I mentioned a ring in my last email, even though there was no way in hell I could afford one now.  Sincere gesture.  Heart on my sleeve.  Most women respected honesty.  Stomach cramps.  I put a finger to neck to check my pulse.  Felt normal.  A gentle steady bump.

“We need to dig that thing up and make some changes, buddy.  I got a meeting with him next week.”

Buddy.  Asshole.  He should be out in the heat selling used Buicks to high school algebra teachers.  Months behind on his mortgage.  His youngest teething.  Screaming.  Cheating on his wife.  A tiny cocaine habit that was slowly eating away at his checking account like a malignant tumor.

“I’ll take care of it,” I tell him while I hide the messenger window on my screen.  She was on-line.  I always sent her something first.  Colorado was so far away.  How do you tell someone you love them in an email?  Cramps.  They were drilling a hole big enough to drop a microphone through.  I’ll have to get some Pepto at lunch.  Upped the dosage on my Lisinopril.  Impotence.  Viagra.  Pocket pussy. 

Mike is still leaning on my cubicle.  I pretend interest.

“I appreciate it, buddy,” he says, then turns to go.  “I owe you one.”

Let me fuck your wife while you watch.  I promise not to come on her tits.  Well, maybe.  98 degrees.  Feels like 110.  I loved summer.  Not a winter guy.  Last time I was up, I froze my ass off.  I couldn’t stop touching her.  Needy, she said, but didn’t complain. Goddamnit Claudia, I miss you. 

Last year’s line reviews.  S.  Seneca.  S & K.  Salinas.  I dig out my BP monitor and wrap it around my arm.  Paranoia.  Cramps.  Starting to get a headache.  Was I sweating?  Jesus, they kept the offices freezing, how could I be sweating?

“Doctor Uptain’s office please,” I mumbled into the receiver, trying to keep my voice low.  More floaters.  He’ll want to talk about baseball.  The heat.  My headaches.  I opened the messenger window and typed in: Missing you!  No response.  She was on Ebay again, bidding on Eames shit.

“Yes I need to schedule an appointment for Tuesday, sometime in the afternoon,” I say a little too loud.  The receptionist tells me in a bubbly, airline stewardess fake happy voice that Tuesday will be fine and to bring my most current prescription.  I was going blind and she didn’t give a rat’s ass.  So what if I was five years older than her?  Stanburger.  142 over 90.  Shit.  I’ll have to hit the toilet soon.  Still no response.  She was playing hard to get.  She was playing. 

I lifted up my shirt and reached for the tweezers in my desk drawer.  Mike’s head bobbled by, but he didn’t stop.  How did they do it every day?  Call.  Make appointments.  Shake hands.  Offer deals with good eyes.  Talk about little Bobby taking Karate lessons. 

My messenger window blinks.  I drop the tweezers and reach for the mouse.

Her: I’m bored.

Me:  Me too.

Her: My dog got into some avocados I had on the counter last night.  I was so mad I screamed at him.

Me:  That’s too bad.

Her: Tell me about it (insert periods and bracket sad face).

Me:  Did you hear about the trapped miners?

Her: Utah.  I didn’t know they had coal mines in Utah.  It’s such a pretty state.  I went there once with James on a camping  trip.

Me:  James didn’t deserve you.

Her: Shelly didn’t deserve you.

Me:  Why don’t you move back here, come live with me.  I’m lonely (insert sad face). 

Her: Ha!  It’s 73 degrees here.  I’m not trading that for your southern sweat box.

Me:  C’mon.  I can get you a job.  I got a back yard for the dog. 

Her:  Come visit

Me:   I’ve already burned all my vacation time coming to see you!  You never come see me!

Her:  I’m so bad.  Maybe I need spanked.

“I’m gonna be up front for a meeting,” my boss waves at me over the cubicle wall. 

“Ok,” I nod, pulling up an Excel window just in case he comes back.  Then I realize my shirt is still unbuttoned.  Hairy navel exposed.  He didn’t notice the tie repeat, either.  I could probably come to work in a jock strap and he wouldn’t care.   Cramps.  Sweat on my back.  Claudia  was always teasing me.  Current prescription.  Like I was gonna bring an old one.  These numbers look low.  Estimates.  Cramps.  Sales volume.  A wife to come home to. Slight pain in the upper temple.  A Rottweiler puppy to play with.  Rushmore was overdue.  I had to watch it one more time.  Love makes a man do strange things.  Love reached in and mixed everything up.  Those trapped miners needed food and water, not a fucking microphone.  Really just water.  Wes really overdid the fish and war symbolism.  Obsessed by the ocean. 

The messenger window blinked again.  I was never going to get any work done.

Her:  You there?

Me:   Yeah.

Her:  I’m coming home for Thanksgiving.  I’ll see you then.

Me:   Yay!  Still, that’s a long time away…

Her:  You’re so needy!  Get over it!

Me:   Sorry.  I almost called Shelly the other night. 

Her:  You didn’t!

Me:   I didn’t, but almost.  Don’t you miss James sometimes? You guys were together for five years.

Her:  Yeah, I miss him, but he was cheating on me and treated me like shit.

Me:   Why do girls always fall for guys who are going to treat  them like shit?

Her:  Why do guys wind up cheating?

Me:   The only time I cheated on Shelly was with you.

Her:  Oh yeah right!  You expect me to believe that?

Me:   It’s the truth!

Her:  So if we got in a relationship, I could trust you not to sleep around?

Me:   Absolutely.

Her:  You are so in denial.

I closed the window, set my status to “away”, and ran to the bathroom.  One long brown squirt.  Raw.  Exposed.  I was trying too hard.  Those numbers were wrong.  Someone had been in that file.  Camping in Utah.  I reached for my smokes and lit one up, even though the building was smoke free.  Another addiction.  Habit.  How could I be in love?  I was thirty-seven.  Divorced.  No kids.  Another cramp.  Aspirin in my desk.  Pain.  War.  Who was looking in at us through the aquarium, Wes?  A ring.  Denial.  Shelly got all the furniture.  I got an empty house.  The girl at the video store was cute.  I needed a fish tank for my cubicle.  So lonely.  Watch them swim around to get my mind off things.  Still, fish are a lot of upkeep.  Like kids.  Cramp.  Another squirt.  Maybe if I lived closer to the ocean?  Sell the house.  Hit the road.  Colorado.  No, I could never live in the mountains.  Air too thin.  Altitude sickness.  She’d have to come to me.  The only way.

I finished, flushed, then made it back to my desk.  Aspirin.  I dug out two and chased them down with a bottle of water.  Stanburger file.  Fear of commitment.  I thought that was just a guy thing?  Don’t squint next time at the examination.  Cheating.  Funny how alike the two of them were.  It was strange living alone.  Echoes.  Doing my own laundry.  Expecting her to show up with groceries, wine and movies every Friday night.  Love just dies sometimes.  It needed constant attention.

I checked hotmail, then Myspace for any new messages.  Some slut from Boise wanted to by my friend.  23.  Naked pix.  Denied.  Other miners on CNN.com talking about surviving past cave-ins.  Living to breathe another day.  Maybe she just wanted to be good friends.  Occasional lovers.  God that would suck.

“Here’s that file,” I told Mike, dropping it on his desk.

“Wow,” he said, scratching his head.  “Ok dude, you’re the man.”

“No Mike, You are the man.  How’s your wife?”

“She’s good.  Put on a little weight, but what can you do, right?”

“What can you do.”

“You still seeing that little gal up north, what’s her name, Cheryl?”

“Claudia.”

“Yeah, that still working out?”

“Have you ever had a long distance relationship?”

He took a few seconds to ponder this.  “Nope, they’ve all been here.”

“It’s hard, Mike.  It’s really hard.  I have to keep my mind occupied so I don’t think about her too much.”

“Hey, enjoy it while you can,” he winked.  “While you still got yer balls.”

I turned and walked away.  Mike had never been in love.  He married his wife because she fucked him on the weekends, made him a nice dinner every now and then, and kept her mouth shut while the game was on.  Companionship.  Commitment.  Surrender. 

I made it back to my desk and stared at my screen saver.  Me and Claudia at the outlook peak.  Buffalo Bill’s grave.  Colorado.  We had taken a detour on the way to the airport.  Just for kicks.  A stranger had taken our picture together.  Her smile looked forced.  It’s funny how I just noticed that.

My messenger window was blinking, but I didn’t pull it up.  Headache still killing me.  Goddamn cramps again.  CNN.com.  They had sent a “listening device” down.  Tested the air.   And got nothing. 

6 new emails in my in box.  One was from Shelly.  It’s never really over, is it?  The families were still clinging to hope.  I could beg for a few more vacation days.  Fake sickness.  I looked down at my tie.  Love makes a man do strange things.     

Keith Wood has successfully escaped from Philadelphia, Austin, and is now back home where he belongs in Mississippi. You can get him at: kwoodphilly@msn.com. He sends most of his stories and poems to Underground Voices and Cherry Bleeds, and hopes that his mom isn’t reading any of them.