Table of Contents
Excerpt vii
Chapter 1 – Think Me a Fool or Madman 1
Chapter 2 – What I Should Have Asked 6
Chapter 3 – Forty Years Ahead of Me 11
Chapter 4 – Everything’s Possible, Young Man 17
Chapter 5 – No One Would Ever See Them 23
Chapter 6 – Talking to a Skeleton 29
Chapter 7 – I See. A Team Effort 33
Chapter 8 – The Lion Has No Choice 37
Chapter 9 – Miracles Are Entirely Ordinary 40
Chapter 10 – I Believed that I Had Died 43
Chapter 11 – Ten or Eleven or Twelve 49
Chapter 12 – I’m Just a Recluse 56
Chapter 13 – Open the Door! 63
Chapter 14 – It’s Thirty Years Later 70
Chapter 1 – Think Me a Fool or Madman
If a sincere request is shouted out, or even if it’s whispered, it often gets no response at all.
But it might just be that the scream or whisper has set a plan in motion, unknown to the one doing the asking and getting back nothing but silence.
That silence can be like a road leading into an unexpected future.
And some roads are deadly. A highway that’s flat and straight can be an outright killer.
That’s the thought swirling in my brain as I crunch dried leaves and kick aside fallen twigs while hiking through the park near my apartment. It’s a clear fall day in the city, and the early morning sunshine hasn’t yet mustered the strength to warm and soften up my frozen leather jacket.
Up ahead, through a sea of busy hikers and folks walking to work, I see Mandy on our usual bench. She’s got on that coat that’s more like a blanket, mostly black and wrapped all around, making her graying auburn hair, bunched up in a mound, all the more obvious.
And even after all this time, my tired mind still jumps back to the sight of Becky’s wavy blond hair. It was always hanging in bunches, left to do what it wanted—that was her style.
Mandy’s hair is under total control, though, and she’s holding that cloak close in front and leaving only enough room for a hand to keep her coffee cup up near her lips, maybe even casting some of its steam and heat toward her face. Anything would help until the sun wakes the hell up for real.
My steps slow before there’s any idea in my head to rethink this long-standing twice-weekly meet and maybe decide to pass on our exchange and disclosures and frequent whining and complaining to each other. And it’s not until my old boots have found parts of the pavement where they want to lock me in place that it’s clear to me why I’ve stopped.
It’s not about that highway, that sneaky, merciless trap. Well, yeah, it kind of is about that. I finish that philosophical observation with the realization that a flat straight lane isn’t a killer. No. It just hides the waiting death, making a playful surprise of it.
Driving a car like you’re on autopilot masks the moment when dry pavement had succumbed to an invisible layer of ice.
But we cruise along, believing we’re in control still.
The tires know better.
The ice is probably laughing, knowing that we’ll have to hit the brakes eventually. Maybe turn the wheel, even just a touch.
Yeah, we think all is well and really, we’ve been up to our eyeballs in danger for a while, unaware of how hopeless our situation has become.
If we had the sense to realize that, we could coast down to a lower speed, maybe even ease the car to the side and make an intelligent choice about what to do about the predicament.
But what do we do? Shit, we race along like everything’s fine until we’re compelled to do something which wouldn’t usually be stupid, but it sure as hell is stupid now.
Only then do we accept that we’ve been in serious trouble for a while. We don’t even know how long, but that chill climbing our spine says it’s probably too late to do a damn thing about it.
You’re probably thinking I’ve been standing here for minutes, maybe longer, pondering my imminent death on a highway built only in my mind. But it took only a second to hobble together those thoughts and since I see Mandy looking my way, I find the sense to take a healthy sip from my paper coffee cup, as if that’s why I’d stopped.
She probably expected me to continue walking after that, close the distance and sit like I usually do—leaving some elbow room between us. Any other day, yeah, that would be the plan.
Not today.
You see, that nonsense about driving on ice wasn’t some intellectual exercise for my morbid entertainment. No, it hit kind of close to home.
Maybe too close.
I’d just locked my front door, began my usual rapid descent of the stairs, then just barely had the reflexes to grab the handrail as a patch of ice on one of the steps did its best to crack my head open on the concrete.
That’s when I first gave hidden layers of ice part of my attention, thinking of the many ways it fouls up our lives and breaks our bones, and it led to that bit about the fool spinning his car wheels on a sheet of it.
But that’s not what stopped me here, staring ahead toward Mandy and genuinely wanting her company, maybe more now than ever.
Part of it is that I’m so god-awful tired all the time. Not from hard work or anything physical—just my life and the demands of its painful twists and turns that I see now were invited by yours truly.
That ice on my steps brought back a memory from thirty years back, way back when I was twenty-seven. I probably laughed out loud, I can’t be sure, when I also realized that I’d remembered that whole strange experience after ten years of forgetting it. Then, not long after, as more twists and turns assailed me, I’d forgotten it again.
But here with my boots pinning helpless leaves and twigs to the asphalt, I’m remembering it all again. And I know I’m going to turn and walk back the other way. Maybe I’ll wave to Mandy first. Maybe I’ll pretend I’m pointing at my watch, hoping she’ll believe that I just realized I have something urgent to get to.
She deserves something more than the sight of me turning my back to her.
I just can’t organize my thoughts enough and push aside all those memories and have a reasonable conversation with her or anyone else.
I’m thinking about that old man, who was forty years older than me when we talked. Damn, that was thirty years ago, so I’m almost his age now myself.
I’m thinking about the truly weird shit that happened. Hell, I don’t know if what happened was the worst of it—maybe it was the things he was telling me.
Mostly, it was the request he said he’d made, then hung on in miserable desperation as his life got dismembered and his sanity laughed while leaving him to rot on his own without its company.
He said I’d make that request too. He spoke like he knew me and plain knew that I’d do the asking, just like he had. But he couldn’t have known me, could he?
But that old man, only slightly older than the old man I’ve become, was right. I did ask the same thing that he had.
I thought it was a joke when I was driving home after that meeting with him. But when I actually did the asking, I don’t know why, but I meant it more than anything.
And hell, it didn’t take long. Life dismemberment and fleeing sanity came to visit damn quick. I’d been speeding on unseen ice from the time I’d voiced my request.
I’m doing it—I’m pointing to the wrist where I forgot to add my watch. Mandy’s tipping her head, not looking happy, but she finally nods, then waves.
I just can’t talk to her about it because it all sounds insane, even to me.
And I can’t ignore it and talk about the goddamn weather.
What did that old man call himself? Oh yeah, he said he was a recluse even when he was out in a crowd.
And he was insane. He had to be. I think he might have drugged me too. I’m still hanging on to that belief, maybe just by a few weary fingertips.
Turning away from one of the few friends I have left in the world, I realize with a subtle stabbing in my heart that I’ve been my own kind of recluse for the last thirty years too. And like that old man, I’m out around people a lot.
No, I can’t tell Mandy about any of it. I think I’m still racing over sheets of ice, and this recluse might never again sit on that bench with her anyway.
But I can tell you how this all began. It won’t be as painful when you, instead of Mandy, think me a fool or madman.
It’s funny that I was thinking of driving because that’s where my story begins—with me driving.
But in whose car, I had no idea . . .
Chapter 2 – What I Should Have Asked
I’m laughing as I drive, even as the cold rain tries to shatter the windshield, easily swamping the wipers that had been on since I’d climbed across the console into the driver’s seat. But it’s not at all funny that I have no idea how to set those thin squeegees to a higher speed. Still, I find it amusing as I fumble around at the controls clustered around the steering column.
“Better,” I say as the water gets dragged off of the glass more effectively. “Still, though. With all that’s already happened, I sure don’t need this too.”
The city streets are becoming canals, and the car’s headlights seem to be surfing along the wave tops, reflecting themselves randomly in all kinds of distracting ways. The wipers are slopping and scraping and sometimes squeaking but other than the rain, the city’s fine.
Steering with my left and taking quick glances at the controls on the dash, I try to decipher it all with only its scant marker lights, muttering, “It’s getting cold too.”
I find something that boosts the fans, and warm air begins to fill the car.
“That helps.”
I sometimes lean forward to eyeball the road better, but I must not care too much since I’m not slowing any. And it just so happens that I have a good reason for speeding.
“This car stinks,” I say, wrinkling my nose as the heater blows around all kinds of scents.
“Cigar,” I say. “That one’s cigar. Some kind of perfume too. That can’t be apple pie, though. That’s my imagination messing with me.”
I drive some more, aiming the car toward my own apartment, where Becky is probably wondering why I’m late for our planned New Year’s Eve dinner. Just what the hell am I supposed to tell her?
“That old man,” I say after a few more blocks of splashing and sending waves toward the curbs, scoffing and shaking my head. “None of that happened—not the stuff I thought I saw. It couldn’t have.”
A deep pothole got gouged and emptied by the front passenger side tire with a jarring thump, causing me to tighten my grip.
“There was something in that whiskey. Had to be. The old son of a bitch slipped me something, then made me think all kinds of shit.”
The wipers are wiping, unseen potholes are taking their hits, and I’m thinking more about what just happened than the hazards of driving through a downpour.
“I shouldn’t have just said what he told me to say. I’m sure he said it forty years ago, the nut. But why was he so sure that I’d say it? But I did. And damn, I meant it.”
Two more potholes, placed strategically to hit one side then the other, rock the car and should be getting me more focused, but I’m still wondering how the hell I could have meant what I’d just said.
Of all the things I could have asked for, why that?
The rain had lessened during the last several blocks, and I wade the tires through standing water along the curb in front of our townhouse, just one among a long line of brick-front dwellings packed in tight. If the rest of what had just happened hadn’t been so strange, I’d be marveling at finding an open spot right at the bottom of the stairs rising up to our small porch.
Shifting into park is easy enough while I lean to look up at the windows, which show bright lights and Becky’s silhouette in one of them. Even through the wet windows, her curvy figure is obvious.
She doesn’t know it’s me, so I figure I have some time, even though I’m already late. I flip down the visor first, and there’s no paperwork clipped up there, just a remote to something, maybe a garage.
When I lean toward the glove box, an elbow on the passenger seat, I first get hit with some latent aromas from the hot pizza box that had been there only minutes earlier. While drawing in a deep breath of it, I drop the small door and reach into the darkness.
“Oh, shit,” I say as I pull out a semi-auto pistol, quickly remembering to take my finger back off of the trigger. “Funny how your finger goes right to it like that.”
Holding it out to where the streetlight can see it, I rotate it around, bouncing it up and down.
“Huh. Real ones are way heavier. What the hell.”
I snap my head toward my window when the flashing red lights of some kind of medical vehicle race past, kindly sparing the neighborhood of the blaring sirens. I should have thought through it better, but I didn’t. I just set the pistol on the passenger seat so that I could check the glove box again.
I should have seen that simple, stupid act for what it was: a supremely stupid act. But I didn’t give it a thought.
All I feel back in the shadows of a glove box with its light burned out were cold metal cylinders, pointy at one end. I sweep my hands around, getting an idea of the count, then have the sense to leave them there and slam shut the small door.
My eye catches a glint of light from the glass storm door swinging open, so I lean again and look that way. Becky’s on the porch, and she’s leaning, too, trying to see in the car.
“Well, the cops will figure out whose car this is. VIN numbers and all that.”
I reach for the door handle, then push it open and let the light rain take aim for my left side first as I stand in the standing water. Already turning to look toward the porch, it never even occurred to me to lock it up.
“Becky, hey, it’s me.”
“Tommy? What’s going on? Is everything alright?”
The rainwater on the car’s roof is cold, but I feel like adding to the drama—it’s all too ridiculous to be anything but a comedy—so I place both palms flat on it and nod, exaggerating it to be sure she sees it.
“Sure. Yeah, everything’s good. It’s just been the strangest evening of my life.”
My left hand drops down to the handle, ready to reopen the car door, but I’m looking toward Becky at the top of the steps as she yells to me through the light rain.
“Tommy, really, what the hell have you been doing? Get inside and out of the rain at least.”
“Okay, in a sec. I just—”
“You’re already late for dinner. I’m starving, so get moving already!”
I let go of the door handle and stomp around the car, splashing the dirty water around while keeping my eyes focused on the impatient wife on the porch.
“I’m coming. Sorry I’m late. You wouldn’t believe the stuff that just happened.”
I have one shoe up on the first step, and Becky says, “Start with whose car that is. Where the hell is our car?”
“Oh, the car,” I say and stop there. “Becky, that’s not the weirdest thing. That’s nothing. Wait till I tell you about—”
“Start with the car, Tommy. Did you steal a car? Did ours break down, or what?”
I’ve got a hand cupped over my eyes, my own personal awning against the rain, and I still haven’t made any progress on the steps.
“Forget the car for a second. I can explain—”
“Well, go ahead, then. Explain how you’re late, and you drive up here in someone else’s car, not giving any reason why you—”
“Will you shush a second? Shit, I just want to get in out of the rain,” I say while taking my first step, and she right away gives me a good reason to stay put again.
“Oh, don’t you ever think you can shush me! Who do you think you’re shushing?”
I grin up at her while wiping water off of my face, waiting for her to curtail her rant, however justified it is. Waiting for her to smile about it, which she doesn’t.
“You know, Becky, that might be what I should have asked for. I should have asked for something practical like that: can I please, just once, get away with shushing Becky?”
She finally laughs at the stupidity of what I’m telling her, but it doesn’t last.
“The answer to that is hell no, Tommy. Forget all about it. You coming inside, or what?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer before swinging open the door and getting herself inside, and I follow without another look at that car.
Chapter 3 – Forty Years Ahead of Me
Finally inside our home, welcoming with warmth and recent cooking odors, I lean into the door to close it and from there, I can see into the kitchen. The table’s set, the plates are empty, and Becky’s propped up against the wall near the doorway, glaring at me.
“New Year’s Eve, Tommy. I can’t keep that stuff warm forever, so it’s not anymore. You should have at least called.”
I walk toward her after kicking off my shoes, leaving them in their own small puddle near the door.
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t call anyone. Sorry I missed dinner.”
“You should be, and you have some explaining to do. I could heat things back up, but not yet. Something weird is going on, so the damn dinner can wait. You’re all agitated and acting goofier than usual.”
“I wish I was only acting.”
“What’s that?” she says with her back turned, then she faces me with a wine bottle and two glasses.
“Nothing. Uh, the wine looks good. Sure.”
She leads the way into our cramped living room, where we take our usual spots on the couch.
“Here,” she says and hands me a full glass. “Doctor’s orders.”
“Never argue with the doctor,” I say, laughing but not pointing out the obvious—she’s not a doctor. Not even close. Maybe someday if she gets through med school.
“Better?” she says, then tips back her glass and empties it.
“Some. You won’t believe the weird shit, Becky. I’m just glad things can get back to normal pretty easy.”
“What weird shit? You think I have the slightest clue what you’re talking about? Start with the car, then tell me why you smell like whiskey. You had yourself a fun little office party?”
“I can’t start with the car or the whiskey. That’s not how the story starts.”
“I don’t think either of us knows what the hell you’re talking about. Fine. You stole a car, decided to ruin our dinner, then finally dragged your ass home to—”
“No! No, it isn’t like that. It started at work. It just all spiraled out of control from there. But Becky, things didn’t start getting really strange until after I delivered that pizza.”
The glass that she’d just refilled is touching her lips, but it’s not moving, and she’s staring at me over the rim.
“Finally,” I say.
She gulps down a greedy amount, then says, “Finally, what?”
“I shushed you.”
“You’re a son of a bitch.”
“Not as much as that old son of a bitch that got the pizza. The crazy bastard never even paid for it.”
I watch her just long enough to see that she’s still shushed, then I reach for the bottle and a refill that I need more than that cold dinner waiting in the other room.
“You skipped dinner with me to buy pizzas for the guys at the office? Things just keep getting stupider with you.”
“What? No, of course not. Forget the pizza for a second. You should have seen his apartment.”
“Whose apartment?”
“The guy. The guy that I brought the pizza to.”
“It wasn’t a whiskey and pizza party at work?”
“If only. That would have been way more normal.”
“Fine. Tell me what apartment you’re talking about.”
She’s staying quiet but squinting at me while I down another chug, and I’m starting to feel the weight of all that happened. That wine, even on top of the whiskey, doesn’t feel like it can slow me down.
“Cats, Becky. I don’t think I’d ever want any cats. Would you? Tell me you don’t want cats either. There’s just something about cats that―”
“Tommy, what about cats? This guy had cats?”
I’m nodding in an exaggerated way as I say, “Oh yeah, he has cats. He said it was a mother and her three kittens. The mom’s all black, but the kittens have white paws and other patches of—”
“Tommy.”
“I know. Weird, huh?
“Tommy, you’re just—”
“One even has a white spot on one side of her lip, right above her mouth, just on that one side, and that might be the only way he could tell the two girls apart. The boy, though? He’s a beast! The rest are all smaller and have short hair, but he’s got this incredible long hair and probably weighs a hundred times what the other—”
“Tommy! Forget about the cats!”
“I should. But Becky, I think that’s part of his story. He said he wrote something about a black cat, then one showed up, had kittens, and he felt like he had no choice but to take them in.”
“I swear, Tommy, forget the cats. No one cares about cats.”
“I don’t. Never will. He does, though, that guy that—”
“Ordered a pizza, and you somehow got stuck delivering it? What the hell is going on?”
“You raise a good point. I’m not even sure he ordered it. I had that address, though, so where else would I bring it? Besides, I needed to use his phone to call about that car,”—I smirk and point toward the front window—“and the driver that ran off somewhere.”
“Yeah. I like that. That’s what you should do first. Call the cops, then try to explain this nonsense. They’ll beat the truth out of you quicker than I can.”
“Oh, Becky, maybe I should wait a minute. Besides this wine, I had that whiskey at the old man’s place, and I know I smell like liquor.”
“Maybe you should be arrested. Whatever goofball shit you got yourself mixed up in doesn’t seem to concern you. Call them, spend the night in jail, and maybe you’ll be sane enough to explain this tomorrow.”
I laugh and say, “You know I can’t do that. Besides feeling kind of drunk, I haven’t committed any crimes. I, uh, don’t think.”
“No. You’ve never been a criminal at least. Don’t tell me you’re one tonight, though. Someday, reality’s going to catch up with you, and you’ll start taking things seriously. You’ll see.”
“I’ll be fine,” I’m telling her, even though I’m believing it less the longer I’m stammering out details of what I’ve been through, knowing that it all sounds stupid.
“I don’t know what you got yourself into, but you should call the cops right now. As long as you didn’t steal that car.”
“I didn’t steal it. Why would I steal a car? No, the pizza delivery girl got hit by lightning, then ran off down the street and into an alley. But she dropped her—”
“What? Whoever that was, she got struck by lightning, then she―”
“She had an umbrella, so she should be fine in the rain. Wait. Maybe that’s why she got zapped. It was kind of still smoking too.”
“You still think this is all a joke?”
“Might as well laugh. Yeah, it’s pretty weird. But Becky, it all fits with what the crazy old man was saying.”
“Which is?”
“He said God makes things happen in weird ways. It’s not like strange shit just happens for no reason.”
“Well, hell, this guy’s trading garbage wisdom for pizza. Terrific.”
“Uh, yeah, I thought so. And he said the more jumbled up it all is, the more obvious it is that it’s part of some kind of plan.”
“Oh, now there’s a plan, huh? What are you talking about?”
“The plan to get me to that apartment. He said it was clear to him that God wanted me there for some reason.”
“God did some weird shit to get you to deliver a pizza. Right. Will you listen to yourself? God strung together a bunch of bullshit to get you to some old guy’s apartment?”
“Yeah. That’s right. And he said something that I thought was stupid until he showed me. He said that random and chaotic is the rule—that’s what’s natural.”
“At least admit that you’re just as crazy—you’re two of a kind.”
“Alright, enough,” she says, not showing at least some amusement like before. “You come home in someone else’s car, reeking of whiskey, say you delivered a pizza to some loony old guy. Tommy, this is stupid.”
“No, Becky, here’s what’s stupid: that old weirdo said that I wouldn’t get any real understanding of life until I was ready to die.”
“Oh, here we go. Fine, Tommy. Crawl yourself off somewhere and die.”
“You wouldn’t care? That’s kind of cold.”
“It’s what you want. I heard you.”
“I’ve never told you that.”
“Not when you’re awake, no. You talk in your sleep sometimes.”
“I do? What do I say?”
“Mostly gibberish but one time, I heard you saying you were ready to go anytime. You said you wouldn’t kill yourself, but God could come and round you up anytime he wanted.”
“I said that?”
“Yeah. You never thought that?”
I take a deep breath to stall for time, but her eyes keep drilling into me.
“Fine. Yeah, sometimes I think that.”
“And how do you think that makes me feel?”
“Uh, pretty shitty?”
She pointed and winked, then reached for the wine bottle.
She chugs half of her full glass, then rests the base on her thigh, letting a drop soak into the faded denim and leave a spot.
“Seriously, Tommy, enough already. Start with the guy’s name.”
“He said it was Tommy.”
She laughs at the ceiling, shaking her head, then levels her gaze toward me again.
“So, he was making a fool out of you too. Nice.”
“No, I think that was really his name. He asked my age, I told him, and he said he was sixty-seven. Then, he got kind of weird, talking about being forty years ahead of me.”
“Alright. So, he’s sixty-seven.”
“He was talking like those forty years were important.”
“He sounds like a lunatic.”
“Maybe he is, yeah. Becky, you should have seen the stuff that happened. He’s like some kind of magician or something. I mean, there was some serious wisdom going on there.”
“Says the younger man who’s ready to die. Fine, give me an example of this old fool’s wisdom. And then, dammit, do some explaining because the whole thing sounds like made-up bullshit to me.”
“Fine,” I tell her, then look around the room.
“There,” I say, pointing to a cheesy landscape print hanging on the wall. “Look at that while I tell you what happened.”
“The painting?”
“Yeah. The kind with actual colors.”
“Huh? What does that mean?”