BY DON RATH
Copyright is held by the author.
DANIEL SCANNED the article from page three of a particular Sunday paper, the one he kept folded in his jacket pocket. The first time he’d seen it, Daniel had thought, “No good ever comes from people leaving a bowling alley.” It was wrinkled and frayed at the edges from overuse.
Only one adult was killed, a woman. The rest were children — four of them. One wore braces, he knew, from the medical reports the lawyers had obtained. Daniel didn’t understand why it mattered, but he still wondered if the braces had been removed before the burial.
Daniel paced outside of Attorney Walter Beckman’s office. He watched his neatly polished black shoes gleam against the wine-coloured carpet in the lobby as if they were moving through a pool of blood. Every few seconds, he stopped and looked down at his watch. Not a casual glance, but a fixated stare.
“Getting the knack of reading time?” Cecile asked.
“What?”
His fiancée pointed at the cuff of Daniel’s cream-coloured dress shirt as it peeked through the arms of the well-worn blue sportscoat. He wished he’d worn black instead.
“The way you keep looking at your watch.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s from a story,” Cecile told him. “‘Here We Are.’”
Daniel looked at her, confused.
“Dorothy Parker,” she said. “The writer. She wrote a short story about a newly married couple. The wife says they’ve been married for three hours. The husband replies that they’ve been married for two hours and twenty-six minutes.”
“So?”
“Exactly two hours and twenty-six minutes. As if he’d just acquired,” she said, extending her palm like the literature professor she was, “the knack of reading time.”
Time was all Daniel had worried about one afternoon, two weeks before the accident. Holmes was over an hour late. Daniel remembered the dusty grey car pulling into the lot, the engine wheezing under its rusted hood. Holmes had to grab the top of the window frame to hoist himself out of the sunken front seat. He approached Daniel, his breathing hard and heavy as if mimicking the engine.
“Surprised it made it here,” he said, wiping a spot of drool from the bottom of his pale lips.
Daniel noticed it was an Oldsmobile. “Guess they run forever,” he said. He didn’t know shit about cars, let alone about the durability of this particular make and model.
“Well, it ain’t gonna run much longer,” Holmes replied. “So, where’s your Dodge?”
Daniel nodded toward the blue sedan on the other end of the parking lot, the For Sale sign tucked in the passenger side of the rear window. He half-listened to Holmes as he walked around the car, pointing out several dents, the by-products of occasionally misjudged turns and an unexpected concrete post in the parking garage. After Holmes recapped all the car’s visible faults, he had just one more question, the one that mattered.
“How’s it run?”
His lawyer had asked a dozen times whether Daniel had mentioned any defects or issues at all. Daniel remembered handing Holmes a stack of repair invoices from the last five years, hastily compiled records of the brake job, the transmission rebuild, the three flat tires, and the annoying ignition problem. Daniel had forgotten to retrieve them before Holmes drove off with the car. The paralegal always turned up her nose when she asked, “Are we sure there aren’t any photocopies?”
Daniel remembered providing only one other representation of the condition of the car.
It runs great.
“Not, ‘It runs great, except for that twinge in the steering column?’” Plaintiff’s Lawyer had asked in the middle of a six-and-a-half-hour deposition.
“No.”
“Are we sure?” Plaintiff’s Lawyer said.
“He’s answered your question,” Beckman said. Daniel wished the answer had been different.
And even more, he wished the answer hadn’t changed over time. Because the first time he had been asked, Daniel thought he “might have” mentioned that the steering sometimes felt a bit “slippy.” Too bad he had phrased it that way. That stupid made-up word stuck in the heads of everyone who had heard it. Slippy. So when he changed his story later, and said he’s been mistaken, it had seemed significant.
“I honestly didn’t remember either way,” Daniel told Cecile afterward.
“It just seemed like a lie,” Cecile whispered. “The way you said it. If you didn’t remember, why didn’t you just say so?”
He didn’t know.
Beckman opened the door and ushered them inside. He invited them to sit down. A competent-looking junior associate in a bow tie stood by, poised to take notes.
“They’ve agreed to a settlement,” Beckman announced. “They’re holding you fifty percent responsible for the accident. And Mr. Holmes, the other fifty.”
“Why Holmes?” Cecile asked, surprised.
“Buyer beware,” Beckman said tersely. “Pure and simple.”
“His wife died in that accident,” Cecile objected. “And one of his kids. How could he be responsible?”
“Whose side are you on here?” Daniel said.
Cecile didn’t answer. She kept quiet for the rest of the discussion, as Beckman clinically reviewed the financial terms, which attached dollar amounts to unpaid medical bills, lost potential income, pain and suffering. It would wipe Daniel out.
“Have you heard from the DA?” Daniel asked nervously.
“No, and it’s best not to ask. That’s why we need to take this settlement. If this matter goes to a trial, there will be all sorts of evidence on record a DA could use to show criminal negligence.”
He wondered how much they would need to sell. How long it would take him to be financially free again. Probably sooner than he would ever be free of blame.
Daniel and Cecile left the office. They had come in separate cars. “I’m sorry I got angry,” he told her.
She nodded.
When life is easy, everything is about living it, not measuring it. When life becomes hard, somehow, the minutes matter very much.
He glanced at her rose gold watch, now transfixed by its slow-moving hand.
***

Don J. Rath holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. A retired finance executive, he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has been published in Musepaper, Hypnopomp, Scribes*MICRO*Fiction, Blood and Bourbon, Twelve Winters Journal, Barren Magazine, and Fiery Scribe Review.