Five(48)

“Move!” Medical Student yells at Sonny, as he scrambles to pull himself up onto the platform. He cannot understand why Sonny has moved to the center of the track. “C’mon, man!”

“Go help,” Mrs. Worth says to Emma, clutching at her arm, breathing laboriously.

“But you’re—”

“Alive,” Mrs. Worth says, and groans through another tightening of her heart.

“The tall one wants to die,” she pants at Emma. “Go,” she commands, with all the strength she has. Like Medical Student, Mrs. Worth can recognize the portents of death in someone’s eyes when she sees them.

“Okay,” Emma says, quickly placing the phone next to the old woman.

“Gideon!” Emma cries as she runs toward him, “Liam!”

“Liam, Biam, Liam, Biam, Liam, Biam,” Gideon says in a sing-song way to himself, still watching his show.

He stands up slowly, still holding his tablet in front of his face so he doesn’t miss a moment of Chase, the police pup, riding in a helicopter with Skye, the sky pup, and he starts walking toward the big man holding his head. He balances on the edge of the platform, like a tightrope walker, putting one foot in front of the other.

“Oh shit,” Bad Back says feebly, when he sees the train getting closer and sees that Sonny is still on the tracks, standing still. He thinks of his wife, what he will tell her about today, and the shame he will feel in the telling. Fuck it, he thinks, and runs to the platform edge where everyone is standing.

“The paramedics should be there shortly, stay on the line,” the operator says on Medical Student’s mobile lying on the ground next to Mrs. Worth. She cannot hear the operator, with the alarm and the commotion on the tracks, so she does the only thing she can.

“Man on the tracks,” Mrs. Worth says with a great effort, as loudly as she can to the phone, feeling the vibration of the train coming down the track through the concrete underneath her, before her eyes close.

It’s time.

There will be no last-ditch rescue, no superhero making an appearance. There is no open-ended scene where you are left guessing if perhaps everyone survives in the end and the story is just a comment on the fragility of the human condition and the diversity of human suffering: a clever mechanism to remind us that everyone has a story, and not everyone is who or what they seem. While the human condition is fragile and while everyone does have a story and while we do not know what goes on behind closed doors while we are judging books by their covers, et cetera, et cetera, you have known since the beginning, since you got to this station this morning, that there are five main characters and one of them will die.

And now it’s time.





Liam


“I must look absolutely mad,” Emma says. She pushes the door shut behind him and pulls at the fingers of her gloves with her teeth. She points her chin down and lifts her eyes up at him as she pulls at the last one, a provocative reflex, a muscle memory of sultriness.

He is not lying when he says, “Absolutely,” but he smiles at her, as if he is joking, to put her at ease, knowing what effect his smile has on women. On this woman.

He steps into the hall and looks at her. There is still a hint of Kate Moss about her, in the cheekbones. But standing like this, a bloody cushion at her feet, her brow bandaged, her gown hanging on her hollow frame—the seductress is gone, replaced by a ghost.

“Liam,” she starts to say, then stops. He follows her eyes to the corner by the door, where they land on Gideon’s Spider-Man wellies. He waits for her to say something about the boy, but she doesn’t. He guesses she has stopped herself so she doesn’t fuck this up.

“Never mind,” she says, “nothing,” and half smiles.

He follows her to the kitchen, “Praise you like I should…” echoing against the bare walls, as he steps over the laundry basket of shoes, kicks the bloody cushion to the side, and completes the deranged obstacle course that is the entryway to her home.

“Emma, what’s…” He starts to ask what is going on here, not sure he wants the answer, but she can’t hear him over the music. She interrupts.

“Let me make us a cup of tea, then we can look at the contract,” she says loudly, beckoning him to sit down. She cuts off the music. “This is business, after all,” she trills into the now-silent air.

He sits on a stool at the center island and watches her move hurriedly about the room as she puts away the evidence of her party for one. She’s lonely, it clings to her like sad perfume.

“I’ll just put the kettle on,” she says, turning to fill the kettle in the sink. “Shit,” she says quietly to herself, frantically dabbing at water drops on the silk satin. He sees the price tag hanging under her arm.

“Worried you can’t return it?” he says, mockingly, a bit cruelly, he knows. “I don’t think you should,” he says, to make it up to her, “looks lovely on you.”

Bastard, she thinks. “I have nowhere to wear it to these days,” she says humbly, with a sad smile, as she pulls open the drawer in the kitchen island where she hopes—she prays—she has left the papers for him to sign.

“Let me just grab the contract, it’s here somewhere,” she says, with the slightest tremor in her voice. She’s a little drunk, though he knows she’s pretending not to be. She’s frantic, rummaging in one drawer, then another, then another.