Routine.

I don’t know what Jamie was thinking before she died. No one does. She didn’t leave a note, no strung-out goodbyes or final wishes. I don’t know what pain she was feeling. I don’t know if it hurt. I don’t know if there is an afterlife, but if there is I’ll ask her. Until then I seldom strayed from my daily routine. I needed it. I craved the structure. I left from my apartment and started my car. Immediately the stereo spun the CD up to speed and the soft song of a guitar came through my speakers. Also routine. Also needed. Silence had been the enemy since I had found Jamie. We declared war on each other from that moment on, and I was not one to back down easily.

Rodney’s was on the corner of a busy intersection. Amid rush-hour when my shift started, the shop was constantly filled with the sounds of blaring horns and yelling pedestrians. Inside the summer sun streamed through the windows and cooked the mechanics in their thick uniforms. A foul mood fell across the workforce when the day hit its highest temperatures every day like clockwork. My stall was settled in the corner of the shop where my toolbox sat against a water stained wall. When I started a year before I expected to become used to the smell, but I had not. The oil and fumes burned my nose. When I had settled into my stall, I stood in front of my tool box and took in the surroundings. Also, routine. Also needed. I took in the sounds. The blaring horns, the shouting, the wurring of the machinery nearby. I took in the smells. The oil, the exhaust, the gas. It was all so overwhelming. So overwhelming it left no time to focus on memories, to focus on Jamie. It was blissful.

I was supposed to have weekends off, but time at home was time spent thinking. I came in every weekend since Jamie died, and since my manager wasn’t supposed to work weekends either there was no one to oppose. However, the work was slow going, so often I simply sat in my stall and enjoyed the distractions around me. Work was also slow for Neil, who came by my stall often to keep himself from being bored. Also, a fan of not being bored, I welcomed his company. Today he came by with a large oil stain running down the front of his uniform. Each hand held a steaming cup of coffee and he wore the same goofy smile he often did. I sometimes wondered if he assumed that was a mandatory part of the uniform.

“Working hard?” Neil asked. He set one of the steaming cups on my tool box before taking a seat on my rolling stool.

“Not a day in my life,” I said. The coffee warmed my throat. It tasted like hot cat urine, but we had grown accustomed to it.

“Is that how you see seventy hours a week?” Neil snickered.

“Try it sometime, then you might have enough money to go to the laundromat more often.” I gulped down the rest of the coffee and tossed it into an empty oil drum. Neil looked down at his oil stained shirt and laughed. Neil took a long sip of his coffee and smacked his lips. His eyes stared at the toes of his shoes for a moment before he looked up again. The goofy smile had left his lips.

“How’d the funeral go?” He asked.

“As well as they can,” I said. I suddenly found something very interesting in my toolbox to stare at. The thing I appreciated about Neil was uncomfortable moments like these didn’t come often. When they did, I wanted to sink into the floor and disappear, but due to normal social conduct I tried my best to hold my head high.

Neil bobbed his head up and down. “Well, if you ever need to get out of that little box of yours, you should give me a call and we’ll go get a drink sometime. I’m serious, John. Whenever you need a break.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “I think that’d be good.” That wasn’t a lie, either. It had been a long time since I had done anything remotely social outside of work. The rest of the day went by smoothly. Neil and I spoke of lighter topics and laughed often. When the clock struck seven, I closed my toolbox and headed for home.

My apartment was my sanctuary. Despite the toll isolation takes on a human being, there was no better place suited for me. It was a tiny little studio, with a weak attempt at a kitchen and an even smaller bathroom. It was all I needed. The entire wall that greeted you when you entered was lined with bookshelves. My treasures. Dickens, Poe, King, all my favorite works all carefully placed with the spines on the very edge of the shelf in alphabetical order by author. On the bottom shelf, Jamie’s books lined all the way across. Her collection was almost completely comprised of poetry. Behind them was hidden multiple different books about coping with loss, but I didn’t think those looked as appealing on display. That was my private collection.

I didn’t own a T.V, my room consisted of a small bed and a luxurious recliner, cupholders and all, and my desk where my stories are born. Since Jamie died, my craft had died along with her. Instead I invested in a large stereo that now sat on the desk top. I unlaced my boots and slipped them off before walking over to the desk. Routine. I tapped a few buttons on the stereo and the CD inside spun up just like it did in my car. Routine. It was followed by the soft lull of fingers dancing on piano keys. Routine. I stood before my bookshelf but froze for a moment. My eyes glanced over the current novel I had eloped with but skipped passed it. As much as my heart urged against it, I lowered my body to read the spines on the bottom shelf. I stopped at the collection of poems that wore a faded jacket and cracked spine. Jamie’s favorite. Not routine.

Indulging in grief was like playing Russian Roulette with all the chambers loaded. I found myself indulging many times before, hoping each time that the gun wouldn’t go off. Sinking into the recliner, I ran my fingers down the cover of the collection. The pages were dirty and worn from dog-ears. I open the pages to the only remaining dog ear and read the poem. I was two stanzas down when tears appeared at the corner of my eyes. The poem Jamie marked was about beauty. It was about laughter. It was about love. I closed the book before I could finish the poem and held my head in my hand. I thought of her face, the blue depth of her eyes. I felt a lot of anger it that moment. I hated myself for not saving her, and I hated her for not giving me the chance. She had taken her own life in the bedroom of our former apartment while I was in the shop. We would often discuss the works of literature we were reading. She read about the brighter signs of life, and I read about the things that go bump in the night. Ironically, she was absorbed in the darker side of life in which I loved. Sometimes I believed subconsciously I loved her more because of that. I threw the book to the ground beside the recliner and pulled my phone out of my pocket. I punched in the numbers with shaking hands.

Neil looked entirely different without his work uniform. He wore a basic white tee-shirt that glowed in the neon-lights above the bar. Although his distinguishing child-like grin was brighter still. The bar was mostly quiet except for the murmur of conversation and music drifting from the speakers above. It wasn’t the lulling guitar or dancing piano, but it did its job just fine. We drank in silence for about an hour. Neil made small talk with the bartender, but I was too busy tracing the grain of the wood we were drinking on to be concerned with civility. Eventually I spoke without taking my eyes off the bar.

“Do you think it’ll ever stop hurting?” I asked.

Neil took a long drink. “Nope,” he said, suddenly also very interested in the bar. “I think you’re going to carry her with you until you die.”

Not feeling particularly encouraged I asked, “do you think I can ever be happy again?”

Neil took another drink and looked at me with eyes like lasers. “That’s the thing about you, John. You’re a tough guy, you work hard, and you don’t give up when things get hard.” I tried to thank him, but he pressed on. “But your failure is that you need to learn that your happiness doesn’t depend on anyone else but yourself. You’re allowed to grieve, and you should let yourself grieve. But this is what I want you to do,” I was completely intrigued in what Neil was saying. I nodded enthusiastically. “I need you to find nine moments a day to give yourself in to the sadness and the pain, and one moment to feel happy about something or feel good about yourself. The next week you find eight for her a day, and two for you. Seven and three the next week, and so on and so forth.”

I couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. My coworker, no less of a grease-monkey than I, shooting hidden wisdom at me in a dive-bar at midnight. I was just finishing processing this information when he spoke again. “No matter what, after the tenth week, you stay in that pattern forever. Nine moments for yourself and one for her. Forever. Don’t ever forget how much she meant to you and how much you loved her. Okay?” He asked. I nodded. We drank for a while longer, once again speaking lightly. I felt in much better spirits.

Neil left an hour later, but I remained on my stool. I drank slowly, enjoying the peace of my newly found plan. I had hope for the first time since she died. I had confidence in the ability to be a functioning human being again. I wasn’t okay, not now, but I knew I could be. That’s all I needed to know. As I was fishing out my wallet to pay the bartender, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I expected Neil’s number to flash across the screen, but instead it was one I did not know. The only unexpected phone call I had received in the last week was from sympathetic onlookers or police officers. My stomach dropped. I flipped my phone open and held the receiver to my ear. It wasn’t the police. It was the fire department.

The woman downstairs fell asleep on the couch watching late night talk shows. She left a cigarette burning on her ashtray that caught her apartment, in turn mine, on fire. She made it out alive with her cat cradled in her arms. My treasures, however, did not. I stood against the fender of my car and watched firemen go in and out of the remnants of my apartment. My books, Jamie’s poems, all gone. The only possessions I still had was the clothes I was wearing, a few work uniforms in my car, and the toolbox in my stall. Everything else was charcoal. As I stood there, waiting for Neil’s car to come rumbling down the street to come pick me up, I wasn’t sad. For the first time I was engulfed in my thoughts and I didn’t want to hide. I had a fresh start. I had room to heal. I would become new again.

That’s one for me.