Where What Matters Most When It Matters at All

by Tom Peer

A frightful experience, I woke up dead once. Of course, I survived—upon which the charge nurse clarified the meth addict in the adjoining bed, not me, had passed away. She apologized for the error explaining that’s why I found myself in the dark, in the body chiller, shivering on a sheet of cold steel.

“Prior to my autopsy, was it?”

The quip missed—not sure where, and without comment she measured my blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, and head size before rolling me back to recovery.

Three days later, upon a subsequent absence of purulent secretions, fever, and delirious seizures of barking at the moon, I’m in the medical director’s office prior to my discharge. A kindly chap, who armed with a prepared statement alongside a rather attractive assistant, expressed his regret for the mistake. When he reached into a drawer and withdrew a cheque for a thousand pounds, I pushed it back. Thereupon, he opened a ledger and wrote another for two thousand quid. The fastest two grand I’d ever made, I grabbed his assistant, bolted for the door, and together we pub crawled the night from North London to South Kensington.

#

Early the next morning, though not early enough, I missed my Basingstoke train to London-Waterloo. Nonetheless, a most fortunate circumstance since that same train came to a bit of a bad end when slammed from behind at London’s Clapham Junction.

By missing the train, I failed my connection with the No.14 bus that in turn veered off the ice-glazed Chelsea bridge. A horrible loss and the city’s worst tragedy since an hour before, the plunge has since been remembered by being nearly forgotten.

#

Soon after I’m about to enter my building when cut off to the entrance by a thoughtless bloke in a terrible hurry. No matter, the poor sod suffered some inconvenience when a ten-stone air conditioner fell from the 40^th story. A direct hit and a dreadful sight, it ruined his whole day.

Already an hour late to the office but just in time for an unscheduled staff meeting I’m told half our workforce is redundant and getting sacked. The eliminations were quite fair, a coworker claimed, as they merely cut the alphabet in half. As a result, those with their last names beginning with the letters A through M received two pasteboard boxes and a security escort. “You’re damn lucky, Nolan,” a senior partner informed me.

#

Returning home, I found a notice in my letterbox that a gas explosion had leveled my apartment block. Pity, just that morning the superintendent had repainted the weatherboarding around my veranda.

Crashing at my sister’s place in Vauxhall, I’m spending a restful night on her sofa when a minor unnamed planet of the Kuiper Belt crashes through her ceiling. I barely escaped with the cat and my life.

After an uncomfortable night on the Jubilee line, I’m awakened by a constable who reminds me that I can neither shelter on the metro nor accommodate an animal in a public place. “It’s a comfort cat,” I explained, “else I’m emptying wine bottles under the Putney Bridge.”

No mercy, he retorts, “Could care what you empty and where. Now, off with you both.”

My sister’s flat hadn’t fared so well. Lucky for the cat, however, my farsighted sibling had taken out a sole survivorship pet policy covering alien abductions, vampires, and asteroids. Electing to take a lump sum and move to the country, she accords me half the payout, the remainder of her mortgage, and the cat.

#

Back to the office, I’m alone in the lift when our CEO enters. The old gaffer neither knows who I am nor cares he doesn’t. There’s just the two of us in the lift when he keels over. Questioned by the board as to my response, I manufacture a fairly heroic performance of how I initiated CPR, saved the chairman’s life, then he died—but not before insisting, “Nolan, you’re the only one I trust to run the firm.”

#

My new office overlooks Westminster complete with a secretary, a personal trainer, a French chef, and a litter box. The cat has adjusted well.

That afternoon the board calls an emergency meeting. It’s soon apparent that we have an inside edge to buy our one competitor. As the decision hinges on my say, I fake a claim that I had prepared a report only six days previous for just such an opportunity. Exiting the meeting to reference the phony file, I consult the cat and refuse the acquisition. The board members are stunned. Likewise, I’m stunned how stunned they are.

The next day a securities fraud indictment renders the competitor’s assets worthless. In the aftermath of the collapse, I’m lauded a financial genius and rewarded a double bonus. My secretary marries me, the trainer runs away with the chef, and the cat has kittens.

When the company is taken over by a pharmaceutical conglomerate nobody can pronounce, the new management dismisses the board but retains me as director of international development. As no one questions my business acumen and my path of least resistance is by now a foregone conclusion, I expand our reach to a château in the Dordogne, a vineyard in Burgundy, and a Premier League football team.

#

In due course, I’m interviewed for Man of the Year and asked to what or to whom I owed my success. Humbled to the limits of honest assessment, I insist it matters only that we are either the victims or the victors of where and when.

Bio:
A retired electrical engineer living in Phoenix, Tom Peer was recently published on Literary Yard and Flash Fiction Magazine’s websites. Previous submissions have earned him a Glimmer Train honorable mention and a finalist award from New Millennium.