Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Blended, not stirred.
A touch on the hand. A soft scent. A slight upturn of the lips. Then she was gone.
He didn’t watch her walk away. He knew there was nothing there. Not even a hope of anything.
He couldn’t feel the touch. Once past the side of his face, he couldn’t see her.
Why did he try to live a normal life?
The waitress was like the rest, pleasant, but reserved. There was no person that mocked, or teased. No hushed whispers behind his back, at least none that he could hear.
His life was the chair he lived in. Quiet, responding to slight movements of his mouth. This was all the life he’d had since waking up in that hospital bed.
Since falling asleep in the cold.
The doctors that attended him then, and in the months that followed counseled him to not dwell on what he’d lost, but to seize what remained, and make a new life for himself. The chair, the months of therapy, both physical and mental only drove home the point in his own mind. No matter what life he made, it was only a fraction of what he had lost.
The accident, the momentary lapse had robbed him of his own life. All he had now was this shell, this pitiful existence. He wasn’t poor, fiscally. He’d done well for himself in the dot com boom, and doubly well in the housing boom. Both bubbles, he’d ridden early, and gotten out at the crest. Unnaturally lucky, his friends had said. His friends. Not friends, acquaintances. Business partners. One of them had increased his wealth exponentially after the accident, suing anyone that could have possibly been involved. The car manufacturer, the highway department, the maker of the guard rail, and they’d all paid.
It didn’t matter to him though. All the money in the world, and he sat at this table, in this dive. Unable to eat anything by himself, unless it fit in a straw.
All this dwelling, he didn’t notice someone take the seat across from him.
“Mr. Tarry. I have a proposition for you.”