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This spec fic story was writ­ten in 2005. I wanted to tell the story of a man’s life as seen by some­one who doesn’t know him at all.

 

The guy always wears a rub­ber band around his wrist—to remind him of what he is.  It’s a thin brown band about the color of his skin, and like him, it’s impos­si­ble to see unless you’re look­ing for it. 

That’s what I do, look for it, when I show him to his favorite table in the back of the din­ing room, always away from the crowd.  It’s a nice place, our restau­rant, with thirty round tables with white table­cloths and a classy mar­tini bar. It’s ille­gal to smoke inside, of course, but it’s an old place, and the ter­ra­cotta walls still carry a hint of the aroma of tobacco. Been in the fam­ily five gen­er­a­tions, and Mr. Old­ham is one of our best customers.

He always reserves a place in the back if there’s going to be a scene—and every indi­ca­tion points that way. As I seat him, he’s play­ing a voice mes­sage.  Not used to gad­getry, he’s left the vol­ume too high, and I can hear a woman’s voice clear as a bell:

“Sam? Eliz­a­beth. We need to talk. I want to meet as soon as humanly pos­si­ble.” 

The empha­sis doesn’t escape me. He clicks off the mes­sage and looks at me like he doesn’t know where he is or why I am stand­ing there in my frig­ging tux and bow-tie hold­ing out his chair.

I say, “Good to see you again, Mr. Old­ham,” try­ing to shake him out of it.

He thanks me, flash­ing the white teeth and chis­eled fea­tures.  Old­ham, that’s the name he’s using now.  Thinks it’s some kind of joke.  He’s a kid­der, this one. Good look­ing guy.  Could be a lady killer if he wanted. 

After he’s com­fort­able, I return to my sta­tion and wait for the woman that’s sure to be com­ing in any minute.  He asks for a bot­tle of Caber­net, 2017.  There’s noth­ing spe­cial about the vintage—’17 wasn’t such a good year, and I have my sus­pi­cions about his rea­sons why.  I don’t pry. In my line of work, you never pry.  It’s a good way to end up dead. Or broke, which is worse.

The new guy, Eddie, takes the wine to the table.  One look at Mr. Old­ham, and he decides to check his age.  I can’t freak­ing believe it.  I scut­tle over, think­ing Oldham’s going to blow his top.  He opens wide for the reti­nal scan, and Eddie’s eye­brows arch so high, they almost touch his hair­line.  I’ve got Eddie by the elbow and yank the scan­ner out of his hand before any of the other guests can notice.  The restau­rant is cozy, which means it’s cramped as hell, with two-tops almost crammed on top of each other. The lighting’s dim, but acoustics are damn good.

“Something’s wrong with this scan­ner,” Eddie says, too loud.  “The guy can’t be a day over twenty-one.”

“Shut up,” I murmur.

I’ve got the bot­tle of Caber­net out of Eddie’s hand.  “I’ll take it from here, junior.”

He starts to argue. Not in my freak­ing din­ing room, he doesn’t, and I dis­miss him with a scald­ing look.

“Sorry about that, ah, Mr. Old­ham.  Hard to get good help, you know how young peo­ple are.”

He smiles like he’s tasted bit­ters.  Wrong thing to say.  I suck my teeth.  Apol­o­giz­ing will make things worse, so I pour the wine. 

He sniffs the glass of Cab, enjoy­ing the bou­quet, and then takes a sip.  It’s to his taste, so I pour a second.

When he’s set­tled, I set the bot­tle on the table and pass him off to one of the older guys, Gus, who knows the score.  I take my sta­tion just as she walks in.  There’s no doubt about it.  She’s his type—tall, angu­lar, with chin-length hair, and laugh lines around the eyes.  Likes his fruit ripened, Mr. Old­ham does.

She doesn’t even tell me his name before I say, right this way, and lead her over.  Her dress is red silk, with a slit appro­pri­ate for a busi­ness woman in her late thir­ties.  Bet he bought it for her.  That’s his kind of dress.

Sam is wait­ing.  He’s watch­ing her through the dis­torted lens of the glass.  From my angle, his nose looks too big for his face.  I won­der what he sees, look­ing back at us. 

He stands, wel­com­ing her.  He offers a cheek. Eliz­a­beth leans in, but her kiss is a phantom.

“You look won­der­ful tonight,” he says as they sit.  “How do the pearls wear?”

She runs her fin­ger­tips over the sur­face of neck­lace.  “Sam.  We need to talk.”

“I got that impres­sion.” 

He nods, and I leave them to it.  I’ve been around the block enough times to know what’s com­ing next.  So does he.  It wasn’t so long ago that Sam and me would knock down a few at the bar after clos­ing, two middle-aged guys between wives. He was a dif­fer­ent guy then.

Back at my stand, I greet a cou­ple of young ladies and point the way to the bar, keep­ing an eye on the table in back. 

Sam pours her wine.  It sits untouched.  He has emp­tied his once, at least, and he refills it when the old guy, Gus, returns to take their order for an appe­tizer. 

When that’s done, Eliz­a­beth leans over the table.  It’s time for busi­ness.  I move to spot near the coat room.  There acoustics are very good here.

 “It might be best if we stop see­ing each other,” Eliz­a­beth says.

He makes that sour smile face again.  Although he has to know it was com­ing, the taste is still bit­ter.  It would be for me, too. A guy works hard, does what he’s asked, and suf­fers his life like he should. All he wants is a lit­tle com­fort at the end of the day, and even that rug gets pulled out from under his feet.

“Why?” he says.

She half-smiles, creas­ing the laugh lines around her eyes. “You know per­fectly well why.”

“Not the age thing again.”  He combs a hand through his thick, black hair.

Wish I had hair like that again, I catch myself think­ing and run­ning a hand across my on empty pate, envy­ing him for one a split sec­ond.  Then I won­der, would I trade places with that poor schmuck, even for the thick­est hair in the world?

“Look,” he says to her, “don’t say you’re too old for this. I said it didn’t bother me.”

“That’s not what you meant, though, was it?”  She picks up the wine glass and points it at him. 

It’s the begin­ning of the end for them. He knows.  I know it.  Hell, every frig­ging cus­tomers in the room knows it if they’re pay­ing atten­tion.  They don’t.  Pay atten­tion.  They point­edly ignore Sam And Eliz­a­beth. Even in this day and age, a young man with a mid­dle aged woman, it just isn’t done.  If they only knew. 

This is how it always starts.  It has the last three times, any­way.  Some­thing he says or does will tip them off, and all of the pieces fall into place.  Maybe Sam hoped it would be dif­fer­ent with this Eliz­a­beth.  Maybe she’s a widow or some­thing, with a cou­ple of teenage kids. Maybe she needs a hus­band as much as he needs a wife.  He’s got a lot to offer a woman.  Not love pre­cisely, he’s too old for that, but guid­ance and help with the kids.  Affec­tion, too, maybe, if she could set­tle for that.  I know where he’s com­ing from.  I’d want the same things, if I had the energy.

Gus comes up, nee­dles me in the ribs. “Some racket, he’s got, eh?” Gus says out of the side of his mouth.  “I’d like them younger, myself.”

“I don’t know,” I say.  “There’s a draw­back, if you think about it.”

He starts to argue.  How can you explain to a guy like Gus about liv­ing long enough to see your wife and kids and grand­kids all grow old, all the while you’re get­ting younger by the day?  Sam’s sort of a hero, just for last­ing so long.

“I can’t hear noth­ing,” Gus says, adjust­ing his hear­ing aid.

Old­ham is Gus’ last table. Most of the oth­ers are clear­ing out. It’s about clos­ing time for the din­ing room, although the bar action is heat­ing up.

We move to another spot, near the kitchen, and pre­tend to shine the sil­ver­ware.  After a minute, the kitchen sig­nals Gus.  He scoots off to pick up their order.  Sorry you’re going to miss the show, buddy.  Gus’s always had dumb luck like that.

“Look at you,” the woman says.  “Young, boy­ishly hand­some, thick hair, flat belly.  Any woman in this room would be glad to have on her arm.  How old are you, Sam?”

He runs a fin­ger around the lip of the gob­let. His smile is glass. “Not a day over twenty-four.”

“And how old will you be on your next birthday?”

“Twenty-three.”

She blinks at his frank­ness. He emp­ties his wine and then refills it.  She refuses to drink. 

“What gave me away?” he said, sipping.

She puck­ers. “The photo of the old cou­ple on your night stand. The peo­ple you allowed me to believe were your parents?”

Sam nods.  Prob­a­bly, she saw it when she was over at his house or some­thing.  I bet it was the pic­ture of Sam and Louisa on their fifti­eth anniver­sary party.  They had it right here, in this din­ing room.  This was before I was born, of course, but Sam’s told me lots of times about.  Hap­pened a cou­ple weeks before Louisa died.

Ah, who knows. Maybe I’m pro­ject­ing myself into the situation—my ex always said I was bad about that.  I like to walk a mile in a man’s shoes, I’d tell her.  Yeah well, she’d say, you’re try­ing to wear his pants, too.

“You’re a rub­ber band man,” Eliz­a­beth says, accus­ing him.

He rubs the non-existent wrin­kles on his fore­head. “I’m not, um, really fond of that term.” 

Sam looks toward me.  We make eye con­tact.  I hold up a spoon and turn it in the light, like it’s the most inter­est­ing thing in the world.  He looks away, and I use the cut­lery like a periscope, scan­ning the other din­ers. No one seems inter­ested in this conversation.

“Why not use it?  It both­ers you?”  Eliz­a­beth says.  There’s an ugly edge to her voice.

Sam hears it, too.  He wipes his chin with the nap­kin.  It’s not much of a shield. “I’d rather you didn’t, um, use slurs to describe me.”

Gus returns with the appe­tizer.  Nei­ther of them touches it, but it breaks the ten­sion. He fusses over the pre­sen­ta­tion just long enough to give Sam a breather. Good man, that Gus.

Eliz­a­beth takes a sip of water.  Her lips look dry.  “I thought all of them—all of you—were dead.”

“Some are.  I lived a longer life than most.  Well, longer than all of them, actually.”

“So you’re the last one.”

Sam smiles like he’s got a toothache.  Yeah, he’s the last one, I want to tell her.  It wasn’t like the gov­ern­ment hunted them down, for Christ sake.

“So on your next birth­day,” Eliz­a­beth says, “you’ll truth­fully be…”

“One hun­dred and eighty-eight years of age.”

“And peo­ple say you’re too young for me.”  She looks away blink­ing.  Her eye­lids are rimmed with tears. 

It breaks Sam’s heart to see her like this, I can tell.  Eliz­a­beth is a fine woman, and he hopes to spend his last years with her.  I’m pro­ject­ing again, I know, but he’s got that look in his eye. It’s an old man’s look.  He knows what he’s get­ting into, you know?

He takes her hand again, and she soft­ens a lit­tle. 

“We can still make it work,” he says.  “I know it’s a lit­tle unorthodox.”

“Unortho­dox?” Her nose wrin­kles up like he’s spoiled milk.  “It’s dis­gust­ing. My old­est daugh­ter is four­teen. In only four years, the two of you would be the same age. And in twenty years?  You would be almost a tod­dler.  I’ve lived through the ter­ri­ble twos and chang­ing dirty dia­pers.  Frankly, I’m not inter­ested in wip­ing my husband’s ass.”

It’s a low blow, but Sam takes it like a champ.  Me, I would’ve excused myself right then.

He slowly pours the rest of the bot­tle of wine into his glass.  It almost over­flows, which tells me he’s a lit­tle rat­tled.  Maybe he’s think­ing of what it’ll be like, a man stuck in a toddler’s body, an archi­tect like him hav­ing to play with build­ing blocks instead of design­ing off­world pre-fabs. 

“That’s not how it works,” he says finally, after he’s taken a sip or two. “Once my milk teeth started remerg­ing, the agency would arrange for my last few years. That’s the way it worked with the others.”

“Not that I give a damn about the oth­ers,” she says.

By oth­ers, she means the cou­ple hun­dred other vol­un­teers who under­went gene ther­apy to reverse the effects of aging.  They thought they’d go liv­ing for­ever, not aging. 

“I don’t know why you peo­ple allowed the gov­ern­ment to screw around with your genet­ics that way. All that for nothing.”

Hind sight’s 20–20, I want to tell her.  It wasn’t sup­posed to be that way.  At first, the news­nets all called the aging exper­i­ments a fail­ure because nobody stopped aging.  The sub­jects got older and older, and then some of them, the ones that would have died in their for­ties and fifties, they start­ing going back­wards, like a stretched out rub­ber band snap­ping into place.  The gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­dists were all over it, call­ing them heroes—until some of them lost their minds.  It was too much stress, they snapped, some of them.  That one woman who killed her fam­ily.  Those three men who blew up that school.  Pres­i­dent Nel­son, who started the last Great War.

“It seemed like a good idea the time,” he said, sadly.  “To be a mod­ern Lazarus.  An immor­tal Ulysses.  To strive.  To seek.  To find. And not to yield.”

Sam vol­un­teered in his twen­ties, and that’s where he met Louisa. They were both sup­posed to live for­ever.  They loved each other so much, I think it could have lasted for­ever, except Louisa’s gene ther­apy didn’t work.  Chro­mo­so­mal pro­lapse is what Sam calls it. That’s too tech­ni­cal for a guy like me.  In my mind, Louisa was a rub­ber band that didn’t snap back.

“Such a poet.”  She pats him on the back of the hand, patron­iz­ing him, and I hate her for it. “You’re a good man, Sam.  I’m sorry you never got to live a nor­mal life.” 

He’s more nor­mal than either one of us will even be, lady.

“Louisa, lis­ten to me—“

She stares at him. Blinks. Blinks again. 

He doesn’t real­ize he’s messed up.  “Did I say some­thing wrong?”

She puts a small, velvet-covered box on the table.  “Under the cir­cum­stances, my answer is no.”

“I wish you’d think about it.”

“No, Sam.  I’m not get­ting any younger, you know.” She half-smiles at her bad joke. Nobody’s laughing.

She tries to pay for her part of the uneaten food, but he waves her off. 

“You really should try to live out your life hap­pily, maybe meet some­one of your same—“

“Afflic­tion?”

“Age.”

With that she’s gone. She can let her­self out, I decide. 

Sigh­ing, Sam drops the ring box into the pocket of his suit coat.  Gus makes for the table with the check, but I cut him off. 

“I missed the show?”  Gus whis­pers.  “Damn it.”

“Not much of a show.”  I lie, but it makes Gus feel bet­ter. I pocket the check, and start clear­ing the table.

Every­body thinks, if I only knew then what I know now, I could go back in time and change things.  Me per­son­ally, I’m glad I don’t have that chance.  My heart couldn’t take it.

“How was the Cab this evening, Mr. Old­ham?”  I ask him, tak­ing the empty bottle.

He swishes the last of the Caber­net in the glass.  “It tastes like water.”

I take Elizabeth’s empty seat.  “Lots of cus­tomers, they come in, and have the same dish every time.  For some of them, it’s because that’s the only thing they can eat.  For most, you know, they find some­thing they like, it’s com­fort food.  After awhile, they get so used to the fla­vors, they don’t even taste them any­more, you know.  I, uh, notice you ordered ‘the usual’ tonight.”

“Veal Pic­cata.  I like it.”

“Ever thought of order­ing some­thing else on the menu?”

His atten­tion drifts toward the peo­ple sit­ting at the bar.  “What’s your point, captain?”

“It’s time to put a lit­tle fla­vor back into your life, Sam.”  I glance back at the bar.  It’s dif­fer­ent crowd there, a group of young peo­ple laugh­ing and talk­ing, hav­ing a good time. “You really should go out danc­ing or some­thing.  Maybe visit the bar.  Have a mar­tini on me.”
“Nah, it’s not me.  I’m too–” He rubs his head, once again rub­bing his pro­ceed­ing hairline.

We both smile, a cou­ple of school boys we are.

At the bar across the restau­rant, a young lady catches Sam’s eye.  She’s a pretty girl, with long hair tied up in a French braid, and there’s a tat­too of a but­ter­fly peek­ing out of the bot­tom of her open-backed dress.

“You think so?”

I look to the lady and then back at him.  I nod and wink. Why not? The night is young.

 

Copy­right 2009 by David Macin­nis Gill. All rights print and elec­tronic reserved.