Daniel



My work/study boss looks like he has a terrible case of pink-eye, which is what I thought he had until I worked in the office for a few weeks and it was still red and swollen as it was the day I met him. There's hardly any work to do there, aside from sorting paper and making copies, so I've been picking up small things from his life with all of the not-working.

I thought he was gay until I was in the supply closet one day, being nosy and rummaging through things in boxes, when I found photos from a disposable camera. I stopped what I was doing to flip through them. There was one of a woman in a bathrobe, and it looked like she was in a barn but the photo was too dark to tell. I took a few others that were blurs of color. Daniel looked to see what I was doing so I asked who the woman was. He told me I could have all of the photos if I wanted, because he didn't need them and the woman was his ex-fiance'. She broke it off with him for someone else, someone who's in graduate school at MICA and has class across the hallway from the office. I didn't say anything else, but I pocketed the blurred photos and shoved the rest back into the box, including the one of the woman.

Daniel told me this June he's sailing across the Atlantic to India, or somewhere, maybe Indonesia, in a boat by himself. He said he loves to look at the water, but the longest he's ever stared at it was two weeks. He's leaving forever this time. He said that once he leaves, every relationship he's had will be frozen and there's no way to change anything once he's gone, which is what he wants. I told him he should write a book, not just about his trip but about everything. He said he's terrible at writing. Then he told me he would throw something into the ocean for me, if I wanted to give him a note in a bottle or ashes, something that people normally chuck in the water.

Last week I asked him what happened to his eye. He seemed more annoyed at telling the story again out of repetition than the horror of re-living the moment. He had been on a boat with his friends and someone was shooting off fireworks. A firework hit him in the eye, the boat capsized and he had to swim to shore. He was blind in his right eye for three years before he got surgery. Now he can only see light.

Daniel asked me to get change today for a twenty. The guy who works the cafe downstairs once told me he can't see very well either, that he lost his health insurance and can't afford contacts or glasses. He gave me two tens, four singles and four quarters back. I didn't realize until I got upstairs and handed the money to Daniel, who rejoiced at making five dollars. After work when we walked outside he asked if I wanted to blow the money with him on an apple cider. I asked how far the place was.

"Oh, I forgot. You can't walk." He looked at my shoes. I showed him how my shoes were broken before when he asked me to walk outside on an errand. The nail was sticking out of one of them where the heel cap should be.

I should have gone anyway.