=Roman Holiday=

Footloose and fancy free, I was wandering around Europe for five years when I realized, damn, I forgot to call in sick to work! I was in Italy at the time, touring the majestic cathedrals, strolling through the great museums, reflecting among the melancholy ruins, sipping espresso in various sunlit piazzas while feeding the Italian pigeons with Italian bread crumbs when it hit me. As I hurried back to my room in a panic, I wracked my brains to come up with an excuse that wouldn't sound completely ridiculous for an unexplained absence of five years. A fierce thunderstorm rose up from out of nowhere forcing me to seek shelter under an awning, then a mad dog got loose in the street, and, just as I was nearing my goal, I was stuck between floors in an antiquated elevator crowded with a bunch of American tourists, among whom was an elderly couple bickering over the pork roll she forgot to buy him. It was already 1.30pm on a Friday afternoon and everything seemed to be conspiring to keep me from getting back to my room and writing that all-important email. What time was it in New York, anyway? Was my boss still at her desk? Eventually I made it back to my inexpensive bedsit, half-expecting to find my laptop had vanished or that the internet was down. But, no, everything was in order, just as I'd left it. I sat down and  composed a brief email, apologizing that I hadn't been able to make it in to the office these past five years but that I'd really been feeling under the weather.  Fortunately, I seemed to have turned the corner and was now feeling back to normal. "I hope," I wrote, "I didn't miss anything too important." To my surprise, my boss wrote back almost immediately. She was very understanding. She told me not to worry. In fact, she hadn't even noticed my absence. She inquired as to whether I thought I was feeling well enough  to make it in to the office on Monday morning. I wrote back saying that I'd be at my desk bright and early. Then I went out to find a good spaghetti place. "Why go back at all?" my wife asked, sitting on the other side of the candlelight in a quaint taverna, "if in all this time they never even noticed you weren't there?" It was a good question but an even better question was how did I forget I had a wife until that very moment? For that matter, how did I forget that I used to be a man? How did she forget I wasn't one any more? What else had we forgotten? I looked across the table at this strange, flickering woman who was becoming stranger and stranger by the second the more that I remembered. Pretty soon, I thought, she'll flicker out entirely and I'll be completely alone. I felt an immense sense of relief. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and made a wish. 

Then I blew the candle out.