Her name was Clarissa, or at least that was what Michael wanted it to
be. He didn't know anyone with that name, but that was OK. In fact,
it was better than OK. This Clarissa would be the original, and the
one who could never be equaled.He saw her on BART every morning and most evenings. Michael would start his commute at the Pleasant Hill station. She would already be on the train and he would make it a point to board the car she was in. They would ride together until she got off at the Embarcadero station in San Francisco. His stop was one further down, at Montgomery. He would ride that last part of the trip with his eyes closed, keeping the image of her fresh in his mind.
Clarissa was a fairly tall woman, about five-eight, with shoulder-length brown hair with a few streaks of gray. She was attractive, not drop-dead gorgeous like a model but pretty in an accessible sort of way. She dressed somewhat conservatively, business casual but with the librarian touch. And through her near-transparent body, Michael could the lights outside passing through her.
Clarissa was a reflection, an image on the window of the BART car that was most visible when in a darkened tunnel. The flesh-and-blood person who created the image probably wasn't called Clarissa. Michael did not know what her name was, nor did he care. It was Clarissa the reflection that commanded his attention and he could stare at her the whole time with impunity. If he tried that with the other woman, she would notice. She would make a scene.
Michael worked in a cubicle on the ninth floor of a twenty-story building in the Financial District. The nearest window was down the hall and to the left. It faced a light well. The break room near the elevators had vending machines selling off-brand cans of soda for a buck fifty and candy bars for two dollars. The free office coffee was discontinued. It was a casualty of recent cutbacks that had also claimed ten percent of the company's workforce.
His job was to match his fellow employees with project codes that had been budgeted for that month so they could use them for their time sheets. To do this, he used a piece of software called "Streaming P." P was supposed to stand for project. What made the program streaming was that the projects would show up on Michael's computer screen as soon as they were approved by the money people upstairs.
"Unleash the power of the stream!" read the bold text below the bright yellow arc on the splash screen as he loaded the application each morning. In reality, project approval was such a slow process that the stream was more like a trickle.
As each pay period drew to a close, Michael would do his best to assign people codes for projects in a way that actually made some sense. With so few projects approved, he would have to make do with what was on his list. People would complain and demand he fix the problem so there would be some rhyme or reason to their time sheets. Michael was not authorized to fix these problems. He was only authorized to take the blame.
Most of the time though, he spent the day pretending to be busy and thinking about Clarissa. He imagined himself going all sorts of places with her. They would visit art museums and go to ball games. They would eat at fancy restaurants and take walks along the moonlit waterfront. They would do all these things not in San Francisco, certainly not in Pleasant Hill, but in a city of his own devising.
When Michael finished his workday, he would usually go have dinner at a Sizzler not far from his home. He picked this particular place because the service was slow and he wanted to kill as much time as he could. For the same reason, he ordered his steaks well done because the meat toughened by overcooking would take longer to chew.
Back at his apartment, he would watch TV. His cable service had over 400 channels and each night, he managed to watch a little bit of almost all of them. He would then fall asleep on the couch and wake up in the morning with pain shooting up his arm from the repetitive stress of his thumb hitting buttons on the remote.
This was Michael's life, day after day, month after month. It continued like this until one overcast Tuesday morning. Michael had not slept well the night before and did something he promised himself he would never do. He let his eyes wander and they fell upon Clarissa's counterpart.
Fortunately, she was reading a book and did not notice him. But then he looked at her left hand. She was wearing a wedding ring. Michael shut his eyes and tried to wipe that image from his mind.
It wouldn't go away. He first felt angry and betrayed, but soon he just felt sad. He took a few deep breaths and opened his eyes. He took what he thought would be his last look at Clarissa and mouthed the word "goodbye."
Then he noticed something. Clarissa was wearing no ring. Since she was a reflection and he thought he might be looking at the wrong hand, he checked the other one. There was no ring there either.
Clarissa looked straight at Michael and gave him a little smile. Fearing he had been caught, he looked away. He glanced back at the other woman and she was still engrossed in the book she was reading, a wedding ring quite visible on her finger.
The train pulled into Embarcadero station. Clarissa and the other woman got up and left. The doors on the car shut and the train moved forward. Michael closed his eyes again.
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