I finished it off with a whimper, which I always take as a compliment. If the last day of your contract ends with a bang, with frantic activity all day, it doesn't speak well of your execution to that point. Still, there is such a thing as too quiet.

I'd managed to inject some excitement by holding one important final puzzle piece to be finished in the morning. Of course, as the day slipped down toward my midafternoon meeting, I was finding myself in haste to have it in hand, and not quite there yet. Alone in my office - the most square feet I've had to myself in decades - and absorbed in my task, I jumped when the receptionist paged me over the intercom.

The phone at my desk has been unplugged since the day I sat down there, so I walked over to the project boss's desk to take the call. After all, the call was from him; no doubt it was about that final ceremonial meeting he and I were to have soon, as the last two people working to close the project. I found myself gritting my teeth as I punched his phone's buttons.

He's a good guy, but he and I have been wearing a little thin lately. He arranges better than he accomplishes, and my arrogance flows from the opposite direction, which can put us at odds. He's a bit too "cowboy" about how he takes things on, too inclined to act overconfidently without thinking, and getting a little old to be writing that off as inexperience. From his conversation, this tendency doesn't necessarily make him great at the whole wife-and-kids thing he took on when he was young and dumb.

I'm certain of this, dear reader, my dear reader: you know the type.

It somehow didn't surprise me that he was calling to skip out on our meeting. He was half a town away and yadda yadda, so the final ceremony where I made a few remaining points turned into a quick kiss goodbye on the phone. Annoyed once again at how little he valued the actual puzzle pieces of what he'd been praised for putting together, I knocked the receiver back into place, leaned back in his chair, and glowered. Not that I was eager to have another meeting the importance of which he didn't quite get: but it would have filled in the day, and I was a bit sad to realize that once again I'd be finishing alone.

I stared at a spot on his desk and thought about that, about him, and about all the rest of what I'd spent so much time doing, here in this place that I was leaving. Drifted through the ways in which he'd annoyed me lately, turned it into a theme. What the hell, with the meeting canceled, I certainly had the time.

I thought about our victory party night the week before, when he and I and our two single colleagues had arrived at the bartender-teasing portion of the evening. I thought of how he spoke louder and faster each time she started drifting down the bar toward the cute guys (and toward me), how she would necessarily walk back to his end, and how he would drift back to playing with his phone each time she would draw near expecting he'd entertain her.

I thought about the way he treated that other girl two bars later, who was so determined to be a party favor that night, and rolled my eyes at how she had motivationally tied him in knots. Granted, she was below his minimum age range, but he should have had a better idea about how 26-year-olds behaved if he was even gonna walk into that place.

I recalled the last time I saw him, midweek, just he and I in that cavernous office. How he'd once again gone into talking about how awesome that night had been, and how he wished he'd done it differently. "I should have brought her little black dress right back up here, should have done her right on my desk."

I stared at that desk and just shook my head, thinking of the ways that he didn't get it. I mean, I'm as much about audacity as anyone, but doesn't he see how unworkable that is? Has he ever considered what would go into getting a girl out of the bars and up to the office? Doesn't he know that nobody, deep down, really wants to be that girl, for the guy with the ring on his finger? Doesn't he know she'd be gone in an instant if he seriously proposed it? Does he really find charming women that expendable?

Perhaps the world looks different to one who thinks in terms of arranging, rather than the details of accomplishing. Myself, I wouldn't even think something like that too loudly, unless I could prove I had everything worked out, had asked all the questions, down to who would have the condoms and how the next week would play out. I suppose I'm glad that he sees things his way, as I seem to have gotten some good work and some good times from sweeping up after his ideas.

It was, however, how that sort of remark from him affected me that had grated on me the whole time we'd worked together. He'd tossed another random cowboy idea out there, and I'd immediately started thinking through the details. Why the hell did I do that? There and then?

It wasn't thinking the execution of the desk thing through that bothered me - obviously that had pleasant aspects. It was that I reflexively thought about his idea harder than he had, from having had to do that so often these past few months. That reflex to think things through had saved both our tails on that project so often, and he'd never seemed to have an appreciation for it.

I spent some few minutes in righteous indignation over the whole issue before I decided that, even on a day for whimpering, I didn't need to spend my time that way. I got up from his desk, and walked over to the window I'd called mine, and spent my time instead staring at that building across the street that had for months been my view. Kissing it goodbye, and thanking it as sincerely or more for being there as I had thanked him.

At least I'd always felt that it had appreciated me, though I don't know where I got that idea.