Second Lives

by P. D. Cacek

  “Mrs. Cooper, it’s Ryan, please don’t hang – ”

  …

  “ – up. Shit.”

  Ryan glared at the iPhone as if it had been responsible for the woman’s rudeness before punching the redial option. He took a deep breath, the words straining against his lips like thoroughbreds waiting for the bell when the connection went through.

  “LookIneedto – ”

  …

  “ – speaktoyouSHIT!”

  Goddamned caller ID anyway. Whatever engi-geek thought of it should be taken out and clubbed to death with baby seals.

  Ryan forgot the deep breath and took a deeper swallow of Bloody Mary, the breakfast of champions, instead, before hitting Redial. This time, after four ‘rings,’ his call went straight to voice mail and he wasn’t surprised a bit.

  “…please leave a message after the tone. Beep.”

  Fine.

  “Okay, like I said, this is Ryan and I’d like to talk to the both of you…not your machine. Call me or I’ll keep calling until I fill up all the little electrons in your phone’s memory. Promise. It’s Sunday, what else I have I got to – ”

  – beep –

  “ – do?”

  Ryan thumbed the phone off and tossed it onto the couch cushion before finishing his breakfast. He’d give it a few minutes to let the folks natter at each other and get it out of their system before trying again. Lord knows they’d had enough time to get over the worst of their grief – he had.

  Almost.

  “Yes, sir-eee bob, I’m doin’ great.”

  Yes, he was, he was doing just fine, thank you for asking, and he lifted the empty glass in a toast to himself for being so friggin’ strong. If it were an ordinary Sunday, like the ones he’d spent over the last month and a half, he’d have another shot for breakfast and maybe another for dessert and then stretch out with the Sunday funnies and laze around until it was time to drink lunch. But this wasn’t an ordinary Sunday – he had things he had to do and getting drunk wasn’t on the list.

  Yet.

  Ryan looked longingly at the empty glass before setting it down on the mosaic-glass coaster Jamie had given him two Christmases ago and picked up the phone. Redial.

  One ringy-dingy. Two ringy-dingies. Three—

  “We don’t want to talk to you, Ryan.”

  “And hello to you too, Mr. Cooper.”

  There was a slight pause then a very soft, very disgruntled greeting. Ryan could hear Mrs. Cooper in the background, telling her husband to hang up, for God’s sake just hang up on him. She sounded as if she’d had more than a one-shot breakfast herself.

  “I have to go, Ryan.”

  “He wants to see you.”

  The silence that followed was so sudden and deep that for a second Ryan thought he’d gone deaf.

  “Did you hear me? I said—”

  “I heard you. No, it’s out of the question.”

  “Look, I understand, but he asked me to call you. He wants to meet to ask your forgiveness.”

  Jamie’s dad laughed at that. “What the fuck does he expect us to forgive?”

  In the background: “What’s he want? What?”

  “I have to go, Ryan.”

  “Wait. I know how hard this is for you, but…he’s a very religious man and – I don’t know why he wants you to forgive him, maybe he feels responsible for what happened.”

  “My son killed himself. He had nothing to do with it.”

  My son, not Jamie. “He still wants to talk to you two.”

  “And I want my son back, but neither of those things is going to happen, is it? I’m hanging up, Ryan.”

  “It’ll just take a minute or two. I can drive him over this afternoon when he gets off work and—”

  “STOP! We don’t want to see him or talk to him or have anything to do with him. Our son’s dead and gone and I’m not going to sit in the same room with a stranger who looks like him and sounds like him and—”

  “He doesn’t really look like Jamie that much anymore, I mean with the beard and everything, and his voice is—”

  “Goodbye, Ryan. Don’t call us again.”

  – click –

  “Well, okay then,” he told the phone, “can’t say I didn’t try. Jesus, Jamie, your folks really are….”

  In pain, that’s what they were; they were still in pain and probably would be for the rest of their lives. They’d lost a son and didn’t want anything to do with the man who’d taken their son’s physical place in the world. And who could blame them?

  He felt the same way, but where Jamie’s parents had had the luxury of literally being able to distance themselves from the ‘situation’, Ryan couldn’t.

  At least not until today.

  Sliding the phone into his shirt pocket, Ryan stretched until he heard the muscles in his shoulders creak under the strain. He’d done way too much lifting and hauling over the past two weeks and his poor, bedraggled body was reminding him of that fact. But that was all over and after tonight, when he dropped off the last of the boxes and returned the U-Haul, he could look forward to a nice hot bath, some take-out Chinese, a little TV, and a lot of Cuervo Gold before getting into his jammies by nine.

  He’d already asked for and gotten Monday off as a ‘sick day’ so he’d be able to sleep it (and everything else that had happened since August 24th) off. Just sleep with no one around to give him grief or ask if he was ‘okay’.

  Because after tonight, he was on his own.

  Not that he’d need a whole lot of time to adjust to that particular state of being. Despite Aryeh’s resemblance to Jamie – which grew less with each passing day – Ryan had never thought of Aryeh as anything but a temporary houseguest who needed his help in ‘connecting’ to the twenty-first century. They were cordial to one another but not overly friendly, respectful of each other’s space and privacy, and, except for the nightly lessons in computer, cell phone and other remote device operations, generally stayed out of each other’s way.

  Ryan thought himself a decent teacher and Aryeh a typical student: good at the things he enjoyed, like using the CD player and microwave (he loved the microwave) but just hitting about average on other things, like using the computer and TV remote.

  “Okay,” he told himself, “time to get goin’.”

  The four moving boxes were sitting in the hallway and when they were gone, there’d be nothing to show that Aryeh had ever been there. And that was good, because when he was gone, the last of Jamie would be too.

  It had taken some time and a lot of late nights and more than just a few thank-you bottles of wine, but Jiro had managed to machete his way through all the paperwork and legal red tape and bring forth upon this nation a man named Aryeh Rosenberg.

  At which point, James Allan Cooper, Jr. was no more.

  May he rest in peace.

  While Jiro had done a masterful job with the whole ‘name change/legal quest’, neither he, nor Dr. Ellison, nor Ryan had been able to convince Aryeh that it was not only okay for him to transfer the money from Jamie’s accounts into the new one bearing his name, but would save another complex round of expensive legal fees.

  But he refused, loudly and in Hebrew, quoting scriptures – “Thou shalt not steal.”

  “It’s not stealing,” Ryan said, having Dr. Ellison translate – just to make sure the message got through – even though Aryeh could understand and speak English well enough when he wanted to. “It’s Jamie’s money.”

  “But not mine,” Aryeh had said via Dr. Ellison because, like Ryan, he wanted to make sure he was understood. “I’m not Jamie.”

  In the end it was decided that the majority of Jamie’s money would go to his family – Jiro would speak to the bank on the ‘estate’s’ behalf, with a smaller amount of $25,000.00 going to one Aryeh Rosenberg.

&nb
sp; With which he could start a new life.

  L’chaim!

  * * *

  Aryeh turned when the door’s electric lock buzzed and was reaching up to remove the magnifying glasses as Ryan walked up to the counter.

  “Ryan,” he said and a smile parted mustache from beard. The beard was filling in nicely and went a long way to disguise the face beneath. “You wait? I be finished in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  Ryan nodded and Aryeh pushed the glasses higher on his nose then turned back to the ring he’d finish in two shakes. The ring, held in metal pinchers beneath a high intensity lamp, flashed a spark of green-red-blue as Ryan leaned against the counter to watch. The lozenge-shaped diamond was about the size of the nail on his little finger and twinkled like a misplaced star with each delicate touch of the wooden-handled tool in Aryeh’s hand. The man had skills Jamie’s fumble-fingers could never have guessed at.

  Ryan watched the repetitive motion and sparkle for a few more minutes before leaving the counter to wander the store. The guard who’d buzzed him in nodded as he passed then went back to dividing his attention between the street in front of the store and the small TV monitor that ran a constant feed from the security camera mounted over the back door. Ryan couldn’t see the monitor, and he wasn’t about to wander over to take a look, but he was sure that if he had, he would have seen his car. Because Aryeh had proven himself to be such a ‘fine worker’, the owner had given Ryan permission to park in the loading zone behind the store when dropping Aryeh off or picking him up.

  This, considering the lack of on-street parking in the area and the exorbitant prices the parking garages were charging, was a blessing. True, the alley behind the store was narrow, dark, dank and smelled of piss and overheated garbage, but it had two things the mean streets of L.A. didn’t: space and surveillance.

  If any of the neighborhood panhandlers, bored teens, junkies or jackers so much as paused to admire the Civic’s fine lines or take a leak against one of its tires, the guard would have immediately stormed into the back room and thrown his full weight against the door’s steel reinforcement.

  Ryan had already witnessed the guard in action twice and both times had jumped at the deafening hollow whack when the man hit the door.

  Pershing Square and the L.A. Jewelry District might have reaped the benefits of urban renewal and the city planners’ dreams of turning the City of the Angels into a slightly scaled-down version of New York, but with all its high-rise condos, glass-front Starbucks, visible police presence and four metro stations within easy (and well-lit) walking distance, downtown L.A. was still downtown L.A.

  The jewelry store, one of the last remaining family-owned-and-operated in the area, couldn’t hope to compete with the ‘superstores’ when it came to quantity of their gems and precious metals, but what they did have, as far as Ryan was concerned as he browsed the few showcases, were one-of-a-kind masterpieces that could have easily gotten them a place on Rodeo Drive.

  Not that the family would ever consider moving, however.

  On the drive home one evening, Aryeh had told Ryan about the store and how it had been started by the present owner’s great-great-great grandfather, who’d come from Odessa with only the skill in his hands. The man had been a watchmaker and it was this, Aryeh said, that got him the job. He too had been a watchmaker – ‘back then’, what he called his past life – and knew how to set stones, and the owner had been impressed by this. The owner had also been very pleased that Aryeh thought $17.00 an hour was a king’s ransom.

  Ryan thought it best not to correct him.

  Although Aryeh didn’t need to work, he had to work. He’d never known how to do anything else. He’d always worked, and worked hard, as his father and his father’s father had before him. To be a man was to work…plus he wanted to pay back the money Ryan had forced on him.

  “There,” Aryeh called, removing the glasses, “done. Mr. Washington? Would you come, please, to watch me put this away?”

  The guard, who could probably have bench-pressed Ryan with one hand without breaking a sweat, smiled.

  “It’d be my pleasure, Mr. Rosenberg.”

  The man had a soft, gentle voice that belied his overall dimensions. Ryan could feel the polished hardwood floor tremble with each step the man took as he crossed the room. Walking around the counter to the workbench, he stepped around Aryeh’s wheelchair and bent low to admire the ring.

  “You do lovely work, Mr. Rosenberg.”

  “Thank you. From your lips that the new bride will also think so. Now, watch, please, while I take it off the stand and put it in a box.”

  The guard watched up close and Ryan watched from the opposite side of the shop as Aryeh put on a pair of cotton gloves and carefully took the ring from the vise and, after a quick polish, placed it into a black velvet ring box. The box then went into some sort of safe beneath the counter – Ryan never asked about it – after which Aryeh rolled the chair out of the way.

  “You saw?” he asked the guard.

  “I saw. You put it in the safe.”

  “Good.” Taking off the gloves, Aryeh set them next to the magnifying glasses and backed the chair up. “Now you please lock the safe and sign the book.”

  The guard smiled as he did both. “I’ve never known a more cautious man.”

  “A cautious man is a safe man,” Aryeh answered. “And now, if you will excuse us, we must leave.”

  “All moved in?”

  “Tonight, yes, I will be all moved in. Thank you for asking, Mr. Washington.”

  The guard walked back to his station next to the front door – going out the back door, though it was much more convenient, would have meant disabling the alarm system which was not going to happen – and Ryan waited until Aryeh had pulled his sweater and lunch tote from the lowest peg of an old-fashioned standing coat-rack before walking up to him. When the buzzer sounded, Ryan opened the door and stepped back to let Aryeh go first.

  “Thank you. Good night, Mr. Washington.”

  “Guten abend,” the guard said and Aryeh laughed.

  “What’d he say?” Ryan asked when they were on the street.

  “He said good evening. When the shop is not so busy we talk. I teach him Yiddish and he tells me the best places to eat around here. Are grits kosher?”

  The chair rolled over a crack in the sidewalk. “Excuse me?”

  “Grits? I’m not sure what they are, but Mr. Washington says he knows a place that makes the best grits in town.”

  “Oh. Grits are sort of like corn mush…but lumpy.”

  “Corn mush but lumpy…ah, like kasha?”

  “Probably.”

  “Ah.”

  They didn’t talk again until they reached Aryeh’s new apartment down on Maple and Twenty-First. Dr. Ellison had suggested the place, a grand old Victorian that had been reconverted as a ‘halfway house’ for society’s misplaced persons – and since Aryeh fit perfectly into that category, it seemed the logical place for him to live.

  His room was on the first floor in what had originally been the front parlor. The bath was down the hall, which bothered Ryan but seemed perfectly natural to Aryeh. And while meals were served communal-style in the dining room directly across the hall from Aryeh’s front door, there was a small L-shaped ‘kitchenette’ in one corner of the room that consisted of a sink, small refrigerator and hotplate in case he got hungry during the night or where he could eat if he just needed some time to be alone.

  If it hadn’t been for the huge bay window that looked out onto the quaint, rundown neighborhood, the room with its twin bed, mismatched nightstand and dresser, dinette table and chair (singular) would have been as depressing as the commute which required Aryeh to rise just before dawn in order to catch the bus on Maple, transfer on Fifth for another eight blocks, then wheel across rush hour traffic to get to the shop.

 
; A commute like that would have had Jamie screaming for mercy, but Aryeh loved riding the bus.

  Go figure.

  When Ryan carried in the last box from the car he found Aryeh carefully folding a brand-new, never-been-worn-by-Jamie tee-shirt into a drawer.

  “This is it,” Ryan said. “You’re all moved in.”

  Aryeh closed the drawer and pulled his wheelchair around to face Ryan.

  “Thank you, Ryan, I know how hard this has been for you.”

  Ryan set the box down on the table and shrugged. What was he going to say, “Nah, these things happen”?

  “Look, Aryeh, I know I’ve been a….”

  “Varen…wait, before you say anything. I have this.”

  Ryan watched Aryeh pick up a small white envelope off the top of the dresser. It would have been just as easy for him to roll the chair across the room, but no, he made Ryan come to him.

  “What is it?” Ryan asked, “A thank-you note?”

  “Nein, I found it in the shirt from the hospital I wore and….” He blushed from the eyebrows down, just like Jamie. “I didn’t know what it was, so I read. I’m sorry. It is for you, from him, from Yaakov.”

  Ryan looked down at the envelope. Yaakov – Hebrew for James. Jamie. He took a deep breath but couldn’t feel the air move into his lungs.

  “God.”

  “Kumt.”

  Ryan looked up.

  “Come…sit and read. I go make introductions, say hello to the others. You, bitteh, please, sit.”

  Aryeh didn’t move until Ryan had sat down at the table.

  “I’ll just be out here,” he said and rolled out of the room, closing the door behind him. “Take your time.”

  Ryan squeezed the envelope and felt the card inside. It could have been anything, any old card or just some invitation Jamie had slipped into his pocket and forgotten to take out. It could be anything….

  Dear Ryan,

  I love you, please believe that and remember it because I do love you; I love you with all my heart. But I can’t do this anymore.

  I’m sorry.

  Jamie

  Four lines, three sentences.

  Ryan closed the card and put it back into the envelope.