Out of the Blue
Holding the screen door open, biting her tongue, Shelly watched Curt jangle the car keys down the flagstone stairs between the flowerbeds. He flashed her a defiant look before sliding in behind the wheel. Shelly closed her eyes as the engine started and the car backed down the drive. Muscle memory, she told herself, he’s been doing this for thirty years. When she opened her eyes, the car had straightened out on the street, ready to go. He tapped the horn and drove off, running the stop sign at the corner.
Shelly stood there thinking, still holding the door, tilting her head into its edge. She’d always wilted when he became angry and insisted, but she damned well knew better this time. Nothing to do now, though, but go back inside.
As he located items at the supermarket and placed them in the cart, Curt methodically checked each off Shelly’s list. He counted out the money for the cashier and jammed his change and the receipt into his pocket and thanked the teenaged bagger. In the parking lot, he set the groceries on the center of the spare tire as always and walked across the pavement to return the cart, leaving the trunk open. He gave the cart a hefty shove, enjoying the metallic clanking it made. Then he strolled out onto the sidewalk and turned the corner, walking toward the river.
The sun had finally come out and a light afternoon breeze kept the day from turning too hot. He took his time on the bridge, stopping in a couple of places to lean over the railing. The river was up, spring flood around the pilings.
When he reached the end of the bridge, a feeling came over him—he wasn’t sure of what—confusion, indecision, something forgotten? Premonition-like, but much too vague to make sense of. He continued walking, the day too beautiful to waste, though that worrisome vagueness gnawed at him. It occurred to him that he’d never seen that gas station before, or that second-hand clothing store. When had that Speedway appeared? He walked on two more blocks looking for something he recognized, finding nothing, and turned a corner at random, sure he would find a familiar landmark.
Then, suddenly, unsure of how he had gotten there, he found himself in a strange neighborhood of tree-lined streets and modest brick duplexes. Dogs chained and barking in back yards. A UPS truck double parked, its engine running. Something vibrated and played musical phrases in his back pocket. My cell phone, he thought. He knew it meant something connected to the three boys in uniforms and matching blue caps walking down the middle of the street. Noisy. Excited. Only feet away, they didn’t see him. He noticed, without articulating it, his invisibility. They were off to play a game. He had played it as a boy, too, but nouns sometimes escaped him. He couldn’t retrieve the name.
Where was this anyway? He needed to do something, but he couldn’t think what it was. Fear quickened his step. Wherever he turned he still found himself in this neighborhood of bungalows and duplexes. The shadows of late afternoon lengthened. He couldn’t find words for why that began to terrify him.
He escaped into a corner grocery and took refuge behind the canned goods in the back of the store, then wandered back and forth along the refrigerator cases to think, though no words came. “Can I help you find something?” the elderly woman at the cash register called. She stretched her skinny neck to see over the shelves. He turned toward her, panicked again. Beyond the open front door, the trees across the street were in deep shadow now. Moving quickly, he picked a Hershey bar off a shelf and stepped up to the cash register. Curt emptied his pocket onto the counter. A crumpled dollar bill, some quarters and dimes, and the folded receipt from the super market.
The woman counted out the price of his candy, sliding the coins to the side one-by-one. As she did this, she watched him over the tops of her glasses. Not unkindly. Concerned. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she said. “Is there anybody we should call?”
He hurried from the store without answering, but she had given him an idea. The light inside the store, the familiarity of a corner mom and pop steadied him. He felt the cell phone in his hip pocket again, knew what it was for now, and took it out and began scrolling his contacts. The names, though, were unrecognizable and, standing in the light outside the store, he began to panic again until he recognized Nick Ford’s name. He quickly hit Call and tried to breathe calmly as he waited for an answer.
A man’s voice, Nick’s, thank goodness, answered.
Curt knew that if he could make one word come out, others would follow. With all his concentration, he said, “Nick. It’s Curt Rowe. A favor.”
“Curt Rowe? Wow. It’s been, like, ages. So. How have you guys been? We haven’t heard anything from you in, like, forever.” Curt couldn’t hear the guarded friendliness. All his concentration focused on forming his request, which was interrupted by a voice behind Nick. “It’s Curt Rowe,” Nick told her. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll tell you later.” Then, back to Curt, “What do you need, Curt? Boy, it’s been a dog’s age. Years—,” but he stopped himself.”
Curt barely heard anyway and he couldn’t make sense of what he did hear. “Carol’s number. I forgot.”
He could hear Nick taking a long breath. “Carol’s number?”
“What does he want?” he heard the voice behind Nick say. Curt knew that person, but her name wouldn’t come. Another noun. “He wants Carol’s phone number,” Nick told her. Then to Curt, “Boy. I don’t know if I should.”
Curt couldn’t imagine what the problem would be. It was Carol. Why shouldn’t he give him the number? He had forgotten it, was all. Now Nick spoke to that woman again. What was her name? They were making an issue of giving him the number.
“It’s an emergency,” he told Nick. But the woman argued against it. People went into and then out of the store. Curt felt their eyes on him. The woman at the cash register kept leaning over to peer out the door at him. The light over the door had come on. “I’m begging you,” he said, and he tapped the numbers into his phone as Nick said them.
“Hey,” he said when Carol answered. “It’s me.”
“Me? Who is me?” Then, “Is this Curt?”
“Who else?” he said, his tongue loosening now. “Come and pick me up.”
“Wait. You want me to pick you up?”
Any other time Curt would have heard her tone. “I got myself lost,” he whispered.
“So I’m supposed to rescue you?” she said. “What happened to Shelly?”
The name didn’t register.
“Are you alright, Curt?”
He felt more like himself every time she spoke. Comforted. “I’m fine,” he said, pleased that she sounded so concerned for him. “Just a little. . .” He let it go. She shouldn’t worry.
“You sound odd,” she said. “Where are you?”
He looked up at the sign over the door. “It’s called Jack’s Corner,” then glancing at the street sign. Everything was going to be fine now. His breathing steadied. “15th and Paige.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Of all places.” She told him she needed fifteen minutes. “Don’t wander off,” she said.
And so he waited, enjoying his Hershey bar, with the faith of a child.
When she pulled up to the corner, she got out of the car to open the passenger side door. Looking him over, actually. “Sorry it took so long,” she said. She glanced down the street toward their little starter house. They were so young then. That had been their happy time. The woman from the store came to the door and gave her a sad wave, as if to say “I hope he’s okay.” Carol waved back holding the car door. “Thank you, Mrs. Caferelli,” she said.
“I always remember,” the woman said and watched as they pulled into the street.
“You don’t look so good, Curt,” Carol said.
“I’ll be okay as soon as we get home,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”
“The Fords called me after I got off the phone with you, Curt. They wondered what was going on. Whether I knew anything.”
He waved his hand, sweeping away the worry. “Long day,” he said, a familiar thing we say when we just want to rest. But then, in wordless reflection, he couldn’t remember why it would have been a long day. He recalled none of it.
“So I found Shelly’s number and called her on the way over here,” Carol said as if she had a bad taste in her mouth. “She’ll meet us.”
He wondered what she meant by that. The name still didn’t register. They turned onto the interstate. Curt lowered his window to feel the air hitting his face. He felt as if he could sleep and sleep and sleep. His eyes closed as they bumped up an off ramp, and then he felt the speeding car slow and his body press into the door as they accelerated into a turn. He opened his eyes to see the red glowing lights of the signage. Emergency Department. “Is there something. . .” he began, but she had already slid into a space and was now releasing his seat belt. “I’ll go in with you,” she said. He didn’t know what she meant, but that didn’t worry him. Carol always knew the right thing to do. That woman waiting at the door, clearly another worrier, must be her friend.
• • •
Stephen Peters is a short story writer who lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A co-founder and past co-editor of BLM, his work has appeared in this and other publications.