Chapter 6 #4
“I know it, but I hate it. If anything happens to you, we’re all up a creek.”
Simon burst out laughing. “I don’t think inspecting my property is quite that extreme.”
“Oh, it’s that extreme all right,” Joe muttered, then waited until his boss was safely back on solid flooring before he continued. “Look, boss. I understand why you feel the need to go out there, but it’s not safe.”
“Oh, come on. Let it go, Joe.” Simon sighed.
Joe had been with Simon for years now and knew what made him tick.
“Sometimes I want to do it because it’s beautiful up there.
Plus, it’s a skyline I’m changing. It’s an emotional response to the work I’m doing because it’s important in so many different areas,” he explained.
“That is why I stand here and watch and confirm that it’s all okay. ”
He reclaimed his coffee and enjoyed it from a safer location, now on the second floor, wondering to himself what the attraction was when he scaled to the top of his bare buildings in progress and just stared out at the skyline around him.
He knew what it was to some degree and had been honest when he had explained it to his foreman, yet so much more was involved in it.
Simon filled a need within when seeing the vastness of space around him, knowing that he had a hand in the building of it, the creation of it.
While he acknowledged just how massive the sight line was from any of his buildings, he also knew how absolutely insignificant his efforts and accomplishments were in comparison to the huge, huge world around him.
When he’d finished his coffee, he asked Joe, “Anything else or can I move on?”
“You can move on.”
Simon nodded, as he continued to take in his surroundings. “Any problems with any of the staff?”
“Nope, everybody is doing great at the moment,” Joe noted. “Yet I hate it when you even ask those questions because, as soon as you do, we’ll turn around and find issues.”
Simon laughed. “I think that’s pretty standard for all of us these days. However, as long as you’re not dealing with anything troublesome, it’s all good.” He stepped away, and a vision slammed into him, bending him over. Joe rushed to him, as Simon’s vision blurred.
“Boss, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.”
Simon was slipping in and out of the vision while trying hard to stay in the present.
He gasped. “Help me sit,” he whispered, and that was the last thing he did before he was laid out flat on the floor, his foreman barking orders for everybody to stay away, keeping watch so nobody came close, yet keeping an eye on Simon.
He sensed Joe standing there, hovering like a mother hen, and Simon kept wishing this would all just go away.
Still, he knew his vision wouldn’t leave until he delved into the actual details of what was going on there.
Yet he didn’t find anything in particular.
It was just this space, a weird space. Then he heard that soft, ever-so-gentle voice.
Believe, child. It’s all right. Just believe. He’s here for you.
Then suddenly he was back in the present, alert again. He slowly got up, his foreman glaring at him.
“That’s why,” Joe grumbled through gritted teeth, tears swelling in his eyes, “that’s the fucking reason why I don’t want you out there on the end of those girders. … What if it happens out there?” Joe took a moment to calm down. “You would have been a goner for sure,” he whispered.
Simon nodded. “Let’s hope it doesn’t because, when this happens, I don’t have much control.”
Joe’s anger spilled over again. “I know, damn it. That’s why I don’t want you going out there in the first place.”
Simon understood Joe’s anger was really fear.
Fear that something would happen to him, fear that everything they had built together would implode.
Simon didn’t want to consider that either.
However hard it was to deal with the uncertainty of his visions, Simon really did understand where Joe was coming from.
After all, shit happens. He really just hoped these events would pick their times a little bit better.
He made his way slowly down to the first floor, Joe walking carefully behind him to confirm that he was okay.
By the time Simon reached ground level, he felt a certain sense of relief, but nothing compared to the obvious relief on his foreman’s face.
He punched him lightly in the shoulder. “I’m heading home for a while. ”
“Yeah, you do that,” Joe muttered, “and maybe get an assistant to come here and there and everywhere instead of you. You need to take better care of yourself, boss. We can’t lose you.”
“Meaning that anybody else is more expendable?” Simon quipped.
“To a certain extent, yeah,” Joe stated, “but anybody else is also not likely to be doing the things you do, probably wouldn’t be out on the girders. You? … That’s a whole different story.”
With a raised hand Simon acknowledged his foreman’s fears and took off to walk toward the downtown core. The walk would do him good. It would help him to re-establish contact with the world around him, even if it still felt unsteady, trying to clear the residual fog in his brain.
He walked a couple more blocks, heading almost instinctively to a coffee vendor outside a little park where he could sit.
… Simon just needed to spend a few minutes collecting his thoughts.
Yet, if so, he should have done it right then and there.
Not understanding exactly what the draw was, he headed into the coffee shop, grabbed a coffee and a breakfast sandwich, and took them outside to sit in the sun.
As he settled here, he felt a weird sense of déjà vu coming over him.
He still felt the influx of energy from his recent vision in his building, yet something was odd about the energy currently around him.
He wouldn’t forget this vision for a while, and Joe would likely never forget.
As Simon sat here, munching, he searched the energy, the source of the uncertainty, that weird sense of something going on.
Yet nothing was clear-cut about it. He just noted a weird off-putting energy slipping around him, and he couldn’t quite get at it.
His grandmother would undoubtedly say that he was the one who was resisting, that he should just get out of his own way. Then it would all fall into place. With that in mind, he closed his eyes and let his thoughts just drift.
He was alone in the park, yet people were walking past, more than likely oblivious to the strange man sitting on a park bench.
Even so he wasn’t getting anything. He finished his coffee, taking the last bite of his sandwich, and just sat here, contemplating the changes in his life, positive and negative.
How very inconvenient these visions were when he was on a mission and had things to do and places to be.
These issues came together in a way that made his life even more complicated.
As he went to get up, his legs collapsed out from under him, and he sat back down, hard.
Suddenly he was not in the park anymore.
No foot traffic passed in front of him. No movement, no sound, just …
silence. Then he heard it again, that same soft sobbing, that painful heartbreaking anguish of some grief, longing, something.
He had no idea what this vision was about, and it wasn’t interactive. He couldn’t reach out and talk to her. He was simply seeing this pale ghostly image of somebody, their grief spilling all over.
Grief should be private. It should be something that people had a chance to just let loose and to let go, knowing they were safe and secure from prying eyes. Yet here Simon was, a voyeur in someone else’s world.
He didn’t want to be a witness, but he had no other choice for the moment. Or was it his inability to step back out of it? Maybe there was an etiquette to this.
As he sat here—with no idea of who and what was going on around him, yet knowing that something was happening—he watched and waited until she calmed down.
Meanwhile Simon mentally sent her healing energy, energy of love, energy of peace, energy that This too shall pass, all in the hopes that it would help.
By the time she finally stopped crying, he was shifted from that vision to another. He tried to stop it, to pull back out, but his whole body had been bent forward with the force of a firm hand behind his neck. Meanwhile somebody else said, Look. You can’t ignore this. … Just look!
Then suddenly that force was gone, and he was back in the park, staring around in confusion.