Soul Mates

by Thomas Melo

  “Go to your room. I’ll be up in a few minutes to take the phone and TV out,” Ray informed his son.

  Tyler made an immediate about-face and jogged up the stairs, out of sight, and slammed his bedroom door closed.

  “Was it really necessary to put your hands on him, Ray?”

  “He’s lucky I didn’t kill him…talking to us like that.”

  “I’ll give Lilith’s mother a call and let her know what’s going on. Not that I think she’ll give a shit. I’ve never gotten her on the phone yet,” Cindy told her husband. Cindy was not able to get a hold of Lilith’s mother and she was not surprised in the least. She left a message on their answering machine, but never heard back from her.

  Again, she was not surprised.

  Chapter 6

  That summer was full of activity in the fairly large town of St. Anastasio, New York.

  Tyler, along with Lilith and Jayson, were part of the graduating class of 2019. The graduation ceremony had subdued the querulous atmosphere which had recently permeated, no, stunk-up the Swanson homestead, and that was spectacular…for everyone. The tension between her alpha male husband and Cindy’s wannabe alpha male son was very uncomfortable, and since Tyler was grounded, he was home all the time and not in the greatest mood, as one might expect. It was a recipe for disaster that would make the kitchen incident seen like a day at the beach.

  The commencement ceremony was held on a broiling late June day on the football field of Alan B. Shepard High School. The ceremony was very tasteful and sentimental without even tip-toeing into the neighborhood of becoming maudlin. The valedictorian, Spencer Mason, even delivered a speech which was not hokey in the least, much to his peer’s and their parent’s astonishment and delight. He had hoped to become some hot shot scientist, as he had received a full ride to either Caltech or MIT, or one of those ivy-league schools.

  Sure, some graduates received significantly more applause than others, like the elected class clown (from the Senior Banquet elections where the “popular kids just took turns sucking each other off by giving one another bullshit awards in the form of monikers”), Wesley Cicero…two names that went together like toothpaste and orange juice. The prom king and queen, along with the popular athletes, got a rousing roar of approval from the friends with whom they would lose contact by summer’s end…even with the immortalization of “friendships” that contemporary social media provides.

  Yes, the ceremony was very tasteful. The only blemish on the ceremony came in the form of a speech by Jim Colabza, announcing that he would be retiring and that this graduation ceremony would be his last. Tyler was taken aback and saddened by the sudden announcement and by his favorite teacher’s abrupt desire to move on.

  Typically, there would be a cavalcade of rumors floating around school when a teacher was preparing to take their final stroll down the same hallways they used to patrol for so long. But, Jim Colabza’s decision had been somewhat knee-jerk and decided upon swiftly; there was no time for a rumor to circulate like that of his sexuality. The district offered to alter his resignation to a leave-of-absence, giving him the option to come back the following year if he thought better of his decision, but Jim’s decision was made with the decisiveness of a unanimous jury throwing the proverbial book at a child molester found with a child duct taped to a chair in his basement. Jim’s house was already on the market.

  The teacher’s union had made some good points about retiring early, but the best point, perhaps, or so they thought, was that Jim would take a bit of a hit on his pension. Jim was adamant that his decision was final and not without plenty of consideration. The opposite was true of the latter, but his decision was final nonetheless.

  Mr. Colabza’s speech at graduation was heartfelt and earnest and brought some fellow faculty members as well as parents and students to tears. Although tears never made their way down Tyler’s cheeks, his eyes were saturated with them. An improperly timed blink would certainly have sent salty tendrils cascading down his heat-flushed cheeks, and he would be in good company.

  Lilith, who was sitting next to Tyler,of course,noticed this and made a face as if she suddenly smelled dog-shit. She silently scoffed and shook her head and looked back at the dais where Mr. Colabza was saying his final goodbyes to the school district and community that he had enriched for over twenty years, and smirked. Without warning, the PA system that had carried the speeches of the valedictorians and select faculty members before Jim, began to spark.

  Abruptly, the two small twelve inch P.A. speakers exploded. Lilith’s smirk grew into a gruesome sneer. A collective crowd-wide gasp pierced through the gob-smacked audience. Following the shaken gasps, a deafening silence enveloped the entire football field and viewing stands at Alan B. Shepard High School until good ole’ Wesley Cicero, star running back cum Class Clown yelled out, “Blow the roof off this fucker! We love you, Colabza!” to which the newest emeritus of the Alan B. Sheppard High School faculty gave a half-hearted fist-pump into the air in acknowledgment.

  Even though they were outdoors and there was no roof to speak of, the sentiment still worked and the 1,200-plus strong crowd on the football field erupted in unison into a euphonious concoction of cheers and laughs. What would have gotten “Wise-Ass” Wesley Cicero, as his teachers were apt to call him behind closed doors, suspended during the school year was oddly enough genuinely welcomed by faculty and parents alike. Although he would never admit it, Lewis Funderburke, the school principal, could have kissed the smart-ass former student...on the mouth even! Wesley took an awkward situation and instantly transformed it into something that was damn-near triumphant. The audience reacted as if D-Day veterans were marching onto the field after defeating Hitler. Jim Colabza’s speech would go down in school history and would be talked about over a decade from now. People who spoke of it with either firsthand knowledge of the incident or otherwise would all agree that Alan B. Shepard High School’s favorite teacher quite literally went out with a bang.

  After the ceremony, Jim Colabza met a few of his friends/colleagues for lunch at a local restaurant named Wings over New York…a wing joint, the name of which, was genius only in its simplicity. The group of faculty members, now off for summer vacation, with the exception of Jim, who was now off indefinitely, reminisced about old times as they polished off four pitchers of New Belgium Black and about five-dozen wings.

  After the last beer was finished and the lonely span of silence between the old anecdotes began to upsurge, two of Jim’s co-workers, Jacob Platt, and Armando Valez decided to get going after they wished their friend the best of luck in all of his future endeavors and in his retirement. Russ Morovich stayed behind to keep his pal company for a bit longer.

  “So, Jim Colabaza, retiree.”

  “Russ Morovich, a Jew. Right back at you.”

  “Yeah, I know! I don’t believe it,” Russ scoffs. The two friends had allowed a few reflective moments of comfortable silence go by as they looked around the pleasantly busy restaurant, both of them with smiles plastered on their faces thanks to the beer, and enjoyed the ambience. “I was always scared about how I’d feel about hanging the work boots up, but you know what? I think it’s something I’m not gonna have any trouble getting used to at all, you know?”

  Jim nods and smiles as he ponderously looks at his pint glass.

  “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Jim jibes with a half drunk grin, but does not mind answering anything Russ needs to ask him. As a matter of fact, he was hoping that his old friend would, in fact, ask the right questions. He was confident he would.

  “A couple of weeks ago, when you came into my lab to check on that dream that you had–”

  “It wasn’t a dream, it happened,” Jim corrected instantly.

  “Alright, whatever it was, anyway, you took off pretty quickly out of my lab that day and you seemed pretty shaken up about something.” Russ paused, waiting for possible elaboration or any participation from his old
friend and colleague, but got none and moved on. “Well, what I’m meaning to ask you is, are you retiring because you’re done with teaching, or is there something else going on? Maybe having to do with that dream–uh, incident that you had a couple weeks ago?”

  “Such an analytical mind, Russell ole’ boy.” He scoffs and takes a sip of the piss-warm beer that he has been nursing for the last half-hour. Russ waited for an answer, well a verbal answer. He had gotten all the answer he needed from Jim’s demeanor after he pointed out his friend’s scientifically analytical mind.

  “C’mon pal, we’ve been friends for a long time. Spill it,” Russ said.

  Jim let go of his crutch, which took the form of his pint glass, for the first time in a span of thirty minutes and leaned back against his chair and exhaled.

  “Aww shit, Russ, it’s gonna sound ridiculous and it doesn’t make a goddamn bit of difference anyway.” Russ stayed quiet and looked at him.

  I want to tell him. I was counting on him asking me, so why am I stalling on the launch pad now? Because I’m afraid. She’s not human and I don’t know how many of the walls in this town have ears.

  “Well, I originally planned on putting in my thirty, I truly did. See, there’s a place upstate that I used to visit as a teenager with my family. A town called Copake.”

  “Copiague?” Russ asked.

  “No, ya dumbshit, is Copiague upstate? Copake, C-O-P-A-K-E. Anyway, there was this house my family used to rent across from a lake up there, well, it’s technically a pond, but it sure looks big enough to be a lake. I used to love going up there. We used to take rowboats out, go fishing, have fires in the stone fire-pit in the backyard, stargaze, you know that type of thing. Well anyway, I always said that one day, I was going to buy that house and retire up there. So, the house is on the market, and I’ve been putting a little cash away from every paycheck I’ve earned since I was sixteen years old, and now I’m pulling the trigger and finally getting that house.”

  “Wow, good for you pal. It’s not every day that someone fulfills a lifelong ambition,” Russ pointed out.

  Why don’t you tell him? You wanted to tell him, so why don’t you?

  For what? What good would it possibly do to have my friend of over twenty years think that my mind is turning to tapioca and that I turned in my keys to my career eight years early because I was afraid of what my friend believes is,regardless of how he tip-toes around it,a nightmare? But that’s not all; I’m afraid of HER. I’m afraid of a nineteen year old girl! There’s something odd in that girls eyes, there’s–

  But she’s not a girl and you know it!

  I don’t know what I know anymore, Jim thought to himself.

  “Yo! Greaseball!” Russ snapped his fingers in front of Jim’s face. “You’re sure that’s all it was? You seemed like you had a whole bunch of shit on that middle-aged mind of yours.”

  “Nope, that’s it. The other “shit” as you so eloquently put it was just reminiscing about my time at Alan B. Sheppard High with all of the students and colleagues who’ve become friends along the way. I finally had a chance to step back and soak it all in,” Jim’s voice did not hitch, but he did well up a bit.

  “Aww, shucks, Greaseball!” Russ smacked his pal on his shoulder as they both picked up their warm beer, clinked glasses, and drank.

  Just as Jim hadn’t that day at Wings Over New York, he never spoke about Lilith, or his nightmare ever again. A month later, his house in St. Anastasio was sold to a lovely young couple; two high school teachers (not Alan B. Sheppard High), which was not as fortuitous and coincidental as one might think, as it was a very popular profession for the college-bound to choose, what with an entire two month vacation, not to mention every other holiday off built in to their schedules.

  He left St. Anastasio with a heavy heart, which is why he did not cancel the local paper, but instead had it forwarded to his new address in Copake, New York, nestled in the Berkshire Mountains. His heart was heavy and strained by the uprooting, but he gazed optimistically upon the future and the new chapter in his life upon which he was about to embark upon.

  * * *

  Tyler and his parents were on the mend. Of course they were. The anonymous check had been sent to the town hall (and accepted) in order to make the moose anatomically whole once again, although Tyler did not stop seeing Lilith.His parents did not enforce their “No Lilith” policy as Tyler suspected but he thought it would be prudent to keep her at a distance…at least for the time being. Tyler thought that the least he could do was rub his parent’s face in the fact that he was spending just as much time with his girlfriend as he ever was. That is not to say that he lied, unless you subscribe to the notion that selectively withholding information is also considered lying; in which case, liar-liar-pants-on-fire.

  Tyler would go out, almost every evening, but whether his parents were mentally indisposed at the moment or just chose not to ask (probably to avoid a foreseeable conflict) Tyler would go out without saying where he was going or who he was going out with.

  Tyler’s story is unfortunate and he owns the lion’s share of the blame, along with Lilith, of course, but his parents were not without guilt. Although their intentions were not always drawn towards the path of least resistance, there were times when they certainly could have fought harder for their son; and if they knew the stakes, they would have.

  Ty spent an abundance of time with his girlfriend and their exasperatingly squeaky third-wheel and eager-to-please friend, Jayson. For the most part, they stuck to summer vacation teenage normalcy; the types of activities and traditions that have been a part of nearly every teen’s life for decades.

  There were late nights of drinking, although Tyler would never drive…that is when Jayson showed he had use after all. Tyler was not going away to school. He had aspirations of becoming a police officer, which only required sixty credits from his local community college. There was a whole new world of experiences that going away to college (real college life) would provide and that he was aware he would be missing out on, so he made it up the best he could close to home. He didn’t get cheated.

  Ray and Cindy Swanson were aware of their son’s occasional drinking. They weren’t stupid and had more than dabbled in the “spiritual world” back in their youths as well. It was just something that they knew they would need to concede one day. There were worse vices, after all. This was one of Ray’s biggest sources of reluctance when it came time to talk with his wife about having a child. He worried that you can teach them right from wrong and teach them what you expect and raise them in a strict but loving atmosphere, but no matter what you do, they will most likely take a drink before they are old enough to legally do so. You know this. You just also pray to God that they have the sense not to drive while they do it and either get pulled over and fuck themselves, or worse, plow into someone walking their dog, or another car and royally fuck themselves or someone else.

  In this sense, Tyler was of sound mind. He would never drive having had anything to drink. There were other things that he did choose to be a part of.

  It was the second week in July, and Jayson worked for the town at a seasonal job which consisted of him sitting in a booth at a town beach checking the windshields of cars that came to the beach for a town sticker. If the cars had the sticker, on they went, but if they did not, Jayson would charge them the ten dollars which the town required for the use of their facilities. This job bored Jayson to tears, but his parents insisted that he have a part time job during the summer so he was not a constant fixture on his parent’s couch, not to mention, this was not back-breaking work, you understand.

  In order to make the days go by quicker for their friend, sometimes Tyler and Lilith would visit him while he was working. Even though Jayson genuinely appreciated the company, he would often bitch to his friends at some point about how it was unfair that he was stuck at work while his friends were free to enjoy their summer vacation without such inconvenient responsibilities.

&nbs
p; “Hey, I’m also starting classes at the end of August. You don’t start ‘til September!” Tyler said half-jokingly.

  “Must be nice to have parents who are paying for college,” Jayson said.

  “It is! No student loans to worry about. How observant, Jay-bag. Now why don’t you go slap a sticker on this guy’s windshield before I give you a slap, dickhead?” Tyler joked with a smiled plastered to his face. His friend sighed and went to do his menial job and was back within seconds, marking the driver’s information into his trusty work notebook and sweating through his powder blue polo shirt.

  “Hey, you know, my brother still has some fireworks left over from the fourth,” Jayson bragged.

  “So? It’s not like you’re gonna take them. He’d beat the shit out of you if you did. Your brother’s a dick,” Lilith pointed out.

  Jayson’s countenance showed that Lilith had a point. Ah, but also an idea!

  “You know,” Jayson started, “I know how we can make a home-made bomb. Well not a bomb, but–”

  “Dude, are you fucking crazy? You’re talking about making a home-made explosive in 2019? Why don’t you just call the White House and tell the operator that you wanna purchase a nuke and you were wondering if they knew of place in town that could get you a good deal?”

  Jayson stands there, hands akimbo the way his father hates, staring at Tyler while Lilith laughs at Tyler’s dramatics.

  “It’s not a bomb, shithead, you didn’t let me finish. It’s a home-made firework.”

  “It’s too bad that the Fourth of July was a week and a half ago,” Tyler pointed out.

  “Who cares? It’s not like they are legal during the fourth either. Also, you know people are lighting shit off for the entire month of July with leftovers or whatever,” Jayson pointed out.