THAN AND NOW
By
Yuri Csapo
Than and Now
Copyright 2014 Yuri Csapo
Table of Contents
Than and Now
About the Author
THAN AND NOW
The small hand lets go of his grip. The green blur is already barely visible when he drops the grocery bags and bolts after the child’s winter coat. Small yelps of pure joy as the two-year-old runs full speed, marveling at the novelty of snowflakes all around him. The hissing sound of tires sliding across the pavement, blood draining from the driver’s contorted face, a sickening thud-crack followed by the most horrible sound of all: utter silence.
Michael tensed up in bed, jerked awake by his own scream. His heartbeat was all he could hear. He leaned against the headboard, trying not to force his body to relax, waiting for the trembling to subside by itself. The nightmare was over, but life went on.
From long practice, Michael knew it was best not to fight. Not to try to forget the dream. He just went about his morning routine, the robotic repetition of mundane little tasks giving his whole life meaning (green blur, grocery bags). The onset of the ritual had been slow, since his marriage had ended in the insurmountable guilt and silent recrimination (tires sliding across the pavement). Amanda never said it, but she didn’t have to. He saw it in her eyes, for one last time the mirror image of his own. He knew she was right to blame him. Who else was there to blame?
The little apartment was meticulously clean and held nothing that didn’t have immediate daily use (horror in the driver’s eyes). He kept all the memories from his previous life in his head. One more look to assure himself that everything was in its place, and Michael closed the door behind him (thud-crack-silence). He wore his dark grey overcoat like camouflage among the dark grey people in the dark grey streets.
Michael walked to the subway station, climbed down the steps one at a time, waited for the train in his usual place, dozed off during the short trip, walked to the office building, greeted the person behind the front desk, each meaningless action leading automatically to the next, each giving its tiny contribution to fill his life with…something (the small hand lets go).
In the evening, as he did more often than not, Michael walked home. Sometimes this made him tired enough to sleep. The little coffee shop almost exactly halfway home was the highlight of his day, a reward he gave himself for living through another day. He didn’t dare drink coffee at night (thud-crack-silence), but he enjoyed the smell of fresh brew. The casual atmosphere of comfortable couches and people with laptops was a poor substitute for family life, but he indulged in the feeling anyway, as he enjoyed a bagel or some fruit juice.
As usual, he perused the cork board full of business cards and laser-printed posters for local bands, the “take one” ads for guitar lessons, roommates wanted, or lost pets. They assured him that life, somehow, went on (small yelps of pure joy).
As he entered his building, Michael felt the familiar weariness that sometimes came after a day’s worth of work followed by the long walk home. The soft protest from his limbs was a sign that, this time, he might be able to fall asleep, to get a few hours’ rest. Most days, he was not this lucky.
Dozing off in front of the news channel, Michael sipped from the one tumbler of bourbon that was all he allowed himself. One drink couldn’t make him forget, but it might help him fall asleep (hissing sound of tires). It would be all too easy to get lost in alcoholic stupor, but after the first few months he had learned to avoid that particular trap.
Feeling the welcome sweet spot of being almost asleep yet awake enough to crawl into bed, Michael forced himself into the heavy, rhythmic breathing pattern.
The hissing sound of tires sliding across the pavement, blood draining from the driver’s contorted face. Then the sound.
The horrible silence still rang in his ears, as Michael was thrown from the depths of sleep into full awareness. He waited for the adrenaline rush to run its course.
The morning routine again helped him settle into his precarious balance, sane enough for another meaningless day. Thankfully, it was not the weekend. Weekends were the worst.
He managed to avoid the nightmare throughout the day, the repetitive patterns and inane conversations at work numbing his mind like they were supposed to.
Later that day, munching on his dinner, he lazily gazed over the familiar coffee shop cork board. Inevitably, his eyes were drawn to the new addition.
Something about the new flier was oddly familiar. It was intriguing enough to make Michael want to have a closer look. He was halfway to the board when he realized what had caught his eye. He should have recognized it immediately, but it had been too long since he’d seen anything like it. Apparently someone was still using mimeographs!
The sheet seemed to have been folded and unfolded many times. The words were barely legible under what looked like years of smudges and stains.
Almost as an afterthought, Michael read the flier. In old-style typewriter font, it said “Too tired to remember, too hard to forget? Do you really want to let go? Only Dr. Than removes unwanted memories.” The words were followed by an address. No email, no website, no Facebook. Not even a telephone number. Just a physical address in a low-rent part of town.
Could it be (horror in the driver’s eyes)? No, it was too good to be true. And “Dr. Than”—what kind of name was that? Probably some quack taking money from desperate people. Somewhere inside his mind he was wondering if he was desperate enough. “He ought to be reported,” Michael thought.
Halfway to the door, Michael suddenly doubled back, grabbed the greasy mimeographed sheet and shoved it in his back pocket. When he left the store his heart was pounding and his cheeks were red, like a kid who had just bought his first pack of condoms.
Michael didn’t think he could sleep that night. No nightmares this time, just excitement. He knew that this Dr. Than had to be a fraud, but for the first time in years he felt excited about something. He caught himself smiling a couple of times. He was even making plans. He would get rid of the memories, then find Amanda, take her to Dr. Than, and maybe they’d have another chance! He knew he still loved her, he always would, and he suspected she would love him again, once the memories were gone (small yelps of pure joy).
His heart still pounding from the sound of (…utter silence), his body momentarily out of control. Then the practiced, automatic letting go helping him grope his way back. He was himself again, and he realized that he must have fallen asleep after all. The nightmare was never far away, but it only came in full during sleep.
Then he remembered Dr. Than’s strange promise. His eyes automatically found the smoothed-out flier on the nightstand. Amazed at his own gullibility, Michael crumpled the old piece of paper once again.
His day went on, just like every other day. Subway. Office. Strangers doing pointless things. All the meaninglessness giving his life the only meaning it could bear (snowflakes all around him).
That night, Michael decided to take the subway home. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want to be at the coffee shop for a while. He reached inside his pocket for his subway pass, but found a crumpled piece of paper instead. Opening it up, he was surprised to find Dr. Than’s flier. He remembered stuffing it in his back pocket that morning, with the intention of throwing it in the first trashcan. He had completely forgotten about it, until this moment.
“What the hell,” he thought. He had nothing to lose. Finally finding the subway pass, he quickly checked the address on the flier and, for the first time in years, decided to board a different train (thud-crack).
It was a much longer trip than Michael was used to, and pretty soon he was in an unfamiliar part of town. He looked at the chart above the train’s door and t
ried to make the names relate to actual places. He wasn’t sure where he was, but he knew he was far from his cozy little world. The noise from the train wheels was hypnotic, and Michael had to struggle to stay awake. Who knew where he would end up if he dozed off and missed his stop?
Finally, he recognized the name of his destination. Michael used the subway station’s stylized map of the surrounding area to get an idea of where he needed to go. Still, he had to struggle with unfamiliar street names and the dimming light from the setting sun. After a few false starts and wrong turns, he was getting close.
It was a poor neighborhood, but not the kind that makes one feel unsafe. Just row after row of tired, dirty apartment buildings. Old decrepit cars parked everywhere, and not a third of the streetlights seemed to be working. Unlike some other places in town, it didn’t seem like they had been broken on purpose. They just needed to be replaced, but city services didn’t come this way very often.
It was all new in Michael’s eyes. Like a world that he always knew existed but had never seen before. Like a foreign country. He had no time for sorrow or nightmare flashes while he took in these new surroundings, made sure he was at the right address, and climbed the five steps to the front door of just another anonymous building.
He opened the door and found himself inside a dimly lit hallway with a grid of mailboxes to one side and a faded print of a classical painting on the opposite wall. Michael could tell where an area rug had once covered most of the floor, but he could also tell that the rug had been gone a long time.
It wasn’t hard to find Dr. Than’s mailbox, which confirmed the second floor apartment number. Nothing about the place was reassuring, but by now he was too curious to go back. Skipping every other step, he quickly climbed to the second floor, trying to get there before he had a chance to change his mind.
Michael knocked on the door. He was panting a little from the unaccustomed effort. Not a sound could be heard from inside. “Well, I tried,” Michael thought to himself, feeling relieved that he wouldn’t have to go through with it after all. He had just turned around to leave, when he heard the door creaking open. “Yes,” he heard an old voice say.
“I, uh, I am looking for Dr. Than,” Michael forced the words through a throat suddenly dry. The door opened wider, revealing a smiling face. There was something scarily familiar about that face, but also something comfortingly foreign. Chinese? Mongolian? Filipino? Native American? Michael would have believed any of these, and also Eastern European, South American, and any number of other ethnicities. The more he looked at the face, the harder it resisted being pinned down.
“No you are not,” the face said with an absence of accent completely incongruous with its appearance. “You have just found her.” The pronoun finally allowed Michael’s mind to resolve the face’s gender. Once he saw the woman inside the face, she became so obviously female that he quickly forgot his uncertainty of just seconds before.
Michael began to fake a smile at the lame joke, when something in that face told him that it was not a joke, but a simple statement of fact.
“Please come in,” the face said reassuringly. The smile seemed to be a permanent feature.
Michael opened his eyes. Looking at the smiling face across the tiny room, he realized that he didn’t remember sitting down. Or walking through the door. “Michael,” he answered the silent question in his mind. “My name is Michael.”
“Yes,” said the smiling face. “And I am Dr. Than.”
Suddenly overcome with the need to get away from that place, Michael tried to stand up. “Easy,” said Dr. Than. “You are disoriented. This is normal. Please relax, you will be leaving soon.”
Michael sat back, but he knew there was no chance of relaxing. “How did I get here? I…I don’t remember.”
“Don’t worry,” Dr. Than continued. “Soon you will forget this place. Remember this: you know who you are. You have a job and a place to live. It is late. Go there. Tomorrow you will feel better, yes?”
“Tomorrow,” Michael repeated. Suddenly he felt very tired. He wanted to go home and crawl into bed.
“Yes,” replied Dr. Than, “tomorrow. Now you are tired and it is late.”
Michael could barely keep his eyes open as he walked back to the subway station. Thankfully the train was empty. He sat down and immediately dozed off. A split-second later, the name of his station on the PA startled him awake.
Dragging foot after foot, Michael walked the short distance to his home and fell asleep on the bed, fully dressed.
~~~