the first parts of arthur bradshaw’s day were always the best.
arthur lived on the thirty-sixth floor of an apartment building in the western section of the city. and although over the years he had various issues with the management of the building, there was one thing he always appreciated about the building, and that was the reason he never left it.
it always had hot water. arthur enjoyed taking long hot showers in the morning, and no matter how long he indulged himself in this pleasure on any given morning, the hot water never seemed to give out. for this, arthur was willing to endure inconveniences with the elevators, the trash disposal, the heating and the air conditioning, and even the wi-fi.
arthur had two other pleasures in life. one was coffee. there were a number of coffee shops outside the apartment building and near the subway entrance that arthur entered on weekday mornings, and he enjoyed spreading his custom around them, and sampling the various blends and brands. he did not, however, profess to be any kind of connoisseur, as he realized how easily claims of that kind, about coffee or about any subject in the world, could lead to ridicule and disaster.
arthur’s third pleasure was enjoying the novels of delia smith rogers.
he regularly consumed them on his hour long subway commute to his office in the heart of the city, usually on his e-reader or listening to tapes of them, but sometimes actually reading the printed editions. delia smith rogers’s long series of hugely successful novels concerned the intricate plots and counterplots on a distant planet of various kings, queens, henchmen, magicians, assassins, vampires, ghouls, golems, rebellious peasants, and unruly royal children, in a never ending but always perfectly logical and comprehensible variety of incident, very different from arthur’s own daily existence. the novels had been made into a hit tv series, but arthur preferred the books.
one thing that could ruin arthur’s day, even early in the morning, was failure to get a seat on the subway car and be forced to stand part or the whole way to the office.
one morning he could not get a seat, and he was debating whether to put his briefcase down on the floor of the car and put his earbuds in while standing up, when the person standing beside him actually spoke to him.
arthur turned his head ever so slightly to look at the interloper. he saw a white man about fifty years old, not quite a bum, with large brown staring eyes and wearing a coat much too warm for the weather.
“what do you think?” the man asked, apparently following up the previous remark which arthur had not heard.
“about what?” arthur answered, thinking, why am i talking with this person?
“about whether the whole human race is insane?”
“um - insane in what way?”
“they live in one world with their bodies and a whole different one with their minds.”
“that could be.”
“do you mind my talking to you like this?” the man asked, leaning a little closer to arthur.
“it’s not the worst thing that ever happened to me,” arthur answered evenly.
“but maybe you better get used to it. because you know what i heard?”
“what did you hear?”
“that they are going to pass a law that people on the street and everywhere will have to start talking to each other and stop looking at their phones and playing games and looking at pictures of cats and monkeys.”
“i didn’t hear that. it sounds unlikely.”
“you think? but you never know, do you?”
“no, you don’t.”
just when arthur thought he could not take any more, the man announced, “well, it was great talking to you, my friend, but this is my stop.”
a number of other people also got off at the next stop and arthur was able to claim a seat.
his ordeal was over. but he did not feel like listening to his book, or doing anything except stare into space for the rest of the ride.
even the least break in his routine tended to upset arthur. his day was ruined, and he decided to just suffer through it.
