The old man sat on the park
bench, cold to the bone though the sun shone bright on his brow. Nearby,
children laughed and played and ran through the sprinkler, paying him no mind
which, in and of itself, was not odd; children often didn’t see old men of no
relation. Children of a certain age were often unable to acknowledge the
existence of anyone over the age of, say, twenty-three or twenty-four. That, at
least, is how the old man thought he remembered it, from his own days as a
child, days he was almost certain happened.
He was having trouble
remembering, though.
Odder than the children who
didn’t see him was their mother, seated next to him on the bench, a visor worn
over a mid-thirties mess of red curls streaked with silver, age lines beginning
to sneak up on her eyes, a thin line of perspiration across the crew-style cut
of her yellow-and-white striped tank top… their mother didn’t seem to notice
him, either. Not even in that protective way mothers do, that offhanded ‘who-is-this-grown-man-sitting-alone-in-a-playground-and-is-he-watching-my-children-a-little-too-close-for-my-liking’
way mothers often did. She had not sent one inquiring glance his way, not one.
And, come to think of it, neither had the mother earlier that day. Or the one
the day before. Or the day before that. Or the week before back. For how long
had the mothers been ignoring him, anyway? How long had he been coming to this
park? How long had he been sitting on this bench?
A chill ran through him,
even as the sun’s glare reddened the skin of the children at play. He pulled
his woolen coat, plaid and downy but worn, tighter over his chest. The cold did
not dissipate. The sun was setting now, falling orange and red behind the limbs
of the trees. The mother and her children were gone; the playground emptying…
No. Not empty. A man stood
across the way, at the jungle gym, smoking. Are you allowed to smoke in
playgrounds? the old man wondered.
He could not remember.
The man at the jungle gym
wore a long gray coat of flannel or some such material, rumpled and open, an
unfastened belt hanging loosely at the waist; under this he wore a wrinkled
white button-down shirt, no tie, top collar open, and a pair of faded jeans
with a very cheap looking pair of loafers. Not that the old man was such a judge
of fashion, but the shoes… they looked cheap. No two ways about that.
The smoking man’s cigarette
burnt down to the butt before he flicked it aside and began crossing the
playground. As he came closer a few other details drew themselves into focus:
he wore the stubble of two or three days on his chin. He had deep, dark circles
under his eyes. His skin was pale and sallow; it seemed the sun had as much
effect on him as it had been having as of late on the old man himself. Another
detail, though, pulled the old man’s attention from these:
The younger fellow was
walking straight towards him, looking right at him.
The old man watched as the
smoker sat next to him, amazed to have been noticed, wondering this amazed him
so. The younger man gazed across the playground to the jungle gym next to which
he had just been standing. He took a deep breath that turned into a few deep
coughs, and when those had dissipated he looked sidelong at the old man. “Hey,”
said the younger man. His voice was quiet and low, sounding as burnt up as he
looked.
“Hello,” the old man
replied. He waited to see what would come next.
The younger fellow sighed
and looked away again. “So. You’re dead. Did you know that?”
It should have come as a
surprise. In fact, the old man’s initial reaction was just that: I should be
surprised.
He was not surprised,
though. Not in the slightest. Even though, no, he had not known it, nor even
suspected it, until his visitor had brought it up just now.
“I know now.”
“But you didn’t know before.
Right?”
“That’s right.”
The younger man nodded, as
though that was the answer he had been expecting. He looked back at the old
man. “Any idea how it happened?”
The old man frowned, and he
thought. He thought hard. He thought back as hard as he could, but he could not
remember. He could not remember how he died.
He could not remember much
of anything, actually, beyond sitting here on this park bench. Good gravy, had
he ever even lived?
“Don’t worry about it,” the
young man said, reading the older’s befuddled expression. “That’s usually how
it goes.” The younger man’s hand slipped inside his coat, pulling out a packet
of cigarettes and a book of matches. He tapped the bottom of the pack, hard,
knocking a cigarette half-out. “Here you are, though,” he said through stiff
lips as he pulled the exposed cig out of the pack with his mouth. Slipping the
pack back into his inside jacket pocket, he quick-struck a match, cupped his
hand over the flame, and lit his smoke before continuing. “That’s how it goes,”
he repeated. “Here you are, and here I am. Here to get you settled.”
The old man frowned. “Get me
settled? I don’t understand.”
“You’re here,” the smoker
explained. “I mean, you’re not there…” (He pointed up.) “… and you’re not
there.” (He pointed down.) “You’re still here. And until you’re ready to go one
way or the other, until Karen comes to get you… you’ll like Karen, she’s a
super lady… but until she comes to get you, it’s my job to find you a nice
place to settle down in.”
He understood, the old man
did, that he was dead. He understood that. That, though, was about the only
thing he understood. “Who are you?” he asked of his new acquaintance. “Who are
you, and what do you do?”
The man gave him a tired
smile, shifted his cigarette from his right hand to his left, and dug into his
right pocket. He pulled out his wallet and flipped it over, revealing an
identifying card with his picture on it along with the words, ‘Prof. Beckett
Simons, Licensee of the A.S.R.’ This cleared up very little for the old man. “A.S.R.?”
he asked. “What’s that?”
“The Association of Spectral
Realtors,” Professor Simons said. He smiled. “As long you’re here, my job is to
set you up in a nice house to haunt.”
