Yellow
+ + +He would enter data at work for fifty minutes and then go on break. He would walk down the hallway to the breakroom, which had a white refrigerator, a black microwave on a brown plyboard cart stocked with powdered creamer, sugar, and swizzle sticks, a dark red coffee maker, and yellow paint on the wall. He’d remember that somewhere he’d read an article about yellow walls being calming. “They use yellow in asylums” he’d say to himself.
+He would sit down at the round table covered in newspapers that took up the half of the room not occupied by the refrigerator, microwave, or counter with coffee pot and sink. He didn’t drink coffee but he would think about starting. He would shuffle the newspapers around on the table and see they were all the same ones as an hour ago. “Or technically fifty minutes ago” he would say to himself. Sometimes Jill would come in for a cup of coffee. She would always check that her lunch, which she brought each morning in a Tupperware container with a blue lid with her name written on it in black sharpie, was still there. Once he asked her why she checked.
+“Why do you always check if your lunch is in the fridge” he asked. “I don’t” she said. “Oh I thought you did.” “I don’t think so.” “Why do you check at all?” “Once it was stolen out of the fridge and returned empty before I had a chance to eat my lunch” she said. “So you make sure it won’t happen again.” “No I’m waiting for the day that it does.”
+