As I watched, he hung up the phone. I could see that it had been an intense, difficult call. I knew those calls—when I dealt with suppliers who were bucking deadlines, or with clients who kept changing their minds about their events. Those calls kept me up at night. But as soon as this Dylan put down the phone, a relaxed smile returned to his face. He called out something I couldn’t hear to two of the volunteers, and one of them tossed a foam football his way. They passed it back and forth for almost a minute. Then he got out of his chair, clapping his hands like a coach. He went from desk to desk, checking in on each of his volunteers. They joked. They argued. An old man showed him something on a computer screen that obviously made him happy, and Dylan kissed the top of his head. He finished his coffee, poured a little more from the pot, and drank it all. He found part of a doughnut in a pink box, and as he took bites of it, he sat on the edge of a desk and checked messages on his phone.

There was nothing special or unusual about any of it. It all looked so casual. So normal. This day, this evening, must have been like any other day for the man who worked inside these walls. That was when it hit me. That was when I understood what made him so different from me.

This Dylan Moran wasn’t running.

All my life, I’d been hurrying to get somewhere, without the slightest idea where that was. But this Dylan was already there. He looked at peace with the ground he was standing on. He would go home to his family tonight, and wake up tomorrow, and his life wouldn’t have changed at all. That was just the way he wanted it.

I felt a malevolent emotion grip my heart again.

Envy, as deep as a well.

Dylan checked his watch and realized what time it was. He was late going home. He looked up with a start, and in doing so, he stared out the windows toward the street. Among the reflections, he saw me. His face did a double-take, and he pushed himself off the desk. Before his mind could truly reconcile the idea that there were two of us, I backed up into the darkness and turned from the window. I crossed the street and took shelter behind the North Park sign, where I was invisible. The door to the building opened a few seconds later, and Dylan came outside. He looked long and hard both ways down the street, but when he saw that the sidewalks were empty, he shook his head and went back into the office.

He didn’t stay there for long.