I sit down on a toilet in a locked stall, with my pants up and head between my knees, silently mouthing the words to “Radio Nowhere” at double speed. Singing helps sometimes, when I’m spiraling—spinning out from whatever center I have left. Not right now. Right now it does shit. I close my eyes and try to step out of my body, away from the terror that’s gripping my chest, the nauseous sag of deflated gut, the rust in every hinge.

I gasp greedily for air that’s fertile with other people’s waste, but my lungs aren’t working. Each breath slides in and out without catching purchase. My heart is thumping through every limb, faster and faster, and my vision is failing at the edges—losing ground to a shimmering void. I slap a hand to my chest to hold it all in, to slow things down while sweat stabs at the edge of my eye, and I think the thought that has become so familiar that it feels like home:

This is it. It’s here. This is how I die. Any second now I’m going to die.

In the stall next to mine, the toilet flushes and I clamp down my breath with the last of my dignity, so some sad sap doesn’t have to hear his boss’s gasping death throes. Footsteps fill the room with a consuming echo. A tap opens to a rush of water. A throat is cleared, a nose sniffed, and somehow the proximity of mundane activity brings me slowly back to earth. I let myself breathe again. I can still feel my heart pounding, but it’s starting to find its old rhythm. The smell of shit—that guardian angel’s shit—fills my nostrils, and I almost laugh. But I wait for him to leave instead, and exit my stall to face my trembling reflection.

Allen Perch.

The crooked tie, sweat-drenched shirt, bags under the eyes and faded hair retreating from a worried forehead. The only difference between him and me is that his waistline responded to the stress by expanding. I fiddle with my belt—starting to lose its grip, even in the tightest notch—and try to contemplate the prospect of a late lunch, but my stomach balls up in an angry little fist that squeezes something like rotting rhubarb up to the back of my tongue.

Allen Perch was my boss at The Dispatch six years ago, before I left to start Volitics. When all the blogs were personalizing, he dismissed it as a fad, then spent a year playing catch-up as the readership tanked. I was his senior editor, and ten years his junior, and he thought of me as tech savvy. I was the one he came to—with eyes bugging out and stupid desperate questions on his lips (“But how will they know which front page is the real one?”). I was the person who suppressed a pained expression while I tried to explain. I was the one he patted on the shoulder with each new concession to aging and obsolescence.

I untuck the excess folds of my shirt to let it air out, splash cold water on my face to wash away the image of Allen Perch. I’m still shaking. My legs feel empty and my head is humming. Little points of light shoot about like a family of Pleiades burning up in my peripheral. I keep my movements slow and stiff. Cautious. Whatever consonance there is between me and my body is tenuous at best. For now I’m in control. For now we’re on the same team. I breathe in, breathe out. The door opens behind me and I flinch.

          -Keith Baldwin