Day Off

For the first time in thirty years he had a Tuesday off, his shoes perfectly polished sounded on the empty sidewalk at ten o'clock in the morning on Teatinos Street. He arrived at the traffic light where he always turned right in the direction of his home and without thinking about anything walked left until he reached the roof of the Central Building he knew so well.

He looked at the city at his feet for a long time, the one that used to look just as small from the huge window of his office and remembered the work meetings, the end of the year parties, the pats on the back, the supposed friends and the tight skirt of Anita his secretary, who today dedicated her flirtatious glances to the new boss.

He thought on a tight stomach that in the thirty years of work he had not been able to get rid of his debts, that he still had half of the quotas for enlargement and the worst thing he would have to tell Julia, who had never worked away from home in his life.

He looked down like one who finds freedom in cement and closed his eyes as he released from his wrist the watch that the company gave him at 25 years of service, wept bitterly and longingly, thinking of the years of dedication that no one cared about today. He took a deep breath and looked up to the sky, dropping his briefcase in a vacuum, squeezed his watch and threw it out, shouting something unintelligible that made the pigeons fly.

The knot in his stomach began to disappear as he felt the warm sun on his face. He breathed and smiled. She put on her shoes and started walking home, where Julia would hug him and tell him they would get out of it and where he would finally invite her to walk to the park, on her first Tuesday off.