“Get the fuck out the car.” A muffled voice emerges from the other side, face hidden behind a bandana and hooded jumper. The door opens and Michael is pulled out. Then, from the other side, so is Sara. They are forced onto the sidewalk, sitting. The engine runs. There are two men, boys even, young, resembling his former students. Michael thinks of them, thinks of Duwayne. A dark sparkle of metal glimmers from one of their waists, but Michael cannot tell what it is.
“Gimme everything you got, motherfucker. Hurry up.”
Michael looks at the terror on Sara’s face. How the tears form at the bottom of her eyes like lakes. He hesitates.
“What are you, deaf ?” the young man roars. Michael huffs and then begrudgingly empties his pockets: wallet, phone, and cash; the hundred-dollar bills. For fuck’s sake. The second young man picks up the items from the pavement and counts the cash. They nod at each other. Mission complete. The second young man runs back to their car and drives off hurriedly, while his partner gets into Michael and Sara’s car.
“Is that it?” Michael shouts. The man stops, looks at him, then at Sara, and then back at him. Even Sara pulls a face at him for his outburst, but Michael ignores her.
“What you say?”
“You heard me, you little prick. I said, is that it?”
“The fuck you talking about?”
“Yeah, what are you talking about? Shut up,” Sara says, no longer crying. She hits Michael on his arm as if to knock some sense into him. The man with the shimmering metal on his waist steps back out of the car. Michael can see what it is now. He walks around to Michael and pushes him in the face, full force, with the bottom of his foot, knocking him to the ground. Sara holds in a scream.
“Are you crazy?” the guy says.
Michael sits back up from the ground and checks his face for bleeding. He lets out a deep sigh as if he has been inconvenienced, like when someone cuts in front of you in a queue or steps on your shoe in public.
“Listen, I’m just trying to help you out,” Michael says, as though he were giving a lesson. “By the time you try to use the credit cards, they’ll be canceled. The cash will quickly be spent on bills and that bad haircut of yours. By the way, you call that a fade? And before you know it, you’ll be back on the streets, waiting in the dark, at night, to rob another car. It just seems a waste of time to me. You can do better.”
“You trying to be a motivational speaker? On these streets?” He laughs. “Understand that you lucky to be alive right now. I could kill you,” the guy adds, reaching for his waist.
“So, go on then!” Michael roars. He stands up and stretches out his hands, his body, as if to provide a better target. “Go on! I don’t give a fuck. Put me out of my misery.” Michael huffs impatiently. He strikes fear into the guy’s heart, as if it were he who was carrying the weapon.
“You can’t kill a man who’s already dead,” Michael whispers. “Look…,” he continues as he reaches into his sock, “here’s $500, take it and give me back the wallet. You won’t be able to use the cards anyway, it’s worthless to you. But I need that wallet.”
The man opens the wallet and finds nothing of value inside. “Nah, you crazy man. There’s nothing in here but some chump change.” There is some noise in the distance, approaching. The man throws the wallet at Michael and grabs the money from his hand. The man runs to the car, gets in, and revs it before screeching the tires and speeding off to his escape, leaving them in the dark cold of the night. Sara stares at Michael in disbelief.
Michael lies down watching the ceiling. Darkness surrounds him. Hours have passed since they made it home. Yet restlessness creeps under his skin, lingers in his bones, keeps him awake. Sara is sleeping on the couch, in the living room of the apartment they rented. She did not say a word to Michael, she barely looked at him. Once they returned, she laid her head down and fell asleep. Michael stared at her for a while, wondering what she was thinking, before going into the bedroom. It is peaceful here. The train tracks echo in the distance, and he wonders whether they are coming or going. Sleep escapes him. His thoughts submerge him.
Is there no way out? No way out of the mind? Out of this prison, this hell, less, this purgatory—this wasteland of nothingness. Where nothing lives, where nothing breathes. And to think, the only way to escape the mind is to escape the body. And I, of both body and mind, am no longer shrinking from annihilation. No longer shrinking from death. I am walking to it, running, even. I want to walk into the oblivion of my being, the disintegration of my existence from this world. Like dust, swept up by wind, into the air, into a tornado, hurricane, storm. Listen to my words, I want to die, yet I speak not as a man who wants to die, but as a man who wants to live, and dying is the only way I know how.
Footsteps creak along the wooden floor, alerting Michael to full attention. His eyes remain fixed, the sight ahead equally dark whether they are open or closed. The sound moves closer. The door slowly swings and closes again. All movement is quiet, calm, like a library, or temple. Sara. He feels her weight shift onto the bed.
There is no hesitation in her movement. He feels the touch of her skin against his as she lies beside him. Her warmness spreads onto him. He trembles. They lie in silence for a while.
“Are you sleeping?” she whispers. Michael shakes his head. She looks up at him, in the darkness, trying to find his face.
“What’s going on with you, Michael? What happened out there?”
Michael lets out an exhausted sigh.
“You know, you don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Play hero.”
“I wasn’t.”
“So what was that?”
“What?”
“You could have got us killed.”
“I could have got me killed.”
“But why, Michael? Why would you want to do that? It’s not a game.”
“Because I want to.”
“You want to…?”
“Yes. I want to die. I don’t care about my life, about the world.”
“Oh, Michael,” she says, her voice breaking.
“It’d be better if I was gone.”
She moves closer, holding him tighter than before. As if she can breathe some of her life into him. Michael remains stiff, unmoving.
“I’m only telling you because, truly, I don’t know you. And I won’t know you after this,” he says.
“But we could…”
“No. That’s not what this is about.”
“So, what is this about?”
“I don’t know. I am just trying to live, trying to experience some last moments of my life before…” Michael pauses, and lets another fatigued breath escape him. Sara leans in to kiss him. Her lips touch his cheek, delicate. Her hands begin to stroke him, begin to explore the soft body of his earth. He stops her.
“I can’t do this. I haven’t been able to do this… for a while.
“See, I’ve always kept everyone at a distance, at arm’s length, never opening up, never letting them in. Not because I’m scared of emotions, of being hurt or of vulnerability, but because deep down inside I’ve always known I want to die, and it was a way of saving them from the pain and torment of what they would go through when I do.”
Sara is silent, but Michael can tell she is crying. They lie tenderly awake in the darkness, holding each other, as dusk passes to dawn. I made a mistake. I can’t let anyone else get this close to me. I can’t let anyone else know. It only increases the hurt, and the pain, and I too often feel theirs as if it were my own. No matter how much I crave intimacy, crave to be touched, and to be held, I’ll remain in this world as I intend to leave it: alone.
Tomorrow, they’ll make their return trip, in silence—as if they are mourning. Asking nothing more of each other than the banalities; have you packed, the cab is here, are you hungry, can I have the window seat. They’ll go back to the normality of their lives, back to their own relative obscurity. They’ll hug and wave goodbye to each other at the airport when they land and go back to the strangers they were before.
$6,621