This morning, just after I stepped off the bus, I crossed paths on a downtown sidewalk with a guy I worked with years ago, ten probably.  It was in the law firm, before I left.  His name was Mike Sanders.  He was stocky before, now just rotund, hair thinned to wisps and gray.  Slew-footed gait.  Smile the same, jolly fellow, content to push papers all day, take longish lunches with colleagues, preside over interminable needless management meetings.

Not for me that life.  Never again.

At first, I hoped to float by Sanders unnoticed among the absorbed faces of the commuters.  Why engage in a phony exchange of pleasantries neither of us desired?   I had a twinge of guilt at this avoidance tactic, though.  After all, Sanders and I had started at the firm about the same time, spent countless hours in the library together writing research papers for partners, played on the firm softball team, shared recruiting trips.

Should I speak?   Indecision paralyzed me.  I slowed my pace and stared intently at my folded morning paper.

In the event, it didn't matter.  Sanders's shadow loomed and he bellowed, "As I live and breathe - Donald Jones!  How goes it, Jonesy?"

"Oh, hi, Mike.  Still at the firm?"

"On my way to start the meter right now."

My stomach knotted.  "I sure remember that."

Sanders backhanded my shoulder jovially.  "Hey, why don't you come up and say hello to everybody.  Our office is just in the next block now.  You won't believe our space - I bet we've tripled in size since you were there."

I mustered a smile.  "I'd like that, but I don't have time right now."

"Well, then, drop by some time.  Everyone would love to see you."

Did he really mean it?   Did he really think I'd ever just "drop in?" Stick my head in the senior partner's office and wave my hand?   Hey, Mr. Bledsoe!  Just passing by and thought I'd check in on the old gang.

I could see Bledsoe raise a bushy white eyebrow and enunciate in his silky baritone, "Glad to see you, Mr. Jones.  Ran across one of your memos a few years ago, as a matter of fact.  Quite well written, though I'm sad to say we ultimately lost that case on appeal, after you left the firm."

A soft finger jab to my chest broke my reverie.  "Take care of yourself, Jonesy," Sanders sang.  He chugged away, calling over his shoulder, "I mean it - drop by sometime and we'll catch up."

I nodded, but couldn't think of anything to say.  I was shaken by the encounter and walked directionless a few blocks reflecting on it.  I needed a cup of coffee to compose myself, so I walked as calmly as I could to the deli on Main Street.

I sat on a stool facing the pictures.  Blown up black and whites of downtown in the thirties.  The one that was in front of me was my favorite: the movie theaters on Main Street.  The Loew's and Metropolitan, side by side.  People milling in front, early evening.  Are they coming out or going in?   Hard to tell.  Perhaps one movie is over, the other beginning.  The sidewalk is crowded.  Carole Lombard on the bright marquee, with Clark, and Shirley Temple next door.  It must be Saturday night to be so crowded.  Maybe summertime.

I stirred creamer in the coffee with a plastic spoon and gazed harder at the picture.  The person I stared the hardest at, as always, was the young man by the curb.  He's sixteen or so.  Open shirt with suspenders and breeches.  Skinny blond, hair tousled.  He's looking eagerly outward.  What is he doing?   Maybe about to cross the street, watching the cars.  Or scanning faces for someone: a friend, a girlfriend.  Or simply waiting for his ride.

I sipped my coffee, glanced around.  No one was watching particularly.  I closed my eyes.  I felt beads of sweat on my forehead, thinking of the law firm days.  Keeping time sheets, tracking every hour, every half hour, even quarter hours.  So many quarter hours to fill a morning, a day.  Damnable quotas.  Two thousand hours a year, forty hours a week with a measly two weeks off.

I opened my eyes and refocused.  His shoes, saddle oxfords.  He's about to step--where?   Into the street or along the sidewalk?   He's trying to keep from losing sight of something or someone.

I cringe at the memory of Bledsoe's barb on the elevator, as stingingly fresh now as it was then, only a few weeks after I started at the firm.  "Departing at six today?   Must feel unwell."   The doors close on my briefcase.  It snaps open.  Empty.  Heart pounding.  "Empty, Mr. Jones?   Taking home an empty briefcase?   Seems a disingenuous attempt to appear diligent, to my mind."

I stared as hard as I could at the saddle oxfords.  Maybe they'll move, even an inch.

The exact place was only two blocks away.  Across the street from the department store, still there, though the theaters are gone.  I took a last sip of mud and hustled out the door.

I needed to hurry.  The boy wasn't stuck in the photograph, only moving slowly.  His saddle oxfords, my loafers, traversed the same pavement.  I reached the exact place captured in the photograph.  We were there together, looking, searching, compelled to do so.  Frantic.

Then I saw it, what we were searching for: a city bus, the Park 5600.  Relief!  We had a curfew, home by ten.  But there was plenty of time, the coffee hour had just ended, and the movies let out.

We got on the bus, the boy and I.  We sat near the front, across the aisle from each other.  He told me about the show, held his nose in derision.  I laughed.  He laughed back.

I told him Mother would be glad to see us.  She'll find us another clerical job some day.  Meanwhile, we can help out around the house.

We were getting close now.  Live oaks line the street, monkey grass in the esplanade.  My Tudor house up a block and around the corner.  It's been there forever, and always will be, unlike Sanders.

My palms were moist as our stop approached.  What would we tell her?   A white lie doesn't matter.  She doesn't want the truth, not really.  No one does.  We'll say we saw the Shirley Temple one, and hope she doesn't ask any more questions.

Author Bio

Rob Kerr's stories have appeared in the Milkweed Editions anthology Stories From Where We Live: The Gulf Coast, New Century Voices 2000 and 2001, and in a number of ezines.  He is currently touting his young adult novel, Beneath the Bridge, in which an eighth-grade girl helps prove the innocence of a wrongfully arrested homeless man.