This morning, I received an email forwarded from my former company that contained parenthetical greetings from a client I had not seen for almost two years. Two hours later, I ran into him as he was leaving a camera store on the opposite site of the metro from where he lives. Ten seconds later and we would have passed unknowingly through each others' vapor trails.
We spoke, briefly but warmly. He is a good man and we carry certain invisible things in common, for better and worse. He knows me, but doesn't, and the imperfect picture is mutual.
I had ridden there on an impromptu shopping trip for a woman who wants nothing — or, perhaps, does not want what she does not have. This is better than having everything, I think.
Because I arrived knowing what was right, I did not try to purchase the bookends made from old cameras. (These were not the novelty bookends or similar ones made from cheap '50s Kodaks, but SLRs with metal bodies and hefty lenses.) These dead weight cameras propped up paper tomes in a still life of obsolescence that did not lift my holiday spirits.
Mission completed, I went out the door and set off the alarm, remembering then that I'd also set it off coming in. My package inspected and re-demagnitized, I headed through again to more chirping and blinking lights.
One more mystery unsolved.
