A spider lives in a crack in my bedroom wall. The crack is highlighted by white smears where ineffectual insect spray has cleaned away the yellow smoke stains. I see the spider most mornings. It goes to bed as I rise. A huntsman that hunts by night.

Nothing lives in the cracks that are forming on my face. My girlfriend Jodie tells me not to smile, but she makes me smile. She is making my face split into segments.

At work, Barry says that if I hope to become a partner in our law firm before I am thirty-five, I should marry Jodie and fill her full of children. He says that unmarried men over thirty are perceived to be dysfunctional. Barry is forty-three, single and fat. He says this is why he hasn't been promoted. I tell him it's because he's the only person at Goldstein, Zuckerman and Associates who wears a moustache in the same style as Hitler.

Mr. Goldstein is a founding partner. I tell him about the spider in the crack. He says cracks are inevitable and, had he not been a lawyer for forty-nine years, he would find my spider charming. I tell him he is a good man. He tells me to get out while I can. He pulls yesterday's lunch from his drawer and tells me to feed the sandwich to the pigeons in the park.

The park became an office block three years ago. The only pigeons within ten miles are turning on skewers in the window of the delicatessen, forty floors below us. I give the sandwich to Barry. Mustard sticks to his moustache.

My secretary Paul types a letter that I dictated in legalese, advising a client to proceed with a noise complaint against his neighbour. Paul speaks without looking at me: Forty-eight pages so far. Can't we just call him? I remind him that the firm gets paid by the word. He says his hands are turning into claws.

I close my office door and spin in my chair until I'm so dizzy I fall to the floor. When I can stand, I press myself hard against the window, looking down, wondering how far I could fly if I had a hang glider.

Legend has it that when the windows of the building across the road were installed, the builder proved they were safe by taking a running jump at one of them. I think of him whenever confused seagulls slam into my window.

Jodie calls me from the restaurant where she works to tell me she cut open an avocado and found a shade of green that matched my eyes. She was going to save it and show me, but it would have turned brown; so she took a photo. A Big Mac wrapper blows against my window as she tells me this. I shoot staples at it and tell Jodie that if she ever has her face bitten off by a crocodile, I will still kiss her.

I'm on top of my desk, pretending to surf. Barry comes in with a file. I tell him I'm checking the ceiling for cracks. He tells me to check the mirror. I open the file and Latin spills out. Prima facie, non est factum, gluteus maximus. The sun breaks open the clouds and screams carpe diem. I take a running jump at my window. I bounce and fall to the floor as the glass wobbles out a tune: Memento mori, memento mori.