The Gentleman Daydreamer

She curled her fingers around the handle and raised her arm, pointing the gun at the centre of his chest. She was surprised at how heavy it was. As her arm began to shake she worried that he would think she was frightened. She managed a quick self-deprecating thought; she was frightened, but she was also determined and with that she squeezed the trigger.
Her world exploded with the concussion. The recoil jerked her arm up and back and she staggered a step or two and tried to focus on where he had been. She was shocked to see him still standing there with a lewd grin on his face and she realized that she had missed him. No one ever missed on television, she thought.
He hadn't moved. He just stood there, defying her with a smile and then he came towards her and before she could raise her arm again, he took the pistol from her hand.
"I'm still here," he said, as he safetied the gun, "and now you're going to stop this and get over there with the others." He paused to look at her and added, "Unless you want me to try. I won't miss, though."
And then he turned away and walked to the counter. With his back to them he could let go of the muscles that had hardened into a grin. He felt sick and his heart was beating so hard he couldn't hear his own thoughts. He rested his hands on the counter and took a deep breath. He had never been so close to death and he didn't like the feeling.
Things had gone so far wrong. A security guard lay on the floor with a gunshot wound in his leg. His whimpering was distracting. And now another one of them had very nearly ended his life.
In thirteen banks he had been quick and successful; in and out before anybody knew, except for the unlucky cashier he had chosen, and he was gone long before the police arrived. He didn't even carry a gun. He had surmised that if he was unarmed he would be safer than if he stormed the door with an assault rifle. He was polite. He had never even raised his voice. He was the perfect gentleman bandit and now someone had nearly shot him.
He knew that he was in very serious trouble. After the teller had screamed and the security guard had shot himself in the leg trying to pull out his gun, all hell had broken loose. And how does a suburban housewife find the courage to pick up a revolver and point it at a man she doesn't even know?
And now he was screwed. After the guard shot himself he had fought for control, yelling that he had a gun and would kill anybody who moved. It wasn't true but they didn't know that.
Except that now he did have a gun.
Things have gone so far wrong, he thought, as the sound of police sirens filled the air, rising above the crying and terrified screams of the customers and other employees.

"You're telling me that, even in your own daydreams, you're a failure?"
"Go to hell, Ricky."
"That's hysterical. "
"Well, what would you do?"
"I'd go out shooting, man. No one's gonna put me in a cage."
"Sure you would."
"I would, man. Then I'd pick up that little chickie who tried to shoot me and I'd carry her off into the sunset."
"That's way more gay than I wanted."

He turned and pulled the gun from his waistband and pointed it at her.
"Get up and don't say a word or I'll shoot you right here."
She stood up and as she looked at him she smiled wickedly. She felt flushed and alive with excitement. She pursed her lips and cocked one hip towards him.
"Let's get out here." she said.
The late afternoon rush hour traffic was brought to a standstill by the blazing gun battle and using her as a shield he pushed his way through the line that cordoned off the bank. They commandeered a car, pulling the startled driver out of his seat and dumping him on the sidewalk. Before she got in she reached down and patted the startled man's head. "Good dog." she said and then they climbed in to the car and sped off into the distance.

"Jesus, that's so unbelievable."
"What the hell do you know about believable? A gentleman bandit? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. "
"Shut up and pass me a beer, man. You don't know shit about realism."
"I know you're an idiot. That's real."

She reached across the space that separated them and slipped her hand under his shirt.
"I'm so hot, right now." she whispered.
"Not now, baby, I'm trying to drive."
The lights of the cars following faded into the distance and the sirens had long since been silenced as the cops realized they'd never catch these two.
The detective stepped from the car and leaned against the door as he watched the taillights disappear into the desert.
"I'll find you, someday. You can't hide forever."
After all, he wasn't the top daydream cop for nothing.

Wellington Walker

My brother Steve once stole one of the legal pads I used to write in and then, sitting at the kitchen table while my mother served up her famous chicken and dumplings, began to read a story that I'd written about a dog that can talk to his master. After that I began to hide everything I wanted kept secret in a trunk at the foot of my bed. It had a padlock on it and I had the only key. It cost me two weeks worth of allowance, but I've never had to sit through another dinner like that. I was humiliated, not because it was a bad story, but because in my family you just didn't do things like write stories.

My mother was impressed, I think. She had no idea that I could write a story, much less fill pad after pad with ideas. She seemed amused that one of her sons could have invented something from nothing.
My father was much less impressed and before my brother could get to the part where the dog becomes the master and makes his owner walk on all fours and wear a collar, he confiscated the pads and I never saw them again.

It was probably a good thing. By the time I sat down to re-write it, almost twelve years later, I had forgotten most of the story, but the central idea survived and it became the basis for my first novel.
In it a dull witted teenage boy steals a book and in it finds a powerful incantation that unleashes the Egyptian god Anubis, who is very unhappy that most of his followers have forgotten him. The dull witted thief becomes the dog god's first victim. I don't think Steve ever forgave me for that. Calling him dull-witted, that is. He started it, though.

After that my father tried to make sure that I never had another free moment in which to sit down and write stories. That period of my life became my second novel in which a dominating megalomaniac tires of having to tell his followers what to do every minute of the day and regrets overthrowing the world. In the end he puts on a dress and slips out the back of the palace and is never seen again. Much like the way my father disappeared one night when I was fourteen. And while, in the book, society crumbles and struggles for its survival, life at home picked up for me and my brother Steve.

My third book, Wellington Walker, had its origins in a regrettable relationship I had with a girl who broke my heart. Wellington Abruter realizes that he's become invisible after he learns that his true love is cheating on him. It's a twist on the old Zen koan about the tree in the forest; if a man has no one who loves him is he still a man? He begins to use his invisibility to help others who have been wronged until he meets another invisible man. He and his new friend, Walker, start an invisibility club, called Wellington Walker, that has chapters all across the country, taking in love-lost and love-lorn refugees. At a members meeting he meets a beautiful young woman who has been invisible since she was a girl. They fall in love and disappear from the head offices of Wellington Walker and are never seen again.

I wrote another three books after that and have done quite well for myself. I have another one in the pipe right now. It's about a man who discovers that his daydreams are spawning duplicate lives. He runs into himself disguised as a reprehensible womanizer and decides he has to kill off all the other daydream versions of himself. It isn't until half way through the book that he learns he is nothing more than a daydream himself and finds himself on the run from a man, who looks a lot like him, intent on putting out his lights and getting back to work.

I have to tell you that this one is based on real life. It's true. I don't have much time. Somewhere, right now, someone-me-or at least a version of me is sitting at a desk writing a story about himself as a writer. Soon, though, he's going to get tired, his back will get sore, or he'll have to get up and answer the telephone and then I'm done for.

I'm working as fast as I can to get this new novel finished, before his concentration goes and I disappear forever. It makes me sad. I've had a good life, for the most part, and I don't want it to end, but like my brother Steve once said, "Being a character in one of your books is like looking into a funhouse mirror. You never get it right, do you?" Maybe he's right. Maybe this is no way to live, but on the other hand, I think I've been lucky. I could have been a very bad dream. I think he's just jealous.

Are We Good?

"Did you know that India is the seventh biggest country in the world?"
"Seventh? That's pretty big." I said to her. I was, admittedly, a little distracted. She had the atlas that I'd given to her for her birthday flattened on the table in front of her and was poring over the details with her fingers splayed across one of the pages. She was three when she'd begun to read. It boggled my mind that she was so smart.
"And that there are a billion people living there? There's only 32 million in all of Canada." She said this last with an air of wonder in her voice as if she was loading all those people onto an imaginary balance scale.
"That's a lot, eh?" I put away the last of the dishes and shut the cupboard door with a sigh.
I've never been a big fan of washing dishes. To me it's one of those chores that seem fruitless, especially when you figure that in another two hours I'll just have to pull them all out and dirty them again.
"Dad. You're not listening. You have to look at me when you answer. Then I know you're listening to me." She had on her teaching voice, which she used with me when she knew I needed guidance, as she often felt I did. I could hear her mother's voice in there, correcting, scolding and laying on a guilt trip, with nothing more than a few words. That woman displayed an incredible economy with words.
"I'm sorry. You're absolutely right. And now, just to prove that I'm listening to you I'm going to stare right at you, just in case you say something else. That way you'll know that I'm always listening to you."
She frowned at me for a minute, trying I think, to gauge what she should do. I made my eyes a little buggy and leaned over to stare at her, and she squirmed under the scrutiny. Then she decided that I was playing a game with her and she began to laugh.
"Dad. You don't have to listen all the time." and then she squealed as I zeroed in on her, my eyes locked on hers. "Daddy. Don't be a doofus." and she tried to hide her eyes.
"I'm still looking at you. I can still hear every word you're saying."
"Daddy. Stop looking at me." I picked her up and put my forehead to hers, my eyes still wide and staring. I soon wouldn't be able to lift her; she was getting so big.
"But then I won't be listening to you anymore."
"You don't have to listen all the time, I guess." she laughed
"Okay." I said and I dramatically turned my head to the wall.
"That's better." she said. She put her hands on my cheeks and looked into my face as if she was looking at one of her maps and following the route down from my eyebrows and across the bridge of my nose.
"What?" I said, "I'm not listening to you anymore."
"Daddy." she yelled, pretty much right into my face.
"Is someone talking? I can't tell. I'm not looking at anyone." She giggled and squirmed in my arms to reach up until her hands were on top of my head.
"Daddy." she screamed again, "Listen to me now."
"I wonder if someone's talking to me." I said.
"You. Listen to me now." her voice had taken on an imperious tone. I had told her once that I would do anything she asked as long as she asked nicely. She had forgotten that one, I guess.
"How will I know when someone is talking to me, I wonder." I said, still looking at the wall.
"Daddy." This time her voice squirreled up into that piercing range, where usually only mice can go. I felt her arch her back away from me and then she slapped my face as hard as she could and screamed again, "Daddy."

In an instant, she was crying. I held her out at arms reach as she began to swing her little fists. I was ducking and weaving the little blows and she had gone from laughing to crying, almost in one breath, and was now on the verge of hysteria. She started to kick at me and then she was having an all-out temper tantrum.
I pulled her in close and pinned her against my shoulder, a million thoughts running through my startled brain. I had pushed it too far, I knew, but her reaction was so extreme. Why was she suddenly so upset? And who taught her to hit someone who didn't listen?
I felt the tension go out of her body and she wrapped her arms around my neck and was sobbing into my shoulder. I was so stunned that for a moment I just held her.
"Hey. It's okay. I'm listening. I was just playing with you. It's okay. I'm sorry, baby. Daddy was just being silly." I tried to pour every bit of love I felt for her into that hug as she cried, and slowly she settled down, suddenly tired from her outburst.
"It's okay. I'm sorry, baby. I'm sorry."

"Don't you ever don't listen to me again." she scolded me, after she had calmed down. She was looking right into my eyes, her face only inches from mine. If she hadn't been so serious, I would have laughed.
I put on a very solemn expression and said to her, "I promise. I will never not listen to you again."
That seemed good enough for her and she wriggled in my arms to be let down. I put on her feet and she began to gather up her atlas and her papers. She always had papers, it seemed. Papers to draw her pictures on. Pages and pages of drawings, and now she was cataloging them according to her own system.
When she had collected her 'work', she turned and headed for the living room. At the door she turned to me and gave me what I would call an even look.
"Are we good?" she said and I nearly choked on my own tongue. It was an expression that I had heard someone else say, so many times, in that exact tone, and I felt my stomach heave a little. My chest felt like it was caving in.
"We're good." I said softly. "You go play in the living room for a bit and then we'll go to the park. Okay?"
"Yeah," she cheered,"the park." and disappeared around the corner.

I leaned against the counter and tried to collect my thoughts, which had run from what I was thinking and had gone off groping around in the dark, looking for clues to what had just happened. I felt like I was going to be sick. And then a calmness settled over me. I stood up straight and I shrugged off my fear.
I went and looked around the corner and saw her sitting on the couch, her atlas opened again and her mouth moving over the strange words, her hand running over the surface of the page as if she could feel every river and mountain printed there.
I watched her for a minute and decided she was fully immersed in her book and then I went to the phone.
There was only one person who had ever said that to me. 'Are we good?'
We weren't good. But I was going to take care of that.

Time on My Hands

To begin at the beginning is something I would call the easy way out. I prefer to begin right in the middle. The things that led up to it and what happened afterwards were just ripples, careening out in every direction and tipping over the stools we sat on, causing both the stumble that brought them face to face and then, years later, the accident that left Jeremy with a cast on his leg and Jules, her scar. It wasn't a big scar, more like a fine line of curiosity which she could turn into a great story every time some one asked about it.
But right in the middle of it, I happened to be looking in both directions and I saw the ripples stretch out and gently nudge my memories aside and implant the new ones. If I hadn't been paying attention I would have missed it entirely and I probably wouldn't remember the way things had been, had really been, just the way it seems right now.
I know now that it happens all the time. We really are a curious lot and sometimes we act impulsively, with complete free will. The anomalous outcome reverberates like a giant oriental gong in our fish tank of no surprises and when the vibrations slow things are just a little bit different than they were a few minutes ago.
This might not make much sense to you if you've never seen it happen. Halloway thinks it's a mystery and starts to pray whenever he notices a ripple pass by. I think he's just praying he'll still be here when it settles. I asked him to help me with my experiment because he's really the only one who can wrap his head around all the variables. It is probably for the best that he's refused. I don't trust that his judgment will remain unaffected by his religious leanings.
The key bit of information is that it has to be totally spontaneous and outside the normal state of functioning. I think by definition it should be impossible, after all, we are what we are. But I've seen it. Truly spontaneous things happen all the time. And they interrupt the flow of linear time much like a damn dropped across a river. It keeps moving but it has to make changes to accommodate the obstruction.
The biggest question now is what to do. Do I give it the Jimmy Stewart try and see what life would be like without, say, the guy who does my dry cleaning? Or do I just start mucking about and let the random nature of the universe go exploring? What a conundrum.
I guess you'll just have to wait and see, won't you. Except that unless you're paying very close attention you won't notice a thing. I think that's the funniest aspect of this whole experiment. I'll be the only one who has any idea that something has happened. And believe me, I'm no expert in this area. Things are about to get seriously weird.

The Meter Man

January 1982

Don't ever let the threats that come veiled as dreams get in the way of your pursuing them. The dreams that is. The threats are nothing more than they seem; sinister levels of manipulation that don't usually add up to much. Although, the time I stole that '76 Olds and wrecked it in the gully prompted such a rash of sub-conscious warnings that it was a month before I got a good night's sleep. They might have continued except that Morrie found out it was me and I got a good beating over it. Satisfied that I'd paid for my stupidity, my dreams returned to the normal guy+girl+girl theme and I got on with my life.
What's happening now is of a strictly different variety and my life may never be the same. Don't fuck around with the guilty/not-guilty slide rule that measures your short-comings. It rests in the hands of that quiet voice in the back of your head and he measures you and every thing you do with it.

About a month ago I began having really disturbing dreams. They would start out the same way, like 'I meet a girl at a party and we hide in the closet for awhile' type but then it would morph into me standing on the back of a pick-up truck, say, lighting down the highway at about sixty miles an hour with nothing to hang on to but a rope that's coming apart. I watch the rope begin to stretch and then the tiny tendrils begin to snap and, one by one, every fiber comes undone. Just as I lurch backwards into the night I wake up, soaked in sweat, and wondering what I'd done to get such a stern warning from the dark side of my brain.

Maybe I'm a bit paranoid but when I was young my mother caught me stuffing those penny crackers into the mouth of a frog and I caught shit when my dad got home. His hand, that fucking huge hand, came out of nowhere and clouded my head with pain and bright lights but that was nothing compared to what I suffered that night when I fell asleep. As she was passing by the room I shared with my brother she opened the door and said, "I hope you can sleep with the knowledge that you killed one of God's creature's today." and I was fucked. For two weeks every time I closed my eyes I was trying to outrun a giant toad hell-bent on stuffing a stick of dynamite into my ass. Not very imaginative, maybe, but I was only ten, and let me assure you that my internal grievance mechanism has matured along with the rest of me.

The problem now is that I have no idea what I did. I haven't stole anything of real value in months. I've been reasonably well behaved and when Buck and I go down to the Won-Ton things are cool. But, like I said before, life has a way of teaching you a lesson in real time. The dreams are still coming and they're always the same. Let me give you an example.

I'm walking across the lot beside the A&P, the one with the rusted out 150 in the ditch, and I come across a length of rope lying in the weeds. Since you never know when a good length of rope might come in handy, I pick it up and put it in a backpack that is suddenly on my shoulders. I have never had a backpack but it doesn't really seem to be a concern so I just keep on humping myself across the lot with my new rope.
It's getting dark out and I can't quite make out the line of trees that stretches from the back of the lot up to Margrave Ave., but I know it's there. And then I see something struggling to get up and out of the ditch. I don't recognize him because his head is bloodied beyond recognition. The guy's obviously been beaten up pretty bad and he staggers toward me with his hands stretched out as if he wants to grab me. Even though it's a dream, I don't want some guy that's missing half his head giving me a bear-hug so I side-step his little lunging lunatic dance and I turn around to watch him as I pass. That's when I get grabbed from behind by something I can't see, something big, and it pins my arms behind me, and sure enough before I know what's going on, the rope is going around and around and I'm trussed like a chicken and forced onto my knees.
I'm starting to freak out, but underneath I'm planning, always planning. This staggering idiot with the head-like-mush is coming at me again and now I can't move. I can hear a gurgling sound as he tries to breath in, like he's trying to suck ice cream through a straw, and he leans in close. I'm in a state of blind, fucking panic now and my plans are out the window. I start thrashing and pulling at the rope, and a hand comes free. I swing wildly at the zombie guy and my hand goes right through what is left of his head.

And then it's all gone and I'm alone in the parking lot, the rope lying at my feet and the back-pack with it. The only thing I can hear is my name being called out in the distance, quietly. But it's coming from a long way off.

Anyway, I wake up and it's my Mom calling me to get the hell out of bed and go to work. You have to add these things up, I guess: nearly spilling out of a truck on the highway, the zombie guy trying to tongue me, and then see what the common thread is. The trouble is that the only common theme is a length of rope that, at first, is about to snap and send me to my death, and, secondly, is used to tie me up. I just don't see it. I can't make any connections so I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

July 1982

It's been a while since I wrote anything. I've tried but I've got nothing to say. The nightmares have stopped, for the time being, and that's a good thing but I know it won't last. There's just too much to take-in right now; I'm a little over-loaded. All I know is that I'm in for it, sooner or later. I know that for sure.
I'm on my own now, except for Buck, my little brother Brian, but he's mostly gone, too. He doesn't want to stay here anymore and I can't say I blame him. He wants to get as far away from the old man as possible. I don't think he knows what happened; I think he bought the story just like everyone else did but he knows things aren't right anymore.
And me? I'm terrified. I spend my days nearly sick to the point of throwing up and scared to death that I'll see him again. And I feel even more sick when I think that I watched it all and didn't do a thing to help her.

And although my dreams are quiet for now, I can sense that things are coming to a head on the inside and I know that when these dreams unfold they'll be playing for keeps.

Now, I just lie awake at night, afraid to fall asleep and afraid, I guess, that I'll get what's coming to me; afraid I might not survive the onslaught of terror that I'm preparing for myself. I got no choice, though. I got no fucking choice. And here comes the Meter Man. All hail the Meter Man.

The Sitting Room

He was in the sitting room. The tall windows had been opened and the shear curtains waved silently in the breeze. He sat in an old fashioned wingback chair, holding a rock glass in one hand as he gripped the arm of the chair with the other, holding on, it seemed, as if he was afraid that he might drift up and out one of the windows to sail away into the clear morning light. He wondered if that was a bad thing to wish for. He wished it would just happen.
The door burst open and he turned to see his son, Christopher, stalking towards him. He could tell from the expression on Christopher’s face that his pronouncement of this morning had been passed along and he turned away, not wanting to fight.
“Is it true?” said Christopher as he came to an abrupt halt in front of the chair his father sat in.
“Is what true?” his father replied. He raised his glass to his lips and sipped at it, the glass barely touching his lips.
“You know damn well what I’m talking about. Marie told me you’re not coming to the funeral. Is it true?” Christopher tired to still his shaking hands, to quiet the anger that was trying break free.
“Yes, it’s true. I’m not going.”
“You’re not going? No, you’re going.” said Christopher almost yelling.
“Don’t you come in here and tell me what to do. I made a promise and I’m going to damn well keep it. Now get the hell out of here or you’ll be late.” He leaned forward and set the glass down on the table and then, as an afterthought, reached for a coaster to put under it. He would have chuckled to himself at the irony of that, on any other day.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you have any feelings? Don’t you care what the rest of us think?” Christopher pointed a finger at him, in a gesture that his father had always found annoying.
“Why should I care what you think? You’ve never given a shit about what I think.”
“So this is about you, again, is it? Jesus,” Christopher spun around looking for something, “you are the most selfish person I’ve ever known. This isn’t about you, Dad. It’s about her. Your wife. Remember her? Or have you forgotten about her already?” He saw what he was looking for and he took the picture and thrust it in his father’s direction.
“How dare you?” said his father, struggling to rise up out of the chair. “How dare you speak to me like that? You little shit; you have no idea what you’re talking about, as usual.” He knocked the table with his elbow and the glass there sailed out over the carpet and upended itself, splashing his drink across the hardwood floor. An ice cube skittered away as both of them tried to contain its wild bouncing.
“Jesus.” said Christopher and he left the room and returned with a cloth to soak up the spilled drink. “What is this?” he asked as he put the cloth to his nose.
“It’s soda water, you idiot. Just soak it up before your mother…” and they both stopped, frozen by the words he was about to say.

“Just tell me why.” Christopher sat on the sofa across from his father. He spoke quietly, embarrassed by his father’s slip.
“I made her a promise, that’s why.”
“What promise? What are you talking about?”
His father said nothing for a moment, his eyes far away, remembering a day, like this one, long ago. Finally he cleared his throat and looked at his son.
“How long have you been married now?”
Christopher groaned and let his head fall forward. “Six years. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything. It has everything to do with it. This year, your mother and I will have been married for thirty-seven years.”
“I know.” said Christopher.
“Thirty-seven years. That’s a long time.”
“I know. What’s your point?”
“And do you fight?”
“Sometimes. Who doesn’t?”
“And who usually wins? You or her?”
“It’s a bit of both. Where are you going with this?”
“Your mother and I haven’t had a fight in probably fifteen years.”
“You barely speak to each other. Is that supposed to impress me?” said Christopher.
“Just shut your mouth for a minute and let me tell my story.”
“Then tell your story. We have a funeral to go to.” Christopher could barely conceal his disdain for the old man. He had very little reason to like him and his father had never bothered to hide his contempt for his son.
“We used to fight, all the time, y’know.”
“I remember.” said Christopher with a grimace.
“We used to fight and say terrible things to each other. And sometimes we would look at each other and wonder why we ever got married in the first place.”
“I’ve wondered that from time to time, myself.”
“Yeah, well, you were very small at the time when it was the worst. There isn’t a person alive who can get under my skin like your mother. When you’re married for thirty-seven years you don’t get to have any secrets anymore. Eventually, though, we settled into it and we haven’t fought a day since that time.”
“Dad, you never speak to each other. What’s to fight about when you barely acknowledge each other’s presence?”
“Christ, you can be so stupid. I’m trying to tell you something, here. Do you want to hear it or do you just want to sit there and make smart-assed remarks?”
“Tell your story then, for Christ’s sake.”
“Look. When you spend as much time as your mother and I did fighting, you get very good at finding weakness and exploiting it. I lied about stupid things and purposely broke promises just to start fights and she manipulated everything I said, turned it around on me. It becomes a stupid game of one-upmanship and before long you find yourself betraying secrets and smashing trust like it was a house made out of toothpicks.” he paused and lifted the glass to his lips and for a moment seemed to be somewhere else. Then he shook his head and set the glass down.
“But one day, one day you wake up and realize that the person who holds the most over your head is also the only one who’s been there with you through it all. After all that time poking and prodding at each other we just ran out of bad things to say and we discovered that we were still together. That’s an amazing thing. An amazing thing.
We found in each other something that most people will likely never find and that thing is faith. And we fell in love all over again. Not like it was when we first met but something better, more real. And, without ever talking about it, we began to realize that the most wonderful thing about it was that no matter what happened we would always be together. It was like that right up until she died.
You say you never see us talk. We didn’t need to. We could have entire conversations passing each other in the hall on the way to the kitchen. I knew where she was and she knew where I was and at any given time she could have told you what I was thinking and she would have been right.”
He sat up in his chair and leveled a finger at his son, mimicking that same gesture which infuriated him so much when Christopher did it.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about when you criticize me, or her, for the things that went on between the two of us. You may be our son, but she was my wife and there’s something there that you’ll only get a glimpse of when you can say you’ve been married for the better part of a half century.
Don’t you ever talk to me about my relationship with my wife unless it’s to honour what we lived through just to get here. And now she’s dead. And you waltz in here telling me what I should do and what I should think but you don’t have any fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
He sat back in the chair, his eyes going to the garden outside the tall windows.
“You want to know why I’m not going to the funeral? I’ll tell you why. We made a promise to each other, one day, a beautiful sunny day; so much like this one it hurts just to remember it. She was so beautiful and happy, then. You had just moved out and we were sitting in here, just like this, and we looked at each other and found that after all we’d been through, all the struggling and all the fighting, that we were still in love with each other.
And that day she made me promise that if she went first that I wouldn’t go to the funeral. I was surprised by the way she said it, too. She was very emphatic. She said she wanted me to remember her like she was that day, young and in love. I held her hand and she squeezed it so tight. And I made her that promise.
I never expected to outlive her. I always knew in my heart that I’d die first. And then when she got so sick that I couldn’t take care of her by myself anymore she made me ask you and Marie to come. She was almost embarrassed to let me see her like that.
The day before she died she asked me if I remembered the promise that I’d made to her and she told me that she expected me to keep it. And I will.”
Christopher was sitting with his hands in his lap, his head down, unable to look at his father.
“Listen to me, Christopher. You may be my son but she was my wife and I love her more than anything in this world and I will die before I break another promise to her. You think that because I’m not going down there to stand beside her coffin and listen to people I barely know tell me how sorry they are, that I don’t love her, or honour her? It is because I do love her and honour her that I’m going to sit here and watch this day unfold, knowing that when I see her again I can tell her that I kept my promise.”
Christopher looked at his father who was staring out into the garden and saw that his father was crying quietly and without any attempt to hide it.
“I had no idea.” he said.
“Of course you had no idea. How could you?” and then he smiled. “It was between her and I. And no matter how much it hurts, it has nothing to do with you.” said his father. “Now, go, or you’ll be late. I’m going to sit here for awhile and finish my drink.”
Christopher got up and looked around the room, at the curtains billowing in the breeze, at the sun streaking its way across the floor and at the old man, that he barely knew, staring out the window and he tried to imagine his parents sitting side by side on the couch, holding hands and making promises to each other every day for thirty-seven years and he wondered why it was that the older he got the more complicated everything became.

And So I Did

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, then. She just looked at me and then, slowly, ever so slowly, the both of us fully aware of how she could use it, what I'd just said, to start an argument, she smiled. I hadn't meant to say it; it just came out. I'd like to think that I am a better man than that, than to bring up something that I knew would provoke her. But it was out there. I'd said it and now it was up to her.

I'm not sure when it was that I began to notice the subtle changes in the way we spoke to each other. Somewhere around the six month mark, I guess, when we felt like we knew things about each other that no one else knew. I think it's a form of possession and a way to claim ownership. There are quick looks, direct eye to eye contact, when something is said, in front of friends, or at a bar, and then the conversation moves on. Sometimes we would talk about it later. She would say, "Peter really pissed me off, tonight." and I would answer, "Yeah, I noticed."

That subtext of ownership goes both ways, too. "Do you need to vacuum the couch?" she would say, laughing outwardly. It didn't bother me, though. The best I can hope for is that my odd little habits will become endearing and not annoying. I made a promise to myself, after all.

I realized right away that I'd made a mistake. I had blurted it out, blithely thinking that I was adding another layer, another subtext to our relationship, but all it was, was hurtful. I could tell that because, despite her smile, I recognized the flash of emotion in her eyes, gone as soon as it appeared. That smile snapped shut the avenue of intimacy. That smile was a barrier that reminded me that, as well as we knew each other, we were also better than anyone else could ever be at grinding down each other's defenses. It hung there, in the air between us. Maybe she saw the instant remorse in my expression, although I tried not to show it, or maybe she just decided that she wasn't going to let me bait her anymore.

Her smile widened and became a laugh, and I used the forced levity to spit out an apology that sounded more like I'd just stepped on her foot rather than laid open her insecurities and ridiculed them. She accepted it, though, and the full impact of that hit me. That silent communication crossed the room, that eye to eye contact, and I knew that despite the meanness of what I'd said, she understood that it was a reflex and that given time and a chance to reconsider, I never would have said it. That's an incredible amount of trust to put in someone who could potentially bring down the tent on your head. She trusts me. And she forgave me.

I think that was when I realized that I loved her. Simple as that. She showed me that she could overlook a few shortcomings and that, if I felt the same way, I'd better ante up. And so I did.

Cat and Mouse

I sat quietly, no, I sat more than quietly, I sat absolutely still, barely breathing, for close to an hour, waiting out and out witting those teeth, those claws, that scratched and pawed at the molding that separated us, the barrier between this life and whatever comes next and it could smell me, of that I'm sure, because I made no sound nor did I move so much as a muscle, although, at first, they had screamed in my head, "Move, run." and then they became still and heavy, like lead, leaving me no choice but wait it out, wait until either it succeeded in ripping away the barrier or it became confused and wondered if I was really there at all, wondering if maybe it was nothing more than a memory and it became confused by the lack of movement, wondering if I was already dead and therefore of no interest, because it had no interest in dead things, that was a rule to be observed and, anyway, dead things were past their expiry date and unsafe to eat and I became the representation of a lost opportunity, although I'm sure it wasn't smart enough to form those kind of thoughts, at least I hoped so because, you see, my own intelligence is the vanguard of my army and without it death would sever me from everything I know and love, my family, the simple pleasures I feel and delight in, and the anticipated scent of delivery that sometimes comes on the faint and wafting breeze and explains this world to me and indicates direction, both forward and back and, just then, told me that it had moved away, but was not gone, and that is where anyone else would have made a fatal mistake and bolted through the shadows for the safety of home, but not me because I'm not that stupid and I knew at that point that I would have to remain there, still, absolutely still, for perhaps another half-hour, just to be safe because, and it's important that you know this, impatience and foolishness always results in tragedy and I don't intend to be a footnote in someone else's story, an off-hand remark about that time he got caught unaware and out in the open, exposed and in need. Do you understand?