Xavier turned the dead bolt in the glass-panel door and pushed the button that set the alarm. His eye passed over the late October sun as it settled down for the night behind the convenience store across the street. He considered for a moment that somewhere further east another like him contemplated tomorrow’s rising sun. But right now and for him, the layers of pre-winter clouds both draped and expanded his sun’s deepening orange fire. His mouth turned up in a slight smile as he felt the artesian well within him expand a little more. This assignment was turning out to be more special than most and it would be hard to hand it over when it was time to move on to his next charge.
He heard a crash towards the rear of the shop and recognized Steven’s voice.
“Stupid, stupid!” the young man berated himself.
Xavier remembered when he had first seen Steven. After he had taken over the shop, he had soon noticed the teenagers that gathered outside the neighboring convenience store to transact their business. Every culture had years built into it where its people sought their meaning and purpose. So far, these had conducted their search in relative calm and seemed to have ignored his store.
One day he ran out of denatured alcohol that he needed to clean a metal door prior to repainting it. He entered the store and its oily-haired clerk pointed him toward the far corner of the store. He felt the attention of the loiterers at the magazine racks and drink coolers shift toward him as he located the one remaining bottle of the cleaner. For an instant he felt the unpleasantness of fear. Then he reminded himself that they were why he others like him had been appointed.
He paid for his purchase and left the store. As he started across the street, a muscular gangbanger shoved a younger boy against a trash can toppling it at the boy onto the sidewalk.
“Outa my way, bitch! I’ll put a cap in yo’ ass the next time!” the gangbanger growled before blowing past Xavier into the store. The boy picked himself up in a casual way, as if to say You didn’t hurt me, ain’t no one can hurt me. Xavier could tell from his clothing that someone somewhere cared about him, but it wouldn’t matter if one of the streetlords got his hooks into him. The way the boy’s eyes followed the gangbanger, it seemed as if that was what he wanted.
A week later, Xavier crossed the street again. “Young man!” The boy looked up from where he had been watching four others playing a game in the alley next to the store. “Yes, you! Come over here!”
“Don’t listen to him. That old man’s crazy,” one of the players said, his eyes focused on his next throw.
The boy shrugged his football jersey-clad shoulders and sauntered over, his high-top basketball shoes scuffing the broken pavement. “Yeah, what?”
“Do you know the name of the game you are playing?”
“I’m not playin’ nothin’. What of it?” The boy cocked his head at an angle, looking at him with one eye.
“They used to call it Skully. It’s nice to see a variation of it coming back after all these years.” The boy looked back at the wanabe gang members as they contested each other over drink caps fitted with coins and melted wax for weight. Xavier knew that the fighting would eventually escalate to more deadly stakes, but maybe not for this one.
The boy smirked. “You’re too old for it.”
“You don’t know it, but you’re probably right. What do they call you at home?”
“Steve. So?”
“This is my shop. I’d like to offer you a job. I need some help with . . . a variety of things.”
That was three years ago. Now Steve squatted in worry and looked at the bottle that had fallen from its perch. It had not shattered, but a crack ran along its eight-inch length. A portion of its amber contents had leaked out and pooled on the dry wooden boards.
Steve looked up when Xavier’s weight creaked the century-old floor. “I’m sorry Mr. Xavier. I was dusting like I do and somehow this got knocked off. I’ll clean it up right away.”
Xavier recognized the item. “That’s fine. Things happen. No real harm has been done.”
Steve pursed his lips and shook his head firmly. “But no one will buy it now. It’s my fault. I’ll pay for it.”
Xavier smiled at the young man’s transformed sense of responsibility. “Do not fret yourself. Besides, its value is beyond your present means.”
“Well, ok.” Steve looked back at the broken bottle. It was dark green with a nubby surface. It had fallen from a shelf of beverage bottles dating from pre-WWII days. There was a label but his eyes couldn’t make out the words in the growing shadows, even with the help of the thick glasses Xavier had helped him buy. He found a cardboard box and set the bottle inside it. “I’ll put it in the dumpster.” He pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped up what fluid hadn’t already seeped into the dry floorboards.
“Make sure you list it on the daily loss sheet after you take it out,” Xavier said.
Steve held the box against his chest and leaned back against the crash bar of the door leading to the narrow alley. Across the way rose the brick wall of a warehouse. He looked left and right even though he knew that there was nothing to fear until night fully fell. Bright street lamps peered back at him from each exit of the alley like the headlights of trains entering a tunnel. He started down the stair prepared for how the third step always shifted under his weight. Sure enough it teetered slightly and his fingers tightened on the cardboard as he reached the bottom. He opened the door of the dumpster and placed the box inside. The trash service would haul it away the next morning.
Nearing midnight and in search of a place out of the wind, Chardy and Tomas turned left and started down the alley between the Potomac Brothers’ Warehouse and Xavier’s Gifts. A dirty stocking cap covered Chardy’s balding head and the collar of a stained trench coat protected his neck from the chill wind. Since he was focused on the twin dumpsters squatting against the antique shop, he splashed through an overlooked puddle.
“Crap!” He quickly shook the water off so it couldn’t seep through the worn seams of his army boots. Keeping his feet dry was an excellent way to avoid another stint in the VA hospital -- in spite of the free food and lodging it provided.
Tomas smiled but said nothing as usual.
They had “shared the outdoors” -- as Chardy called it -- for the last ten years. He knew the possibilities of the streets -- what was worth the risk and what wasn’t. He knew all the trash routes and how to get in ahead of the trucks. He called it a good day when they scrounged enough to sell to pawn brokers or flea market vendors for food money and smokes. It amazed him what people threw out, even in down times, and it reminded him of how much he had taken for granted once upon a time.
When it rained or winter came, they opted for the shelter built by the Arlington Temple United Methodist Church out of an old gasoline distribution station. He carried a fair measure of anxiety even though the Reverend regularly reassured him that the underground fuel tanks were long gone.
It had been hard for Chardy at first because of the fire. It had been a cold night in December when he and Tomas stood huddled with other men around a barrel of burning wood and paper. Someone stumbled into the flickering light and tossed something metallic into the barrel. Before Chardy could turn away, the aerosol can exploded. He woke up three days later in the hospital. Two month’s of painful treatments left him with dark scars on his arms and the left side of his face and neck.
Some of the more petty street folk called him Chardy, but his true name was Randall. “I used to be King of the Hill of our consulting firm,” he told Tomas as the server in the shelter’s dinner line plunked a spoonful of potatoes onto his tray. “You know that game? No one could knock me off -- until an investor with lots of money bought the business and drove it into the ground. No more consults. No more money. My wife skipped out on me two days after the bank repossessed the house. Talk about kicking you on the way down.”
After dinner, they returned to the sleeping area – rows of beds for single men. He sat on his mattress and pulled his old friend from his coat pocket. Through a twelve-step program the gas station church offered he had stayed dry for six years. But then the fire came. When the pain outlasted his oxycodone prescription, he sought a cheaper remedy in regular doses of Virginia Gentleman bourbon whiskey.
“I haven’t seen any of them today,” Tomas said. Chardy knew he was talking about the Mara. They had started to appear in the Washington area about six months ago. Tomas had first run into them in Phoenix. Latino gangs had spread out of Mexico and jumped east from city to city along the I-10 corridor. Tomas moved fast to stay ahead of their “recruiters” and beat their arrival in D.C. by a year. So far, he and Chardy had avoided their sweeps and stayed out of the line of fire from their battles with indigenous gangs.
“Come on,” Chardy urged Tomas toward the dumpster on the left while he moved toward the one behind Xavier’s. “The trucks’ll be here soon.” While the warehouse container was more likely to hold tradable goods, he never passed up a possibility. He also believed in playing the odds and saving the best for last.
He slid the rusted metal door back and pointed his penlight inside. Something reflected the light back at him from within a box just below the door. He reached and his fingers circled something cold and glassy. He lifted a bottle into the beam of his light.
“Vigor-Ale,” he read the label. The bottle appeared unbroken and sealed with an old-fashioned pop-top, not the modern screw-off kind. Liquid sloshed around inside and his first thought was about how it might taste. Wonder why they’d throw out something like this. I’ll bet another antique shop would give a good price, he thought.
“Tomas! I found something!” Three gunshots echoed off the brick walls. Chardy looked down the alley where two gangbangers stood over the body of a man lying on the dirty pavement.
Tomas hurried over to him. “Let’s go!”
It might have been the alcohol or just the raw horror of knowing that a man’s brains had been blown out of his head. In any case, Chardy hesitated and Tomas would not leave him. The two gunmen pointed their weapons at them and fired. Tomas fell hard and blood welled from a wound in his upper chest.
Chardy stared at his friend and heard the shooters argue over whether or not they should finish them off. He hoisted Tomas over his shoulder and then stooped to pick up his dumpster prize. Another shot rang out. The bullet passed through the space where his head had been and ricocheted off the wall of the antique shop. A splinter of brick slammed into his left forearm and a thin flow of blood ran down to drip off his elbow. He ran back toward Third Street. Maybe he could call 911 from the convenience store around the corner.
Chardy watched the orderlies wheel his friend into the trauma room at the Virginia Hospital Center. The flashing lights of the Rosslyn Police cruiser he had flagged down had driven their pursuers back into the alley’s darkness. The paramedics arrived five minutes later and they let him with Tomas in the back. From his former life, he knew that the EMTALA laws would keep the hospital from refusing a patient that could not pay. Tomas would get care -- if he survived.
A nurse sat behind a low room divider and stared at a computer screen. “Name?” she asked him.
“Chard . . .I mean Randall Jackson.”
The woman did not look up as she typed. “We have no record of him as a patient here before. Does he have insurance?”
Chardy heard a derisive snort behind him and turned. A twentyish man in a polo shirt and a broken arm flashed a sarcastic grin and turned toward the television. Chardy turned back to the nurse. “No, neither of us do. My name is Randall. His name is Tomas Soto.”
The woman typed again. “Still no record. What happened to him?”
“He got shot in an alley over in Rosslyn.” Chardy leaned toward the nurse. “When can I see him?”
The nurse’s eye paused a moment too long upon his scarred neck and then moved on to a one-way window and a door marked security. “How about his social? Are you a family member?” she continued talking as her hand reached under the desk.
“Sí. Él es mi hermano,” Chardy retorted. The nurse looked up with a bemused expression. “What do you think?” Chardy continued. “I’m the only familia he’s got right now.”
The security door opened. A man in a crisp white shirt, pleated dark pants, and a 9mm Beretta on his right hip approached. “Is there a problem?” he asked the nurse.
Chardy pleaded silently with her until she leaned back in her chair. “I don’t think so, Wayne. I think we’re OK.” The guard shrugged and departed back into his office. “I’m sorry Mr. . . .Jackson. I need only a little more information. After that you can get some free coffee over there and wait for the doctor to come out and see you. You ought to have that cut checked.” She pointed to the gouge on his arm. “Stitches and a tetanus shot would help.”
Chardy sat down on a fake leather couch that had been worn thin by a countless number of slumped, exhausted, and fearful people and sipped his coffee. He’d had much worse even though the beverage had been reconstituted from black syrup drawn from a canister, quick-blended with unnaturally heated water, and dribbled into a thin Styrofoam cup. A dozen other patients and family members sat around him, having been triaged into the system. Tomas bullet wound had moved him ahead of the broken fingers, sniffles, and unknown queasiness that murmured around him.
His practice was to avoid such places until he had no other option. Hospitals, nursing homes, mortuaries – such places stood as evidence that in spite of all the money raised and technology discovered, every human life was on a one way road down.
He looked toward the double doors that separated him from the patient care areas, willing the doctor to come forth. He gave up after ten seconds and glanced down to the bottle he had scavenged from the dumpster. A copy of Discover Magazine lay next to it. He noticed the publication date and calculated quickly. His own subscription had run out ten years and three months prior to the issue he held. He could barely remember when he thought a relaxing afternoon consisted of his hammock in the back yard and uninterrupted reading authors like Sagan and Hawking. He flipped it open to a one page news item entitled “Physicists Learn to Turn Back Time.”
According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, any isolated system tends to grow more disorderly over time—the fundamental reason the mess in your sink only gets worse if you don't wash the dishes. But Denis Evans, a physicist at the Australian National University, has found that the second law can sometimes be forced to run backward. This is a discovery equivalent to finding that the dishes washed themselves while you waited. The experiment proved what had been predicted nine years earlier -- measurable violations of the second law are possible at extremely small scales. At larger scales, however, they vanish into the overall trend toward disorder. The second law defines the arrow of time—why those dishes do not get un-dirty, or why you cannot un-spill spilled milk. The existence of some flexibility in the law hints that events could temporarily run backward but only over minuscule distances. Humans will not be able to make themselves young again . . .
“Mr. Jackson?” the nurse’s voice intruded. Dr. Malik can speak with you now.” She pressed a button that released the magnetic hold on the door with a loud click. The door angled outward. Chardy dropped the magazine on the cushion beside him. “He will meet you in Consultation Room Two,” the nurse pointed ahead. “Go through the door to your left and down the hall.”
“Can I see Tomas?”
“The doctor wants to talk to you first.”
Chardy’s vision remained blurred as Dr. Malik returned to the ER, leaving him alone. It had blurred the moment he learned that Tomas would probably die soon. The bullet had done too much damage to his lungs and he had lost more than half his blood volume during the time it took Chardy to find help. The only thing keeping him alive was medication that elevated his blood pressure and the ventilator that breathed for him.
“You’d better go see him soon,” the doctor had said.
Chardy rocked forward with his elbows planted on his thighs with the bottle wedged between his left arm and side. If only he had run away as Tomas had urged. The room closed in around him and a surge of heat began at his left arm and radiated through his body. A flash of white light overwhelmed his vision and he woke up on the floor with someone kneeling beside him.
“I’ll get the doctor!” a woman shouted.
Chardy climbed back onto the chair. The bottle lay on the floor where it had fallen. When he reached for it with his left arm he saw that his wound had closed with just the hint of a scar. He touched the place and felt something sticky. No pain or tenderness. He looked at the bottle and saw a faint crack running from the top to the bottom and covered by the same sticky substance. The brighter lights let him read the label: “Vigor-Ale.” Below in smaller print was written “Good for what ails ya.” The date and place of bottling appeared at the bottom: 1926 -- Winchester, Kentucky.
He found Tomas in a room of beeping monitors, plastic tubing, and harsh lighting. Chardy’s heart thumped in his chest as he pulled the curtain across the door and approached the gurney. A bloody gauze bandage covered the wound in Tomas’s chest. The monitor displayed numbers in different colors for heart rate, blood oxygen level, and blood pressure. Chardy inspected his now healed wound once more. Could it be? What was this stuff? He looked again at his friend. He’s going to die anyway. He removed the old-fashioned cap from the bottle with a pocket knife, pulled off the bandage, and poured a tablespoon of amber liquid onto the wound. He replaced the bandage and slipped the bottle into his coat pocket.
Ten seconds later, Tomas’s heart stopped and the monitor’s alarm went off. Dr. Malik entered with a nurse. He silenced the noise and held his stethoscope to his Tomas’s chest. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jackson. There was nothing we could . . .”
The monitor beeped loudly as Tomas’s heartbeat resumed at a strong sixty-five rate. “What the hell?” Malik shouted as Tomas’s chest rose and fell steadily. “This isn’t possible.” He peeled back the bandage. A small scar had sealed the bullet hole. “This man’s not going anywhere until I find out what happened. I’m admitting him.”
Chardy and Tomas spent the next two days enjoying the warm accommodations and free food of the hospital. Dr. Malik ordered every conceivable test and learned nothing about his patient other than that he was moderately anemic and borderline diabetic. He would have kept him longer had Tomas not signed himself out AMA.
That night they found beds at the Arlington Temple and Chardy told Tomas everything. “I couldn’t tell that doctor it was the Ale that saved you. He would have taken it from me.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Tomas said from where he lay in the next bunk.
“I don’t know. Hang onto it, I guess. Sure would be handy considering how banged up we get sometimes.”
“Kind of like liquid first aid,” Tomas smiled.
“I know some people who could analyze it for me. Wouldn’t they be surprised to see old Randall Jackson climbing back up the hill?”
“Who?” Tomas asked.
“Forget it.” He pulled the bottle out. “I could make a fortune with you baby,” he chuckled.
A brown mouse scuttled between his shoes from beneath his cot. It carried a nugget of something in its jaws as it headed toward the safety of a gap in the baseboard on the far side of the room.
“Look! Speedy’s found dinner,” Tomas said.
The springs of the bunk above them creaked. A knife snapped through the air and speared the mouse a foot short of its sanctuary. Its tail whipped back and forth a couple of times before falling still. The bit of food slipped from its mouth
“I hate those little shits,” a gravelly voice said. The man dropped down. “Everything dies, some things sooner than others.” He retrieved his knife, wiped the blade on his pants, and left the body of mouse lying on the floor. “I got to take a crap,” he said and left the room.
Chardy stared at the animal. He had met people like the mouse-killer before, though they used innuendoes and lawsuits as weapons instead of knives. Their targets were those who achieved a measure of success beyond theirs. Reputations, careers, and even marriages lay eviscerated from their attacks. They had cost him his identity as Randall Jackson.
Tomas looked at the bottle and then at Chardy. Chardy handed Tomas the elixir with a nod. He squatted in front of the mouse, removed the cap, and poured a dollop of the Ale over it. A minute later there hadn’t been so much as a twitch of a whisker. He stood up. “I really thought it would help.”
“Maybe it works only if the victim is still alive.”
“I guess.”
Two dozen men sat at plain tables eating meals of Salisbury steak, potatoes and gravy, and green beans. Carafes held hot coffee. Two seats remained open – across from the mouse-killer. Chardy and Tomas got their food and sat down.
“You didn’t have to kill that mouse,” Chardy said. “What did it ever do to you?”
“Shut up if you know what’s good for ya!” the man growled, not looking up.
“Leave it alone, Chard. He’s not worth it.”
The man grunted and continued shoveling food into his mouth. Chardy’s appetite disappeared. He settled into his chair and ran a hand along the scars on his face and neck. They itched a lot and sometimes burned, especially on nights when the heat was up.
He leaned over. “I think it’s time we found out what the stuff does on the inside,” he whispered. He drew the bottle out of his pocket and looked at its knobby green surface. It was still half full. How much would he have to take? Maybe it was it like iodine – not meant for internal consumption. How could he be sure?
Hank noticed the bottle. “What’s that? Is it good? How about a little?”
“It’s nothing. Just some allergy medicine.”
The man grunted and scooted his chair back. “Damn good chow tonight. Time for seconds,” he said and tramped back to the food counter. Chardy pried the cap off the bottle and poured a shot of the liquid into the man’s coffee cup.
After supper, they returned to their bunks. It would be another hour before the matron called lights out.
“Look there,” Chardy pointed. The mouse was gone, though a dime-sized spot of drying blood marked the spot of its execution. The piece of nut it had chewed still lay at the edge of the spot.
Hank staggered into the sleeping area holding his stomach and moaning. He reached his bunk and fell into it on his back. “Oh, God! What’s happenin’ ta me?!”
Another resident came over. “Hey, Hank! You want I call an ambulance or somethin’?”
“I can’t take no more of this. Those beans must ‘ave been spoilt! Get me some help!”
The man flipped open a track phone and punched in ‘911.’ “Hello? We need help at the Temple Church shelter. My friend’s got food poisoning or somethin’.”
Hank got up and looked around, his eyes wide but focused nowhere, as if he were seeing the demons of his pitiful life coming home to roost. He spoke again, not in his normal street gruffness, but in a more polished voice, though in an unnaturally rushed cadence. “Sarah and Bobby! Traded for this? How could I let it happen? My best years!” He grabbed the sides of his head and keened. “Shut up! Shut up!” he shouted at the private accusing voices that accused him of the willful transgressions that had come to form his life. “Too late! Too late!”
Chardy sat on his bed, frozen by a wave of guilt. What if the Ale was poisonous?
Hank stopped his frantic movements and looked at Chardy, flushed by the fever of his demise. A great drop of sweat fell from his jaw. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” he said in a perfect imitation of Charlton Heston’s Moses.
Chardy watched as Hank wrenched himself around and then threw himself out one of the tall windows that looked down on the street. The panes shattered and he left blood on the sill where the sharp edges cut him. Chardy heard a heavy sound as the man hit the sidewalk. Tomas looked out and then turned around shaking his head.
The police took an hour to come and go. Everyone told the similar stories: Hank acted crazy and then threw himself out the window. Chardy overheard the female coroner tell the director of the shelter that an autopsy would be performed. She asked for information about his next of kin and made notes on an electronic pad with a toothpick sized stylus. Chardy remembered how the man had shouted the names of Sarah and Bobby. “Not much help,” the coroner told him. “A lot of kids go by those names. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
Chardy swallowed. “No. I didn’t know him very much.”
“OK, then.” She closed the pad and walked out.
The supervisor turned off the lights for the night and snores began filling the air of the sleeping room. Chardy sat with Tomas on his bunk and looked through the great window at a light snowfall that began to coat the sidewalk. He wondered if it would ever grow thick enough to cover the place where Hank had broken himself. “How was I to know that would happen?”
“Maybe he just had a bad reaction, like allergic?”
Chardy rolled his eyes. “You think? Why didn’t he just collapse? I could believe it if had taken it out on us. The guy was too mean to turn on himself.”
Tomas pointed to a sudden movement on the floor. A shaft of light from the street light outside cut across a section of the floor. A mouse identical to the one Hank had speared skittered into the light. It took the remnant of nut in its paws and began chewing.
“Is that . . .?”
“I think so.”
“Madre de Dios,” Tomas breathed.
“I don’t get it. How could it bring a mouse back to life but kill a perfectly alive person?”
They watched as the mouse devoured the remains of the nut and skittered through the hole to safety. “Maybe the ale didn’t kill him,” Tomas said. “Think about it. You, me and Speedy were not just healed. We returned to our former states. What if the same thing happened to Hank, but his wound was something deeper than physical?”
Chardy remembered how Hank had shrieked, as if he was suddenly made aware of all the misery that he had caused those he should have protected. Few persons could bear such raw reality. Most found scapegoats which they blamed for their sufferings.
It was the woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit and I ate it.
“What are you going to do with it?”
Chardy felt Tomas’ eyes on him. In the year that he had known him, Tomas had never laid any expectations on him. Some thought he was slow or autistic. Chardy knew the truth – Tomas simply enjoyed being the supporting actor in other people’s lives. “Do you think I need it? Would it make me like before?”
Tomas looked at the bottle. “There is probably just enough left for you. But I guess it depends on what you think needs changing.”
Chardy thought back past his arrival on the Roslyn streets and the accident at the barrel. Did he really want to go back to climbing up the hill again? He listened to the snores of the men around him. Eight hours from now the sun would come up and they would be hustled out to seek their fortunes as best they could. A few lucky ones would stumble onto minimum wage jobs, but most would survive another day by their wits and return to the shelter for their one hot meal. Success on the streets was measured not by social advancement, but by a trinket scavenged from here or there. Every once in a while he heard of someone who weaseled his way onto one of the urban gangs that had an opening for a gofer or buffoon.
“You tell me,” he said.
Tomas reached out one of his large rough hands and Chardy gave him the bottle. “I don’t think that the way back to your former middle-class life is in here. Anyway, that wouldn’t be anything different for you. What you are now is what you were then. You can’t get back to somewhere you’ve never been before.”
Chardy grabbed the bottle from Tomas. “This might be a church shelter, but that doesn’t give you a preaching license!”
Tomas raised his hands. “You asked. All I’m saying is this: ‘Is it workin’ for ya’ as Dr. Phil says?”
Chardy read the bottle: Good for what ails ya. The image of Hank throwing himself out the window careened through him once more. What good are you? He asked the bottle again.
Two rows over, an upper bunk creaked loudly and its large occupant crashed to the floor headfirst. Chardy heard the sickening snap of bones breaking. Others stirred awake as he and Tomas found the man on his back, his head twisted at an unnatural angle, the bones of his neck pressing against the skin.
Without thinking, Chardy opened the bottle and poured what was left of the Ale into the man’s gaping mouth. He bent over him and saw the liquid pool in the back of his throat. He watched a long five seconds before the man’s torn muscles and shattered bones started shifting back into place. The man convulsed twice. His airway cleared and the released air caused the Ale to spew out of his mouth. The liquid drenched Chardy’s face and dripped onto his shirt. He lurched backward as a sudden heat enveloped him. His hands beat against his face and shoulders as the burning sensation deepened. He felt Tomas catch and brace him and then things went dark.
When he opened his eyes again he saw that the lights were one. His friend’s face bent over him and he felt his arms around him.
The man who had fallen from his bunk said, “What happened?”
“You fell out of bed, Bob,” another resident said. “Damn noise woke everyone up. Looks like you fell on Chardy here.”
“You OK Chardy?” Bob said.
“Yeah, I think so.” He squinted his eyes at the halo effect around every light source.
“Serves you right wandering around at night. Bob’s big enough he could’ve squashed you.”
Tomas handed him a towel to wipe his face. “I’ll help you back to bed.” Bob climbed back into his bunk and someone turned off the lights.
The next morning, Chardy staggered into the washroom to shave. He lathered up his face at the sink and picked up his cheap single blade razor. The steam from three showers had fogged up the mirrors so he wiped clear enough space to see. As usual, he began with the left side of his face, working from the temple down with minimum pressure because of the ridges of his scars that tended to bleed easily.
He dipped the razor under the hot water and returned it to his face when his hand froze. Where were they? He reached with his other hand and felt the skin on the left side of his face and throat. He dropped the razor, cupped water in his hands, and rinsed the lather away. All sign of scarring was gone as was the familiar pain that every move of his neck and facial muscles had given him since the fire.
“Tomas,” he croaked through suddenly dry vocal cords. “Tomas!” His friend entered the washroom. “Look!” Chardy said pointing.
Chardy worked his way with a dozen other men through the breakfast line and tried to understand what had happened to him. It’s depends on what you think needs changing, Tomas has said. The Ale had turned the clock back for him to before the fire, but that still left him unemployed and on the streets. Had his relationship with Jack Daniel’s changed or with the men around him or the gangbangers or the people he used to love and compete against in his “middle-class life”? What really needed changing?
He sat down with his tray of food and felt the now empty bottle in his pocket strike the side of the table. He heard the sound of glass breaking. He carefully reaching into his pocket. The bottle had shattered into a hundred pieces.
“It’s broken,” he said as Tomas sat down. He exhaled a deep breath, as if finally saying goodbye to someone who had died years before. Thomas nodded but said nothing.
After eating, Chardy took his tray to the dish room. He took off his coat and shook the broken bottle pieces into the trashcan. On his way out the door, he noticed a flyer pinned to the wall. It had been there for weeks but he had walked past it. It offered to connect math and science students with tutors.
Science? I used to be pretty good at that. Maybe measurable violations of the second law are possible at extremely small scales.
