I moved out of St. Louis to Bridgton when I lost my job at Leinco Technologies. The rents were cheaper out there, as everyone was abandoning the place. Apparently the airport had expanded not that long ago, even though the town tried to fight against it. Ever since then, people have been getting out of there.

I took an apartment in the basement of a house near the 270, so I could hear the rush of traffic in my bedroom. I would often lie awake at night, not knowing what I was doing to do with my life, and I would listen for subtle changes in the constant hiss coming through the window. Sometimes things would quiet down for a while, or else there would be short spurts of intensity with lulls in between. Quite often a garbage truck or some other similar contraption would roar past, cutting through the normal static. I couldn’t sleep much. That’s the main point I’m trying to make here.

I often met Samuel after he was done at Leinco. He lived out in Chesterfield so it wasn’t too hard to get to his place. He’d bought a house a few years earlier with the expectation of filling it with a family. But things fell apart with his fiance, and she packed up and left. He took it hard for a while, but bounced back rather well. Imagine that. I got let go by Leinco and I was never the same, yet after only a few months he was carrying on as if his big break-up never happened.

We’d sit in the big living room in the middle of the house, which was filled with all the furniture he and his fiance had picked out way back when. He kept the place cool even when it wasn’t particularly hot outside. His coffee table was made of glass.

"So how do you like Bridgton?" he asked me soon after I moved there.

"Nobody likes Bridgton, " I told him. "Not even the people who live there. They like it the least, I think."

"Well, at least you found a place for now, " he said.

"For now, " I said. "I might be there forever. There’s no way I’m getting back into any kind of writing work now."

"You’ll be fine, " Samuel said. "Put me down as a reference. I’ll pretend I was your manager or something."

"I need a break, anyway, " I told him. "I have some money saved up."

"And then what?" Samuel said. "You’re going to sling coffee after that? You know, gaps in your resume don’t look good."

"People always say that, " I said. "You hear that everywhere. It’s one of those things you always hear, even when you’re working. People are just walking around telling each other the same story even when it’s not relevant to them."

"Let me make some calls for you, " Samuel said. "I know some places that might be looking."

"The work was just getting unbearable at Leinco, " I said. "Don’t you think?"

"It’s fine, " Samuel said. "It’s all right. Obviously you didn’t think so."

"I remember when Joseph called me into his office and told me that I had to redo that entire section of the ELISA kit catalog, " I said. "He thought it was confusing."

"It was confusing, " Samuel said.

"But that’s their fault, " I said. "You know, they gave us the information to use. It’s not like we could come up with them. But Joseph is acting like I made everything up myself. He’s pointing out all the problems in the text and it’s like I’m supposed to apologize for their screw-ups. They gave us the information. We had to arrange it for them. It’s not like they gave us anything in the way of guidance. The kind of guidance we needed, anyway."

"You got to worked up about that one, " Samuel said. "I could hear you yelling from my workstation. I knew then that you wouldn’t last much longer."

"That wasn't it, though, " I said. "It wasn't because of that that they let me go."

"You don't even know what you're talking about, " Samuel said. "Everyone was talking about you. Even now you don't seem to realize that."

"There's always gossip going around, " I said.

"This was different, " Samuel told me. "It started out as regular gossip. But as things got worse, you became an important topic of conversation. We'd spend whole lunches in the break room talking about you. Some of them would go on and on even when one of the senior managers was around. You know, they couldn't stop themselves. You made a lot of people upset."

"There were so many problems with that place, " I said. "My only problem was that I spoke out about it."

"Leinco isn't that bad, " Samuel said. "There are good people there. They're trying to do good work. We just get the lousy work."

"Other places treat their writers better, " I said. "I know it."

"Then go work at one of those places, " Samuel said.

"I'm tired of that work now, " I said. "I don't enjoy it anymore."

My meet-ups with Samuel were always a touch uncomfortable, since I knew that, deep down, he really did believe in the work that Leinco was doing. I was fine with that, but we tried to avoid the topic as much as possible. I would ask Samuel about how his novel was going. Samuel grew up in Benton Park and had a pretty tough childhood. He was trying to put his memories into words, and he enjoyed describing the process. He was never prentious about it. He just talked about it like someone might talk about fixing up an old car. He looked at it as a project he was tinkering with, and would finish when the time was right.

Once when I was coming home from Samuel's place, I stopped at a hotel off the highway instead of going home. I was thinking about Samuel's novel and his life, and my problems seemed to pale in comparison to what he had been through. I could not face my small, grim apartment knowing that it was own mistakes that had put me there.

I got myself a room and then headed over to the small bar on the other side of the lobby. I got myself a vodka tonic and took a look around the place. One table in the corner was occupied by two young couples who looked like they'd been on the road for a while. Another had a fellow in a business suit flipping through pages in a binder. I downed my drink and got myself another.

"Slow night tonight, " the bartender told me as he poured.

"This doesn't look like a place that's normally all that busy, " I said. "No offence."

"We get conference people coming in the spring and summer, " he said. "You'd be surprised. That's when things get a bit rowdy."

"Businessmen sweating and screaming into the karaoke machine, " I said.

"Something like that, " the bartender said.

"I've been to stuff like that, " I told him. "I even had to give a talk once. It was about 'best practices'. "Best practices of' something or another. I can't even remember the title. It went terribly. But they all go terribly. You know, you talk, and nobody's listening. The talks I went to, you know, I didn't listen either."

"But everyone gets a paid vacation, " the bartender said.

"It's not a vacation, " I said. "Not to everyone, anyway."

"Well, enough of them seem to have fun, " he said.

"Right, right, " I said.

I stayed there for another hour, putting away the drinks. Finally I got up on my feet. "A little unsteady, " I said to the bartender.

"I can get someone to give you a hand if you want, " I said.

"I'll be fine, " I told him.

"You should come back around here when it's busy, " he said. "Maybe you'll have more fun."

"I wouldn't count on that, " I said.

"You never know, " the bartender told me.

"I suppose you're right, " I said.

My room was on the third floor. It looked out over the highway, with the lights of the city behind it. It was a beautiful place at that hour. I haven't been back to St. Louis in years. But I'll always remember what it looked like from that hotel room. When I'm old and my mind is rotting away, I hope that's the last image of the city I keep with me.