Cheap Thrills

The horror will stay with most of them, but not me. For me, it was just another Thursday afternoon. My office sits on the fourteenth floor and by the time I returned from lunch, I was already thinking of something else: my tardiness. I tried to glide by my boss’s door unnoticed, but he looked up as I passed.

“One-fifty!” he barked. My watch said one forty-five, but what’s the use in arguing over five minutes? “You see the accident?” he asked.

Accident? Had there been one?

“I did,” I said. “I saw it.” I always speak with an economy of words. If people want more, they must ask.

He did: “Well?”

“A real shame,” I said and walked away. That’s all he would get.

The accident: she’d been thrown clear of the car, her body crumpled unnaturally in the street - an impressive sight, but unnoticed. The car, that’s where they looked. On fire, yes, but was it screaming? Those around wished it had been, for trapped inside was a small boy letting forth the wails of one being burned alive. And then they stopped.

And there on the corner stood I, laughing at my attackers. They would fail again. “How obvious,” I thought, and turned toward my building.

On my desk sat an alphabetical listing of names and numbers. I was on the P’s. “Hello Mr. Packer,” I said. “I understand you have a swimming pool. How do you obtain the chemicals needed for its upkeep?”

Click.

I wasn’t having a good month.

Had I really seen an accident?

* * *

Sometimes I walk to the movies. Sometimes I don’t get there. I leave for the theatre, but tire on the way and stop to rest on a park bench; I’m under attack. My attackers used to come only when I was weakened, but now they ambush me nearly every day. I sit still, hiding. Two boys skateboard by, and I drift toward a memory:

I was eleven and made a ramp. I pedaled hard, my heart raced, my eyes pressed to slits. I heard only one last thud…and then silence. I was suspended in both air and time. My heart no longer raced, I wasn’t afraid. For that suspended second, I was free from anguish, free from regret. I was a clean canvas, as a boy should be. Then I crashed into the grass and ached again. It’s taken many years to re-find that feeling of freedom, and it’s come at a cost far greater than bricks and boards, but I’m again on my bike, free. All I had to do was exile my emotions.

At home my phone rings, but I don’t answer. I’m safe here, a King in complete control. It rings again and I know it’s my grandmother. She calls every Thursday.

“Franky,” she says. “It’s Grandma. You okay?”

“Hi Grandma,” I say. “Yes, I’m fine. You?”

My grandmother lives alone. She raised me after the accident.

“I’m doing real good,” she says, then pauses. She wants to talk about something, she’s been thinking about the past. “Franky,” she says, “it wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?” She doesn’t believe this, she still blames me for their deaths. The accident today has stoked her memory: it was my birthday and I wanted a bike, a red one - it had to be red and I’m still not sure why. After I blew out the candles, I opened my eyes to a green bicycle, and I was disgusted, saying only, “It’s green!” I walked to my bedroom, punctuating my arrival with a slammed door. Moments later, I heard the trunk close, followed by two car doors – my parents were going to make the exchange.

I never saw them again. The accident wasn’t their fault and it wasn’t the other driver who killed them, either. It was me. They found a red bike in the trunk. I never rode it.

“Franky?” my grandmother asks. “You there?”

“I’m here, Grandma.”

“It wasn’t your fault. Nobody blames you.” She’s a liar. She expects protest, so I give it. I’m no longer talking to my grandmother. She’s just some old lady. “But if I weren’t so selfish,” I say with a grin. It’s a game, why shouldn’t I smile?

“Nonsense,” she snaps, but not defiantly.

I change the subject. I don’t want to play anymore. “You ready for winter?”

“Oh no,” she answers, allowing the change unchallenged, and then asks, “What you doing this weekend?”

She’s my grandmother again, but I wish she wasn’t. It’s easier to talk to her when she’s just some old lady. “Not sure. What about you?”

“Well,” she says, “there’s the football game.” And I don’t even see it coming: an ambush in the form of a lonely old lady trying to resurrect her husband, even if for only a few Sunday afternoon hours. My emotions, they’re getting really clever.

"I got to go," I say.

Click.