I'm Thinking of Ending Things

~ ~ ~

— We’ve talked with almost everyone he’d worked with and have been able to put a picture together. He’d been developing physical problems. Issues. Everyone noticed. He had a rash on his arm and neck. His forehead would get sweaty. Someone saw him a few weeks ago at his desk in a sort of daze, just looking at the wall.

— That all sounds alarming.

— I know it does now. But in the context of then, it seemed private, like his own health issue. No one wanted to meddle. There were a few incidents. Over the last year or so he was playing his music quite loud during his breaks. And when people would ask him to turn it down, he’d just ignore them and start the song over again.

— No one thought to make a formal complaint?

— For playing music? Didn’t seem like a big deal.

— I guess not.

— Two people we’ve interviewed mentioned he had notebooks. He wrote a lot. But no one ever asked about what he was writing.

— No, I suppose not.

— We found those notebooks.

— What was in them?

— His writing.

— He had very neat, precise penmanship.

— But what about the content?

— The content of what?

— The notebooks. Isn’t that what matters? What he was writing about? The content? What it might mean?

— Right. Well, we haven’t read them yet.