So much for my sneaking in unnoticed. The
entire group turned to give me the third degree, as if they were
perfect angels plucking their harps and I was Satan himself,
interrupting their concert with an off-key accordion.
"Yes sir," I replied, plastering a
plastic smile on my face. Outside, I played the good employee
and accepted my reprimand with quiet dignity as I found a seat.
Inside, I was once again disheartened with my job. The meeting
dragged on and on – same old stories, same old windbag. It
gave me acid indigestion. Would I ever get back to my desk and
to some real work?
When the meeting had finally died, my
motivation had died with it. Consequently, the balance of the
morning was spent alternating between wishing that I’d just
stayed home in bed and daydreaming about becoming a magician –
actually, the greatest magician that the world had ever known.
The numbers across the computer’s ledger sheet blurred as I
pictured myself sawing a beautiful lady in half and levitating a
grand piano into the air. Maybe I would have lions and tigers in
my act or catch a speeding bullet in my teeth. No, to be really
great I’d have to make the Statue of Liberty disappear,
like David Copperfield. Wait, I've got it, something different –
I would make a battleship disappear from the high seas and then
make it reappear in someplace like Central Park!
It was really quite the daydream till Braeback
walked up to my desk, glared down at me over his bifocal
glasses, tapping his watch. "Timeliness, James," he
snapped.
Reality set in. As if by some evil black magic
I was right back where I had been before my mystical weekend –
no one special, just good old James, the bean counter. Hell, I
was no one important.
Then again, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on
myself. After all, I was good at my job – I had a brass
recognition plaque to prove it. I wasn’t exactly unhappy
with work; I had received ample promotions, earned great money,
and made plenty of friends.
But I felt alive when I was in front of that
festival crowd – as though I didn't belong within the
audience. I belonged in front of the audience. When I pictured
the old woman, who had believed that I was part of the
magician's act, I knew we gave her something that no one could
ever take away: a moment of true magic, the magic of enjoying
life, forgetting the everyday drudgery. She felt the magic of
living; I knew it.
