Freedom.

Some people pursue a new and different life. Others are forced into one by necessity.

This was never more clear to K as he balanced, on both arms, breakfast dishes still heaped with untouched food, bacon fat dripping off the plates down the sleeve of his uniform. K backed through the swinging door to the kitchen and, through the dining room window, caught an uninterrupted view of autumn foliage spanning the length of Central Park from the Club on 59th Street all the way to Harlem.

In his homeland, K had been a Professor of Literature until insurgents shelled his University campus, slaughtered his colleagues and caused him to flee. Now, he is cleaning up after people who were lucky enough to avoid such a fate and therefore, were able to hold on to their money. Pigs. No, worse than pigs. Pigs would not waste so much food.

It bored K when these rich, but uncultured animals remarked on the splendor of Central Park in fall and debated whether the view from the dining room was as good as that from the roof of the Club. If only they could see the view from his breakfast nook at home. The mountains he knew so well, where his father took him as a young man to hunt. Where his father taught him how to fire a rifle to, in his father’s words, put a beast out of its suffering.

His wife and son were still there and K hoped to earn enough from his cleaning work to be able to send for them in the new year. It is not like anyone knew him or spoke to him at the Club (or anywhere else for that matter). Often, he thought he could be a ghost, passing through the Club entirely unnoticed by anyone. Therefore, he might as well just work and try to salvage as much of his old life as he possibly could.

Every day, after the breakfast service, he cleaned the Library on the eighth floor. This was his favourite room in the whole Club. It reminded him of the luxury of his old life. Dark parquet floors. Worn Chesterfield couches. Antique Persian rugs. And the greatest luxury of all: rows and rows of books. So many books that the whole room right up to the 15 foot ceiling, although impeccably clean, smelt faintly dusty. Simply being in that room was the best part of his day.

K never understood why an athletic club (and the animals that attended) kept such a beautiful library. There was never anyone in it! That is, until a week ago when a man took up residence at the large lacquered reading table in the corner farthest from the entrance. K observed this man. He never attended breakfast, or any other meal service. Nor did he seem very athletic. He looked out of place at the Athletic Club. But if the man wanted to be alone then inside the Library, as far from the door as possible, was a good place to be.

The man gave no indication that he ever noticed K, either before, during or after he had completed his cleaning duties. However, over the course of the week, the begrudging (though dutiful) servant began to think of this man as a kindred spirit. K looked forward to seeing him after the breakfast service. K coveted the man's thick, dark coats and tacitly indulged in the man's solitude, which he cultivated by wearing a hat with the brim pulled over his face, even indoors. K admired the man and over the course of the week, that admiration had turned to envy.

But this morning, K entered to find the man slumped over, resting on the table rather than perched at it. The man’s dark skin, similar in tone to his own, reflected in the lacquer. K leant in to listen for a breath - it was the closest he had been to anyone since arriving in the country - and as he did, he pressed against the man's arm. A pen dropped to the floor. Death had interrupted the man making a note in his black book. At the open page, the man recorded a list of dates. All were accompanied by a tick or cross except for the final one, which was the date three days from now.

Only because he had found the man so mysterious, K wondered if anyone in the world would notice he was gone; if anyone in the world would miss him. Anyone other than himself, that is. K went to the phone in the Library, raised the receiver, but before calling the concierge, he paused. Would anyone notice if he himself was gone? Would anyone here at the Club miss him?

Looking back at the corpse of the man he lowered the receiver, returned to the large table in the corner farthest from the entrance. He began to undress the man. Then undressed himself.

After admiring the quality of the man's clothes, how well they fitted him and how pitiful the man now looked in K’s old cleaning uniform, K once again raised the receiver and informed the concierge that a cleaner had just collapsed in the Library. In the unlikely case someone recognised the corpse, or recognised that the corpse was someone other than him, K tucked the man’s little black book under his arm, took the man’s room key and cautiously made his way upstairs to the man's suite at the Club.

After the third day, K awoke from the best night’s sleep he’d had since fleeing his homeland. The suite was peaceful. After three days alone in the Library where he belonged, so was his mind. He was not completely his old self, but he no longer cleaned up other peoples’ mess! From his bedroom, a partial view of autumn leaves in Central Park brought a smile. He looked down at children playing while mothers and fathers watched on from park benches – enjoying their freedom. He dressed and went to the Library.

Distracted by the thought of his own, newfound freedom, K almost failed to register a dower looking man in an ill-fitting suit, sitting with his back to the door in one of the worn Chesterfield couches. Cautiously, K passed and sat at the large lacquered reading table. The dower looking man watched, then he stood, buttoned his jacket and left the room, abandoning an old leather duffle, obviously on purpose.

When he caught his breath, the cleaner turned man-of-leisure walked slowly to the bag and unzipped it to reveal wads of cash, a sealed envelope and a copy of Catcher in the Rye translated into a cyrilic language, which he knew (although he could not read it) was undoubtedly Russian.

He scrambled to slit open the envelope and saw photographs of a handsome, middle-aged man, sitting on a bench in Central Park. It was the same bench he saw this morning from his bedroom window.

With the duffle squashed firmly under his arm, he returned to the suite upstairs and opened the door. A breeze rattled the artwork against the wall. He turned into the bedroom. Someone had been in there. Someone had unlocked the window, leaving it ajar. K looked down. The man from the photograph sat on the bench.

In despair, K fell backwards onto the bed and felt something hard under the pillows. Clearing away the bedding, K uncovered a thin, black case that certainly was not there when he woke up this morning. K did not open it. He did not need to. He knew what it was, what the dower looking man in the ill-fitting suit wanted him to do with it and what the notes in the black book meant.

He thought of his family alone in his homeland and then counted the money. $20,000 would ensure safe passage. They would not have to wait until the new year to be reunited. But then, what could he really offer them here? Who was he to force this new life on them?

From the little he knew, his family was safe and they remained in their home. Although they were in the midst of war, that was more freedom than he had. And staring at the wads of cash in the old, leather duffle he knew it was true. It’s not like he could find the dower looking man in the ill-fitting suit to say “I think there’s been a mistake” and return the money.

Once again, his life had become the one forced on him by necessity. Why did he come to America? In America he could not even steal a better life. In America, would he always end up here; dealing with someone else's mess?

In the midst of frustration, he convinced himself that things were never going back to normal and that he might as well forget that whole idea. He looked at the thin, black case resting where he had woken, so peaceful and happy, only an hour ago. He looked down at the handsome middle aged man, watching his children play in the fallen leaves. K remembered his own father, in the mountains in his homeland. He reached out to the thin, black case and slowly, deliberately flicked open the clips.

He did what he had to do.

The beast no longer suffered.