2003-06-03 - 3:57 a.m.

Now I know why people love fine cigars.

Left work today--I had just hired and trained a bunch of new people, and I quickly broke my I�ll never again become friends with people I�m the boss of rule... again, and went out for a beer with two of �em.

Foley�s. Of course.

I talked too much, which is rare for me, but I made a good impression with two people I believe to be of the type that are mature enough to understand the boundary--what happens at work can sometimes be discussed outside of it. What happens outside stays outside.

Caught the last train outta Downtown Crossing, to Davis. Mistakenly thought, or more accurately, hoped against knowledgeable hope, that there�d be a (w) bus waiting for me--(w) being the bus that (w)aits for the last train to arrive before leaving.

Which was like hoping to win $100 on a dollar scratch ticket.

I could barely afford the Schlitzes at Foley's, yet I flirted with the idea of taking a cab from Davis. Flirted, but somebody else took the cab home for the night.

I walked, happy to have met new folks, happy that I got that train (another five minutes, and it would have been a much, much longer walk).

I had walked to Davis heading to work, and I remembered smelling baked chocolate, an unpleasant smell for me. The sweet burnt stench gristled over the same house as I left the square.

I saw the same recycling bin again and felt the same twinge of guilt I had felt when I first passed it. The same muraled electric box. The same display in the guitar store. The same hefty bags on the street, waiting to be picked up for trash day. And a wooden box, 1/20th the size of a coffin, which I hadn�t noticed before.

And which I would have noticed before.

A block later, I turned around and picked it up, giddy.

It was a wooden cigar box with a glass window, brass edges, brass spring hinges, and plastic dividers inside. A bit dusty from the cigars it had once held, but apparently free from spider eggs and other such paranoia.

A beautiful wooden cigar box that someone was stupid enough to throw away.

I lugged it home, carefully. I pictured myself falling over and breaking it a dozen times, as I always do when I handle something valuable.

It was a gift for the Roommate. That much was obvious.

It had to be. I knew that when I knew to turn around to snag it. The greedy, jackass part of myself had a good 30 minutes to talk the part of myself that had found it outta giving it away, but the part of me that had found it has a pretty good track record (unfortunately) with regards to doing the right thing.

I also thought of giving it to her for her birthday, which is but two months away. Also rejected.

I was meant to find it, to carry it back home, to clean it, and to present it suddenly.

�Cause that�s my gift to myself.

How often does anybody go to bed, and get a kiss on the lips hours later, and then wake up to greet her boyfriend and chat for a few before returning to bed, and later open her eyes, and then close them as instructed, and sit up in bed as instructed, and then feel something heavy on the blanket on her lap, and open her eyes, and see a perfect present, and for no reason other than for a cosmic and an also personal reward, for her unsolicited generosity?

How often? Does anyone have stats on this? Some data?

And how often do you get to do that for someone else?

I floated through this day, by the way, and my auto pilot gets me to weird places. I fell today, in Quincy Market (by Faneuil Hall). I was thinking about the book I was reading, I was wishing I didn�t have to go back to work and be work flingiedo, that the work me had succeeded in its attempt to impose martial law, to approve or disapprove of every action and most thoughts, and I hovered down steps, and missed one and fell.

I landed on my right knee and right hand. I wasn�t hurt, nor was my pride �cause oddly enough, nobody saw me fall. In such a crowded place, usually, but it was empty for some reason, even though it wasn�t raining. Even though it was tourist season and it was sunny today, hardly anyone was there, which in itself is odd and made me feel odd.

I cleaned that cigar box, by the way, before giving it to the Roommate. Pledge, Windex, and a tiny bit of something else for a little piece of metal on the back. My reward for finding it, for carrying it, for cleaning it, for giving it away, for giving it to the right person, was a smell I�ll never have again--the history of that box, which I kinda new I was wiping out with the lemon Pledge and the ammonia Windex (but I found it on the street, and why would someone throw it away? I had no choice but chemicals). I�d say thirty years, maybe, but it could be two, or one, or fifty, for all I know, but I�m thinking thirty, based on the hinges, on how the drawer has become warped convex slightly, on how the foam buffers are foam and not just plain plastic. The scent of thirty years of fine cigars were in that wooden box, wood a carrier, and the hint of cherry, maybe almond, and fucking tobacco are still there, and finding it now is like looking for the taste of a Corona (the beer, not the cigar) and getting it cut with lemonade--you wouldn�t know it was there unless you already knew what to look for.

And I do. I�m going to think about this day again--when I detect foreshadowing, I do my best to remember it. I�m gonna smell that cigar box in somebody�s apartment, or walking, or in a hospital bed, or a car, and it�ll get me excited when I can�t place it, and then I might remember.