The brown brick building stood as lines and planes in the shadows. Icarus ran a gloveless hand over its rough surface. The windowed top of the skyscraper was lost in the wintry gray sky. His office was up there. They’d given him until the end of the year to clear it out. There was no more time for postponing.

He walked inside the building, doffing his hat toward the doorman. The opulence he’d taken for granted — the brass fittings and the granite floors, the sculptures on the walls and the chandeliers, but most of all the sheer brilliance of a place occupied by rising stars like himself — now chilled his threadbare soul. Nodding at the attendant, he took the elevator to the roof. It was a cloudy night but as he looked out, he felt like he could see for miles. An icy gust blew past him, and he leaned into it. For an instant it was as if he could ride on its strength, but the moment passed and he was mortal again, just another ruined businessman looking down on a world he’d once owned.

“You’re flying too high,” his father-in-law had said so many times. A tinkerer in a mechanic’s shop, the man knew nothing of numbers and high stakes.

“It’s under control, Pa,” Icarus replied with a touch of arrogance. “I have to be going. Mabel and the kids are waiting.” They were still waiting. He hadn’t been home since that black day in October. He’d been wandering the streets for months, in and out of speakeasies and soup lines, stealing food to leave on their doorstep and coins for a cup of gin. Better off to stay away; better they figured him dead. Soon they’d forget him and start over again. He had failed them all.

Regret pressed into his shoulders as Icarus rested against the railing. The New Year’s ball was lit like the sun and poised over the square; underneath, a sea of dark faces had gathered to await its descent. Icarus climbed onto the railing and opened his arms to embrace the possibilities. The countdown began.

10, 9, 8…

Against the advice of his elders and on dreams of his own, he had escaped the labyrinth of mediocrity. It had been glorious, for a time.

7, 6, 5…

Then, crumpled in a blaze of his own failure, he’d been spit back to the ground. And still he couldn’t bear the thought, to never soar again.

4, 3, 2…

Goodbye Mabel, goodbye children. It was never all for naught. With the grace of a bird, Icarus dipped over the railing and disappeared into the irrevocable darkness.

1…

On equal parts passion, bravado, and love, Icarus took flight. His wings, like his hopes, were long discarded but, for a moment, the old dream was born anew.

Happy New Year!

Vanitha Sankaran spends her time balancing the two hemispheres of her mind between biomedical engineering and writing fiction. Her recent publications can be found in Midnight Mind, Fiction Inferno, The Green Tricycle and The American Journal of Print. She recently completed a collection of linked short-shorts and is now working on a novel set in fourteenth century France.

New Year's Resolution for 2003: "Write more; travel more; frown less."

Copyright 2002 by Vanitha Sankaran

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