That Crazy Reality Show

by Natasha Kent

  Finally, Friday morning the train pulled into the station in Atlanta. As I waited for a taxi I looked at all of the luggage. Those suitcases had been everywhere with us. Alaska. The Mississippi. All of the places we had gone. I remember thinking, Martin, you’re nuts to carry on over luggage.

  Martin.

  Matt’s name for me.

  Oh Matty! I thought as we pulled away from the station. I started crying silently. The cab driver looked at me. “Where to?” he asked softly. I gave him the address. “Are you visiting Atlanta?”

  “I just came back from New York City.”

  “Oh.” What else was there to say.

  My heart was killing me as the taxi pulled up in front of our house. I felt empty inside. No words can describe it so forgive me if I don’t try. The driver helped me in with the suitcases, I paid him and he left. Slowly I looked around at all of the work that Matt and I had done on the house, making it beautiful again.

  Together.

  Numbly I went upstairs, took some more medicine, and laid down. I lay there crying until I finally fell asleep.

  * * * *

  I woke up and it was getting dark outside. I shuffled downstairs and turned on a couple of lights, then headed into the kitchen to fix something to eat. Not that I felt like eating at all. The answering machine was blinking. Fourteen messages, huh? Oh well. Can’t deal with that now. I fixed myself a grilled cheese and a Coke, then sat down in the den.

  Flipping on the television I wound up on the celebrity tribute where they were raising money for the victims of 9/11. There were celebrities taking calls and a bunch of songs were performed in the studio. But they were pussy songs, I remember thinking. What a bunch of sappy bullshit! I was angry. Some bunch of anti-American assholes had killed Matt, along with thousands of others, and they’re playing these slow, cryin’-towel songs?

  Fuck that! I wanted to hear “Born in the USA” or “Little Pink Houses” or "Proud To Be An American." Something to get people to their feet in anger and pride!

  Then came the part where they showed the different countries around the world observing a minute or two of silence. Complete strangers in other countries, even countries that hated the United States, grieved for us. That killed me. I lost it and started bawling around my sandwich. I put my face in my hands and sobbed like a baby. My heart was ripped out. My soul felt empty. I couldn’t be alone. Not right now.

  I picked up the phone and dialed my parents. Dad answered.

  “Mike?” he said, sounding exasperated.

  “Daddy..” was all I said. I was an absolute wreck.

  “My God are you alright.”

  “I’m…I’m…okay. Matt didn’t….he didn’t….he's gone....I’m alone…will you please come over?” I know I must’ve sounded like a five year old, but I had never experience that kind of loss.

  “We’re on our way.” I clicked off the phone and sat there watching the horrific images of destruction as the planes crashed into the Trade Center. Then the one image of the South Tower starting to collapse and the dust and debris rolling through the streets of New York. The people running for safety. I sat there transfixed wondering where was Matt when all this happened. Was he hurt initially? Did he know what was happening?

  Did he know I was trying to get to him?

  I was still crying when the phone rang. I couldn’t talk to anyone and I started hitting the machine with my hands. Just then I heard someone on the front porch. Thank God, my parents were here. I left the kitchen to open the door for them and I heard a “beep” from the answering machine.

  “Mike, it’s me.” I spun around at the sound of Matt’s voice. “Man where are you? I tried calling you on your cell—“ and the connection ended. “Tuesday, 9:12 a.m.” from the answering machine lady.

  I heard the front door knob rattle behind me and the machine beeped again. “Oh man Mike, I’m scared man.” You could hear his voice wavering. “If you get this message…God I hope you call the house…can’t get through your cell. Oh my GOD!!—“ and the connection ended. Again. Tuesday, 10:05 a.m.” The first tower collapse. I was in shock. I didn’t even think to call the house phone. Things were just so fuckin’ crazy.

  The machine beeped again. “Martin. I love you.” He was breathing heavy. “I just saw you and you disappeared! I lost you in the dust cloud. I could have sworn I saw you go down this street. God DAMMIT where are you.” How could he see…”Tuesday, 10:08 a.m.”

  I heard a key in the door as I stared at the machine. “Mike, I don’t know where to find you.” At this he was crying. I started crying too. “Just know that if you get this message go back to the hotel. I love you. I’ll be waiting for you there.” The machine read off the time. “Tuesday, 10:45 a.m.” That was after the second collapse, I thought as I heard the front door open.

  I turned around and thought I’d have a heart attack.

  I couldn’t move. God was playing a trick on me. My mind was still fucked from the medicine. I know it was my dad but it looked like…

  “Martin.” He said.

  It was Matt. I stood there. I couldn’t move. My eyebrows started doing that crazy thing they do when I cry. My lips quivered. I thought I was all cried out but I was wrong.

  “Matt?” I whispered. I started to walk towards him and it felt like the house was getting longer. I didn’t think I’d ever get there. He ran up to me and grabbed me.

  “Oh God, Martin!” He was bawling and I was stunned. I had my arms around him but I couldn’t say anything. This wasn’t happening.

  Slowly, or it seemed slowly, it sank in. I held him tight and kept saying “Oh God” over and over. I wanted to climb into him. I wanted to melt myself into his body. I couldn’t let him go! We stood there crying for what seemed like hours, then I stepped back to look at him. Nobody ever looked so good. I held his face and kissed him, then I hugged him again.

  “I thought you were dead,” I repeated over and over. When I looked up my parents were coming into the house. They were shocked and came over to hold us. We were all blubbering like idiots.

  After about ten minutes of crying with joy I sat down on the stairs, taking Matt with me. We each had an arm around the other one. I wasn’t letting him go. No sir!

  “What in the hell happened? Where were you?” I asked.

  “Oh my God! When I called you to wake you up I was downstairs buying a newspaper—“

  “A newspaper! Say what?!” I was shocked. “I thought you said you were at Windows.”

  “No, I asked if you wanted to eat there for breakfast.”

  “Right, but you were singing that damn song when I asked where you were,” I said.

  “What song?” Mom asked.

  “Top Of The World,” we replied in unison. I continued, “I assumed that you were already up there waiting for me.”

  “No. No, no, no.” The tears kept rolling down his cheeks and wiping at his face with his upper arm. “I think on the phone I said something like, ‘well, not quite.’ I was in the lobby as you bolted through and out the doors. I called your name but you didn’t answer.”

  I remembered. “Oh hell, I thought somebody said Mister Martin, not Martin.”

  “No babe, that was me.” He smiled. “I’ll tell you what, man, I’ve never seen you run faster in my life.”

  Turning to Mom and Dad I said, “When he called I thought he was in the Trade Center as the plane hit. I saw it hit from our balcony. And I had no clue which building the restaurant was in so I just hauled ass down there.”

  “Our hotel was about a dozen blocks or so from Ground Zero,” Matt said. By now that’s the moniker that the World Trade Center had been given. “My God, he ran so fast I couldn’t find him. I wasn’t sure which street he went down.”

  “And that’s after I busted my knee too. I went down West Broadway, by the way.” I squeezed him to me again. I still couldn’t believe he was here. Alive. “When I got down to the Trade Center my phone started ringing. I had dropped it on my way off the terra
ce and thought it might be broken.” At this I started tearing up again. “I saw the second plane coming in as Matt was saying ‘Mike, Mike.’ Then it smashed into the South Tower. The phone went dead.”

  “Oh man. I was trying to tell you that I was looking for you. The connection must have died.”

  “Please,” I said to him, “don’t say the word ‘died’ right now.” They all looked somberly at me.

  Matt continued his story. “I was running around trying to find you but I couldn’t, and you weren’t answering your phone—“

  “The phone quit working. I got mad and threw it against a building. Which was stupid of me.”

  “Then when the South Tower started to collapse I started running. I saw you,” he said, turning to me. “Martin, I saw you running with the crowd. You were about a block ahead of me and I was screaming your name but it was just so damned loud. I thought I saw you running into a side street but then the cloud blinded me.”

  “Yeah, that wasn’t good. I was running to some kind of shop and smashed my knee, again, into a fire hydrant. I flipped over and hit my head on the building.”

  “Oh Mike,” my mom said.

  “Luckily, two guys were in there and they helped me to a hospital.”

  “Saint V’s.” Matt said.

  “How’d you know?” I turned to him.

  “Man, I checked every place I could. Saint V’s just happened to be the last place and you had already checked yourself out. They wouldn’t tell me details about why you were in there though.”

  “Slight concussion.”

  “Oh my God,” Dad said.

  “Dad, it was horrible. Not only did I think I had witnessed his death,” my voice cracked at this point, “but to watch those poor, poor people who jumped. I’ll never get that image out of my head. Never. God, and then think of the firemen.” The tears were rolling again at that. “I found a place with the help of Lou—“ and I smiled at the memory.

  “Who’s Lou?” Matt asked.

  “Oh, during one of my basket case moments" I sniffed "I sat down on some street corner and this older man came up and asked if I was okay. He helped me find he place to register Matt’s name in case…any remains were found.”

  “Oh, Mike,” Matt said, crushing me against him. “I called so many times on your cell and even left messages here, thinking you’d check the house voice mail.”

  “God, man, I was…well, I was out of my mind. How did you get home?”

  “I rented a car.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No. I went to the hotel and you had checked out already. Martin, I swear I was always one step behind you.”

  I kind of laughed and shook my head. Un-fucking-believable.

  Mom came over to us and grabbed us both. “I’m just so glad that you’re both home. Alive!” She held us like that for a minute then stood back. “Well, would anyone like something to eat?”

  “I’m starving,” Matt and I said. We both laughed and walked off to the kitchen, arm in arm.

  Together.

  One heartbeat. Different names.

  The End.

  Wait! As a sign of appreciation, I have two more bonus Short Stories for you. Read them Below:

  FRE

  E FALL

  When I checked the posting board that Sunday to see my week's work, I was pleased to see that I would be sharing the Shuttle trip with Cyril Blanton. Cyril is one of the British auxiliary members of the shuttle crews, and we always had, in his words, "a ripping good time" when we went up together.

  Our mission was in its day front-page new; now we were old hat ever since the space station became operational. Even the shuttles had been shrunk in size, and I was now on call for a two-man model. Cyril and I were to rendezvous with an errant satellite, one of the English ones (which explained his presence), and fix it. As I met Cyril in the dressing room, he told me that he figured it was a bent antenna.

  "Spending two million pounds sterling to drive a space lorry up for five minutes; I say, that's a waste of perfectly good time, eh, what? Why not send a crew over from the station, is what I'd like to know." he protested.

  I don't remember his exact words, being used to his English-isms, but that was close. I won't do it to you any more than I have to, I promise. Just remember when you read what follows that Cyril is English through and through. Every word of his shows it. I just may not quote him that way.

  Cyril shucked his blue jeans and I again got to feeling horny watching him. Cyril may one day be a proper English gentleman, but these days he was a true hunk; Black straight hair and blue eyes on that elongated, square jaw, his eyes sparkling like twin sapphires. He was downright pretty, I jokingly told him once. I had hoped the conversation might lead somewhere, but he just laughed.

  His body was very, very hairy; A solid coat down his chest and stomach, coating both arms and hands nearly solid.

  "My grandfather was a werewolf." he joked when someone mentioned it. His body was a typical astronaut's (astronauts have to stay in shape, or you get down-checked), nicely muscled, with swelling biceps that rippled when he moved, his abs lining his stomach accented by his hair, his chest muscled but flatter than mine. His nipples were lost in that hair somewhere and his body wouldn't tell you where to look. I gulped, turned away, and got into my own jumpsuit.

  We boarded the shuttle on the mark, and a bored checker read the countdown for us. I'll never quite get used to it, even though everyone else seemed to. That bone-crushing take- off, over three minutes of agony while the shuttle gets up to speeds of eight miles per second, and climbs to the 225,000 mile orbits of the geosynchronous satellites. Once we were up to speed, though, I checked our flight plan, and then saw to my dismay that we were below speed. We would make the rendezvous (those satellites don't really move in that orbit, at least relative to us and the Earth), but were going to approach it slower than planned.

  "Bloody hell." was Cyril's only comment. We had twelve hours to kill.

  Fortunately, even the small shuttles are designed to let you stay up a while if necessary. Behind our pilot station was a sizeable room, a crew lounge. It had chess boards, sleeping stations (in free fall you don't need a mattress, just a place to strap in), food for two weeks, and so on. So once we learned how long we had to wait, we put the shuttle on automatic and went back to wait out the time.

  Cyril and I exchanged off-color stories like we always did. I was used to "playing straight" around the other crew members; while officially the agency didn't care if you were gay, it could get sticky if they found out. My problem was, my best story was a strictly gay one. It was all I could think of.

  But how to tell the story without giving it away? Best to change it so that one of the characters was a woman. I started in (it's a long story and an old one, I won't bore you with it here) and he was enjoying it. I enjoyed swapping stories because the English have a different sort of humor from ours; an old joke to us is a new one to them and vice versa.

  Trouble was, I got confused in telling the story. I changed the sex of the wrong character half-way through, and ended up with a mess. When I got to the punch line, Cyril was looking at me very curiously, and I knew there was no way out for me.

  "I guess you muffed it, eh, old fellow?" he kindly asked.

  "I guess so." I was blushing bright red, I could feel.

  "Don't worry about it, old chum. I couldn't care less who you sleep with. I've known about it for a year or more; have I been telling stories about you 'round the base?"

  I was astonished. "You knew. I mean... How?"

  Cyril laughed. "Old bean, my uncle is, what's your word, gay. I knew you were a pouf about the first time I met you, but I've gotten along with the poufs in my life."

  "I'm not sure I like that word." I said hesitantly.

  "What word?"

  "Poof."

  "Oh, pouf. I don't mean it badly, old chum. But if you wish, well, I won't say it."

  "Okay." I said. "I'd appreciate it. Now, how
about a game of chess; your turn to take black"

  We had a good argument about that, since it was really my turn to take the black pieces, and I felt better when it was over and I settled in to play a defensive game. Cyril's too good for me to even think about a gambit when he's got the initiative. I settled in, concentrating on the game, thank God, and played him to a stalemate, the best I could hope for with a player of Cyril's caliber. I only won occasionally, when I played white.

  "Set 'em up again." Cyril said. "I need to hit the head."

  He went into our tiny bathroom and I heard the fan turn on. In free fall, without the fan, you'd have no control of where your ejecta (NASA's word, not mine) would go. In other words, the shit's SUPPOSED to hit the fan, as it's so cogently put. There's a vacuum for your urine, too.