by Thomas, Lee
One afternoon, I leave the apartment on Broadway and begin walking in an attempt to dilute the memories with the city’s sounds and motion. As I near Lincoln Center, I pass a restaurant’s patio, where young and attractive people gather for expensive coffees and complicated pasta dishes, and I see a man sitting with his arm on the patio railing. He is speaking with a younger man who wears his hair in a nest of dark spikes. The younger man has his back to me, but he seems to be in the process of laughing, and the man I am facing smiles broadly, shrugs and continues speaking.
The man is thickly built with short brown hair and scars like a line across his nose and cheeks. In addition to the mustache I remember, he now wears a Van Dyke that is lightly salted with gray, and were it not for the miscellaneous impossibilities, I would swear this man once lived across the street from me in the city of Barnard, Texas. So great is this impression I feel a twinge of fear should he recognize me, but even if Ernst Lang had survived Burl Jones’s bullets, he would be a hundred years old or more and certainly would not look so close to the way he had the last time I’d seen him.
Knowing I gaze on nothing more than a normal man, given attributes I ascribe to a long dead German – perhaps because of the hours I have spent thinking about him in the preceding months – I still cannot take my eyes off of him. His joy is palpable, and his eyes twinkle mischievously, the way they did when he climbed onto his sofa to explain the power of names to two little boys.
I stand there and smile. I want to approach him and even take a step forward before I stop myself. Then quickly I turn and hurry back the way I have come.
When I was a boy, I lived across the street from a German. His name was Ernst and he helped me once. He might have even saved my life, but that isn’t something I will ever know for certain. If nothing else, I have tried to live an honest life because of what he taught me. There are many things I never told the German. So I will tell him now.
I am sorry, and I am grateful, and goodbye.
Wherever you are, live and rest in peace.
~ ~ ~
About the Author
Lee Thomas is the Lambda Literary Award and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Stained, Damage, and The Dust of Wonderland, and the critically-acclaimed short story collection In the Closet, Under the Bed. In addition to numerous magazines, his short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Darkness of the Edge, Supernatural Noir, Horror Library, Vol. 4, and Inferno, among others. Current and forthcoming titles include the novellas The Black Sun Set, Crisis, and Focus (co-written with Nate Southard). Lee lives in Austin, Texas, where he is working on a number of projects. Find him online at www.leethomasauthor.com.
