Today 9:35 AM
Can we talk? he texted.
Today 9:36 AM
What about?
Good question, he grimaced.
Today 9:39 AM
Common ground? Mutual understanding? A place we can begin?
Today 9:40 AM
It’s the beginning of the end for us, Buddy. I’ve got a full day lined up and really can’t get into this right now. You keep figuring out your future; I’ll catch you up later.
Harsh! he thought. Don’t know what I expected, but not this?
It seemed to him that Leanne had crystallized into something hard and brittle that you wouldn’t dare touch. Like dry ice!
Not that I should be surprised, he adjusted his take on things. She’s been angry for years. Barely civil since my retirement.
She’d never come right out and said so, but he knew she’d expected more from him than he’d delivered as a stay-at-home-hubby. And maybe she had a right to?
Today 9:45 AM
I’m sorry for the way I left Lea. Sort of panicked. But you have to understand, PLEASE, this isn’t about you. It isn’t about you and me. I just need to be in a place where I can find myself. ‘I’ can’t talk about it with you because there is no ‘I’ right now. Buddy Hope has gone AWOL. I didn’t realize how much of me has been missing until I retired. I’m a ghost, hon. A hologram.
Today 10:30 AM
Can we talk?
Today 1:33 PM
What’s to talk about? You said you need to be in a place where you can find yourself.
Today 1:34 PM
For a little while. But I’m thinking about you, Gloria, and Robbie. I think about you all the time.
Today 1:35 PM
But you didn’t think to talk to me before taking off?
Today 1:36 PM
I don’t want to get into an argument, Leanne. I just want to explain things to you and the kids.
Today 1:36 PM
Have you talked to them?
Today 1:36 PM
Robbie, yes. Gloria, not yet.
Today 1:37 PM
Did you talk about me to Robbie?
Today 1:37 PM
No. He told me a few things about what’s happened since I left, but we didn’t talk about you. I wouldn’t do that.
Today 1:37 PM
Hmm? If you had talked about me, what would you have said?
Today 1:38 PM
We didn’t talk about you.
Today 1:40 PM
I want to talk about me and you.
Today 1:40 PM
When?
Today 1:40 PM
I can come down tomorrow, if that’s okay? 1:30?
Today 1:41 PM
Ring the doorbell. I’ve changed the locks.
The urge to bare his teeth, growl like a cornered raccoon flared.
Don’t
But instinct urged him on, alarmed, trapped in the damning equipoise between fight and flight. He resisted. Let the fierce energy to DO SOMETHING pass, short-circuiting through his body, out fingers and toes, beyond the extremities of Being.
Only then did he tap his reply into the mobile’s keyboard, hesitating a moment before adding a period to his response.
Today 1:43 PM
Okay.
This is it, then? He glanced round the camper, only vaguely aware of the reality outside its claustrophobic dimensions.
For now, he promised, although he had no idea how long a future beyond his Now-with-a-capital-’N’ might be in the making.
The numerals on his mobile reconfigured themselves from 1:44 to 1:45. What-the-fuck was that supposed to mean without the referents of family, community, familiar geography? In his state, clocks measured senseless motion, nothing else. That had been his choice, though: to step outside the known coordinates of his own history and accept the nullifying affirmation that he was… nothing.
His phone vibrated, rattling about the table like a beetle on its back. He snatched it up. “Hello,” he grunted.
“It’s me,” Bernice replied apologetically. “I hope I didn’t disturb you, but I’m wondering if you can come over and meet my daughter Jenny, perhaps over coffee and a bite?”
“Coffee will be fine, Bernice, thanks.”
Why am I so annoyed? he wondered, hoisting himself up off the bench. She isn’t to blame for my being here. Maybe nobody was. Maybe blame didn’t come into it. Maybe none of them—Bernice, Leanne, him—had any choice. Shit happens, then you die.
He didn’t want to believe that cynical edict, but couldn’t shake it off. Couldn’t prevent the obverse from flipping face-up: Die, then the shit stops happening.
Buddy sighed, making his way down the camper’s wobbly stairs and through the gate in the hedge at VORLand’s End. It wouldn’t be a very long drop if the bottom fell out of this day, he figured.
Next: Jenny