It was noon when Zill Moralitaser awoke and rolled from the bed onto the floor. After checking his watch, he burst from the sheets as a tiger would from the tall grass, and rushed into the bathroom to shower and shave. He clambered in to his khakis, his freshly ironed shirt, his overcoat, and struggled with his tie. He brushed his teeth and re-laced his new dress shoes at the same time, and spent ten minutes scrubbing the toothpaste from his khakis. After gargling and combing his hair-careful not to get anything on his tie, he slapped on some aftershave and rushed into the kitchen for a bottled frappuccino and a nutria-bar; then rushed out of his apartment.
Zill considered himself the average new yorker: on the run, frustrated, grumpy, addicted to caffeine, and too busy to enjoy the better aspect of life. He was tall, lean, in his mid-thirties, and what many women considered a handsome man; and was also what he took pride in calling himself: unmarried. He was the type of man who wore contacts instead of glasses to enhance his popularity with the ladies, wore colorful ties to draw the eyes of his coworkers, and lived in an apartment in Queens that he couldn’t afford to “establish his status”. He strived for perfection, timeliness, and organization. He worked for the New York Herald and was a freelancer on the side, which meant that he had a NY Herald sticker on his delivery van and wrote articles for small circulation magazines. He was the feature writer for his Blogger.com articles and the administrator of his MySpace page. In short, he was all but what he wanted to be, but satisfied because he thought he was.
Today was special, today was the day to truly shine, today was the day he would be on his way to be recognized by everyone, today was the day; he was going to give his new book, his first book, to the editor for review. Zill hailed a taxi and headed for his editor’s apartment. During the ride he checked his manuscripts to be sure that everything was in order and perfect for review, because the last thing anyone who wrote a book would want to do is have something missing or out of place when his editor reads it. Every thing was fine, he decided, so he closed the envelope and put it to the side. At that moment he noticed several other envelopes that were stacked beside him.
“Hey, what is this in the back seat? Did someone leave that here?”