Patrick Brandt, famous author of the book Love and Other Disappointments, made an appearance at Holden’s Book Store on Haight Street for a book signing.
Young women were lined up around the block, despite the drizzling, persistent rain. Success had brought a huge book tour, but really, Patrick did not think of himself as a people person. Taking pictures, writing signatures, and pressing the flesh of these young and eager women made him feel more like a politician than a literary mind. And who thought up this rat race, these small tortures for writers, who were usually reticent, introverted folk anyway? His hand was already beginning to ache. His face felt pulled back to unnatural lengths, he’d smiled so much. He wondered if this was what it was like to have too much botox pumped into one’s face: having a frozen, joker like expression that was immovable.
His book purported to have all the answers: how to find love, and how to keep it. The big questions condensed into 350 pages of biting wit, distilled from thirty four years of love-’em- and -leave-’em and calamities in between. It was an attempt at an autobiography about his love life. In truth, it was the most grandiose piece of fiction he’d ever seen.
The women did not seem to know that. They compared the picture on the back of his book cover and whispered that he looked better in person. If it could be called whispering, when it was loud enough for him to hear. He grinned. He’d heard this bullshit long enough that he’d begun to believe it. They did not know he’d grown up a small town boy; that his curly brown hair was natural, and that his physique was built up from years of construction work.
He stretched his arms, took a breath, and stared out the window for a brief moment. Pressed against the glass, he saw a familiar pair of eyes looking back at him.
He blinked. When he looked again, the woman outside was not there.
He shook it off, signing the books a little more quickly. He had a sort of rhythm to it, almost like an assembly line.
“Hello, Patrick.”
He heard her voice first, and his heart dropped into his stomach. He’d know that voice anywhere.
“Susan.”
She nodded slowly. “I’m glad you remember. Would you sign the book for me?”
He picked up his pen. “Of course,” he said. He was searching his memory. When exactly, was the last time he’d seen her? They’d grown up together. Susan Hadley was his date for senior prom.
“I read your book,” she said in her soft, sweet voice. “I guess I was searching. I expected that in some way, I’d be in it, you know? I wanted to see what kind of imprint I’d left on your life.”
“I remember you,” he said. Looking her in the eyes as he spoke was difficult. She had hazel eyes, and he remembered looking for the bits of color floating in them. On this dreary morning her eyes looked more gray and flat than he remembered.
“Yes, sure,” her long fingers reached for the edges of the book. She did not move.
“Do you remember the last night you saw me? Come on Patrick, concentrate. Were you really that drunk?”
He remembered only parts of it.
Jimmy’s party in the basement, he guessed. A couple weeks after prom. Loud music, pool, and an almost endless amounts of beer and whiskey. Jimmy’s dad always had the good stuff.
Patrick had been drinking before Susan even got there. He knew that he kept drinking after.
“Do you remember how you got home ?”
His hands began to shake. He stood.
“Susan, I’d be happy to talk about old times, but not here.”
“Where then? If this isn’t the time, when will be the time?”
“I don’t want to…”
“Think about it? I know that. You’ve built up this whole falsehood so that you don’t have to. Some of us have had to make do with the decisions others made for us.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Patrick,” she said. “I think you do. “It was raining. The way it is today. And you insisted on driving. Remember? I wanted to get the keys from you, but you wouldn’t have it.”
He got up and ran outside.
Susan followed him.
His fans looked onward, but none of them followed.
Susan caught up to him, clutching at his arm.
“I tried to get the keys from you, Patrick. What did you do then?”
He remembered. She rode with him for a way. And then she asked to get out of the car.
He’d stopped in the middle of Sutter Bridge Road. Susan insisted that she’d rather walk home than drive with him in that condition.
He grabbed her arm. They struggled. She slapped him.
And then he pushed her, hard.
He never even saw her fall. She was on the bridge and the next second, the spot where she stood was an empty space. She fell into the churning, gray depths of the river below.
He got in his warm, dry car, and drove home.
He never told anyone. When asked, he said that Susan walked home alone.
“You do remember, don’t you?” Susan said. They were standing together in the middle of the street, both soaked by the rain. “You didn’t try to save me. You didn’t call anyone. I was just a mistake, something you’d rather forget.”
He tried to pull away from her, but her grip was like death.
With all his might, he pushed away.
And she let go, not fighting him.
He fell off the curb.
The car did not have time to stop.
Susan turned her back and walked away. She heard the horrified screams of pedestrians who’d seen the man killed. Soon people from the bookstore would empty onto the street, looking on in shock.
Susan walked slowly up the hill, and disappeared into the mist.
___
© 2009 Lori Titus
Lori Titus’s The Marradith Ryder Series appears in episodes on Flashes in the Dark. Many of her short stories appear on MicroHorror.com, DemonMinds.com, and Shadeworks.org. An upcoming story will also be featured as a pod cast on SFZine.org. For more information see her at http://www.myspace.com/talesforthedark.
Tags: Lori Titus
April 2nd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Wonderful, haunting story, Lori!
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:41 pm
This is a good one.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it.
April 9th, 2009 at 1:15 am
Thanks a lot! I do really enjoy sad endings.