Lucas 06 – Wake up

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He felt his eyelids grow heavy under the warm hand of Tyche as she stroked his forehead, his body was aching, and he was feeling himself drifting away from here. He wanted to sleep, but he also wanted to stay awake to take all this in. To fight it, he opened his eyes as wide as he could, but it was only momentary, before he had realised his eyelids were weighing down again and his eyes were closing. He could feel Tyche’s palm on his forehead, he could still feel his hand held tightly by the girls, but he was losing consciousness with every second.

He woke up, opening his eyes to a familiar scene. His dark red drapes with the cream stripe, the aluminium base of his bedside light, a glass of half drunk water, an untidy pile of clothes, and his digital alarm clock’s bright red display. He was at home. To say that a massive wave of disappointment swept over him would be something of an understatement, as the realisation hit him of what had passed the previous day had in fact been merely a single night’s dream. He closed his eyes again, with almost a forlorn hope of returning to his five goddesses, but to no avail.

“Damn it!” he shouted out loud.

Squinting in the half light he took a second look at the display on his alarm clock. It read 7:35AM. He had to leave for work in twenty five minutes. He threw off his covers and swung his legs out of bed.

He arrived at work fifteen minutes late, cutting a rather sad figure, he sloped in past Janie the receptionist, trying to keep a low profile. If he had hoped to sneak in unnoticed, he was out of luck.

“So?” she said. But Lucas was either too dazed to hear, or just assumed she was talking to someone else, because he kept on walking.

“Lucas!” she shouted, waking him from his stupor in double quick time. She could command an army that girl.

“What?”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So what happened. You leave the office at 2.15 in the company of five,” she paused at this point, unsure of what word to use, “women. And don’t reappear for the rest of the day. You really think you can just brush that kind of behaviour under the carpet.”

Lucas is taking this in, wondering what to say, when a door opens briskly to his right. Out steps Lucas’ direct report manager, middle aged, mid-life, middle living, Frank.

“Lucas. A word,” he says beckoning him into his little office.

Lucas is computing as fast as he can, the presence of Frank is a mere speck on his awareness horizon.

It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a dream!!! That’s all and everything he is thinking. He breaks out into a huge smile.

“Lucas! What’s so funny? Come into my office, I must have a word with you!”

Lucas sees Frank clearly for the first time, but he is now delirious in his happiness anyway as he goes into the office. Frank closes the door behind him. They remain standing.

“I’ll make this brief. Your,” he pauses, “visitors. Yesterday.”

Lucas nods and tries to suppress his happiness, visually at least.

“I would prefer it if you didn’t make a habit of bringing your personal life into the office.”

“Yes. Understood Frank.” Lucas says, trying to look serious.

“On this occasion, I’m not going to ask you for an explanation. Despite the fact that for a whole,” as Frank says whole his face kind of explodes into a spherical ball as if to emphasis the gravity of the situation, “afternoon’s unexplained absence. But, that was your one indiscretion. You will obviously lose half a days holiday as a result. And I want your assurance that it won’t happen again.”

“It won’t happen again Frank.”

“See that it doesn’t, there’s a good fellow.” Frank kind of smiles, man management is not really is strong point, despite his position.

With that, Lucas left Frank’s office. He closed the door behind him and had to lean against it to steady himself, his head was in such a spin. Fortunately, Janie was by now taking a call, and despite her expansive efforts at sign language wanting Lucas to hang around, he was in no state for explanations. Janie’s eyes blazed wide as he wandered off to find his desk.

He fired up his computer and saw the half finished scribbled notes from his conversation yesterday with his supplier from Perugia. He really didn’t feel like working, so while his computer clunked, clanked and flashed various screens of nonsense as it tried to get itself going, Lucas went to the kitchen to get himself a coffee.

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