Overture to Chemistry

    In a small apartment in a small city, Nigel stares at his toaster.  The television is on in the background.  Someone on the news claims to have mathematically disproven Wednesdays.
    Nigel works at an average-sized gardening supply store, stocking shelves and tending the register.  He paints abstract landscapes, which he sells on the internet for between fifty and three hundred dollars.  He used to own a cat, but he gave it to an acquaintance when he got into a relationship with a girl who was allergic.  The relationship has since ended, but he has not asked for the cat back.  Nigel also knows the exact date of the apocalypse, which happens to be exactly six hundred years, two hundred and fifty-five days, seven hours, twelve minutes, and forty-three seconds from when he finished his buttered toast.

    At work, Nigel helps an elderly woman find catnip.  She is six feet tall and she wears a purple dress with a blue sunhat.  She stands in the store for a few minutes before she starts sobbing uncontrollably.  Nigel takes her to the back of the store, where she stutters out an apology, explaining that her husband of forty years died two years ago.  For some reason, the idea hadn’t “sunk in” until today.  Nigel lets her calm down, and lets her have the catnip for nothing.

    An overweight man with a short beard enters the store seven minutes after the woman leaves.  He buys hedge trimmers, a hatchet, and a coil of wire.  Samantha, Nigel’s coworker, gives the man his change.  After he leaves, Samantha mentions him to Nigel.
    “I reckon,” said Samantha, “that guy spent the whole time he was coming here worried that we’d think he was a serial killer or something.”  Nigel shrugs.
    At lunch, Samantha asks Nigel to go with her to a movie that weekend.  He agrees.  Nigel doesn’t tell her that he has already seen the movie, nor does he tell her that he hated it.

    That afternoon, the manager brings Nigel into his office.  He glares at Nigel for a while, then asks why he let the lady in the purple dress walk out without paying for her catnip.  Nigel, not prepared, stammers and bluffs that since she had a good experience at their store, she would be more likely to come back.  The manager stares at Nigel for a minute, then laughs.  He tells Nigel that he’s promoting him to assistant manager.

    That evening in his apartment, Nigel gets out his paint and a canvas.

    A silver sun bows down over the wasteland, caressed by a single wispy pink cloud.  The sunlight strokes the blue-and-bronze-striped rocks that line the copper-colored sand.  The rocks melt up, droplets of liquid stone retaining their stripes as they drip into little upside-down puddles.  The light reflects off of the bronze but not the blue, and there are shadows on the blue but not the bronze.  Somewhere in the middle pure potential is twitching and writhing and glittering, a magnificent detonation intertwined with unbreakable chemical bonds.
   

    Nigel admires the painting for a little while.  He signs it, dates it, and titles it “Overture to Chemistry.” He cleans his brushes, puts away the paints, and folds up the old blanket he uses as a tarp.  He makes himself a ham sandwich for dinner.  Later he puts the painting up for sale, starting at one hundred and fifty dollars.

    Nigel and Samantha both have Saturday afternoon off.  They watch the first forty minutes of the movie, then leave.  They go to Nigel’s apartment.  She stops by again on Sunday.  He meets her at her condominium the next Friday.

    On the first day of the next month, the manager of the gardening store is killed by a drunk driver.  Nigel attends the funeral, but Samantha doesn’t.

    Samantha writes a novella about a serial killer who tortures his victims with gardening tools.  As she writes it Nigel offers constructive criticism, most of which she ignores.  The book, which she titles The Rakeist, enjoys moderate sales.

    The gardening supply store wins an award for a magazine that focuses on locally owned businesses.  Nigel accepts the award, not pointing out that the magazine determinedly ignores the fact that a massive soda company had its headquarters in the city.

    A movie studio offers to turn The Rakeist into a feature film.  Samantha moves to San Francisco to adapt the novel into a script.  Three weeks later, a drunk Samantha calls Nigel to tell him that she won’t be coming back.  A month later, she calls again and asks if he wouldn’t mind picking her up from the airport next week.

    That evening, in Samantha’s condo, Nigel proposes.

    The movie adaptation of The Rakeist opens to generally positive critical reception, but does very poorly at the box office.  Exactly one year later, Nigel and Samantha get married.
    They have two children, both girls, named Mary and Chloe.  One summer when Mary is fourteen and Chloe is ten, Nigel takes them out to the park.  There, he tells them the exact date of the apocalypse.  Mary doesn’t care, but Chloe listens, and Nigel knows that she’ll remember it.