Falling

They had been seeing each other for two months now. It was only after the man fell from the sky that they first spoke.

“Oh my God” were the first words that he heard her speak aloud. Scrambling alongside her, taking the faller’s pulse, tearing off the man’s limp shirt, ignoring the dead man’s hard hat still spinning in place on the pavement, he leaned in. And held her hand. (The left one; her right hand was building a makeshift tourniquet for the poor man’s shattered legs.) Boy, did that feel good.

Just thirty seconds ago, they had been surreptitiously eyeing each other (again sighed the lab monitor) from the fourth floor of their respective classrooms. The two were separated by a mere cobblestoned street, a pair of walls, and a set of super-insulated windows. Though divided by only 50 feet of air (maybe even less he estimated while pacing it off during cigarette breaks), it felt like a deep chasm of nothingness sprung between them. No, a cursed dam. Holding back his unrequited passions. A dam which he egged with mental cruise missiles, but to no effect, no damn effect, for the structure was built of impenetrable steel and was coated with a slick petroleum-derived substance upon which no organic life could ever hope to form. And it was from this perch that he daily opined into his Trapper Keeper, cursing Jehova, Family, Society for this most unjust cosmic har-har. Just thirty seconds ago and 50 feet away from her (probably less he pitifully reminded himself every now and again in less happy times), he had been sighing, crumpling his water cooler Dixie cup, ready to trudge back to his non-existence of a lab table. And then he was blessed with the faller.

It is not every day that we see a man fall from the sky. Many go their whole lives without such an event. But for him, this was the second man that he had seen fall, though technically, his father fell out of a tree, not the sky, while failing to rescue Rascals the family hamster. His father’s fall had a documented starting point, an apex so to speak, and that event was anything but a blessing. In fact, he had been to therapy for many years in an attempt to wipe out all traces of the memory, and it was mostly successful, Rascals and dad being dead and all and leaving no evidence of that most unfortunate fall behind. So he didn’t make the connection between his father’s fall (“from Grace” his mother whispered with a chuckle sometimes after a few martinis—because she had discovered years after the fact that he had been sleeping with their neighbor, Charity) and this most opportune of moments.

His mother had remarried, to Stan, the local hockey coach, a decent enough guy who embodied “pal.” He vividly remembered arguing with Stan about whether the Japanese, before they abandoned the island to the invading American forces, should have booby trapped Guadalcanal with miniature fire ants and man-eating alligators. Like starving man-eating alligators. And they should have rigged the island with video cameras, like in Big Brother, and caught the whole thing on tape and mailed it to all the major TV outlets in America as propaganda. Because, God, it would be awful for Sally and Jenny to see our boys over there getting ripped to shreds by alligators and then their scraps being devoured by fire ants. Just plain awful. But this conversation felt miles away and light years ago, because just this moment—not thirty seconds ago, no, thirty seconds ago he was sad, and lonely—but right now, right right now, he was holding her hand while suturing the dead man’s openings, rinsing with a pint of vodka that one of the spectators had handed to him when he called for “DISINFECTANT!”

Fifteen seconds passed, and the faller had not moved. The sound of sirens could be heard and the crowd’s collective muscles unclenched. The ambulance’s call seemed to break the couple’s trance, and they finally looked up from their work.

She had the waviest hair he had ever seen. Her dimples had dimples. There was a need to capture this moment, and he mourned the fact that she would never look as beautiful to him as she did on this day, at this very moment. He pulled a rubber band from his pocket and tenderly tied up her hair. A short moment of indecision entered before he thought, no, today is different, and he spoke, and then she spoke. Soon, they were walking, walking away from the scene of the faller, the sirens having been silenced now that the authorities had unofficially concluded that the man was dead upon impact and had carted him away. As they walked from their blessing, they spoke and exchanged the little intimate details that take couples forged in less blessed relationships years to establish. He spoke fondly of Rascals and Stan and his mother and she of similar equivalents.

It was only when after they had arrived at the bowling alley that he noticed the blood on his hands. He excused himself and he went to the bathroom where he promptly threw up. He looked up into the mirror and washed his face. As he walked back out to her, he smiled, thinking of the goddamn 50 feet that had come between them and how it never would again. He then went out and bowled a 237, the highest he had ever bowled, and the highest he would bowl for years to come.