Twenty

1

It was a flash. It couldn’t have been anything else, because he couldn’t think of anything else it might be. His mind had been elsewhere, not on the flash that hadn’t come yet. He had been attending to the empty space above his right ear. Could that have been full of nothing? Why did it fill up when he squinted and looked closer? In a blink something was there, fluttering. You couldn’t call that empty since it filled his eye. But he thought better than to reach for it. You don’t grab a moth.  Another blink and it’s no more. You have powder between thumb and forefinger and may as well go back to sleep if you were sleeping when the flash woke you. It was enough to wake him if he had been sleeping. But he hadn’t slept. That’s what a flash is. At least that’s what they say it is. He could compare it with other flashes if he could remember any. That’s why they call it fiction, flash fiction. Gone so quickly and maybe never come. He resolved to stop blinking, if he could remember to.

2

There was vomit on the tie of the customer coming out. So it may not have been the best place for lunch. But he never turned back. When the waitress mumbled, he nodded. He always showed decision. She returned in no time. He didn’t know whether to go at it with a fork or spoon. He took a fork in one hand and a spoon in the other. He was a fast thinker. When the thing slid about and went mushy, he wiped his mouth and leaned back as if finished and content. He was never at a loss. The next dish was something in a shell. A classic move to freeze you in indecision whether to bite the container or pick it up and look inside. Resources he had. His teeth ground a quick chew of nothing and he forked the shell away with respect. His expectant look brought a dessert that wasn’t quite dead. It crawled toward the edge of the plate. He paid the bill, smiled and put down, gently, a tip, thirty-five percent. You are supposed to raise your voice and complain. But nobody manipulates him. They understood that now. He checked and his tie had no more than a speck on  it.

3

The clock was a big one like he used to see at school. That was no guarantee it was correct. Those clocks were always slow. He sweated every minute till he could get out. And the clock at home was even slower, That’s why he had always been late to school and never got going on anything. He stared at the big clock to keep it ticking. The difficulty was to do anything else at the same time. Strange that he couldn’t catch the hour hand moving. Yet it moved, had to. That’s what time was. He fixed his eyes on the clock face, not once blinking. But he couldn’t keep the hour hand still. Well, that may be how things are, not to be changed. It was something he had to accept, human destiny. That meant him, because what else was he if not human? All his competitors, below and above him, were human too. They had no choice. But destiny or not, it was damned annoying, enough to make living impossible, the fact that the hour hand without moving was never in the same place.

4

He had to turn aside to avoid a collision with their man who walked toward him down the sidewalk. They teach them that. He took a deep breath before turning to watch the back of the expensive suit. Trained to perfection, the tweed never tightened.  One private head couldn't compete with their set-up. They retire with a good pension. He’d known by the slap of soles on the cement that he’d been followed all morning. Now he’d made his move and was ten yards behind the phoney. But he was jumpy and rigid, because sincere, no pretender. The imposter stopped before the window of a menswear store. Tricky. They might even authorise the purchase of a pair of expense-account socks. It’s what they call strategy. He was losing heart. All on his own, he hadn’t that kind of support. He paid his taxes, mostly. Crossing the street, he stared into a store window and watched the professional in the reflection. The polished performer yawned and walked off unhurried. He couldn’t beat that and surrendered, ready to hold out his naked wrists.

5

He couldn’t have been clearer in his meaning. They had to have got it. What was difficult to understand? Couldn’t they, between the two them, summon up five minutes’ attention? He’d been so careful in the way he put it, foresaw their objections, answered them softly, added a friendly aside or two, but come down hard, of course. It was a matter of principle. That was the point of his statement, so he could hardly not emphasise it. Reasonable he’d been, so if they had a cavil or whatever they could not but come back in the same spirit. That was his secret. He was calm and fair, a congenial judge, and anyone but a lowlife would use a similar tone in reply. He would deal with their quibbles in the same way. Instead, they had simply closed their minds, perhaps never   had them openat all. Or else, it could be, he’d crafted such a tight fit of words that it left them no breath for rebuttal. They were stunned silent. Capitulation was the word. They hadn’t even the strength left to acknowledge reception.

6

The man had a punishing grip on the lead, but must have loved his dog. When it crouched to defecate he paused like a priest at mass. He may even have felt the strain. He could have been straightening something on the altar for all the care with which he wiped its anus. The same paper handkerchief, unfolded, served to manoeuvre and wrap the fallen turd. It was elevated with a touch of the sacred. The refreshed animal surged on its lead, Sursum corda. The man pulled back sharp enough to show there was a ceiling on how far a heart should be lifted. The faithful had to know they were still in harness and not setting the pace. Suitably contrite, the animal dipped its ears. Ite, missa est and back to the profane and Monday. The lead loosened. Creature weakness was tolerated, short halts for sniffing conceded. But no defiance of the law with yelps or whimpers. The walk finished, the man sealed the connection. He detached and doubled the lead. Teeth clenched, he slapped it hard on the dog’s rump.

7

Besides, they didn't pick up on his reference to cuttlefish. Nor did their doorman get his pun on ‘hail’. Foreign-born, then. Were there no ice storms where the flunkey came from? There are all sorts of climates and the earth is warming, of course, but it’s not as if the booby had ‘hale and hearty’ thrown at him. Visitors must have said, ‘howdy’ to his smile. Who can tell? The native college-grads at dinner, with two fish courses, should have connected a cuddle and smooch with what wasn’t on their plate but all the same a hundred-per-cent seafood. Listeners can’t be counted on. He did his part, taking thought beforehand. He couldn't expect them to help. Chiming in on time? He was lucky if they hadn't turned a deaf ear right and left and drowned him out with some blather of their own. ‘How you doing? Like this warm spell?’ Try to make something to remember in reply to that.  ‘Press upward on the depression’ wasn’t the thing to say when they were down with it. Bad taste would spoil the cheese course and calling the taste of the Camembert melancholic wouldn’t help.

8

He could see no sense in it.  He’d be doing something, anything, nothing and a scene would come up before him. Let’s not be dramatic. It wouldn't be a decisive scene. Not one that had changed his life. Only one scene out of trillions. Why hadn’t he forgotten it and wiped his mind clean?  Because it was unforgettable, forever returning but always beside the point. There was no connection between its meaning nothing now and its meaning nothing then. It only ever recalled itself. So he saw a green mosque, but it was only one of a dozen, not the biggest, not the smallest, not the most impressive or memorable. Or else, a moment in the rain, bare street and dripping trees. Curtain. Don’t think his umbrella was blown inside out or his wet feet brought on pneumonia. Nah, quick curtain and the lights go out. What kind of mind is that, random as death, senseless? Even a nonsense game has to have rules, some reason. Why those scenes, never forgotten. One will land like a housefly. No good swatting. It’s gone already. But it will be back, forever.

9

The wind hurt. About meteorology he didn’t want to know, but icy rain in the face was honest pain. He would wipe it off and reopen his eyes. What he didn’t want to hear was talk of the tectonic plates, that their dance was as good as opera. The wrecked villages were something else. He would pick up the pieces as willing as anyone, provided they left him alone. When the earth shook again he would brace himself on a crippled tree, a broken gate, a dead man’s bicycle. Just don’t ask him to sit on the shore to count the new waves. Numbers. Panic took him when they said he was a baby boomer. Straightaway he fiddled his dates. The figures weren’t his doing. But the generation X mask choked just as much. A traditionalist he was not, unless they too unstuck labels from their foreheads, closed their mouths and refused to blame the weather. No hero of the mind, he wished only to stand there without a uniform and receive the blows. For the moment he’d take a shower and shiver. Don’t tell him about evaporation.

10 

He clicked his teeth at his screen. They wouldn’t shut him up. “Off my back”, he said, and made his chair screech as he pushed away and looked toward the window. He didn't care about the noise. He was mad. He stayed seated. The window didn’t interest him. He'd seen the view. A reply came to mind that would leave them speechless. He pulled up to the keyboard and tapped it out. A long minute. That their move would be conciliatory made him smile. As if he didn’t know what was coming next. They would talk it over trying to convince one another they hadn’t gone too far. He sat forward on the edge of his chair, alert, ready to rebound. In a case like this he always doubled down. They were taking their time. Several minutes. Nothing. The bastards. He straightened up and rephrased his next comment. Not a word from them. So they were backing down. Pussies. He stood up, careful not to stoop his shoulders, pushed his chair back delicately and went over on old man’s feet to the window still not looking out.

11

There she stood, in the way on purpose. It had always been like that with her. Wouldn’t make room. It goes back to the beginning. He tolerated it, was too easy, gave in. But those days are over. All that will stop with a bang, an explosion. Everything is going to be different when the sun rises. And here it is, a morning with a different taste in his mouth. It’s clouded over. He asks her if Tuesday is blue Monday again. She doesn’t smile. But she doesn’t not smile. No sneer. He says, “About what we were discussing yesterday…” She says, “What was that?” “After we decided to have the car checked over.” “Oh, yes, I’ll take it in this morning.” “It was after that, when we were drinking coffee.”  “You know we have to stop that, drinking coffee at bedtime”. “Right. You’re right. No coffee after eight o’clock.” “I’d make that seven”. “Okay. Let’s say seven-thirty. I believe in compromise.” “I’ll go along. What was that you say we were talking about with the coffee?” “You know, I’ve forgotten too. It can’t have been important.” “I’m off now. See you after work.” “Till then, take care.”

12

The son of a bitch says he’s witty, the rest of us are only comical. He thinks he knows the difference between a smirk and a grin. So he tells his story again, slight changes in the lead in, then a hint of dirt coming as he pours out the build up, all pus, while the head of the pimple swells and, squirt, he pinches it out all over us. Laugh? Of course. That’s what the imbeciles have paid for. Professional solidarity means we air our teeth too. That’s what we’re hoping to be paid for. But it tightens our shoulders. This guy has to be got off us. It’s no good trading old-timers over a drink with him as if we’re rubes busy digesting. Sit down with him, yes, just the two of us. Another drink. When he leans back, gone soft, hit him. Make it pointed. Aim at his memory pan where he keeps it all, just above his puffed up hairline. Stare hard so he knows it’s for him. Get a slow bleed going. That’s the thing. Then unwind it full length, an aphorism for the love of Mike, a wit hit, for the love of bullshit.

13

So he didn’t see the eclipse. Okay, correction, the comet with a tail. Right, it was a once in a lifetime sight. He missed it. They saw it. The universe has filled with stuff to see, but he doesn't keep up. He sits there and watches the scuff marks on the top of his shoes. Is he wrong to want to leave a vacant space in his head? Just an empty sliver? Don’t begrudge him that.  As it is he’s got such a load he can hardly carry it. Some days he has to go down on all fours to get up under it. Even the hard done-by, the starved children, the groggy homeless, the ebola cases—they get tough with him, prodding and hissing. His life is a long grimace. Their tears call the shots.  Lift, lift, they say, keep moving. There can be plenty of spite left in a three-legged, mange-chewed spaniel. The near dead are full of demands too, with their last breath. So what’s new with the sky-gazers? Don’t say they mislaid their telescope or cracked their smokey glasses. Their open arms make him tired. He’ll try to be sorry when that shooting star hits them.

14

Not a pal, but he could pick the face out in a crowd. Once in a while they’d met by chance, never intentional. You can’t say that sort of accidental thing is friendship. They would chew the professional rag, both knowing there would be issues if they turned off the smiles and stood their ground. No doubt at all the dislike was mutual. Now the man was dead and no part of the opposition, a closed mouth. Not that he hadn’t always seen him as dead except for the minutes they traded hypocrisy, a couple of jokers on a street corner. So he could stamp him R.I.P., as the saying goes, one less to keep away from. Then the widow ‘phoned. Would he be a pallbearer? What? A what? Apparently they still ran through that routine. He hadn’t seen it since the last time he watched a skinny Ophelia laid to rest in a stage trapdoor. The lifting turned out to be the easy part. The man’s beloved made a big meal of the event. She wanted a few words from him, just an appetiser.  Why did he start his spiel with “Our friend”?

15

The body was so warm to touch, he tried to pull away. But he couldn’t make space. The other had the force of gravity all right but was it alive? It would not be dislodged. In any case it wasn’t healthy. He could catch something from it. He had to have cool air between. Then hands were doing something above him. What did they want? This was no time for third party interference, pawing him. They might be on his side but this was something he had to settle himself. No one else could understand his position, his predicament. They didn’t feel the sick heat of clammy encroachment. He foresaw their advice. Relax, they would say. They always said that to start with. Then they would pat him on the shoulder, those hands, and he would have less space than ever, cool air nowhere. And why should they be on his side? Why wouldn’t they be a part of the heat that was crowding him? He stopped thinking and tightened into one tiny muscle, inching into himself a speck at a time.

16

They put him on a bench until the lawyer came back from lunch. He wasn’t sure he needed a lawyer, but they were. It sounded expensive. The secretary nodded twice with her chin. The first nod remembered his problem. The second sized him up as insignificant, guilty, but small as in petty crime. He sat absorbed in a huge wardrobe that stood against the corridor’s other wall. A column of shelves at each end was set inches back. The shelves were crammed with dull-buff dossiers. A lot of guilt there. Some were so thick they had to contain mass murder. A thin one would have been marked, “Dead, no more to be said.” What did he care about the big ragged ones? An eternal squabble over a dear-departed’s leavings, a banker’s scam that danced from one continent to another? He slumped in the backless bench. The doors of the wardrobe were a huge face that belittled him with a grin from between dossier ears. The secretary opened a wardrobe door to hang up the lawyer’s overcoat. He wanted to sign a confession and go home.

17

In those days he was an early morning person. Not up with the birds, maybe, but once vertical, cheeky, he chirped along. Look, he’s the same person. He can pinch himself and it makes a mark on his flesh, a fading one. It’s hard to remember what exactly, but something changed. Maybe it was the earth that never stopped turning. Did it begin grinding like tired metal? Little things happened too, living and all that. Too hard to recall and go through it again. Let it pass, the past, now he’s a late night person, busy with his scale having to weigh it all up instead of sleeping. Because little things have got bigger and bigger. They can’t be dodged and have to be thought away. He gets rid of one and another is there behind it. Never mind the blood and thunder out there on the main stage. He hasn't space for that. It’s nothings that keep him awake. Things he said or didn’t say to the now dead. Eternal esprit d’escalier in a one-storey shack. Not chirping but pecking with those birds at seeds so tiny they can’t be forgotten.

18

He made a sign of the cross not to spoil unanimity at table. It was annoying not to feel well. That he didn’t look well wasn’t his problem. His mortally heavy hand only picked at his full plate, respecting his recent loss of appetite. Others fussed over what they called their ‘passing’, obliging him to pay them the attention of attending their funeral. The morning bodycount could only ever rise. A dozen here, fifty there. When the number reached three figures, the event deserved a second look and being remembered until lunchtime. Those cadavers didn’t smell. Cyberspace buried its own. The sourness in his stomach was something else. It wouldn’t call for mourning or a standup eulogy. It was just a very bad taste in his mouth. His mind cruised through what the other diners thought the jiggery with their right hand might lead to. Eternal life in a cosy spot somewhere upwards? No more arthritis? The end of dreaming maybe, because nightmares weren’t the problem, any highjacking of sleep was. It would be a shame if he didn’t use up the dyspepsia pills. He had a full bottle.

19

Where are they? The last time he saw them they were children. Afterward he heard about them. They fell into work, marriage, illness, problems they had no answer for. They had a smile or two, before disease did all the grinning. They died. He remained. He wants to know where they are. Understand, he’s not asking for justice. Who would dole that out? You might as well demand equity from the north wind. He sees them all still, a schoolroom full. A crooked tie with a plum-sized knot. That one never stood straight, tilted like the line of his mouth. But that was no reason for him to disappear. She made a thing about having her pigtails pulled and always had her hand up. Surely later she did her hair differently and left off policing others. They knew no better, those kids, and even if they never dropped their hypocrisy and hid it behind a grownup face, there’s no reason to obliterate them. Scared, they were, and uncertain where to take the next step. No reason to hold that against them. Just tell him where they are, the ones he watched as children.

20

He hadn’t forgotten he’d said he wanted to go. That he couldn’t wait. No, he didn’t say that. You can’t say he said that. But he was ready, willing to go. “Ripeness is all”, was his quote. No doubt about that. One—you know, one—can have enough. Done everything, he has. Nothing worked out right or exactly how he wished. Tried again and again, like they told him to do in school, but falling short was his thing. Was someone jiggling his aim? Were his arrows limp? Not made for distance? Nothing had ever hit bullseye and the time came when he had to admit it wasn’t ever going to. So why stick around? There was nothing for it but to turn his back on the target and stride off with style into the great relaxing nowhere. He could see himself upright lifting a creaky knee into autumn and heading west. But not quite yet. Not that he had planned another try. Enough is just about enough. He hadn’t changed his mind. But what’s the hurry? He’d like to repeat his quote a few more times—the sound pleased him— and maybe figure out first whatever ripeness means.