Read by Terence Anderson
One day. That is all it is. It has its fragments, a series of actions and succeeding actions, as mechanical as the turning of a clock. It has its existence as a whole, an inescapable prison. He will be held within it forever, and so will they.
In the morning, he leaves his wife. She rolls over and says something in slurred, sleepy Russian. Lee ignores her, and quickly gets dressed. The room is not his and it would not be right to say he is leaving home.
She wakes and they speak a little, early morning talk. Not in English; she cannot speak it. This country is not her home and nor, in truth, is it his. They cannot even live in it together. He knows from what she said last night that she does not want him back. When she cannot see he places his wedding ring in a china teacup on the bureau by her bed and leaves.
Running a little late, he meets Wesley for his ride into town. Wesley asks what is in the package he is carrying. “Curtain rods,” Lee replies. The boarding house room that he rents, the one he sleeps in when he is not visiting his wife, needs new curtain rods. He told Wesley last night that he would be collecting them this morning, and Wesley remembers now he mentions it. It closes the subject.
Will she notice that he is gone, for good this time? Nothing is different except the ring in the teacup and the rifle he has taken from the garage, and those are easy things to miss. Easy because he has made them that way. No, she will not notice, any more than Wesley will think twice about the curtain rods. They are not really looking, and will not see.
At work people are busy, like always. Books are logged, processed and dispatched to schools around the state. Nobody is that excited about the motorcade but all of them are going to watch. It makes him angry and elated. They shouldn’t want to watch, but they must.
Someone speaks to him.
“Lee.”
“What?”
“Give me a hand with this.”
The kid has too many boxes piled up on his trolley. Lee doesn’t tell him to unload some of it, just helps him take the books where they need to go. It feels good to help. Time passes and opportunities open. There is a moment to get away, to unpack the bag and put the rifle together. To prepare his spot.
His vantage point gives him a perfect view of the crowd. Smiling faces, waving flags. There is a strong wind but the day is clear and he can see everything perfectly. From here he can end it all. A police motorcycle appears and the cheers get louder and it is almost time. The motorcade glides along the street in front of him, serene and not quite real.
A precise moment: at 12:30pm, he kills a man. His first shot misses everything – he’s too close, it’s too awkward – he fires again and he hits, his target slumps, he aims and then – again – and it’s over, he sees blood and brain and relents. He drops the rifle and hurries down the stairs and when the two men stop him, he is about to buy a Coke.
“Is this man an employee?” The officer points the gun right at his head, finger on the trigger. Lee stays calm, says nothing.
“Yes, he is.” Three short words from Lee’s boss release him. The two men dash upstairs, towards the past. Lee watches them go, and buys his drink.
Nobody stops him leaving. Outside, the street is in chaos. As he walks away from the building Lee glances back up at the sixth floor window and expects to see himself there, firing the rifle. If it were possible to be somewhere forever, that would be his place.
He rides a bus. He takes a cab. It does not feel like an escape but only an imitation of one, part of a drama whose end is already set. At his boarding house Lee changes and goes out again with a pistol jammed in his jacket pocket.
The street gives a faint offer of escape. The hard sidewalk beneath his feet is somehow a shield, a protection. But soon they find him, or one of them does. The cop pulls up alongside him in the street, alone in his car, and the words that pass between them mean he has to do it again. Lee drags the pistol from his pocket and shoots him. “Poor dumb cop,” he says, and runs.
A rush of images whirls around him. Unknown streets and startled faces that he knows see him, see his face, see it too clearly. They will know him when the police ask who it was they saw. He hurries into a movie theatre, where he can sit for hours and hope that when he leaves the world will be different. He does not get the chance. The house lights go up. Someone points him out.
“Well, it’s all over now.”
He fights them, the police, for what little it’s worth. He was right, it is over. Time has gone. Time is dead, for what it can do to him now. He has done something immortal, as hard as it is to remember while they push him and punch him and drag him into the street. Time has become a series of punches that can never connect with their target.
At the police station he sees a clock. It says the afternoon is getting old. It claims it will soon be night. To him, it means nothing.
Questions. Aggression, disbelief. Lee marches into an identity parade. They book him for murdering the policeman. Fingerprints. Paraffin tests. Hatred. They book him for murdering the president.
In the night beyond time his brother comes to see him, a figure from a dream. Lee watches him closely. He knows there is no bond, no common ground with this man who was once his kin and is now a stranger. The visitor looks into his eyes, desperate.
“Brother, you won’t find anything there.” That is how Lee tells him what he has done. It is interesting to see the reaction, the defeat in his brother’s eyes. Only for him have things changed. Only for any of them. For Lee, it was always like this.
He goes away and Lee is alone. There is a clock on the wall but it says nothing. It has been one day, but there will be no more. For him, days and nights and time are finished. The prison around him is not his alone. It belongs to everyone.
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Brothers’ Eyes and Curtain Rods by Robert Long was read by Terence Anderson at the Liars’ League Hot & Bothered event on Tuesday, July 14th, 2011 at the Phoenix, Cavendish Square, London.
Robert Long lives in West Hampstead. He has had work published by the Muscle & Blood Literary Journal, Bards & Sages Quarterly and the Terminal Earth anthology amongst others, and has recently finished work on a novel. More information about his writing can be found at http://adsoofmelk.blogspot.com/
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