Marvin called time and temperature many times during the week. He felt he needed to hear another human voice and too often he felt the recording was a real person talking only to him. Then one beautiful Thursday morning, he dialed the number and the voice said, “Marvin, get outside. It’s a beautiful day. Just beautiful. Go to the park, sit on a bench, go to the zoo, wander around. Go.”
Marvin stared at his phone for a long minute, never heard the time or temperature, and then he went to the park and sat on a bench.
After that, he called time and temperature even more often, but he never again heard the recorded message call him by name.
He remembered another time when he was much younger. He was at his job sitting alone, as was his habit, when he felt the slight tremor of strong hands massage his shoulders. He did not recognize the voice at first, but he knew the face, another young man who spent a lot of time to himself. A great electric shock sprung through his body and he felt alive suddenly, energized, even engaged. He did not wonder at the time if this might mean he was gay—he knew he was not—but later he thought about it. Now all he remembered was the strong hands on his shoulders massaging them and the electricity that flowed from them into him as if they were giving him a charge he very much needed.
On the subway home, after gathering a few library books, he thought about time and temperature, reminisced over the electric shock against his shoulders, began reading a book, and fell asleep a few stops from his. Over the loudspeaker, the voice of the conductor said, “Marvin, wake up. Your stop is next.”
Suddenly he was wide awake. “Get ready to exit, and Marvin, go home to your wife. Have a nice day.”
He was so stunned, he did not react for a long second and when he did, the train was pulling to his stop. He hurriedly placed the book in his bag, stood quickly, and ran to the exit door a few seconds before it closed. When he opened the front door of his small apartment, his wife was waiting for him as pretty as anyone could ever be.
| Copyright © 2023 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
Michael, there’s magic in these short prose fictions of yours. Your stories have set me to seeing story possibilities all around me, like the parallel thoughts of (1) a truck driver imagining picking up a hitchhiker, fearing what the hitchhiker might have in mind to do to him, shuddering at the stories he’s heard about what other truck drivers have done to hitchhikers, and (2) a hitchhiker imagining being picked up by a truck driver, fearing what the truck driver might do to her (of course it’s a young woman!)….
ReplyDeleteMorris,
ReplyDeleteYou have to read the works of Breece D'J Pancake who died at a young age, but left behind one of the best--in my opinion--short story collections. Make sure you read the story about the snow plow driver, "Time and Again".
Here's a link: https://shortstoryproject.com/stories/time-and-again/
ReplyDeleteMichael, thanks! And while you were leaving the shortstoryproject link address, I was reading Wikipedia’s synopsis of “Time and Again.” I can see how my hitchhikers reverie made you to think of that story.
DeleteI may actually have read that Pancake story (years ago), or a Joyce Carol Oates article about it. The author’s name is a familiar one.
Wow, your link takes me to the complete text of the story! Thanks!
DeleteI’m glad my revery about hitchhikers springs from no such ghastly haunted a life as that Wikipedia says Pancake lived…before committing suicide at age 26.
ReplyDelete