by B. P. Kasik
Jerry limped painfully out the Gym’s front entrance and turned to his new friend. “Hey, I don’t remember seeing you around the neighborhood. Admittedly, I’m not great at getting out and meeting folks—”
“I imagine that thing keeps you from being too much of a social butterfly,” Ben quipped, pointing Jerry’s bum leg.
“Yeah, it doesn’t help. But I haven’t seen you before, are you new to the area?”
“No, I live a few blocks away. I don’t get out much, either. Work, home to the wife, hang out, sleep. Repeat as needed. You married?”
“Was.”
“Sorry.”
“Yeah. Freshly divorced.”
“Ah. So you on Tinder yet?”
“What’s that?”
“Nevermind. Um...can I ask what happened?”
Jerry laughed and pointed to his house across the street. “We lived there. One day we started arguing. And we forgot to stop.”
“Sorry. You guys try therapy?”
“No. That never works, does it?”
“Worked for us. Our communication got way better after we saw a counselor.”
“Wow. Uh...congrats.”
“Thanks. Hey, sorry for getting so personal. I know we just met.”
“No, it’s cool. Kinda refreshing. Most guys don’t talk.”
“We’re shattering stereotypes here!”
“Yeah. Good for us.” Ben looked down at one of the Gym’s cards that he grabbed on the way out. “You gonna sign up?”
“No,” Jerry said, frowning. “Place kinda rubs me the wrong way.”
“Yeah, it’s odd. But hey, free for a month. Can’t argue with that!”
“No, not at all. I hope you have fun with it.”
Ben nodded. “Well, was nice to meet you. I’ll probably see you around.”
Jerry laughed. “People say that, don’t they? But we never leave our houses, so it’s rarely true.”
“Yeah, good call. So—will maybe never see you again!”
“Alright, won’t see you around!”
And Jerry limped home.
Chapter 3
As the city slept, a thickly-clothed, wide-moustached homeless man rolled his squeaky-wheeled shopping cart down the echoing street.
He forgot his name most days. It was easier that way. His last clear memory was months old—the fifth floor at the University Hospital. He’d checked in due to persistent hallucinations. Visions of the Blue Ridge Mountains rising up and revealing themselves as the fingertips of some incomprehensibly enormous entity emerging to crush and consume the world.
He wished he could have had the usual PTSD flashbacks that other folks in his squad suffered when they returned from Afghanistan. At least their visions of war and being constantly under fire made sense.
His grandmother had been schizophrenic, so he figured that was his diagnosis. The hallucinations and his paranoid symptoms fit the bill. It had always lain dormant in him; it just took combat time to activate it.
Hey, at least it didn’t start when I was in the desert!
He tried to look on the bright side of life.
It was getting harder, as the cocktail of medications the doctors put him on in the hospital fried his brain. He found himself unable to form any short-term memories and even some pre—hallucination memories were getting fuzzy.
He found himself unable to keep a job, pay the bills, or make it to appointments with his VA or Section 8 coordinator. He kept passing out or losing track of time somewhere along the way.
And before he knew it, he was walking around town in ragged clothes with no memory of acquiring the shopping cart he pushed. He didn’t know where any items in the cart came from, either.
He thought about finding a homeless shelter, maybe they’d have a bed for him. He then wondered if this was a thought he’d had before, right as he noticed an orange glow near the Downtown Mall calling to him like a beacon. He approached, keeping his eyes fixed on the pillar of light piercing the night sky.
He finally saw the source when he came around the corner: a sign simply saying, “THE GYM.”
The city had recently restored a theater Downtown with a light-soaked marquee and flashing lights, but it was nothing compared to this. It was a firefly compared to this supernova.
He wondered how anyone slept on this street with that glare.
As he pushed his cart closer and closer, he found himself unable to take his eyes off the sign.
He then noticed that it wasn’t glowing consistently. The light was pulsing. At first it seemed to be random and he wondered if it was just a power glitch.
But no—the slight increase and decrease in intensity was consistent. And he recognized it. He had no idea if he learned Morse code as a child or in the military, but that was the language the sign was speaking.
He paid close attention, parsing out the letters, and starting speaking them aloud:
“N,D,K,I,L,L,A,N,D,K,I,L,L,A,N,D,K,I,L,L,A,N,D,—”
And he realized it was looping, over and over.
“Kill and kill and kill…”
He kept staring at the light, felt his fragile mind drifting away, some force pushing his last remnants of self and sanity out...then he used every bit of strength and resistance he had left to shake it off.
He pushed his cart over to the side and ran and ran and ran. He made it to the interstate and eventually slowed to a brisk walk as he traveled on the side of the road. He felt a little better as he left the city limits, but he didn’t think he’d ever be far enough from that sign to feel comfortable. He went as far east as he could before collapsing and getting picked up by the authorities the next day.
Everything else continued to fade, but the pulsating Gym sign burned into his mind and never left.
Chapter 4
Jerry woke up to the glow of the Gym sign again the next day.
He pulled the curtain aside from his bedroom window. The sign had an odd warmth to it. Despite its intrusiveness, he felt sustained by it. Like a plant under a heat lamp. He just couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed.
Limping through his morning routine, he put off doing his daily stretches and exercises as long as possible.
He’d skipped his daily leg rehab work yesterday and was paying for it today with an exquisite array of pins and needles stabbing him all over his foot and ankle.
So he gripped his couch for balance and dutifully raised and lowered his legs 15 times. Then rested and did it again. Then rested before one last rep.
He collapsed on the couch afterward, but then his phone on the table across the room started vibrating.
So he grumbled and hopped on one foot across the room to avoid limping.
“The Ex” showed on the phone screen.
He sighed.
“Hey, Becky,” he answered.
“Hey. How’s the ankle?”
“Same as always. Held together by chunks of metal.”
“You still use the crutches?”
“Not for the past week.” He looked out the front window as he talked. The early morning sunlight was about half as bright as the Gym sign. “Even going up and down stairs without too much pain.” Except for oversized glass stairs, he thought.
“Good to hear. So you think they’ll clear you for work soon?”
He closed his eyes. “Probably not for a few weeks.” There was a silence. “I can function and move around, but lifting heavy equipment and doing labor for hours at a time, that’s just not in the cards yet.”
“Okay. Okay, I understand. It’s just…”
“I know, and I’m sorry. I’m sending you what I can.” Jerry started pacing unsteadily.
“I know. And I promise, I’m not trying to get litigious or weird. It’s just that we have bills to pay and the kids need new clothes and all that stuff.”
“You have my word, as soon as I’m off disability, I’ll send you extra with the support payments each month and I’ll try to make up the difference.”
“Oh, you
don’t have to do that. I just...I’m looking forward to regular payments again. Money is tight around here.”
“I appreciate you making do. It’s just for a little longer.”
“Right.”
“Are the kids around? Can I talk to them?”
“No, they’re both still at preschool.”
“Together? Already?”
“Yeah, they’re so close in age they both qualified.”
“Wow...they’re already in preschool.”
“Sunrise, sunset.”
“Exactly.”
“Right...Well, I hope you feel better and that you keep healing.”
“Thanks. I lo—” He caught himself before blurting out the old phrase—three simple words—which came to him like a muscle memory. I love you. Becky wasn’t his spouse anymore. He wasn’t allowed to love her.
He tried to cover up his close call. “I’ll, uh, I’ll call you with any updates.”
“Okay, thanks. Bye.”
“Bye.”
He pocketed his phone and opened his front door so he could step out on the porch. He needed to hear the sound of a car or people or life to take his mind away for a bit.
He tried to think of the last normal conversation he’d had with his ex. Before she was an “ex.” “Ex” is such a cold thing to call someone—like you’re crossing them out of your life and they’re nothing. He thought about that a lot.
Probably two years ago. The last time they talked as a couple. Then their conversations devolved into shrill, landmine-filled endeavors. And then it ended.
And now they were free. Paperwork was signed. Custody agreement agreed upon. No knock-down drag-out legal fights. As soon as they separated, the bitterness evaporated. Which meant separating was the healthiest thing they could do.
Wasn’t it?
Jerry tried not to think too much about it.
He noticed a pretty steady stream of people entering the Gym that morning. Just normal everyday folks looking to get a bit healthier. Good for them. It was neat that the Gym was right in the middle of a neighborhood, because people didn’t have to worry about parking or driving. They could just walk over.
In addition to the new Gym clientele, Jerry noticed an overturned grocery cart with knick-knacks scattered everywhere out in the street.
Looked like some homeless guy was pushing his stuff around and it got knocked over. Maybe by a car. Poor guy. Jerry wondered whether he had to clean the mess up or if it was a city cleanup issue, since it was out in the street and not technically on his property.
He was in no shape or mood to go tidy up the street, so he took uneasy steps back inside and plopped down in his chair.
He wondered how long he was supposed to stay single. They say you need one month alone to recover for every year of your relationship.
They’d been married 12 years. And they’d been separated for 14 months (formally divorced for only two, thanks to the state-mandated one-year paperwork waiting period). Society said his grieving time was up.
He was sometimes grateful for his injury, as it gave him a pretty decent excuse to sit around and do nothing.
But that needed to end. He couldn’t just loaf about the rest of his life.
He decided to look up that thing Ben had mentioned at the Gym.
“Tinder.”
By lunchtime he had a date.
He swiped right on everyone within 30 miles and eventually got a swipe back.
Kris. She looked perfectly normal. Worked for the University as a Faculty Administrator. Not too much younger than him. Profile photo showed her on a bridge in Prague. So she was professional, liked to travel, had probably had some adventures and was hopefully mature enough not to be scared by the fact that he had kids.
He carefully selected some business casual clothes for the date, fingers crossed the whole time.
At Shebeen, the African restaurant, the two of them sat together.
Sparks were not flying.
“So, Kris…how is the University?” Jerry asked. “Good place to work?”
“You know…” Kris said. “Lots of paperwork. Lots of meetings. Lots of holding the faculty by the hand and helping to coordinate their travel schedules.”
“Gotcha, gotcha. So, um—you like to travel? I noticed you were in Prague.”
“Good eye! Most people don’t recognize that location, or they think it’s in Germany somewhere. But no, I was visiting my sister while she studied abroad. I don’t really travel much. Work keeps me pretty busy.”
“Oh. No traveling for work, then?”
“Sometimes, but it’s just to conventions where I see my hotel room and the convention center and that’s about it.”
“Okay. I see. So, um. How about that black bean burger? I hear their spicy avocado mayo is to die for here.”
She looked down at her quarter-eaten burger. “It’s okay, I guess.”
Jerry looked around the restaurant, as if someone in there could help him find the right question to ask. He hadn’t done this in so long, he wasn’t sure what he was doing wrong. He was asking questions and showing interest, that was what you were supposed to do, wasn’t it?
“So…” he tried again. “What do you like to do in your spare time?”
She leaned back. “I mostly just talk to my friends online. They all live in Arizona, so I try to keep in touch with them.”
“Oh, is that where you’re originally from?”
“No, I just went to school there.”
“Oh. So...where are you from?”
“Truth or Consequences.”
“What?”
“It’s a town in New Mexico.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not very big. People grow up there in order to leave. Its chief export is people.”
“Heh. Okay. Truth or Consquences. Neat.”
The girl took a deep breath. Every other patron at the restaurant seemed more interesting to her than Jerry.
He took a tentative bite of his peri-peri shrimp. It was really good. He wished he was alone so he could just enjoy this meal.
They let an uneasy silence settle. Jerry felt no obligation to break it. From the moment they met each other at the restaurant—every step of the way—he’d been deferential, polite, and interested. He’d been out of the dating pool for over a decade and the waters felt like they’d been pissed in. He tried to appear neutral despite his turmoil.
And he waited.
“So…” she finally said. “Have you been on Tinder long?”
“Just joined today!”
“Ah. So this is your first date.”
“It is!”
“Uh-huh.”
Jerry felt his mouth run dry. Possibly from the shrimp’s spicy garlic flavoring. But more likely anxiety. He took a sip of his water. “Um...I’ll be honest, I feel like I’m doing something wrong. Clearly, there’s a lack of chemistry here. Is that fair to say?”
“Fair.”
“So can we just call this date off? Accept that this is going nowhere and just enjoy the meal with no expectations, so we’ll just walk away when we leave, no hug or kiss or anything?”
She smiled. “That sounds delightful.”
The tension dissipated and they both dug in on their food more aggressively. The silence between them for the next few minutes was perfectly amiable as they cleared their plates.
“That was delicious,” he said.
“Yup. Best black bean burger I’ve had in years.”
“So you’re a vegetarian?”
“No, just watching my weight.”
“Okay, cool.”
“Which brings me to an item of concern…”
“Oh yeah?”
“We agreed we’re not a date anymore, right?”
“Right. But I’ll pay for the meal! I have no problem with that. I invited you, I’ll pay.”
“I appreciate that. So let me earn my meal here with some advice.”
“Okay.”
“Change your
profile photo on Tinder.”
“What?”
“Seriously. No one likes it when you show up at a date and find a guy who looks nothing like his photo.”
“It was the only one I had on my phone…”
She stared at him. “You really have nothing more recent?”
“No…”
“How old is that photo?”
“I guess...six years or so.” The photo was a decade old.
“Right. You need to represent yourself more accurately. When I show up on a date and you look nothing like your self-representation, that puts me on guard and gets me wondering if you’re dishonest in other ways, too.”
“Oh. Huh.”
“Like—you’re divorced, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“When were you going to tell me that?”
“Jeez, it doesn’t seem like first-date conversation material.”
“It’s not. You need to list that on your profile.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And you have kids?”
“Yeah.”
“List that, too. You’re presenting yourself as a good-looking, free-spirited single guy in his early 20’s on the site.”
“I listed that I was 33.”
“Yes, but your photo is anything but 33.”
Jerry chewed over everything he’d just heard. Then zeroed in on one part. “You said my photo was ‘good-looking.’”
“I did.”
“So I’m not good-looking anymore?”
She paused. “You’re not ugly. But no, you’re not as good-looking as in that photo.”
“How so?”
“Your hairline’s a half-inch further back, you have more worry lines on your face, and you look substantially heavier.”
“I…” Jerry looked down at himself. “Dad bod,” people called it. A small paunch hung over his waist. He hadn’t ever noticed that. It felt like an alien appendage just suddenly attached itself to his stomach. “I guess I have put on some weight. I broke my ankle a few weeks ago and haven’t been moving much since.”
“I’m guessing you don’t watch what you eat?”