The purpose of my second narrative was to write a dialogue driven narrative story. I wrote about the life of a “right-brained” Silicon Valley programmer, who’s only goal is to get ahead of his competition, and be at the top of his firm. This caused him to abandon his past creative life, and only realizes how much he has changed when he confronts two late night janitors.
Overtime
Andrew sat at his Macbook, his fingers clicking away at the keys and his eyes glued to the screen with laser focus. In front of him, lied thousands of lines of code for a new software update. The clock on his computer read 1:23 A.M. The cool breeze that blew in from the window kept him alert.
People questioned why he stayed this late. If they stopped questioning me and actually got to work, maybe they would be the top programmer at the firm, he thought to himself every time the question was asked. “Work smarter, not harder,” people told him, but he already worked smart enough. Working hard was the only thing left, applying himself. His mind was a calculator, adding together the various elements of the code, making it run seamlessly. As he finished the code and checked for errors, a new message popped up on the screen. The automated message laid out a list of new tasks. It was work that he easily could have done the next day, but he had to be ahead of the others. He dropped his head, took a deep breath, and began typing away.
His ears perked up at piercing laughter that flowed through the window. He looked at the open window, and when the laughs rang out again, he went over and closed it. Janitors, he thought to himself as he walked over to his seat. He sat back down at his desk, but the laughter still broke through the window, reverberating in the parallel office walls. His eyes wandered on his screen, and his fingers stopped moving. His momentum had disappeared. His fingers felt as if they were going to explode if they didn’t type something, but the only thing that occupied his mind was the laughter.
He stood up and briskly walked to the stairs, his feet stomping on the concrete floors. As he walked down the hall and to the exit, he saw them. Two janitors standing in front of an old Westfalia. Their laughter echoed down the hallway, and Andrew furrowed his brow. He shoved the door open and walked towards the two men his head held high. As he got closer he could read their nametags, Michael and Steven. The moonlight shined through Michael’s long silver hair. He easily could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy years old. Steven looked a bit younger, but the perils of age were apparent. His hair was brown and grey- mostly grey- and a scruffy beard covered most of his wrinkled face. As Andrew walked up to them, he could smell weed. The two men paid no attention to the guy in a button down and artisan jeans as he approached them. Andrew let out his frustration with rapid fire questions.
“What are you guys doing? Can’t you see that I’m trying to work here?”, he said. The janitors looked at Andrew, up at the faint glow coming from the upstair window, then back at Andrew as he continued with his slew of questions.
“Why do you guys have to be so loud? It’s almost two in the morning. What are you guys even doing here?”. Andrew paused, looking back and forth at Michael and Steven as they stared at him. Finally, Michael spoke up.
“It is two in the morning,” he said calmly “What are you doing here?”. Andrew seemed surprised by the question.
“Well, I’m trying to do some work”. Andrew said this as if it was common knowledge. What else would I be doing at the office?, he thought to himself. He looked at the men skeptically. Steven interrupted his confusion.
“We were just about to do the same thing. Why are you still here? Didn’t your shift end like, 7 hours ago?” Steven asked, with a genuine sense of curiosity in his tone. Andrew was annoyed at their questioning. He came out there to get them to be quiet, not to be interviewed about his work life.
“It did. I’m staying to get extra work done”
“Are you getting paid to be here?”
“Well no, not technically, but-”
“Then why are you still here”, Michael interjected. He scorned Andrew, but took it away once he saw the look on his face.
“If I’m going to stay at the top of the firm, I need to get as much work done as possible”. In his head, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable statement, but when he actually said it out loud, something felt different. It rolled off his tongue with a bitter aftertaste.
“Why does it matter to be at the top of your firm?” Michael asked. James thought back to his youth. All the participation trophies, the non-championship teams, B average, tryout cuts, and rejection letters came storming back to him. It was a question that he could answer, but he didn’t know how to.
“I don’t know,” Andrew replied, looking down now, his eyes staring off into something distant and non-existent.
Michael and Steven stared at him for a little, looked at each other, then approached him. “Maybe you should go home” Steven said comfortingly.
“Maybe I should”, Andrew sighed. His frustration at the janitors disappeared. He continued to stare at nothing while his mind bombarded him with troubling thoughts and questions. It was as if the question had sparked a quarter-life crisis, one that hit him all at once. As his eyes began to regain focus, his thoughts were interrupted by a familiar sight.
“Is that a strat?” he asked, pointing inside the van.
“Why yes it is” Michael said, picking the old guitar out of from the blankets, handing it to him.
Andrew turned it over in his hands, looking over the weathered lacquer. The three colored sunburst, the rosewood fretboard. He hadn’t picked up a guitar in seven years, but it felt right in his hands. It looked like the strat that he had in highschool, only with an extra 50 years of wearing. The days of his fingers flying over the fretboard and trying to get a band together came rushing back.
“Mind if I play it?” Andrew asked. Michael nodded, and Andrew put the strap over his shoulder and he began to play. His fingers didn’t fly as fast as they used to, but they still moved better than he ever could have expected. With his eyes closed, he played out some riffs of old songs he once played. It was a little rough around the edges, but he played it for as long as he could. Eventually, his fingers stopped moving over the fretboard, just as they had stalled on the keyboard in his office. When he opened his eyes again, he saw the two janitors looking at him. They had lit up a joint without him even noticing.
“Hey man, that was pretty good,” Michael said after blowing out a plume of smoke, “You want some?” Andrew stared at the joint, contemplating the question. When’s the last time they did a drug test? He thought to himself.
“Yeah, please” he said, reaching his hand out. He took the stick of paper into his fingers and took a long hit, too long for him to handle. He coughed out the smoke. The janitors laughed.
“Haven’t done this in a while, have you?” Steven said, taking the joint from Andrew’s fingers as he was bent over in a coughing fit.
“Guess not.” Andrew was able to regain his composure and stood up straight. It hit him hard and fast. His blood stream turned to cotton and his muscles relaxed. The janitors looked at him, smiling, and Andrew giggled almost uncontrollably. Wow, I must look like an idiot right now, he thought, but his concern for what they thought of him was met with a lack of concern for everything else.
Andrew looked down and saw the guitar still hanging from his shoulder. He placed his fingers back on the fretboard, and it had felt like it became a part of him. He closed his eyes and he played. He didn’t know what it was, but he was plucking the strings and to him, it sounded like music. This sounds good, he thought as played an embellishment, No, this sounds really good. He looked up to the sky as he played. His own thoughts had taken him by surprise. It wasn’t a song he had ever learned before, let alone even heard before. His mind made the notes, and he played them, jamming along to the backing track of his mind. As his fingers moved across the fretboard, he opened his eyes. He saw the two janitors with their eyes closed, their head bobbing, their feet moving along to the rhythm he played. Andrew’s fingers came to a halt, and so did they.
“That was hella good, what song was that?” Steven asked, his eyes looking at Andrew with great bewilderment.
“I- I don’t know.” Andrew was as confused as he was impressed. Suddenly his head was filled with a flurry of ideas. He felt as if a flower garden had just grown in the middle of the desert. Song lyrics, guitar riffs, pictures, paintings, and designs took over his brain. I gotta get these down! He thought.
“Thanks for letting me play. It was nice meeting you guys. I gotta go now.” Andrew said as he handed the guitar back to Michael.
“Nice meeting you man.” the janitors said. He thought they had said something else, but he had already broken off to a full sprint towards the glass doors of his office. He ran up the stairs and up to his desk, still dimly lit by the computer screen. He found a blank yellow legal pad and a nearby pen, and began writing. His hand turned into a faucet, and it was at full blast. As he wrote, he had an odd sensation. It was a faucet that he hadn’t touched in seven years. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to open it, he just didn’t know how. The clock on his computer now read 2 AM. His pen stopped moving. He looked down at the years of pent up creativity. Song lyrics, drawings and designs covered multiple pages of the legal pad. Andrew looked at his work, and sighed a breath of relief. He looked back at the computer. A message displayed a new list of tasks for him to complete. He paused, then reached to the back of his computer and turned it off. He walked away from his desk, holding the notepad close to his chest, leaving behind the work for the next day, or the one after that.