LAIRD’S NEW TOY

My best friend Laird lost his younger brother just over a month ago, dropped instantly dead at his workstation in a sheet-metal factory buried in South Carolina. Just forty-six, but grossly over-weight and hopelessly mired in a life stalled by narrow-minded tedium. I don’t know, but maybe Laird’s brother longed for something new, something beyond his control that would appear unexpectedly and rescue him from life’s onslaught of stale routine. Well, death is certainly something new, if not wholly unexpected.

Laird shares his anger and sadness with me via the miracle of my cell phone as I sit imprisoned on Los Angeles’ most notorious freeway, the 405. Hideously large jets packed with perpetual strangers choke the sky above me on their way to controlled crashes. I realize I’m preoccupied with my current situation and wish I had a hands-free headset as Laird grills me about my own views of life and death and how I think we travel our individual paths. I try to listen better, but the curiously attractive older woman in the car on my left is using one of those little pink disposable razors to shave a bare leg with long, sensuous strokes, her right heel solidly indented into the dashboard of her decrepit Toyota.

“I’m telling ya, it doesn’t make one god damn bit of sense anymore! What the fuck does it all lead to anyway Wayne, all this shit of living and always…ALWAYS dying?”

I’m inching forward in a sea of slow-motion lemmings, doing my darnedest not to run into the Jaguar in front of me while I practice a little shaving voyeurism, but more than its content, the tone of Laird’s question calls my attention back. The crackling of static in my ear gives me the feeling I don’t have to rush my answer.

“I don’t know Laird.”

After careful consideration, these are the only words of comfort I can produce, and the hot verdict of Laird’s silence shames me into stammering rhetorical platitudes of withering emptiness.

“Maybe it was simply his time Laird, you know, like we all must have a destiny, right? I mean, like, hey, I don’t even know if I’ll make it home today with all these Mario Andretti wanta-be’s fuckin’ with me out here”

I notice the speedometer indicates a little over fifteen miles-per-hour as I finish talking, and I begin to drift away once more, enraptured with the idea of what death would look like at fifteen miles-per-hour. Slow, simmering agony as my body…

“Fuck destiny Wayne…And fuck you and me and everyone else! We’re all gonna die, and it don’t matter when it happens or how. If there is a higher power, it should show its hand and quit messing with our heads. I’m just too tired of all the shit life offers up to go on believing in something nice and shiny waiting for me just around the bend. And I’m done with believing I can make it better somehow just by believing it will be!”

Deep silence penetrates the vacuity of my car, and I feel like getting out and running away from whatever it is that Laird and I have unearthed. I pull the phone away from my ear and see that the battery is running low, and I use the break in our conversation to look around for the woman with the wonderfully bare leg and pink plastic razor…I could introduce myself, I think, and get in with her and her smooth legs, and we could drive away and be happy somewhere out beyond the horizons that form my life’s borders. But she’s vanished, and I wonder if she ever really existed at all, the impression of smooth flesh against my brain the only evidence of her passing. And in the near distance, Laird’s voice sounds like a tiny, tin music box as he calls out to me from the phone now cradled in the hand tensed between my thighs.

“Wayne, where’d you go? Come on bro, I can hear the traffic…”

My body feels rigid and heavy, especially the arm attached to the hand that cradles the phone. Raising the phone to my ear takes considerable effort, and I realize that the herd of autos is loosening up a bit as my speedometer passes forty-five in a slow arc of hope. Finally I answer;

“I’m still here Laird. Battery’s running low though…might get cut off.”

“Okay man, I gotta get going anyway, but I wanta tell ya about my new toy. Just got it last week.”

And suddenly I can hear the stain upon his voice left by tears already fallen, and the future echoes of those still to come. This makes me feel softer, sadder and lonelier than I’ve felt in a long, long time. I don’t really care to hear about this “toy,” but I ask anyway, knowing he longs to break free from something hard and all too real. In complete jest I ask,

“What did you get Laird, a sports car or something?”

“Oh man,” his voice chirps, “How’d you know? I found a sweet little 1999 BMW Z3, like the one that Pierce Brosnan drove in that James Bond movie a few years back, remember that one? Mine’s charcoal-gray though, with a black convertible roof and gray interior. Only 60,000 miles and super clean. Ya gotta come down soon and check it out dude!”

I find myself amazed by this revelation, not only because I guessed correctly about his new toy, but more so because of the change in his demeanor as he talked about it.

“That’s awesome Laird! Sounds like good medicine to boot. I’ll see about coming down next weekend…Ya gonna let me drive it?”

“Ya, ya, of course bro. It’s just a thing anyway…Hey Wayne?”

“Still here dude, what’s up?”

“You know I love you man.”

“I know ya do buddy…and right back at ya.”

My phone goes dead as I offer this last sentiment, and though I’m not even sure if Laird heard me or not, I know he already knows. I’ll call him back when I get home anyway, and besides, the traffic is really starting to move and I feel the need to concentrate more than I usually do. All around me is the burgeoning rush of cars and more cars carrying their drivers and passengers toward the infinite mystery of their separate destinies, too fast perhaps, to allow time for the remembering of where they’ve been.