It was in a single breath that his world unravelled. The threads slid away from each other in the raspy intake and fell with the long sigh that followed. For the end of something thought to be significant, the moment lacked grandeur. He doubted anyone had noticed, or could tell that the man at the phone booth had suddenly found himself lost in life— would have even cared. Everyone was having a mid-life crisis. They were living a catastrophe, each and every one of them, and one man’s displacement was hardly anything worth noticing. The lady in greens, greys, and browns who had sashayed past, all beads and wooden adornments, had a father dying in a hospital bed, with a mother too angry at the circumstances to know she cared. The shy child with a fistful of his father’s shirt had learned for the fifth time how torn knees from a fall stung, and his shuffling steps were burdened with the sharp stretch of taught skin. Problems, problems. Lessons.

But what had he learned? That even on top of the world, he could be reached. He wasn’t invincible, or powerful, or even influential. He didn’t really matter. A few steps down the ladder there was most likely another man possessing more skills – intelligence, charisma, good looks – than he could ever hope to have. He had learned he was expendable. He was another lesson, another problem. She was a problem, his mind murmured belatedly, still dumb with the news.

In elementary, he had been taught the five w’s – where, when, who, what, why – and the singular h – how – and now they echoed in his ears, made them buzz and caused his eyes to itch.