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SUMMARY: Part 5 of the puzzle and Someone has got some advice for you.

The Downstairs Of Happiness
By Richard Ridyard

‘I hate my boss so much, he's so smug with his huge mansion, his flash cars and his servants at his feet as soon as he clicks his fingers. I know he's having an affair with my wife. He doesn't think he'll get caught because he thinks he's untouchable, but he's not I'll show him.'
‘Let me tell you a love story.'
I'm sitting in the American bar-diner on Mathews Street, on one of the high stools at the bar, working my way through my fourth Budweiser. Tonight I drink with a determined resolve, hoping to put some distance between consciousness and troubled thoughts. In front of me, above the inverted, suspended bottles, a neon Coca-cola sign stammers hypnotically, and I pretend it is all there is to notice. But through the dim lighting and a blanket of smoke an old man emerges to sit next to me. He buries a yellow, bony hand in the dish of peanuts that sits between us and plucks a couple to be carried to a wrinkled, gummy mouth. He orders a double Jack Daniels. He sips it and stares at it for a few seconds while he smokes a cigar and then turns to me.
‘You looked troubled, son.'
I don't want to talk to anyone right now, let alone share my thoughts with a stranger. But to be polite, I offer a token explanation.
‘Bit of a hard day at work, that's all.'
The old man nods wisely. His eyes become narrow slits as he draws from his cigar. Through the exhaled smoke he says:
‘Nothing to do with a woman then?'
I swallow my beer a bit too heavily, wanting to cough but not wishing to show reaction to the old man's insightful probe.
‘Maybe,' I tell him non-committally, and turn back to my beer, hoping the conversation to be over.
But it's not.
‘Let me tell you a love story', he says angling himself in his seat so as to face me, and I know he is to tell it whether I wish to hear or not.
He begins.
And despite my reluctance, I listen.
‘It was a long time ago now, back when I still had more years before me than behind; when growing old was something that other people did. Back then I had this shitty factory job. Eight hours a day standing in front of a conveyor belt putting together clockwork toys. Not a whole load of fun, I'm sure you'd agree.'
I match his wry smile.
‘Well, I thought that if I could become educated, I could escape to better things. So I started going to the library. Every night, straight after work, there I was, a big pile of books around me, reading anything and everything. I didn't really have a plan, no sort of goal or idea of what I wanted to achieve. I just thought that if I saturated myself in all that knowledge, a bit of it would rub off. If I became clever, I wouldn't have to work in that factory anymore. You understand that?'
He pauses to drink whiskey. I watch his thin, cracked lips parting to allow the golden liquid to enter. I notice he shudders slightly as it goes down, smiling contentedly against its warm hit.
‘Well, that's where I met her. She was the evening librarian. I remember the first time I saw her over the top of a book I was struggling to read.