One morning I slipped out the window of Opportunity. I’d heard him coming up the path, you see and knew he’d knock, even though it was his own door. Opportunity is like that. Always keeping up appearances.
Before I heard his knuckles on the wood, I muscled up the glass (double-hung, thick and stuck with summer’s heat) and leapt. A sticker bush cushioned my fall. As I ran, heels pounding the gravel driveway, I heard Opportunity calling.
I put my fingers to my ears and pressed. Kept running. He came on, relentless.
At last I thought I’d lost him. Had to rest. Ducked down an alley into a bar tended by a bald man. Pool table in the corner with no one playing. The cue ball, though, was spinning oddly. I drank and watched and wished that it would stop, which it did not.
On the door, I heard a knocking.
He found me there. Opportunity in a cheap suit. Sat on the next stool and hawked his wares like one of those salesmen with the vacuum cleaners or the fancy knives. Shiny swimming pools in bright green yards. Bloated houses, garages fit for kings, and sometimes a golden retriever. The pages of the catalog were beer-stained.
I was drunk by then, head in my hands, spinning like a white ball on a field of green.
“Why don’t you go?” I said. “Please. Find someone else instead.”
Opportunity polished his pocket watch. Breathed hot on the glass, rubbed it on his suit sleeve. “But I am right on time. I’ve knocked and called; I even gave you my window for looking out of, and see how you’ve repaid me? Sent me running, dodging dog dirt, to find you here in this…” he looked about. “In this…establishment?”
He seemed so aggrieved I wanted to apologize. Felt the sorry rising in my throat; what’s one more on top of all the thousands come before? The cue ball kept on spinning; motion going nowhere, like my head, and also like the view that morning spent staring out of Opportunity’s window.
He saw, I think, the falter in my eyes. Smiled, said, “No matter. Look, you see? Any window can be the window of Opportunity. He gestured at the glass behind the bar, the woods beyond. “We’ll pick up here where we left off. Come now.” His hand was on my shoulder, clammy, thin; hot breath on my right ear.
It all came clear, and I was on my feet. I took the ball and thrust it in my pocket, grabbed the cue. The butt of it went through that window. Out I slipped, over broken glass, not minding the cuts or the blood that fell. Red trailing me, all the way back to the place that I am now.
Quiet.
Except for the sound of distant water, running. I will go towards it. Let the rush of water drown, I hope forever, that sound — I hear it still. Opportunity, knocking.
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