Life, Lies, and the Little Things

by Brandon Mason

The next morning, he found himself oddly unable to dismiss the idea that Aiden was not real. Though he knew it was a dream, the concept of Aiden began to eat away at him. Even if Waldin gave everything he had to offer in the highest capacity, were there other factors that were too significant to overcome? Was the battle already lost? Was there even a purpose in trying, in anything at all for that matter, if there were such metaphorical override buttons in life that could control what happened and what didn’t? Whether through God or physical law, was free will and control an illusion? Aiden, in all likelihood, was not real, but what he stood for might be. And if he was real, would that be the end? Would he just let her go and pretend that he didn’t contain an unbearable desire to simply see where things would lead with her? Would he let her be just a girl he talked to that one time, whose name he didn’t even know? Would he write the past few days off as a nonsensical whim and go back to his old ways? Would he take the record player to that sweaty salesman at the pawn shop and head straight to the firm to beg for his job back? Maybe. He sure as hell hoped not, but he found more comfort in hoping Aiden was just an insignificant product of his subconscious.

  The next few days were dangerous times for the mind. He always slowly dismantled himself when he had too much time alone with his thoughts. The poorly constructed world of instant gratification quickly collapsed on itself. Waldin could not bear to wait. The questions came avalanching in as they always did. Did he misspell the address? Was there a mistake at the post office? What were the odds that it even reached her? Was she too confused to respond? Was she just trying to get rid of him and assumed he wouldn’t even try to write her? Was she unimpressed? Had her response failed to reach him? How long did it take to send a letter these days anyways? Each day the questions increased tenfold. He was so accustomed to nearly immediate responses. When he asked his assistant for a list of potential clients, he was reading it within the hour, by the end of the day at the very latest. When he sent out a casual, “You doing anything later?” he was promptly met with a, “No, I’ll be over around 12,” or if a denial, though they were rare, at least a fairly immediate one. He sometimes imagined her reading his letter, laughing at his pathetic words. She’d show it to Aiden and he’d crack a smile, but instead of making fun, he’d insist that it took courage to write something like that. Fucking Aiden.

  It had been six days since he sent out the letter and though that would have been a reasonable rate of return, it seemed like an eternity. As each day slipped by, he began to resign himself to the anxiety he once feared. He immersed himself in his music and began reading again. It was almost therapeutic to get out of his head for a while and take a glimpse into someone else’s. He left his apartment increasingly often, but rarely for anywhere besides the record store, library, and local shops. His music collection flourished and his once pseudo-intellectual, unused, reference filled bookshelf soon became something of actual significance. He’d made enough money in the past few years to last him quite some time. His money had been spent almost exclusively on necessities; always figured he was saving for something. This provided him with the financial security to take a mostly volunteer position at the local library. He’d been spending a lot of his time there recently anyways, and figured he had always wanted a means of interacting with and impacting the city’s youth. Though he quickly learned that the library was more a haven for the city's homeless than anything else, and if not that, a place for kids to play internet games and check social media, the potential for value remained the same. Despite all its shortcomings, the painfully outdated safe haven began to endear itself to him, and it became the center of his newly non-existent social life, his bar, if you will. Though he had more acquaintances than a politician, Waldin never really had many friends, real ones for that matter. That was, of course, until he met a kid a named Leonard, or, as I preferred to be called, Leon.

  Not Leo, no one called me that, not since her.

  It was the summer before my senior year in high school and I was still seventeen, much more of a man than most, but in so many ways still such a child. Jordan and I were still in that rundown studio on the south side, no bigger than Waldin’s living room, and my brother was still working the streets most nights. Whoever made it back first at night got the bed, which was almost always me; so he usually took the couch that was so worn out we called it the “poor man’s memory foam”. I spent most of my days at the Central Branch, since for some reason none of the local stores were looking to hire the kid they regularly kicked out for shoplifting. Before Waldin I didn’t even read there, I just played the six string that I salvaged from one of the live shows I used to sneak into, in the most secluded corner of the second floor. No one seemed to mind until Waldin overheard me and came up to tell me to keep it down.

  “You know this supposed to be a silent read —”

  Before he could finish he was disarmed by the melody, which for the first time he fully heard.

  Sensing this, I continued to play. Though I rarely admit it anymore, I was good. I was really good, far better than I realized at the time. I just had rhythms and melodies in my head that I didn't understand, that were phantoms, until I started to play. And when I did play I didn't think, I just felt.

  I came to a stopping point and pretended to have just noticed Waldin.

  “My bad, I tend to zone out. Was I getting too loud?” I asked, fingers still moving.

  “Oh, um no, well yes, but that was something else, kid.”

  “Na. I was just messing around.”

  “Yeah sure, where’d you learn to play like that?”

  “Just listening and watching the street musicians and some live shows. Not having shit to do.”

  He wasn’t convinced. “May I?”

  I handed him the guitar and he slowly plucked some classical tune on the top four strings. I barely contained my laughter.

  “And that’s what happens when you let your cello collect dust for ten years. Used to be decent but I never really played any acoustic.”

  “I figured. So… Can I…?”

  “Oh yeah, sure, keep playing, just try to keep it down. I’m Waldin, by the way.”

  He extended his hand. I paused and looked at it for a second, as I always did after seeing Jordan do it a deal a few years back, thought I was some kind of no-shit-taking, “you earn my respect” kid. But this time I broke a smile and dapped him up.

  “Leonard, but call me Leon.”

  He began walking away but stopped and turned back. “And the reference section might be a better idea. You won’t have to worry about an audience there.” Dude had jokes.

  Though I didn’t think much of it at the time, Waldin sensed the beginning of something of cosmic significance. Now granted, knowing Waldin, he probably had that same feeling at least five times a day, about shit of far less consequence, and I hate to admit it, but he was right.

  The next day he found me leaning against Encyclopedia Britannica Volumes 6-11, strumming away. Lunch in hand, he took a seat beside me. Armed with a copy of The Invisible Man and a handful of songs he’d obsessed over since he got home the day before, he gave me his best shot. We tried the whole hardened, reserved kid is resistant to open up to the delusional adult who tries to understand him act. Just take a moment to imagine a how receptive a kid, who never met his father and was raised by a single a mother who walked out the day he graduated from middle school, would be of an adult trying to gain his trust. Trust me, I played my part. I was what one might call a seasoned veteran when it came to shutting people out, but nothing could have prepared me for Waldin. All was lost when, for the first time, I asked him a question. He opened up faster than a white girl who happened to have just returned from a six day life-altering “volunteer mission trip” to Haiti, after three shots of Cuervo. Honestly, I can’t recall what question I set him up with, but I doubt it mattered in the slightest. He let it all go, and though it confused me at first, I eventually became content to just witness what unfolded before me. From his first
memories as a young child to the dream in which he was a paralyzed invalid being taking care of by an actually non-existent older sister that he had the night before. Every day during his lunch break, which always seemed to last unreasonably long, we talked, or, well, he talked mostly. And most nights, once the library cleared out, except for a few of the persistent homeless, we would talk down at the front desk for another hour or two. I suppose all the years of lying and containment just finally got to him. Not even a played out flood gates metaphor would suffice. When things got too profound or meaningful, he would resort to writing, which was always his more comfortable medium. One day I’d get a letter in the mail about how he didn’t show up to his father’s funeral, and later we’d talk about corn chips.

  All things considered, it would be unfair to paint Waldin as a self-absorbed man. Despite how much he spoke of himself, his interest in my life and opinion was relentless. Every few days he’d come in trying to contain his excitement, with a new book for me to read or an instrument he’d picked up for me to play. Some days it’d be an existential thriller, others a cajon he won off a street musician turned hustler. He’d even slip in a few transcendentalist essays from time to time. My early reservations soon gave way to complete absorption of everything he put before me, which was a big step for a kid who churned out C’s with Pete Rose like consistency. Granted I could have had a 4.0 if I showed up to class more than half the time, making me one of those gifted but never applied themselves cases you probably hated in school if you tore your hair out and picked up an Adderall/caffeine habit for B’s. That summer I learned more than I had in twelve years of public school “education” and my mind slowly crept out of hibernation, but at home things remained the same. It seems they always do.

  Chapter 6

  “I often wake up in the morning and wonder if I am, when it comes down to it, anything more than just hungry and horny.” - W