by Ryan Downey
The ambulance arrived and Derrick had a few words with the EMTs before they came in to do the most unpleasant part of their job. She finished her Ginger Ale and placed the bottle back down. Then picked it up and moved it to a coaster just in case. As they left, they took one last look around and she tucked the book tightly against her hip as she closed the door behind her. She felt better now taking the book. She knew he wouldn’t have minded. For the old man was kind.
Zikhrono Livrakha
There was no music playing. Dragging long bouts of silence. The pipe organ, almost as old as the church, sat quietly in requiem collecting dust while the town’s only remaining organist was, funny enough, on vacation. Relief came only in the form of creaking wood from the few souls shifting in their pews. Wasn’t like Father O’Malley to be late. He prided self on punctuality. Derrick and Gina walked in easing the heavy door shut behind them. Seated in the back, intent was to leave closer seats for closer relatives and friends. Once sat, they soon realized they were merely making elbowroom for the five or six there. “Is this it?” Derrick asked Gina. “Guess so,” Gina answered.
He wandered over to the organ and fiddled with it, playing a few random notes. B flat. C. A flat. A flat, an octave down. E flat. Until Gina smacked his hand and murmured ‘knock it off’ through grinding teeth. He was only trying to help. The room was sepulchral, musty, doleful, funereal. Even for a room hosting a funeral. In walked Father O’Malley. That was odd. If they weren’t waiting for him, then what.
In walked an older woman who immediately began scanning the room. Her eyes fell upon another old woman already sitting. She went to join the woman who when seeing her at pew’s end jumped up to greet a friend not seen in ages. They sat close to the front, three pews back, holding hands. The reunion was sobering. Likely the last of the attendees. One leaned into the other to whisper something. Father O’Malley took the podium.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. Our guest of honor is running late. Drawbridge is malfunctioning, the hearse is stuck.” Son of a bitch. Everyone shifted uncomfortably in their seats and shared glances. “If there are no objections, I’ll go ahead with eulogy and we’ll commence the remainder of the mass when he arrives.” There were no objections from the baker’s dozen or so of personal favors currently present. Two there out of curiosity. Two there out of duty. The rest…
He started with the standard biographical information. Name, DOB, place, things, moves, relatives, yadda yadda yadda. Favorite TV Show: Seinfeld. Favorite food: Soft pretzels. Covered in crab dip. Favorite Beatle: George. Favorite flavor: Malt. Favorite Song: In The Deep by Bird York. Oldie but a goodie. Album: Crazy Monsters And Super Creeps. Even older. Animal: Turritopsis Dohrnii. Potentially ancient. Obligatory, but not the least bit interesting. “He had made a profitable living doing what he never wanted – other people’s work. Became renowned in the industry as the man who could fix any book, any screenplay. He chose his work carefully and was compensated handsomely. A dramaturge is something of a diagnostic editor. A fitting vocation for the man able to help everyone, but himself. He did the heavy lifting, came up with the best ideas, while others harvested accolades. And we’ll never know the true extent of the body of his work, as he was so prone to using nom de plumes. One of his best works, a novel about remorse and lamentation in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, won a Pulitzer Prize. The award sits proudly on a mantle thousands of miles from his home.”
On he went really bringing the room down. Then he turned a corner and things got a bit lighter. “He often spoke of the women of his life.” At least four perked up. “In fact, he seldom spoke of much else. The good and the bad. The great, the unforgettable. The awful, the imploding. The pull, the gravity. Gravity keeps us safe. The abyss is huge, vast, daunting. Even terrifying. As long as we’re planted on the ground, we take no risk.” He paused for dramatic effect. “But he wasn’t one to avoid risk. He proposed once. She laughed and told him to get off the ground. Lived with a woman. It was court mandated. He went on a two-week vacation with a woman. She couldn’t accept the prize otherwise. He met families. They didn’t like him. He gave a girl a ring. It was a bottle opener. He bought a house with a woman. As a rental investment. He was part of a couple’s Halloween costume. The rest of the group didn’t show. He was engaged. Briefly. She needed citizenship.” Laughter waned. The list was out anyway. Just in time for the old man’s arrival.
Ouroboros
The mass concluded. He finished the eulogy strong, solid homily, traditional mass. Made sure to point out that it was an act of charity, the deceased was not the religious type. Another favor. When the two older women exited the church, both without blessing themselves, Derrick and Gina felt compelled to say something. They reacted more than anyone else and cried at various times. And Derrick was almost certain one was Pretty Girl. As they shook Father’s hand and descended the steps, Derrick nudged Gina and nodded towards the woman he believed to be the book’s proper owner, the one who was first to arrive.
Gina as awkward as ever, crept uneasily towards them. With no break in their ongoing conversation, she was forced to interrupt. Neither minded and one was quick to implore how she knew the deceased. Geezer who used to sweep his porch, tell long stories, and she was the one who found his corpse. She settled for addressing him as a casual acquaintance.
Nothing rehearsed, she didn’t say much beyond that and lifted the book up to hand it to one of the women. Graciously taking it, his Sweetheart of old opened to the inscription and smiling with a tear passed it off to its rightful recipient. Derrick was close. 50/50 shot. The other woman whose radiance had survived to antiquity took the book and after blinking and pulling it back and forth to adjust her eyesight, read dutifully.
Her lips were doing that thing. That thing they hadn’t done in years. Her heart had leapt higher than it had in decades. Along with it dissolved any question as to whether it was a good idea to go. She closed the book, not wanting to look again until she got home. As a thank you she only nodded. It was all she could muster. And all the interaction Gina wanted. Ready to cry herself, she ran back to Derrick with an overwhelming sense of accomplishment.
“I have a message of my own,” Derrick was holding the note in his right hand, unsheathed from his suit pant pocket. The old man had a trick or two left up his sleeve. Derrick opened it with both hands for her to come around and read. She looked puzzled to him and he shrugged. “Sounds good to me,” he affirmed as he slid the note commanding “Take Her For Ice Cream” into the breast pocket of his Sunday best.
Syzygy
A tuna salad sandwich with rippled chips was placed in front of Pretty Girl, while a large house salad with Thousand Island dressing was simultaneously placed in front of Sweetheart. And Gina- their waitress, not their mailwoman- asked if there was anything else they needed for now. They were good. Pretty Girl sipped her root beer, a drink that never appealed to Sweetheart. She thought it tasted like bubblegum. But she liked bubblegum, a contradiction no one felt the need to shed light on. She was drinking an Arnold Palmer. They talked about a great many things between bites. Miles and miles to catch up on. Lunch was such a lovely idea. They were reminded soon in how much they used to enjoy one another’s company.
Friends through a mutual acquaintance, their bond had historically been one more of convenience than anything else, though as they were realizing in the course of the late afternoon, they could have been friends regardless. They had a surprising number of common traits despite their differing race and upbringing. If felt delightfully natural. And here they thought they might have to force it.
At a certain point one asked the other why they hadn’t done a better job staying in touch. The excuse was age old, they had let life get in the way. An attempt to return the conversation to more casual topics failed and before long they were speaking of regrets.
The inevitable took an uncomfortably long time to come up. Particularly given he
was the reason they were there. Maybe it was their age and tendency to ramble. Maybe it was because he was so far back in the rearview, he was barely detectable. Maybe it was because neither wanted to admit that perhaps he was their greatest. Tough call. Sweetheart was happily married for years before her dearly beloved succumbed, Pretty Girl was contently herself for a lifetime. “He was a dear,” Sweetheart reminisced. “He was my first kiss, you know.” “I remember. Certainly wasn’t mine.” They shared a laugh to those foolish things. “But somehow, he felt like it.” They both drank. No toast. Then the question neither wanted to ask. What happened. Now they knew why they didn’t want to ask. Neither knew how to answer. The excuse that was promptly brought to mind was not one either was willing to use. They wouldn’t dare cheapen their experience with him, not today. Somehow ‘life got in the way’ really wasn’t going to cut it. He deserved better, even if it wasn’t an option.
Pretty Girl paid, she had already gotten her gift for the day. She clenched her book close to her chest as they exited what was essentially a diner in the middle of the parking lot for a business unrelated. The salt air filled their tired old lungs and the gravel lot made walking even more of a chore than it already was. They didn’t want to say goodbye and they didn’t have to. New numbers exchanged, they vowed to do better. A promise they would both keep. A hug between old friends is always a sight, even if its just for seabirds overhead. Then Sweetheart said something Pretty Girl never expected.
“Thank you.” The words almost got stuck in her throat. Pretty Girl didn’t know what to make of it. It wasn’t for lunch; she already thanked her for that. And it wasn’t for the day. Thinking she had it figured out, she came close to asking, but decided against. Instead she nodded as she always did. No sense ruining a perfect moment on what was, all in all, a perfect day.
Scintillation
Why do stars twinkle? She asked observing one appearing near the horizon as the sun fell from the sky. “To get your attention,” he answered half kidding, half not knowing. A man sitting with his wife at an adjacent bench scoffed audibly. An ironic condescension as he himself didn’t know the answer either. “I wonder why the sky changes so many colors when the sun is setting,” she mused aloud, further testing his knowledge of the cosmos. “I believe it’s caused by the sun reflecting off the water,” he answered incorrectly, having no earthly idea on the natural phenomenon known as scattering. Where light particles are forced to deviate from a straight trajectory by one or more paths due to localized non-uniformities in the medium through which they pass. “Like a rainbow. You ever watch Captain Noah growing up?” He did what he always did when he found himself painted into an intellectual corner. He brought up something faintly relevant in order to switch the subject to something better suiting his expertise. In this case, Children’s Saturday Morning regional television programs. “Oh my God, yeah,” she responded as if they hadn’t had this conversation a dozen times before. “My parents had all these old recordings.” “Yeah mine too. They would put the tapes in every Saturday morning to buy themselves an extra couple hours of sleep.” This of course was proceeded with them singing, very much out of key, the forgotten lyrics to a song gone unbroadcasted for decades. Captain Noah, or W. Carter Meierbrier was a Philadelphia broadcasting pioneer who made his final airing in the mid 1990’s and died nearly twenty years later. Too local for any kind of home video release, his memory hinged on the middle aged to elderly who could still recall waking up early in the Delaware Valley to check and see if the good Captain had selected their hand drawn artistic submissions to feature on his show. Their deharmonized tune ended in a fit of laughter nearly causing them to drop their treats. At that moment a rare sight, a shooting star in the fading light of day, streaked across their peripheral vision. “Make a wish,” she commanded. “No need,” he said as naturally as if he had rehearsed it all day. She desperately tried to hold back her smile, reluctant to give him credit, but it was no use. His corny charm got her every time. As her eyes lit up, magic hour kept alive just a wee longer.
They sat on that bench eating their dessert. With all the people crossing behind. So many couples. Some already passed, some yet to catch up. The depth of sonder flowed shallow for these two. Unbeknownst to them which couples set to stay together against better interest. Unable to ever admit that it just wasn’t working. Neither brave enough to leap; too gutless to walk alone. Or all the couples who would come to fail. When they might have made it if either were willing to tuck some tail and admit they’d never survive without the other. All he knew, was the day was getting on. All she knew was her ice cream was melting fast. She giggled as she finished it and it dripped down her chin. He grabbed a napkin and manned clean up duty. Back to being a gentleman.
He continued down to brush sand off her toes, but she stopped him. A silly task trying to keep sand away at the beach, she pointed out. Where the grains of sand were outnumbered only by the stars in the sky. Then standing, in true gentleman form, he gave her a kiss and walked her home.