The idea was so simple: I could walk away from my desk, leave the office forever and start living my life the way I needed to live it. There was nothing to fear, really. This was America. I was strong. And I just knew that I was destined for success.

“I’m going to lunch,” I said.

My coworker Tamara peered over the dust-gray cubicle partition with her tremendous brown eyes.

“See, that’s what you need, banna. Just go get yourself some Indian food!” She laughed the little girl giggle she had never lost, her dark mass of long, thin braids swaying in front of her face as she rose to her feet.

After my particularly horrible morning, Tamara was trying to convince me that some deep breathing, a walk and forty-five minutes of sensory pleasure in my favorite Indian restaurant would be sufficient to cure what ailed me. In fact, such a break would have been no more curative than a drop of anesthesia. It might have temporarily eased the pain but would not change the fact that I was wasting my life.

The temptation was great, but I stopped myself from telling Tamara that I might never be coming back to the thirty-eighth floor of the Mephicon Corporation’s world headquarters ever again, that perhaps the time had finally come to start living the life that was intended for me. Despite her free spirit, she would surely try to undermine my quest with arguments dependent upon conventional notions of reason and responsibility. Already that morning she had given me a hard time when I revealed that I was in the midst of my third consecutive day of fasting. She was a Guyanese immigrant and middle-aged. Certainly she would not understand my needs. At the moment, Tamara could not be trusted.

“Thanks for listening,” I told her, my voice shaking ever so slightly. She was about the only person in the world to whom I could talk about my problems, and for just a moment my emotions welled-up at this realization.

“Hey, got to look out for my banna!” she said, giving her heart two gentle pats with the side of her fist.

“I’m not worth it,” I said.

Immediately I regretted the habitual expression of self-loathing. Tamara scolded me with nothing but her eyes.

“Go!” she finally said.

It touched me that she cared at all.

I grabbed my shoulder bag. Since I typically brought it with me to lunch so that my book, my journal and my pen would always be there with me, no one had cause to become suspicious. They all just thought I was some kind of freak.

On my way to the elevator, my eyes involuntarily fixed themselves upon beautiful Shannon, the sweetly freckled redhead upon whom I’d had a severe crush for the previous six months. She didn’t even glance at me as I passed her desk. That was typical. I tried to muster up some contempt for this recent college graduate who could think of nothing better to do with her youth than work some entry-level position in a multi-national corporation. But she looked so amazing. All I wanted was to take care of her and make her happy. If only she’d wanted anything at all from me.

It was the kind of warm and brilliantly sunny spring day that offers a sweet, perfect taste of the summer to come, and my legs propelled me quickly up Broadway from the Mephicon Corporation’s Times Square headquarters. Passing the southwestern corner of Central Park, I watched a swarm of pigeons moving in unison above the treetops like a single spirit untethered from earthly concerns. The only threat to my progress was the problem in my right shoe that sent a sharp, electric jolt of pain from my big toe up to my skull with every step. Three days before, on Monday morning, I had been nearly run over by a red double-decker tourist bus while on my way to work. Never mind that the incident was partly a result of my fixation upon the perfectly formed buttocks of a trio of teenage Latinas who had just passed me. My rage-fueled, expletive-peppered tirade was loudly mocked by some obese, dough-faced, middle-American tourist in the upper, open-air level of the bus, and my contempt for his existence inspired me, foolishly, to give the side of the bus a vicious kick. Immediately I knew that my violent action had damaged more than my self-respect. Even three days later, the swelling around the toenail had not gone down.

Gandhi would surely have disapproved. The man had recently made a very strong impression on me. I had read his autobiography at Tamara’s suggestion. Although his efforts to liberate India from British control were impressive, it was the way he lived his life as an ongoing experiment that I found most significant. My life thus far had taken many turns but it had surely not been lived as an experiment. It had been more like a repeated roll of the dice.

Gandhi’s words were the inspiration for my fast and two months before had been the final steppingstone toward becoming a vegetarian. That was easy but it was not enough. The hopeless death march of my life needed to thrown off course, and somehow I had to quell the violence that simmered within the caverns of my heart. It was time to be fully conscious of the fact that with every passing second I was moving closer to my end. As it was, my life was not worth living. It was a waste and a sham. Halfway to seventy years of age, my existence lacked justification. If I was to survive, that had to change. Everything had to change.

My phone rang. It was an office number, but no one from the office ever called my phone. I wasn’t important enough for that. Maybe it was Tamara, though I had no memory of having given her my number. I ignored my gut and decided to answer.

“Hello?” I said like a horror film’s next victim calling into a dark room.

“Jean?” The nasally voice made my name sound closer to “John” than to the proper French pronunciation.

My heart rate and blood pressure surged. It was Steve Wang, my boss. With his two-hour commute from some distant suburb, his oft-stated desires for a larger home and a more prestigious car, and his obvious pride in being a middle-manager in a famous multi-national corporation, he represented everything that I despised.

“Hi, Steve,” I said as casually as I could. What was this? I hadn’t even been gone an hour yet.

“Uh, yeah, Jean,” he said, drawing out each word in the way that stupid people do when pretending that they’re the superior ones. “What’s going on, buddy?”

“I’m at lunch,” I said.

“Okay, yeah. Just want to confirm that I’ll get those reports by my three o’clock, right?”

“Definitely! I’m just waiting for some feedback from Bob in Finance. Otherwise they’re pretty much good-to-go!” I loathed myself for the false enthusiasm that animated my voice.

“Alrighty, so just stop in when you’re back, okay?”

“Will do,” I said, snapping the phone closed and truly comprehending for the first time that I had a serious decision to make. The choice was mine, as it always had been.

“Will I really do this?” I inquired aloud. I didn’t know.

At the corner of 103rd Street and Broadway, I passed the Royal Kabab & Curry Indian Cuisine Bar & Grill and realized that I was starving. Between 104th and 105th Streets, I paused to read the menu at the Calcutta Café. Resisting the delights of the world’s finest cuisine was no small thing for me, but this was a test I was determined to pass.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

At that moment on Broadway, remembering Gandhi’s magical words suddenly filled me with a kind of blissful clarity. His authority gave me permission to do what I truly wanted. There was no need to rationalize. It was time to live according to my own beliefs, to live as if my life actually had meaning. I might not be able to change the world but I could certainly change my small part of it.

Optimism overwhelmed me. The Indian Café near 108th Street didn’t tempt me at all. Passing through the land of the intellectually privileged between Columbia and Barnard, I felt as if I’d achieved a kind of special knowledge that could not be taught in some overpriced classroom.

The phone rang again, and my heart pounded against the wall of my chest. It wasn’t Steve. It was one of the few non-work acquaintances I had. What did she want? There was no way I could handle a conversation right then. I just let the phone ring. Doing so made me feel like I was turning my back on my life and on everyone I knew. A heavy sweat rose upon my brow.

“Fuck you,” I said aloud, fighting off a twinge of loneliness. They all just wanted to keep me in my place.

Abruptly, the landscape changed. At 122nd Street, a subway train shot out of the ground and clattered its way up the elevated tracks, dreary housing projects looming behind it. Someone had decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble to conceal the noise and the rust and the grime of the subway here.

A stray cat, his bones visible through his dull orange fur, confidently crossed Broadway and disappeared into a small space beneath the concrete supports. I thought of my own little kitty. The pretty little thing had suddenly died the previous autumn. At that moment, remembering her, the idea of ever again returning to my empty apartment seemed horrible. There was no reason to go back without her there.

I was at the intersection of Broadway and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The arching ironwork of the elevated subway tracks hung above me. To the west, the Hudson River flowed seaward. A column of sunlight was shining down upon me as I waited to cross the street. At that single intersection, there were three fast food restaurants with brightly colored plastic exteriors. This country needed help as badly as I did. I felt that. The decision, therefore, was effortless. I didn’t make it. Instead, it simply became a part of me.

A downtown train screeched as it pulled into the station. Traffic had stopped for the red light. I was free to cross the street but instead just stood there at the corner. Everything was instantly so simple and so clear. I knew what I had to do. As the train accelerated with a deafening clatter, I turned my face toward the sky and smiled.

Read Chapter Two >>