Posted on Friday, 16 May 2003, at 2:52 a.m.

Nothing at all to do. Nothing at all.

That may seem a completely normal thing for most people, but it isn't for me. George Knightley, Vice-President of a rather prestigious firm, does not usually get time to think, especially in his office. And thank God for it. I have very little to think about except things I shouldn't think about at all, or rather things that I can't think about in the only way I am allowed to think about them.

Confused yet?

Sigh. It would make sense if you knew Emma. Or rather, everything would cease to make sense in such pleasant, I-have-Emma-let-the-world-blow-up kind of way, that confusion on the thoughts of a maniac would stop being relevant. Emma. John says my eyes glaze over whenever I talk about her. I personally think my brain stops functioning. We may both be right.

Emma is the daughter of Mr. Henry Woodhouse, an old friend of my father. Capital man, with lots of capital. Unexceptionable family, old roots, old money, old home, the whole lot. Mr. Woodhouse is frail, rather fussy, almost a hypochondriac, and also kind, simple, and elderly. How he got a daughter like Emma, I will never know.

Emma is...now, how to describe her? It's rather impossible, unless you go by metaphors. Like a butterfly emerging from a dew-spotted cocoon at dawn in May. Like the rays of sunshine that pierce dark, hazy clouds and give an aura to whatever they fall on. Like Sunday mornings when the sun creeps up through your window, gently beckoning you awake while reminding you that it is, indeed, a holy day. Like those half-ope'd roses that poets go dotty about. Like everything beautiful - a colt capering around it's grazing mother, the cool touch of a window when it's raining outside, the exotic dancing of a fire when you feed it dry wood - everything beautiful, rolled into one and held together by pure kindness.

John also says I wax poetic whenever I speak of her.

I disagree, although it's true that this curious romanticism in me started rather late in life. I always thought that I would die a bachelor, even after my younger brother got married. He had shown promising signs of remaining a spinster himself, but, alas, got drawn into marriage by that (as it was to me then) incomprehensible thing, love. I had planned that we would live like Higgins and Pickering, two happy men without the nuisance of the female of the species, but I restrained my disappointment at this overthrow of my arrangements. Mother and father would have been glad to see the family line extended. So, despite the fact that my resolve to not marry weakened a little at the thought of living alone, I truly believe I would have followed through. I am, after all, a man of decision.

Except for the fact that John, being a lawyer, would never leave an avenue of escape. Of all the wonderful, brilliant young women he could marry, it simply had to be Emma's older sister.

I was born doomed.

I can't even say that I loved her the moment I laid eyes on her at the marriage ceremony. That would at least make the story pretty. And I would've liked to add a touch about how I was too noble to bind her to myself when she hadn't seen the world, hadn't lived her dreams, hadn't done everything she wanted to. I would have liked it even better to say that she professed her eternal, undying love for me. But my story isn't a love-story. It's more a lovesick-story. And one of these days it might become lovesick-man-falling-from-thirteenth-story-office story.

Thirteenth. I told you I was cut out for a bad end.

As it is, seeing her after the space of the six years she was at college excited no lover-like instincts in me. She was more exuberant, more open, and decidedly prettier, but I suppose I was too involved in the marriage ceremony to pay much attention. I wish I had paid more attention. I wish I'd told John to go to hell and get married there, and pursued Emma relentlessly until she agreed to marry me.

I hope John never sees this.

Anyway, after the marriage, she came back home to live with her father, since she'd finished her MBA (rather early actually, she was only twenty-three then) and wanted to take over the family business, which is absolute balderdash, since she's really the one who's been handling it after Mrs. Woodhouse died. But, being the kind, neighborly, elderly friend of the family, I decided to mentor the girl. Amazingly enough, it went rather well for the first two years. She soon got the hang of it - her only problem had been in making solid stock market investments, but that's my forte - and she had that self-confidence which made me sure that she'd fall on her feet. She drifted off into her own little world of business, defied me at every chance she got, and laughed heartily when it only proved that I had been right.

I feel another bout of poetry coming on regarding her spirits and laugh, but I heroically resist temptation.

She turned twenty-five at the end of last year. It was also the year one of her close friends got remarried. I wish to God that she'd stayed single the rest of her life. No, I bear her no personal malice, but she had to marry the one person who had to have as son the one man that turned my whole life upside down.

Frank Churchill. The name reeks of money and old nobility. It smells of the expiration of my dreams. I detest the man. I feel like burning this piece of paper because it has that - that - creature's name on it. I'd have a restraining order against him coming near Emma if I could. The double-dealing sniveling little puppyish - I'm sure you grasp the concept I'm trying to get across.

Too bad Emma's going to marry him.

Jealousy is a horrible thing, probably more horrible to those who haven't felt it before. I've been too satisfied with my life to feel even professional jealousy, and jealousy in love is a horrid, soul-eating thing. And as soon as I'd heard that disgusting name, I knew that I'd have to live with jealousy for the rest of my life. Can you blame me for hating the man? It doesn't help that he is, by all material standards, quite perfect for Emma. Rich, young, and handsome - or so Isabella tells me. I think he looks like a cross between an inbred bulldog and inexpertly boiled cabbage, but that's just me. And the Westons are encouraging the despicable dog in his designs to seduce Emma against her will -

Er...not exactly. So this little thing called conscience finally speaks up. I'd strangle it if I could. Without a conscience, I could at least try to win over Emma, despite the fact that I'm thirty-five, preoccupied, and stupid in the matters of love. Despite the fact that Emma, to all appearances, loves the man. Damn.

The phone rings. Let it ring, I think, but the dratted thing called conscience wakes up again and prods my tired brain into functioning. I pick up the phone. It's John.

"George! How are you?"

"Dead."

"Aw, c'mon."

"Close enough as makes no difference. Really, John, why did you have to call me? I was just thinking of murdering someone, and I've lost my chain of thought."

"Chain of thought?"

"Hey, good idea, I hadn't thought of that. Yes, hanging him with a chain, what a wonderful idea. He'd deserve it. And then there's the idea of a chainsaw." Actually, he'd deserve having his fingernails pulled out and his ear lobes ripped and his nostrils slit and -

"Um, George? You're getting a little sadistic these days." Little does he know how true that is.

"Look, was there some point to this call? I'm really in a bad mood right now. So if this is just some chirrupy phone call about how everything's perfectly spiffy in your corner of the world, I'm going to tell you take those bright words, boil them, and stuff them down a dead flatworm's throat." Flatworms don't really have throats, I think, but how's a lawyer to know?

"Really, George, do you want me to hand the phone to Isabella?" That gives me pause, as John knew it would. I try to maintain some semblance of good behavior with my sister-in-law, who is really a wonderful woman. Not my idea perfection perhaps, but as good eggs go, she must be a beautifully shiny, crack-less, well-boiled one with sweetened coffee on the side. I think might be just a little hungry.

"George?" The voice on the other end sounds a little concerned now. I'm glad. Now that my murderous mood has receded somewhat, I want to talk to him about Emma. He can't help me (unless helping me constitutes saving me from the death-sentence after I murder Frank Churchill, an idea that grows more appealing every moment). And John knows everything already, so no icky revelations to bestow.

"You didn't ask who I wanted to murder. I was thinking about Churchill."

"Oh." A pause. I understand it. I know. It's rather a bad line to start conversation with. Quite the non sequitur. What do you say to a prospective murderer? 'Don't do it, we love you'? 'Think of your parents - they wouldn't want you to spend the rest of your' lonely, sad, loveless, Emmaless, 'life as a number in prison'? Poor John. He must have to put up with a lot, with a burdensome brother like me. Sigh. I give new meaning to the word 'depressed,' take the part of the pining lover to new heights. I ought to be flayed to within an inch of my lousy life for being so mean-spirited. Although being flayed to outside of my life sounds better.

"Sorry John. Got a little carried away. How's Isabella?" Just be nice, I chant to myself. Don't act like you're going to bite off the hand of anyone who pets you. There's a pause at the opposite end. I'm a horrible brother.

"She's fine." His voice is nervous, and I can sympathize. I wouldn't cherish the thought of having a madman for a brother either. "So are the kids. You're coming over this weekend, aren't you? Josh has been wanting to talk to you." There's another good egg, my brother. Lets me near his kids even when I talk of torture and murder. Really, he's rather careless. Very affectionate, I'm sure, but rather careless. But I like the children, who are all exceptionally well behaved (tribute to their father) and very healthy (worry of their mother, who thinks that that normal kids should perhaps not be that healthy - don't ask me explain the mind of a mother).

"Yes, I'll be there."

"Good. And you won't - "

"No, I'll let the scum live another week. I'm too tired as it is."

"Wonderful. I've won a rather important case, and we were thinking of celebrating over a picnic. How does that sound?"

To be quite honest, it sounds horrid. "It sounds wonderful." It would, if Emma were there, her long hair let down, fluttering lightly in the breeze. She has beautiful hair. And eyes. Beautiful eyes. When she laughs, I can see a thousand stars burst inside those eyes, and the light illuminates her whole face as if she were beaming from the inside out. Sometimes I think that all I want is to be able to look in those eyes forever, and I could forget the fact that even being with her hurts me more than anything else ever did, that one moment in her company ends up being hashed over for hours on sleepless nights.

John is saying something, and I've missed it completely. Safest to agree with whatever he's saying. He can't choose worse for me than I've chosen for myself, falling in love with a girl who loves someone else. I sigh. I'm very tired now, and there's no chance of seeing her today. I might as well go home.

"Look John, I have to go now. I have to come up early tomorrow for a meeting with a client, so I should go home now. I'll call you Friday." John makes no resistance, and I get ready to leave. At least it's another day that I managed to get through without flinging myself out the window. Or sending a death-threat to Frank Churchill. Or murdering him. On the other hand, it's another day I didn't manage to fling myself out the window, or send a death-threat to Frank Churchill, or murder him.

Life was so simple before love came along.

I step into the elevator - fixing the elevator to plummet to the ground would be good way of finishing someone off, wouldn't it? - then press '1' and turn around - and meet the stuff that nightmares are made of. Mrs. Elton stands in plain sight in the corridor, bedecked in a purple iceberg-patterned monstrosity that would make the yeti turn pale and quake in fear, and I am but a lily-livered lowly human. A very nauseated lowly human. I edge quietly towards the side of the elevator to seek cover behind the panels of glowing numbers and curse my already rather cursed fate. However, it is the habit of humans to try to fight their fate. Looking straight ahead disinterestedly, I frantically and repeatedly press the 'Door Close' button, having a scare-to-none interest in talking to my doom - er - Mrs. Elton.

"Knightley, could you hold the door please?" comes the dreaded banshee voice. I've heard that banshee wails can be heard over fifty miles and instantly turn the listeners to stone. Well, no one in those fifty miles comes to my rescue, even though fifty miles is but an easy distance, and I know I don't turn to stone since I have never thought that stone could shudder as I do at hearing that voice. And that voice is asking me stop the silver doors that would secure me of a temporary haven from said voice? Never, till the blood runs pale in these veins, shall a Knightley willingly ensconce himself into an elevator with a banshee!

This is the ultimate challenge, I think. The test of my complacency. The thing that separates the boys from men, the amateurs from the acting stars. With a look of perfect nonchalance, I say, "I'm trying, Mrs. Elton," here deliberately and forcibly pressing the 'Door Close' button, "but it seems that the door won't stay open." The silver doors begin sliding, as if my heavy though unvoiced curses hasten them, but fate is against me: an orange - purple and orange! - shoe slides between the doors, and in slips The Purple Horror.

"Oh, thank you Knightley," it says, fluttering its lashes at me. The eyes are like dismembered spiders, rolling around shrewdly (though how spiders can roll shrewdly I know not). Dismembered spiders, to resume, whose sundry limbs have been attached to the lids of those eyes. I bravely repress another shudder. Never let the enemy know you are scared.

"Not at all, Mrs. Elton." There. That'll shut her up. And it does; the telltale sour look is crawling onto her face like a caterpillar. (If I could find a more unflattering comparison, I would write it down and gloat over it in my more hateful moods.) She hates that name. I'm not sure why, but probably because 'Elton' has such a country-parson sound to it.

Parson. Church. Churchill. Damn.

The Elevator Ride from Hell ends as the Elevator Ride Companion from Hell exits at the second floor, at which godforsaken level Elton works. I feel for the people working at that level, I really do. Breathing must be a grueling task in the vicinity of Augusta Elton, and terminating the bother must seem temptingly simple. I wouldn't be surprised to find that that floor had the highest suicide rate of the whole building. Scratch that. Probably of all the buildings of the whole corporation.

I somehow drive home, wrecking God alone knows how many cars and slaying countless stray animals that wander in my path. Driving seems so very unimportant and where I'm heading doesn't feel like home. It's an apartment, perhaps, a place to live, but not a home. It is not a place where two (or more) people live together, share happiness and sorrow, for better or for worse. It is only a nine-hundred-square-feet apartment that is too empty to call home.

As soon as I open the door to my apartment, I head to the kitchen and make a cup of coffee. I sit down with the boiling hot cup of coffee and stare into it. Who needs tea leaves when you have warm coffee? All important truths can be divined using a cup of coffee, without mucking about with soggy brown messes. The vapor coming out of the Styrofoam cup (hang the environment - I'm too depressed to care about it) tells me that there will be more confusion, and the murkiness of the brown color tells me that it's uncertain whether I succeed in murdering Frank Churchill tomorrow. The warmth of the liquid in my throat gives me hope of comfort from a friend, and the burning sensation in the hand tells me that I've spilled some coffee on myself. There, my present and my future, in as neat a package as could be desired. And, once I throw out my cup, no traces left. I like that. I like to be reserved, mysterious, so that no one knows what's going on in my head. Especially black-haired, hazel-eyed, beautiful no-ones.

Sigh.

Nothing at all to do. Nothing at all.

Except to think of Emma.

PS: "Don't do it, Woody, we LOVE you!" --Toy Story II