MY LOUISA
by MJ Harris

About the author

MJ Harris' short story "Frankie's Wish" appears in the anthology No Longer Dreams(Lite Circle Books, 2005). MJ works for a law office in California and enjoys spending time with her family and writing music. Website: www.angelfire.com/film2/mharris

It was nearly 4:30 p.m. on a Friday. I twisted impatiently back and forth in my swivel chair. Staring at the clock wouldn’t make it move any faster, I knew, but as I glared at it's long pointing hand, it was like a shiny middle finger pointing down at me, taunting me, reveling in its plastic power.

I leaned forward and drummed my yellow pencil on the desk and tried to focus. There was so much work to do before 5:00 p.m., yet somehow I couldn’t bring myself to even look at it - not until maybe five ‘til.

I stared up at the dimpled foam ceiling above my cubicle and noticed for the first time a water stain. It had been storming outside for two days so this didn’t look good. The thought of the roof suddenly caving in all over my desk made me more eager to get the hell out of there; on the other hand, it would give us all an excuse to go home early.

Home was where Louisa waited for me. She sat patiently all day, waiting for my return, my embrace. I could barely function when we were separated, but I knew I must dutifully go to work each day. The 8 long hours apart was torture; concentrating on work nearly impossible.

"Michael...?"

Raquel, my supervisor, slithered around the corner of my cubicle and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

I looked up and grinned nonchalantly. Her blue dress was low cut and exposed a wide smooth space between her small breasts. A gold chain bounced against her neck. "Did you get the chart done yet?" She asked.

"Sorry," I stuttered. "Still working on it."

"Well, Michael. It would help if you had the annual figures." She looked toward the copy room and gestured with her chin. "The file is still in the copy room. You can’t do the chart without it."

In other words, knucklehead, you haven’t even started on the charts – that's what she really meant. Guilt washed over me as I realized how much time I had wasted daydreaming. What could I say? I was a dreamer. My mother always told me so. I wondered: what would Raquel think if she knew I still lived with my mother?

I shrugged innocently and quickly scurried up an excuse. "I’ve been on the phone. You know, clients..."

Raquel nodded and winked, as if to say, "I don’t buy it but I’ll let you fly." She liked me, I could tell. She let me get away with everything. I was the youngest man in the office and she had recently broke up with John in Accounting. Now she patted my head in a motherly fashion and walked back to her office. I sighed and smoothed back my thick curly hair.

So many temptations. So many beautiful but dangerous options surrounded me, tempting me to leave Louisa and start a new life elsewhere. After all, that is what it would mean: starting over. Louisa would never want me back if I slipped. I wouldn’t deserve her. I had tried it before - to share my affections - and I had suffered immensley. My music became not about selfless love, but guilt and remorse.

Oh, but the temptations! Ever since I had landed the job at Crown & Co. I was viciously tempted by Raquel. She was a daily reminder of all I had given up to stay true to myself.

But I couldn’t bear life without Louisa. She was my one true love, my reason for being, the only one who had ever been faithful to me. Our relationship had encompassed many years of dedication, many cities, many people. We had overcome a great deal together. Just her name alone was a sweet reminder of the first time I saw her. It was on a hot summer night in St. Louis - thus, her nickname - and I was a changed man ever since.

I glanced up at the clock again. 4:35. I jumped up and hurried to the copy room where the yellow file folder sat forgotten on the copy machine. I had inadvertently left it there an hour earlier. What had caused me to get side tracked? Oh yes. The soft music playing on the overhead speakers reminded me. An hour earlier in the copy room, one particular song on the radio had made use of a whiny violin and I had instantly taken notice. The C and G chords played in a uniquely rushed beat. I had dashed to my desk to scrawl down notes in my notepad quickly before I forgot the tune. I had then called the radio station to find out the name of the song. I desperately needed to buy that CD and listen to the music over and over and somehow instill my own melody into it.

"Want to go out for some drinks after work?" Len’s sudden deep voice jerked me back to the present.

"Sure – but, I can’t. Not tonight." I stammered.

"Oh come on. You say that every Friday. I’m meeting up with the guys from Personnel."

I wiped the sweat from my brow and struggled to appear self-controlled. "I really can’t. I - I have plans."

"Ooh," Len said in a sing-song voice, punching my shoulder a little too hard. "Who is she? Anybody I know?"

"No!" Had I responded too quickly? I forced a friendly but fake chuckle and spoke more slowly. "Look, I have to finish this chart before closing time and – ."

"Sure," Len straightened, suddenly serious. "Maybe next time."

As I watched him head for his cubicle, I wanted desperately to hurry after him, to stop him, to tell him yes, I would go out with the guys from Personnel. But the thought of Louisa sitting home alone awaiting my return forced me to submissively remain silent and return to my desk like a dog with its tail between its legs.

How could I focus? How could I add up figures on a calculator when thoughts of Louisa flooded my imagination, and a guitar dreamily played on the speakers above? Why didn’t someone just turn the music down, or off, or turn the station to a talk show? I closed my eyes and leaned back.

If I paid close enough attention, all I could hear was the guitar and not the other instruments. The drums and – a harpsichord, was it? – were nearly inaudible against the rasping of the guitar riff. I imagined the musician’s fingers ferociously strumming each chord.

Suddenly the music clicked off. I peered up at the clock. It was five ‘til. Someone had turned off the radio and a few of the overhead lights.

My cream colored phone buzzed. "Got the charts?" It was Raquel. Even through the phone her voice excited me.

"Five more minutes," I said. "I promise."

"All right," she said and hung up without a good bye. I turned in my chair and looked at her sitting in her small side office, the door open, glaring at me from behind her disheveled desk.

I swiveled back and frantically pulled the papers from the file folder. "Eleven percent rise in sales from last quarter..." I had to speak aloud, otherwise there were too many distracting thoughts bouncing about in my head. Thoughts of Raquel in her low cut dress and then Louisa’s fierce jealousy, despising my wanton desires. How dare I look at Raquel, or even consider the idea of going out with Len and the guys? All I needed and wanted in the world were at home waiting for me. I must remind myself of that.

I quickly filled in the chart with a sharp pencil. "Twelve over nine divided by three years..." The office was bustling now with tired employees eager to get home or go out. Computers beeped and shut down and voices became louder as Len and Stan and Laura and the others pulled on their mall-bought coats and scarves.

I glanced at the clock and then at my office mates. How did they stand it? How did they make it through each day, each week, in this windowless cave? I had only worked there a year and it was much too long. Sure, it paid the bills, but this was not my destination in life. God had pre-ordained me for something greater. Something more desperately necessary.

"Desperately necessary." I liked the way that sounded, the way it rolled across my tongue. I pulled out my tattered notebook and flipped to the most recent page. "Desperately necessary," I scribbled. "Desperate. Extreme. Needed." Oh, how I needed a thesaurus. What rhymed with Desperate or Extreme? "Mean. Seem." I wrote ferociously, before the words disappeared forever.

Sure, I had done the responsible thing, had gone to college, had earned a two-year degree – my mother wouldn’t hear of anything less from her only son. But all along my love for music had an ever-present stronghold on me. Like warm whiskey to a recovering alcoholic, or candy to a diabetic, I guess. Not that music was evil - it just seemed to take up every core of my being, to require all of my attention or I could not be whole; if I treated it as anything less, I did not deserve to put my name on it, did not deserve its respect.

I slapped my notebook shut and glanced back at the chart. It would have to wait until Monday. There was no possible way I could complete the chart in 30 seconds and I wasn’t going to stay late.

I shut down my computer and stood and grabbed my old denim jacket and hurried to the time clock before Raquel could stop me. I felt her brown accusatory eyes burning into my back but there were too many office workers in the way for her to reach me before I clocked out and stepped into the packed elevator.

"All You Need is Love," the soulful voice played in the elevator over the murmur of people discussing what they were going to do after work. To these pitiful souls music always remained in the background, simply a musical soundtrack that added to their lives. How I sometimes wished I felt that way so life could be simpler. But for me, a life without music was torment. How would I possibly get through the day? What hope would I cling to? The thought of spending the rest of my years pent up in a cubicle at Crown & Co. under a water-stained foam roof was very depressing. I loosened my tie and rubbed my tired eyes.

Of course, perhaps my coworkers really loved their jobs. Maybe all they ever loved and wanted out of life was a secure 9 to 5 with a pension. If that were the case, they were living a content life.

But not I. My father once told me that when love surrounds a person they are in need of nothing else. I promised my father years ago I would only pursue what I love. At Crown & Co., aka "the dungeon", I was falling dreadfully short of that promise.

Off the elevator I stepped with a cordial "Good night, Stan," and "Good night, Laura," and out into the freedom of the night, away from the stuffiness of the office that had threatened to suffocate the very life out of me. I hurried to Lot 8. It was dark out. I had forgotten my umbrella and so had to jog quickly to the parking lot to avoid getting totally soaked. My shoes filled with water as they slapped down on the puddles. Through the dense rain I smelled the fresh salmon from Chinese Hut next door and my stomach ached with hunger. I climbed into my car and pulled the small red rubber band from my ponytail, allowing my wet curly hair to fall to my shoulders. Instantly my CD blared across the stereo speakers when I started the car, and I backed out of the lot, heading for home.

I had mailed my demo CD to 10 different record companies and hadn't heard from any of them. Sure, it had been only two months, but hope was quickly dwindling, to say the least. Their acceptance was my only escape from the Cave of Doom, where otherwise I would be enslaved for the rest of my years.

Finally I turned into the driveway of our four-plex and parked and hurried up the stairs two-by-two, careful not to slip on the wetted wood. I unlocked the door and hummed the tune I had heard in the car. The door stuck and I had to shove it open. One of these days we would have the money to fix it. "I’m home," I called over the loud rain as I burst into the living room.

It was quiet and dark and I flicked on the lights. The low murmur of the television and the stench of cigarette smoke floated in from the bedroom. "Is that you, Michael?" My mother couldn’t get up anymore, couldn’t live life. She was frail and bedridden and forced to spend the rest of her time on this earth in the eerie loneliness of the bedroom watching soap operas and The Price is Right.

"Yes, mom. I’m here. I’ll fix you some coffee."

I was all that remained for her. I had to make her happy in her final years. "Make me proud, Michael," she would say, her voice breaking into a cough. "You have a good job. Don’t lose it just like your father. Always too busy with his music, bless his soul."

I hung my damp coat over the back of a chair and stepped out of my soaked shoes. I spooned coffee into a thin filter and leaned against the dish-cluttered counter. "You’re all I need," I sang softly. "Not a woman in a blue dress – cut low – the tempest is about me." The words spilled from my lips with ease. "I only need what I love..." I slowly headed for the living room where Louisa patiently waited. "How do I go on, with such a tortured life, but how can I afford not to?" I created the words as I sang.

There Louisa sat in the shadows, quiet and impossibly patient. Her red mahogany lit up the otherwise drab room. I sat down on the floor with my legs crossed and lifted her into my arms. I strummed her strings gently and tuned the knobs a bit. She sang to me. A familiar peace flushed through me. I was finally home.

Together we played the bridge of the song I had just created.

I had always played "by ear," as Mother called it, although I’m utterly convinced it is much more than that - an ear for the right note, yes, but also an indescribable euphonious soul-to-finger desire that cannot be kept silent.

Louisa’s strong piercing whines reverberated throughout the apartment, through the olive green walls, despite the hard rain pounding against the windows; into my Mother's cold dark room, and out into the threatening night. I closed my eyes and peacefulness washed over me. I was reminded of why I remained faithful for so long. Her song was my reward.