Part 1: Character Creation / Chapter 8

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Getting my car out of the ditch wasn’t easy, but I managed it.

Then I called the office. I needed to know what had happened after I’d fled. Plenty of my coworkers deserved a tire iron to the head. But plenty of them didn’t. So, I suppose I was calling to find out if Marty had brained the right or wrong people. Granted, based on what Nancy’s mom had implied, if any out-of-this-world events had transpired, it was likely no one would remember them clearly. But just because no one would have an accurate memory of how damage was done didn’t necessarily mean the damage would be undone.

Lela answered the phone.

“High Gear Marketing.”

“Lela, you okay?” I asked.

“Henry?” she answered. “Jesus—what was up with Mr. Malomar? Dude ran out of the office after you, super pissed.”

“Did he . . . hit anyone with the tire iron?”

“What tire iron?”

I felt a tingling in my forearm. Apparently, the tire iron had been retconned from reality. I needed to proceed with caution.

“Uh . . . never mind. Did he . . . hurt anyone?”

“Actually, he banged into Dwight on the stairs and Dwight fell down a whole flight.”

“Really?” I asked, thinking it could have been worse.

“Mr. Malomar didn’t even stop to see if he was okay. Just ran off.”

“Was he . . . running really fast? Like crazy fast?”

The tingling in my forearm intensified.

“As fast as a heavyset old dude can run. Why?”

“No reason,” I answered.

The tingling backed off.

“Anyway, Dwight’s in the hospital! I was gonna send flowers, but Mr. Delaney told me . . . ”

She didn’t have to finish. Frank Delaney was the agency founder and a world-class penny pincher among other things. He, unlike me, had watched the whole of Mad Men without a single wince. In fact, I suspected Don Draper was his hero.

Over the line, I heard his unmistakable Brooklynese accent call out from across the office.

“Zat Hubble? Transfer him over.”

“Mr. Delaney wants to talk to you,” Lela said.

There was a beep as the line was transferred and I waited for a moment. I pictured Frank reclined with his feet on his desk, hefting himself forward for a split second to grasp the receiver with his sausage-y fingers and press it to his stubbly jowl, as he flopped back into stasis.

“Heard Malomar took a swing at you or some crap?”

“Yeah, but I’m ok—”

“Was that before or after you got a signature on the media plan?”

I sighed, kicking myself for imagining Frank giving a crap about whether or not I was okay.

“Before,” I answered reluctantly.

“Goddamn it,” he cursed. “Get over there and apologize and get it signed before end of day.”

“Go apologize to the guy who attacked me?”

“Don’t be dramatic, you pussy.”

The dude was so gross.

“Look, Frank, I’m not being—” I started.

“Do you know how I got to where I am?”

Oh boy, I thought, here we go.

“My mother was the lawyer who got Harley Dinkins off.”

Harley Dinkins was an alleged murderer. Of nine people. One of the murders was caught on camera—which would usually be enough to nix that “alleged” modifier. But no. Marla Delaney had stepped in and twisted the jury—and the justice system—to her will. Dinkins had walked and she had written a book called “Defending Dinkins” that sold over a million copies.

Most of Frank’s employees knew all of that, as well as the next bit.

“She thought I’d follow in her footsteps—take the nepo train to cash town. But did I?”

I didn’t answer. The question was rhetorical.

“Shit, no!” he went on. “I ditched New York for Cali. She told me I’d crash and burn out here. But I didn’t care what she thought and I spent the next twenty years proving it to her.”

Nothing shows how little you care like two decades dedicated to proving how little you care. Frank had really showed his mom.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“She begged me to take her money but I turned her down flat.”

A drunken holiday party disclosure a few years before indicated otherwise. According to the slurred, teary-eyed confession, Marla Delaney esquire had in fact sent her son quite a bit of money every month for the first decade of his California odyssey, until his business had achieved the shaky solvency it now enjoyed. But he never seemed to recall sharing that.

“Soon as I got boots on the ground, I got into the ad game and built this place from nothing!” he went on. “And you know how?”

I sensed where he was going with all this and decided to move things along by treating his second rhetorical question as an actual question.

“Was it . . . by getting the media plans signed?” I mumbled with just a note of patronage.

“You gettin’ smart with me, you freaking jabroni?”

Jabroni? The word evoked a dormant memory of one of my 80s streaming binges with my dad. While action movies were usually the meal du jour, once in a while, the World Wrestling Federation made the cut—ancient VHS recordings from my father’s youth that he’d painstakingly digitized for posterity, commercial breaks and all.

Those viewing parties would have been treasured memories for any kid, but having lost my father so suddenly and prematurely, they’d been infused with a profound nostalgia that could be triggered by the most trivial event. Hearing the word jabroni was such an event.

Frank was undoubtedly using the insult to channel Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, circa 2001 or so—but unlike most philistines, I knew that The Rock had actually borrowed the archaic put-down from none other than The Iron Sheik, who had used it regularly decades before. I was thinking about how much the Sheik despised every fiber of Hulk Hogan’s being, when Frank barked, “Hello?”

“Yeah!” I exclaimed.

“I said are you gettin’ smart with me?”

“No.”

“You’re goddamn right!” he yelled. “Get it signed or get another job. Got it?”

I paused, not fully registering his segue-free transition back to the media plan.

“Do you got it?” he repeated menacingly.

“I . . . I got it,” I confirmed, defeatedly.

“Good.”

He hung up.

I sighed. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Frank really would fire me if I didn’t get the plan signed. And that was going to be difficult because the guy who was supposed to sign it was now a stain on my car’s back seat. It occurred to me that maybe I should be more concerned about the fact that I’d sort of murdered Marty than the fact that he wouldn’t be able to sign the plan. Then again, while I didn’t feel great about him dying, I was pretty sure I would have felt worse about me dying. And I didn’t think there had been a third option. In truth, the biggest regret I had about how it had all gone down was that I’d put a lot of innocent people in danger by trying to flee the inevitable showdown. Again, many of my coworkers sucked, but as I now realized, deep down, I wasn’t okay with being responsible for any of them getting hurt.

Granted, the toll Dwight Furlow’s hospitalization was taking on me was exceptionally light. The guy ended every sentence with “bro” and had asked Lela out aggressively at least a dozen times, despite a ten-year age gap and a clearly-stated lack of interest on her part. Still, his injuries were my fault—and it was just dumb luck that Marty hadn’t hurt anyone else at the office or someone along the roadway as he was chasing me down. However events were being rewritten, they weren’t being rewritten to spare innocent bystanders. So turning tail and running for the hills wasn’t going to be an option next time around.

But how many next times could there be? How long could this go on before somebody took notice? According to Nancy’s mom, the dozens of people who witnessed chubby, middle-aged Marty Malomar running along McInnis Parkway at forty miles an hour would have their brains rejiggered. But what about all the social feeds that had undoubtedly live-streamed the event? I supposed those would be magically adjusted too. Or people would just assume the spectacle was the work of a new Instagram filter or something. But Insta-filters and mindwipes aside, Marty’s disappearance would eventually trigger a missing person investigation. Wouldn’t it? I couldn’t be sure of anything.

So, for the time being, I was the only person in the world that knew the world had gone even madder than Lela’s professor could imagine. Alas, when I saw my sister was calling again, I was reminded that this warped new reality wasn’t all beserking, super-powered car salesmen and teleporting ex-girlfriend moms. It had retained some heartbreaking normalcy.

“Margaret?” I answered.

My sister responded shakily, “The tests came back.”

###

As I entered Robbie’s room, I noticed a crash cart parked in the corner. As far as I knew, it was only a precaution, but the need for such precautions is never a good sign.

Margaret looked up at me, with helpless, glassy eyes from her seat by Robbie’s bedside. She opened her mouth to say something, but then just closed it again and stood to hug me.

She’d given me the news over the phone. Apparently, Robbie’s heart had taken a turn for the worse in recent months—a big turn. His life expectancy had gone from five years to one or two.

“Anything good happen at eleven?” he asked as Margaret broke the embrace and stepped aside.

“What?” I asked.

“You know, like you can drink beer when you’re twenty-one. Does anything cool happen at eleven? How old do you have to be to skydive?

“You want to drink beer and skydive?”

“Not at the same time. Are you crazy? I could get myself killed. And I got my whole life ahead of me.”

More gallows humor. He was trying to be strong for his mom. And from her harried look, I could see why.

I thought back to our childhood. Margaret was a couple years older than me—my big sister, who’d always looked out for me. I recalled a family picnic at the beach. She and I had wandered off to play. I’d tried to climb a cliff and fallen off like idiot boys do. My ankle was badly twisted and it couldn’t take any weight. So, she’d carried me back to our folks, piggyback. It was probably only a couple hundred yards, but for a nine-year-old carrying a seven-year-old it must have felt like ten miles.

The incident had stayed with me over the years. It was one of several memories of my sister and/or nephew that seemed to render them immune to my trust issues. Such memories would strike like lightning whenever my tendency to distance myself from the world at large would threaten my emotional commitment to Margaret or Robbie. It was like an emergency broadcast system barging into the middle of my regularly scheduled programming. But, I supposed, that was love.

Anyway, as I looked back on that day at the beach now, I realized that it was the first time I’d thought my sister would be a great mother. And she was. Sadly, no amount of motherly greatness could lighten the tragic weight fate had heaped upon her. I was glad that I hadn’t burdened her further with my suspicions that I had a brain tumor. After all, at this point, I was on the fence about whether the explanation was really that simple. And if I wasn’t going crazy, the whole world was. My sister didn’t need that prospect on her plate.

“What do you say we send your mom home to get some rest?” I said to Robbie as I took a seat in the chair next to him.

“I can’t—” Margaret started.

“We’ll be fine,” I said, cutting her objections off with a look that reminded her that she’d be no good to Robbie ravaged by exhaustion and demoralization.

“Seriously, mom,” Robbie said. “Your vibe is a little clingy.”

She couldn’t help but crack a smile at that. Neither could I. And it was the nudge she needed.

“Okay,” she said. There was a lot of guilt in her voice, but also some relief as she looked me in the eye and added, “You call if anything comes up. Anything.”

I nodded and gave her a hug. Then she headed out and I took a seat next to Robbie’s bed.

“You gonna sneak me out for beer and skydiving?” he asked.

“Obviously,” I answered. “Just want to make sure she’s gone first.”