The phone rang, Lucas picked up. "Hello?" said Lucas. "Hey, Luke, it's Lillian" "Oh, hey sis, how are you?" "I'm doing fine, I'm actually calling because I dropped by today, but you weren't home. I let myself in because the door was unlocked." "Oh, so did you leave that book on my bed?" "Yes...who else would've done it? I figured you should read one of the all time great tragedies. I thought it'd help your playwriting." "Thank you! I –" "Oh, sorry Luke, I have to run, the baby is crying. Talk to you soon!" "Okay, then, bye sis."
He hung up the phone and sat down at his typewriter. And he sat. His mind was blank. "This is stupid" he thought. He couldn't get past the coincidence between the homeless man and the book on his bed. Maybe, he thought, he'd write a story about a man caught between his perceived fate and his true fate. For tomorrow, perhaps, but now to bed.
Lucas woke up at 6:30, forgetting once again to turn off his alarm the night before. He wasn't upset though, the song playing on his old clock radio was coming from WTF, the local radio station. "Just 'cause you feel it, doesn't mean it's there..." sang the radio. "Hah, Radiohead on the radio...that's not that funny..." thought Lucas. That line resonated in his head. "Maybe I'm not supposed to be a writer," he thought, "just because I think I'm a writer, doesn't mean I am."
He looked in his fridge. No milk. He decided on his fallback breakfast plan, the 24-hour coffee shop down the street. They always served pastries and things that he liked. However, when he reached the coffee shop, it was closed. There was a small group milling around outside. A man who he'd seen in his building before was there. "What's going on here?" Lucas asked. "Who knows, I've been here for 30 minutes and there's no sign of life in there" said the man." An awkward silence ensued. "...I've seen you before, do you live in the Castle Apartments?" "Yeah. My name is Otis." "Otis..." Lucas tried to lead on to a last name, he liked knowing the full names of people. "Otis Baumer." "Nice to meet you...I'm Lucas Shaffer." He extended his hand for a shake, but Otis turned away. "I try to be nice and I get this" Lucas muttered. He shivered, it was colder than he thought it would be.
The blanket of fog that covered the town every morning seemed especially thick to him this morning, possibly because he was rarely outside before 7.
He saw a young looking girl standing outside the shop, immediately noticing her shifty eyes. "Excuse me," he said, "are you waiting for the shop to open?" "That's why I'm here, obviously. I shouldn't even be waiting, it's a 24-hour shop. Why is it closed?" said the girl. "I was about to ask you the same thing, sorry to bother you..." again, Lucas pressed for a name, he liked to know people's names. "Evie." "Sorry to bother you, Evie." Irritated by the cold reactions he got from his fellow coffee shoppers, he decided to go back to his apartment, and go without breakfast. He felt bad for the girl, she seemed upset, but he couldn't relate. Not without being incredibly awkward, at least.
Right before he opened the door to the apartment building, he noticed a bus stall on the corner of H street. He thought nothing of it and walked into the building and into his room. About an hour later, he looked out the window that faced H street, the bus was still there, and a woman was yelling at an exacerbated bus driver, who was smoking a cigarette. "Well, yelling won't fix it. He probably can't do anything about it. She's getting mad for nothing" thought Lucas, "I hate people who can't accept the bad things that happen to them."
"Hah, ironic" he thought.
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