The Tower, and other pieces - 7. The Wish - version one

The Wish

Version One

He stood by his window. Down below, he watched the scenes of parked cars, of pretty girls walking past old ladies who were busy chatting away. And, he was very sad. He remembered countless other scenes like this, and the scenarios he had made up for why this car was parked there, and why this girl was wearing red, and that one yellow. In an average memory, such scenes run together into a giant composite, but one they may get refined and reinforced with hues and shades as it builds. But not his. Every single time he watched the street below, it got logged into his memory as a discrete entirety, as a wholly unique entry. This time would be no different: that car, this man, that imagined conversation – he was very sad.

Richard sighed. "Oh well, at least it's not raining." At least that was something that wouldn't need to eat up part of his memory…or, would it? Maybe it required just as much space to remember it was NOT raining as…he shook his head. Such thinking was useless.

"Oh shit!" He had caught a glance of the clock while moving his head, and now he paused to take a good look at it. "Hope I'm not late." He grabbed his jacket off a chair and bolted for the door, before bolting it up from the corridor side.

He was on the street now and amid the scenes he had just made fictional accounts for – walking among 'them' with the irrational fear that someone would stop him. Then, in front of the whole world, that person would accuse Richard of invading his privacy. It was irrational, but that twinge of anxiety always accompanied him out his apartment door.

Standing in front of the coffee shop, he glanced at his watch and pretended to be surprised. He was early: his usual six-and-a-half minutes early. Stooping a little, he peered through the shop's window. The place was pretty crowded with early lunchtime-goers. He glanced across the room to the back wall and the clock it sported. Eleven-twenty-four: it and his watch agreed.

'I better wait inside,' he thought. Richard didn't want to do that, to go in alone and sit down at a table for two, and wait. Alone. But it appeared a little overcast, he told himself, and that was reason enough. He did not want to hear himself say how strange it would be if he just loitered outside. Alone.

He went in. Richard took a couple of steps and confirmed that there was only one table open: the worst table in the shop. It was the one at the very front, where you have a choice of either sitting facing the entire room, or sit with your back to them and face all the world through the window – or at least that segment of the world strolling past Delmar Boulevard to watch you eat your lunch. It was a decision he hated.

He picked the room, as it was potentially a smaller audience. Richard sat down and the waitress descended on him with lunchtime brevity. Chewing her gum, she recited her opening line with actorly stoicism: "What'll it be?"

"Coffee." He tried to model his response to be as emotionless as her opening volley had been, but he could not.

He extracted the menu from between the ketchup and mustard bottles, and started looking it over.

"That all?"

He gazed up into her passionless face, and wished she'd leave him alone. "Yeah. I'm waiting for a friend of mine. We'll order later." She gave Richard a huffy glance of disbelief, and the coffee appeared almost immediately with the bill discreetly tucked under the saucer. Then he was left to face the room.

He tried casually to look around the space, at the faces of these people he didn't know, and thought about how they will never know one another, even if they all became the best of friends and stayed so for fifty years, they would still never really know one another. Such proximity, but… He met a glance and looked away quickly, too quickly to be casual. Suddenly Richard did not feel like being there; he just wanted to get up and go. He downed his coffee and noticed the bill for the first time. Now a wave of defiance overtook him and he resolved that this waitress woman didn't have a right to be right about him. Again he glanced at the room, only this time with more assuredness, heartened by his little victory over the server.

Unexpectedly, he couldn't see the room any more. Instead, he was looking at the belt buckle and midsection of a man standing in front of him blocked out all the rest. The man pulled out a chair, and sat down with an exuberant thud.

"What's up?" Mark said with a smile in his voice.

"Oh. I was wondering when you were going to show up." Richard tried to glance unobserved at the clock on the back wall.

He failed, as Mark flung himself around on his chair-seat and squinted at the clock first. "Okay. Sorry I'm late," he said, turning back around again, but he didn't mean it. Mark was always late, everybody knew that, but he continuously felt it necessary to apologize to this friend about it. So, now that that was out of the way, they could get down to business.

He grabbed the menu, and Mark did sometimes think of this friendship as 'work,' considering all effort it took. He thought Richard was a nice enough guy, but occasionally he just got too weird to handle. He feared his friend was slipping into one of 'those dark times' again, so he tried to be more cheerful than normal.

Mark summoned the waitress and spoiled her chance to get the upper hand. Richard smiled, they ordered lunch, and she was gone, sulking ever so slightly as she retrieved the tab from beneath the saucer and went. Mark watched her for a second, and then restored his attention to his friend.

"Well, what's the hubba, bubba? You look so down; why don’t you cheer up?"

Richard regarded him with new-dawned resentment. "I hate it when someone tells me to 'cheer up.' It's like telling a cripple to just stand up."

"Okay, okay. What is it this time, what's got you down?" he asked, laughing.

There was a pause as Richard held Mark's gaze and felt droplets of anger appear on his forehead. "You don’t know what it's like," he said, biting off the words to control himself. "Tell me this, do you know what three-one-eight four-five-nine-one is?"

"What is this, some kinda game? How should I know what that is?"

"You want to know why you should know..." Richard sat back a little, his ire abated, and a small grin returning to his face. "I'll tell you why, because that's your phone number from when we were in high school, that's why."

"How do you remember stuff like that?"

"I don’t know how…" his voice was raising "…I just can't forget most things. I don’t know why, but I can tell you it's driving me nuts."

There was a horrible silence, through which neither dared to look at the other. Fortunately, the food arrived soon after and gave Richard a plausible place to hold his sight. Somehow hearing Mark reach for the bottle, and then splash a substantial glob of ketchup on his plate, normalized Richard's emotions; this man was his friend, had been his good friend from the time they were both fifteen, so why was Richard afraid or ashamed to talk to him?

"At night, Mark, you don’t know, because you go to sleep, and three-fourths of what you remembered from the day before is gone in the morning. What's left is stuff you can use, important stuff. I go to sleep, and, oh…just forget about it. What's the use?"

Mark held his friend's attention to make sure the other man was finished. Then he fingered a French fry, swirled it in more ketchup, and through the air it went to land in his mouth. He chewed, ensuring a pink mush was visible as he said, "Bullshit. You'll never be happy until you realize that people are only about as happy as they make up their minds to be. Know who said that?"

Mark was smiling broadly, now that he anticipated victory.

"Abraham Lincoln."

Mark's grin of triumph faded. "Oh yeah, I forgot you know just about everything."

Richard was tired of this. He rubbed his palms over his forehead, down to his eyes, and then lower to his mouth and chin. He held his friend's gaze in a way that showed he was seeking a reciprocal form of sympathy. "I know that stuff," he said softly. "I want to believe in it, but wanting to believe and actually believing are two completely different things. I just wish I could forget. Forget it all."

˚˚˚˚˚

He was back on the street again. Lunch was over; his friend had gone back to work. Richard was lonelier now that he had been before, only the cold sweat on his brow remained the same, as he could not seem to get rid of that. He was still considering that perspiration, when he suddenly felt something, something painful, but only for a second, and then a wonderful black overtook him. It was soft and warm, it enveloped him and he became aware of nothing; a great amount of sorrow was instantly gone, lifted up out of him by the gentle blackness.

˚˚˚˚˚

"Doc, how is he? What happened to him?"

"You are?"

"They called and said they found my card on him, but wouldn't tell me what happened. I'm his friend."

"He was mugged. He has a pretty bad concussion, and one hell-of-a headache, but he should be all right. Oh, I should also tell you, he appears to be suffering from amnesia. It's probably only temporary though, and he should be all right in the long run. However, only time will tell."

"You say he should be all right?"

"Well, mostly these incidents produce temporary memory loss, but sometimes…well, it's too early to know for sure."

˚˚˚˚˚

Richard Lerner lay in his hospital bed, feeling his head gently being ripped apart by the blood sent to it by his heartbeat. He felt more alone than at any other time in his life.

'Okay,' he thought carefully about the information he had been told. 'I'm Richard Lerner; I'm 28 years old; I live at 701 South Skinker Boulevard, apartment 3G; and…I… I am…'

He rolled over, placing his face sideways on the pillow. 'I don't know. I don’t know who or what I am, or what it means to be Richard Lerner." Great sadness overcame him, climbed into bed with him, and sank into his nearly empty mind. 'How can I be happy not remembering anything..?'

Very quietly, very gently, the tears rolled off his face and stained the pillow.

~