A Wonderful Life Read Online Free Page B

she realized that the left closet door was probably just as dangerous for the same reasons.
    So, she decided to chance it and take the left closet door, although she walked the middle wooden panel of the floor, her heels clicking as she took each step forward, reverberating off the floor like an army of unsuspecting soldiers about to enter an ambush of which there will be no escape.
    Once at the middle of the closet, she walked slowly down the closet length until she came to the left door, and with much creaking and dragging, she pulled the closet door open.
    And there he was.
    The man stared back at her hidden behind the same black dress she wore to the Black and White Ball just last year, but he did not pounce on her as she suspected he might. Instead, he stared and made no move, his body hidden behind the safety of the raven dress with his head sticking out from its side. But he made no move.
    “Why are you here?” she said, gathering up her courage to finally speak.
    The man said nothing, but just stared back, almost as if he was as scared as she was.  Then his eyes broke away from her stare and glanced at the contents of her closet.
    Beneath the dresses and shoes and shirts and pants and other accoutrements of her closet where the remains of the last five men to have visited her home in the past, although this individual in the closet was probably the first to have come in uninvited.
    But no matter.
    “Again, why are you here?  Most men don’t reach the closet until long after the first time they visit here.”
    Again, the man said nothing, although the look on his face told him that perhaps this was the wrong home to break into.
     
    The End

THE NAME
     
    It was in the summer of my second year at the company when I saw her for the first time. I didn’t know how long she had been working there, although I thought I knew the face of every attractive woman in the place. Then she came into my life, and I’ve never quite recovered.
    In two years, I was on slow track to seniority in this company. Most upwardly mobile employees made their mark in the first few months, but not me. I was just coasting along. I probably should have just left and found a better job, but when I saw her, I was locked into a blindness where I could see no future but the present I was living in. I blame her, but it was really me who was at fault.
    She was beautiful. There’s no getting around that. But she wasn’t gorgeous in that supermodel kind of way. No, she was divine in that innocent, I-don’t-know-I’m-beautiful state of being. She had long black hair that covered the small of her back, an impervious smile that carried her everywhere she went, and eyes that stared into you as if they could speak and always seemed to know the right thing to say. It sounds really ridiculous now, but I truly believed she was an angel sent down for reasons even she didn’t understand.
    I didn’t know her name; that was the problem. I asked around the company, and everyone recognized her description, but no one actually knew who she was or where in the company she worked. Granted, it was a large company. Still, it seems strange even now that no one could ever tell me who she was.
    I lived and breathed the same air as her at least twice a week. It was in the lunchroom, and she would sit in the far corner with her packed lunch. Sometimes, it would be a homemade sandwich she would unwrap from double-wrapped cellophane as she pulled at the plastic wrap slowly in what looked like a trance, the sandwich freed millimeter by millimeter as she took her sweet time releasing it. Other times it would be a Tupperware container of sushi or something like that. She would always sit alone, reading her newspaper, and she would keep to herself, almost as if there was nothing else she needed. Or anyone.
    So I continued inquiring about her. I was convinced that someone had to know who she was. There were some guys in my department who had reputations for knowing who every