Why We Came to the City by Jansma Kristopher

Author:Jansma, Kristopher [Jansma, Kristopher]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-01-28T19:00:00+00:00

OCTOBER

George stared at his smooth white coffee cup, determined that, by the time he finished it, his life would be forever changed. Before this burned Starbucks coffee, he’d been George Murphy, jovial drinker, perhaps at times a little weak willed, not just with alcohol but with many things: sleeping past his alarm, eating at the McDonald’s drive-through when he was in a hurry (and also when he wasn’t), spending too much money on things he didn’t need (at this he glanced guiltily toward the bulging Barnes & Noble bag on the seat beside him), and listening to the same rock music he liked in college, even though he knew it put him in an angry mood. Before this cup of burned coffee, yes, he’d been a man of bad, unbreakable habits. And yes, he, like the rest of them, had begun to go a little crazy with everything that was going on lately.

But after this cup, an entirely new George would emerge. A George more like these other productive and wholesome people at the bookstore café! A George who listened to peaceful, acoustic, harmonious songs like the one playing overhead, “Not Worth Fighting” by Envoy. This would be the soundtrack of the new, punctual, in-shape, fiscally responsible George.

Most important, the sober George. He wouldn’t have another drink. These days it brought him little of the weightless joy it once had. More often than not, now, it just weighed him down more. It made him hazy and slow-witted. It was hard to admit it, even just to himself, but it had cost him a potential job at Harvard. He’d been lucky enough they’d called him, but now it had been weeks. Who was he kidding? He’d been so wretchedly nervous before the interview that he’d popped into a bar to calm down, thinking it might help to be around some people. He’d just had one beer. Full of confidence, he’d walked into the room where Drs. McManus and Schwartz from the physics department were waiting to interview him. Then, paralyzed by the certainty that the men could smell the suds on his breath, George had found himself barely able to answer even their simplest questions about the collapse of 237 Lyrae V.

Well, no more. That was the old George Murphy. Forever he would look back on that moment as the turning point—well, as a turning point that had then led to this turning point—to this cup of burned coffee, after which nothing would ever be the same.

Because now he had a reason to turn it all around. And screw his own well-being and his own future—those had been proven to be woefully inadequate to the task. That’s why he’d been put between this rock and a hard place. Thank God it wasn’t Sara.

“Thank you,” he said out loud.

No one in the café even turned their head as he spoke to himself. They were all busily tapping away on their laptops, earbuds shoved halfway down their eustachian tubes. He heard no clinking

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