I love the last twenty minutes of my job.

As I sit, secluded in a vantage point, surveying the angle of my post I drag out the memories of my past and peruse them as the dawn breaks and the world comes to life.

I sit, silent as my visions wrap about me. There is music and my world spins.

My grandmother taps her feet and she takes my hands as she sings the steps of the dance. My tiny feet upon hers as the music swells from a rickety turntable. "OneTwoThree, OneTwoThree, OneTwoThree..."

'time... three minutes until the alarm clock goes off.'

"Lift your head my dear, and straighten your back. Remember this above all. You are, ever and always, a lady."

'Okay... wife rolls over, mumbles something, goes back to sleep.'

My grandmother had an affection for this silly song about a magical dragon and it's love for a boy named Jackie who was made from paper. She really loved it. Listened to it over and over again and sang along whenever she could catch the words. There is really very little stranger than the sound of a folk song in a heavy chinese accent.

But it was the first song I ever remember hearing, and it never seems complete anymore without her crooning. It made her want to get up and...

'Okay... wife is up. wife enters bathroom. Lean forward a bit.

Okay. Run fingers through your hair.'

My grandmother had the softest hair, so straight and shiny and the color of pitch. Unlike mine, which has a tendency towards brown thanks to my mother's choice in husbands. We don't talk about him much.

'Talk with your wife for a bit. Blah blah blah. Frown at the door. Grit your teeth. Go back to trying to straighten what's left of your hair and look for your shoes.'

My feet would be on hers and we'd dance about the room, her silly dragon song playing as the room whirled about me and I learned my first dance. As I got older I stood on my own but still danced to her crooning. Her arm would lift and I would spin, turnturnturnturn...

'Oh good, turn in the mirror, check out that stomach you've been getting. Sorry sucking it in doesn't help. Vanity is a killer ain't it?'

We danced last on the eve of my eighteenth birthday. I was so grown up, a sophmore, with such views on how I was going to change the world. If she and I danced to music, with the rest of the family I danced around the disputes of my being allowed to major in the politics of under-developed countries. The light of humor burned in my grandmother's eyes, the appreciation of the sidesteps I had learned from her. Long after the last of my cousins left, still shaking their heads with regrets of me...

'Okay, stretch... walk around a bit. Shake off the sleep.'

Our last dance. My cousins had wandered home and as the last of my birthday candles sputtered she and I whirled about the living room and as the chords died, she held me once more, than sent me back to my world of graphs and figures to fix my world. For she had faith in me.

Five years later I'm not sure what she would think. I never saw her again but they played her dragon song at the wake. And I danced to it because I think she would have wanted me to. She always wanted to give me wings. I hope she found hers.

Five years. Five years and the heavy guiding hand of a government that found me so soon after I lost her guidance. I don't think I'm what she wanted me to be. I don't think I'm who she knew I could be. Five years, so short a time for the distance I've come. Could I truly have forgotten so fast? I was barely eighteen...

'Eighteen hours. A dozen to get across the compound, inch by cautious inch. The mud was so soft and cool to the touch. Then it itched as each coat dried. An inch. And then another. The minutes dragged as slowly as I. Three hours to climb, and another two to arrange the place about me. And now I count down my last moments with you.'

Five years, my god who could have thought the world would spin so. I had lost my partner, my lead. They slipped into her place so easily, guiding my steps and leading me into my next dance. Five years. Five...

'Okay... a few more steps. Five, four, three... throw open the doors and greet the sun. Yes, such a beautiful morning.'

She sent me off into the world to make it a better place. A better place for us two.

'Two more steps, two... one. Smile my love.'

She could barely sing the words, so foreign to her tongue. She never knew what they meant.

'A breath... then still. The pressure is so wonderful, after all this time. My twenty minutes. My last minutes. A bit more pressure and it gives way. A crack and it is done. Drop and fade out of sight.'

I don't think I'm what she wanted me to be. But as strange as this dance would be for her to follow, I am doing what I set out to do. I'm making the world a better place. But I don't think she'd like this song as well.

'I love the last twenty minutes of my job. Makes it all worth it. The last twenty minutes and the dance begins again.'

They played 'Puff' at my grandmother's wake. I wonder what they'll play at his. Check my watch, oh good. I'm right on time. Twenty minutes even.