I saw a man on the El today, this is probably his story

He climbed the snow bank and checked the Shawnee compass his uncle had given him. Due south. What did that mean?

He was pressing, hard, the graphite tip, and muttering to himself, “What was Dad listening to on the news? What is the capital of that country?” Slipping away from the answer, which was Pyongyang, he began to daydream about Angela, the girl sitting in front of him. He swore he’s smelled that smell before. He thought she was pretty, the kind of pretty that would cause flattened pressure in this chest. But that smell, that purposeful smell....

Aunt Ellen.

He would ask Samantha to homecoming instead.

He would marry Elizabeth at age 37, a hasteful yet delightfully sobering decision. He’d missed the chance several years ago to pay for Emma’s coffee, which had cost him. He didn’t know her last name, or her hometown, or even the way she liked her coffee. But she had smiled at him. She has smiled, and he slinked out the door, late for work.

He’s 48 now, on the glimmering white squares at Target, quickly buying a blow up mattress. Elizabeth and him are nothing now, not after she took charcoal sketching. Or at least charcoal sketching with Dave. Either way, he’s got to buy an extension cord.

He began to write feverishly on the bus back to his flat. Rolling down thick brick banks by the river, the graphite again skimming the blue lines of loose leaf, the Gherkin in the background hiding the spiraling downfall of his optimism, until the No. 2 came to a rest in the middle of the page. Due south was that way, and he had wasted too much time already.