Overdressed: two thick, wool, rag sweaters, a pair of wool army slacks, a cool, black leather jacket with a matching smart leather cap and a heavy backpack. Panic shot through his veins when he looked at the clock while he was garnishing his body with too many clothes. Lists of "things he had to do", his insecurities, his hopes and fears, and every component of his neurosis were scrolling before his mind's eye like credits before the major motion picture of his life that only existed in his doleful mind.

Quickly, he grabbed his backpack. He had forgotten to pack his toothbrush so he rushed to the bathroom to get it and shoved it in his backpack.

"I can't believe this... oh yeah, I have to feed the fish ...here little fishies-little dishies," and he continued to talk to himself and the fish. The phone rang and he flinched. "I'm not answering the phone, I don't have time," he talked to himself and the fish. Four, long, high-pitched and electronic yells pierced his busy eardrums as he was on his way out the door. Jonathan was reaching his paramount of anxiety--feeling his ears fill with blood from the tank of his angry soul.

Click. "Jonathan, hi, just calling to see if you left yet...see you in a few hours." Click. Rewind. Click. Jonathan stood still with one hand holding open his backpack and the other hand wrestling through his thick, matted locks. He was standing beside his bed, slightly hunched, staring into the red light/green light of his answering machine. He had the same answering machine that he'd bought many years before. Jonathan didn't want to bother with the new amenities of the phone company: voice-mail and call waiting. He thought call waiting was rude.

After hearing the message, he was roused by the pressure of his friends putting pressure on him to get to their house. Possibly, the intention, he thought, was one that inferred that he was irresponsible or unstable. Because he wasn't married or didn't have a girlfriend that supported timeliness, meant he didn't have his act together? Jonathan configured people's actions toward him as formulas that only applied to that particular equation of a person. That equation, being any equation that he created in order to base his actions on how stereotypical personalities reacted upon his actions. Although he excelled in math throughout is twenty years of formal education; he didn't care for it. Its functionality was his attraction to it.

When it came to interpersonal encounters though, he thought of physics. He applied it and it worked. Until this day, Jonathan adapted his linear pattern of thought to any person whom he encountered or simply observed. He then began to calculate how many minutes it would take for him to get to the train station, how long the ticket line might be, and the possibility that he may have to purchase his ticket on the train. Therefore, it would cost him more money.

Jonathan had haphazardly filled his gray backpack with clothing for a restful weekend in the country with his friends Dean and Sabrina. Their company was peaceful, relaxed and seemingly stable. Prosperity of all humanly needs wants and desires seemed to hover like a halo over their home and barn. As he thought of them while locking up his apartment, Jonathan wasn't sure if it was their mien or their personalities that appealed to him.

Almost as if a string connected the movements, he bolted the top lock then dragged his thin fingers and cumbersome keys through his hair. As badly as he wanted to run down the stairs, he chose to take the sweet-talking, female voiced elevator that he loathed. Her cold, silver doors slid open to his jittery body. Jonathan walked into her vacant cell. "Elevator down," she cooed. Easing his back onto her carpeted walls, he closed his eyes. Strangely, there were no other stops. The square, lit "L" button lit up when he touched it and he walked up to her doors while she silently slid then open for his release.

Jonathan had quite a unique gait. His steps were grand and sound. In opposite union with his arms, his legs strode like a wind-up toy soldier. At the same time he slid like a champion figure skater. Both arms lifted upward to push open the glass door. He passed the doors and was assaulted by the noises of the city. Immediately, Jonathan came to a halt. "Damn it!" he barked. He had forgotten to get his umbrella out of the backpack before he zipped it. He did not know or think that it was raining. Throwing the pack from his shoulder and onto the wet cement, he was remembering shoving the umbrella into the side pouch.

It was rush hour before Christmas. Hell. He detested Christmas, religion, advertising and elves. Business people, shoppers and street urchins were dodging him as if they were professional athletes. Swiftly, almost precisely, he pulled the umbrella from the backpack as if he was unsheathing a sword from its scabbard. Jonathan thrust into the fierce umbrella hovered crowd as a warrior would into battle. An offensive player on the city streets; he rarely, except for an occasional old woman or fervent psychotic, would break his designated stride. When someone would detour his path, he would sigh deeply or give a sarcastic "excuse me." His eyes fixed into a linear gaze-accomplice to his mind and stride. The rain gushed and spit on the old, gray city and onto Jonathan who felt insulted that it had to hit him. With each step he walked further and further into his vacation and what he'd envisioned it might be. With these steps, the crowd of people seemed to multiply like bacteria.

Umbrellas hitting umbrellas-poking metal spokes jabbed at other spokes that had disrobed their canvas. He watched the sneering old men, giggling teenagers, and squinting secretaries struggle to get home, or wherever they were going. A swarm of excitement buzzed through his center when a pretty woman glanced at him and smiled. A flash of him thrusting into her past as quickly as it came. He walked through this, extending his umbrella vertically to avoid contact and to maintain his gallant pace.

Jonathan saw a thin, slovenly dressed woman doing the same chivalrous act. Watching her extending her shield to the sky two or three times before she drew unto him, he contemplated the possibility of what might happen when they would pass one another. The chances were, he thought, that she would lift her umbrella, unknown that, he too knew the trick of umbrella lifting. So, Jonathan chose to keep his umbrella closed. He had not been at the focal point of her urban gaze as she was to him. She lifted, and he smiled. Another completed equation and even a grander completion, for he had no verbal communication with the fellow umbrella lifter-only deduction.

Another red light...he stood past the curb within inches of the passing cars. Exhaust fumes were making his stomach do dives. His heart was clapping, the audience of his drama. Dean and Sabrina had evolved to Gods; their country home was the heavens and he was Lucifer damned to hell-only visiting bliss in disguise. Dean and Sabrina were his friends from college. They hadn't seen him for five years, and didn't know how his love for life had dissolved and had been blanched by over-analyses of everything and every person in whom he'd once found beauty.

"Unbelievable," he said aloud. Then, he realized that he wasn't at home and these strangers weren't fish. Thinking of them as his fishies in their safe tank, he felt sorry for them-for humanity and himself. Jonathan checked his watch every few steps. Knowing that he would make his train, had no relevance. Believing that some external force could possibly deter him from his scheduled departure was the nexus between his anxiety and neuroticism.

His eyes caught an oncoming withered bum. The closer that the bum came to him the clearer the bum's withered face appeared; large pores and red, blotchy patches. Jonathan felt a faint touch on his arm and when he looked down at his sleeve he saw a bony, wrinkled hand slip from him. Although Jonathan rarely revealed superstition, he thought of this as a sign. What kind of sign, he had no idea. He thought of the homeless drunks, junkies and dregs of society and felt lucky that he wasn't included in that facet of existence.

He passed another umbrella dodger; a man who looked much like himself, but not over-dressed. The man was middle-aged, concentrated and he frowned so much that his expression was permanently etched into the character lines in his face. Yet, he dodged differently than Jonathan. He combined his upward arm movement with quick slices from side to side. Jonathan conjured the idea that he was a man's man; a man who plays and watches a lot of sports and drinks with his buddies on a specific night of the week. "If only my feet could move as speed as fast as my brain... if only I would blink my eyes and be there in the nimbus of Dean and Sabrina," he thought. Then, a sudden sadness poured over him and mixed in with the rain. He had realized as one does in a spectacular revelation, that he didn't care too much for his to be host and hostess. He didn't even know them as they were now. Actually, they always got on his nerves. Guilt put its hands around Jonathan's stomach and lightly squeezed. A vision of Sabrina, nude, standing in front of him masturbating, caught him off-guard.

"Why the hell am I visiting these people? I mean, Jesus, I really couldn't care less how Sabrina looks nude...and, well I'll just drink a lot and ride their horses - talk about the environment," thought Jonathan. Again, the formula was applied, solved and pushed into the perpetually crowded theater of his mind.

He slowed down his pace while walking down the stairs to get to the train: forgetting to enfold his umbrella. Underground, canvassed by concrete, and surrounded by shield-less pedestrians; Jonathan felt foolish. He closed the umbrella. Two spokes were exposed and the canvas was pulled toward the center. With his arm extended out from his side he dropped the umbrella into a trash can and swept his hands much as people do when they've just done a well-performed house cleaning. Early for the train, he stood in peace by the tracks and watched the people wait while he waited.

Kathryn Lewis moved from Philadelphia to Seattle seven years ago and is presently getting tired of the rain. She has been published in The Welcomat, The San Diego Reader, Art Matters, and Hunger Magazine. She was accepted to the Ploughshares International Fiction Writers Seminar in the Netherlands, but could not afford to go. She has a small business of her own so she doesn’t have to deal with Corporate land. Her education was at York College, Temple University, through travelling and in the observation of and the participation in life itself.