Tom Benecke: A Short Story

Tom Benecke pauses once he closes the door thinking whether or not he should go back and bring his difficult work from outside the window again. He finally decides to begin looking for his wife. He went out hoping and praying that he is not super late for the movies; for he knew he would be in the dog house. He runs down the street to hurry up and make it to the movie theater. Still in the back of his mind he is thinking about his tough work. He finally makes it to the theater and surprisingly on time. He finds his wife at the snack stand getting pickles, a large popcorn, bags of candy, and a generous cup of coke ICEE. “Why is she getting all of this?” he wondered. He has noticed that his wife has been increasingly gaining a bunch of weight lately, but he knows not to state that fact out loud.

Claire sees him standing by the ticket booth and runs up to him feverishly. “Hey baby what are you doing here? I thought you needed to work on your project.” She said out of breath. I enveloped her back consequently we both walked into the movie room together. Once the movie had ended, individually, we began walking out of the theater. “Baby I’m hungry.” She said with a pout on her face. We began walking to her favorite suave Italian

restaurant, Olive Garden. This, according to my beautiful and gorgeous wife was located right across the street.
As soon as the hostess brought us to our table our waiter showed up.

Claire began ordering every single item she could discover on the menu. “Baby don’t you think that is a little too much for you to be eating?” He asked with pure question. “Well baby when you are eating for two you kind of need to eat plenty.” She said nonchalantly. He had completely gone frigid in his seat. At that moment, everything in his life that he did wrong flashed before his eyes. Consequently, as soon as she said “Eating for two,” he thought right back to those papers that were sitting on the ledge of his apartment building ordinarily. He additionally realized not only does he has to provide for him and his wife; he also has to provide for his baby girl or baby

boy.
Tom rushes out of Olive Garden bumping, to a waiter. He full out sprints to his apartment building, hoping that his hard work had not gone flown away. He hurries up the apartment stairs and sees the window still unlatched. Making the reasonable decision of whether or not to go back on the ledge or not. In the end, he ends up deciding that the money was important for his family and goes out again onto the ledge. Meanwhile, Claire is trying to track after he husband, but she has to rest and catch her breathe. With her hands on her knees, breathing hard, she sees pieces of yellow paper with her husband’s name on it. As she is finding the paper, she sees a man falls in front of her, from her apartment building. She goes over there to try and differentiate the person and finds out that the person is Tom.
Claire screams and yells at Tom’s lifeless body, but in the end it was not going to change anything, and she knew it. A man comes up to Claire and holds her, “Are you ok? What is your name?” the strange man asked. “My name is Claire. What about you?” she asked crying so hard that the man could barely understand her. “My name is Matthew. Why are you crying? Did you know this man?” Matthew asked with pure curiosity. “Yes that was my husband.” Matthew helps Claire up and gets her to get away from the body as much as he possibly could. “You are way too beautiful to be sitting on this street crying.” Whenever Matthew said that Claire’s eyes lit up, she feels really appreciated. When she was with Tom she really never felt appreciated, especially today for their date night. At that moment Claire thought she had truly found her soul mate.