It's Impossible

Mornings are the only part of my day that follow a routine.

Boot up the computer. Start the coffee. Warm up the printer. Pull the sign ins from the day before. Check the email. Copy the receipts and scan to the office. All while fielding the typical early morning banter. Morning Stella. How You Doin, Sunshine? Oops spilled the coffee. Where’s the paper towels?

Enter yesterday’s time into the cards. File. File. File.

Safety meeting.

It’s an interactive soundtrack that repeats itself every morning. Like the dialogue from “It’s a Wonderful Life” I have it memorized right down to the pauses. On occasion, Civil Soup will whistle a few out of tune bars from some country song but that’s about as exciting as it gets.

This morning, as I was making the coffee, however, a different soundtrack wafted in from that end of the trailer.

Strangers in the night. Two lonely people, they were strangers in the night.

I frowned. Sinatra? Really? The voices in my head don’t usually do Old Blue Eyes.

Tendrils of Sinatra curled beneath the closed door of Mechanical Soup’s office, wafting toward me in buttery streams. Just then, the door opened and Zorro emerged, all six foot five of him, moustache and all, singing in a strong rich baritone.

 Up to the moment we said our first hello, little did we know, love was just a glance away, a warm embracing dance away…

He was deep in a set of drawings, his brow furrowed in concentration, but his steel toed boots weren’t feeling the isometrics. Instead they heel-toed their way along the vinyl in perfect time to the beat. Never looking up, he shifted seamlessly from one song to the next, like an old vinyl 72.

Heaven, I’m in heaven. And the cares that hung around me through the week seem to vanish like a gamblers winning streak when we’re dancing cheek to cheek.

Zorro. Sinatra.

Sinatra. Zorro.

I poured myself a cup and returned to my desk but my brain refused to reboot. I just sat there, feeling the universe shift beneath me. Hardhats and safety glasses don’t sing Sinatra. They just don’t.

Call me irresponsible. Call me unreliable. Throw in undependable too. Do my foolish alibis bore you? Well I’m not so clever, I just adore you.

Call me unpredictable. Tell me I’m impractical. Rainbows I’m inclined to pursue. Call me irresponsible. Yes I’m unreliable. But it’s undeniably true. I’m irresponsibly mad for you.

Seriously. The power of music is astounding. I was transported out of the dingy trailer to another place, where the world turned to black and white women wore crimson lipstick with clip on earrings and men tipped fedoras and actually knew how to dance. It was all I could do to keep from kicking off my shoes and twirling across the floor.

And for the rest of the day, I couldn’t look at Zorro without wondering ...
Who are you? And with a voice like that, why aren't you on  Broadway?