Simon Fraser (IV)

The silver Beemer wound its way through the mid-week evening traffic of Sunset Boulevard, past the theme bars and shaded rubberneckers, past the tattoo shops and peeler joints, past the superstores and boutiques, past the parking lots, their attendants, their cars. Past the wafer-thin girls crossing the street.

Resting his fingers on the top of the steering wheel, Max drove the borrowed vehicle with insouciant ease. Seemingly impenetrable black shades rested calmly across the bridge of his nose as he scanned into the traffic and descending sun. He was thinking about someone.

Slouched in the passenger seat, Freddy squinted from the brilliant shine. He silently recounted to himself the events of the day. Not that anything uncommon had happened. He merely had the occasional bout of short-term memory loss. He glanced at his wrist to see that he had forgotten to accessorize himself with a timepiece.

“What time is it?” Freddy asked.

Max glanced at his watch and said glumly, “7:30.”

Freddy detected his friend’s pathetic tone. “What’s wrong?”

“Aww there’s this girl,” replied Max, as if such a curt explanation were enough. With Max, there was never just one girl. Not that anyone kept a count. Everytime their conversation found itself on the subject, Max would introduce several new names that Freddy had never before heard. There were always new names – Mia, Marcia, Alicia, Felicia, Laetitia.

So Freddy had to ask, “What girl?”

“Siobhan. She’s a model.” The only reason Max qualified her with an occupation – and he always did this – was to give her a personal context. Max only dated models.

“What’s the problem?” asked his friend, anticipating the variation on a theme. Still squinting.

“Well I met her three months ago at some party,” Max began, shifting gears. “I got her number and I put it on my desk with all my other little pieces of paper and I never got around to calling her. You know, it was just one of those slips of paper on my desk. I finally found it again a couple days ago.”

Freddy opened the glovebox and dug through the pink papers, AA batteries, fresh fuses, pens and pennies for a cheap pair of spare sunglasses, to no avail. “So did you call her?” he asked, repeatedly slamming the box closed until the latch caught.

“Of course I called her,” Max retorted quickly. “I called her last night.”

“And?”

“She was pissed off it took me three months to call… So I said, ‘Lemme make it up to you. I’ll take you out for drinks.’ She said, ‘Great, call me tomorrow, late afternoon.’ I said, ‘Great.’”

A smile grew across Freddy’s face – he knew Max had made an error somewhere in the process. It would take some delving. As always, he first assumed the most obvious, “You didn’t call her, did you?”

“Yeah I called her! Of course I called her!” Max deflected the notion that he would be so insensitive as to neglect Siobhan a second time. But he could not leave it at that. His innocence was paramount; he could not be wrong. Someone else had to take the fall. “I called her half-an-hour ago. She wasn’t home!”

What did he say? thought Freddy. Could that be it? “You called her half-an-hour ago?” Freddy asked him.

“Yeah!”

“At 7PM?”

“Yes!”

And there it was, the monkeywrench in the works. Freddy spoke. He spoke with care and hush, barely audible, in a voice that carried with it the knowledge that there are some mistakes that all men make, little faults that crack wide our plans for fulfillment. Freddy spoke these words: “2 hours late.”

Max did not respond immediately. He mulled over the sudden snap in the atmosphere; had the barometric pressure changed inside the car. What was Freddy talking about? he thought. “What are you talking about?” Max asked.

“Late afternoon is 3 to 5,” replied Freddy with certitude.

Max glanced curiously at Freddy before entering a deep curve in the winding road that always made Max feel like Richard Petty or Charlie Sheen. This time, he felt like plain old Max.

Freddy explained, “Late afternoon is 3 to 5. Then you got evening, 5 to 7. Then late evening – 7 to 9. 9 to 12 is night. Then you got late night, 12 to 4. Then early morning – 4 to 6. 6 to 9 is morning. 9 to 12 – late morning. 12 to 1 is noon. 1 to 3 is early afternoon. Then 3 to 5 again – late afternoon. You were two hours late.”

Max was silent for a moment; the only sound was the increasing whir of the engine as the car came out of one curve, into a quick gulley and back up over to the left. Across the recently repaved tar, through a corridor of wealthy taxpayers, their walls of trees and property values, they sped. Past bastards in better cars and suckers in worse.

Max had it. He had the rationalization. It had only taken him 2 seconds but this was it. “It’s alright,” he lied. “I’m just testing her.”

Freddy didn’t get it. “You’re testing her?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you testing?”

Max thought for a moment and had an answer for that too, “The relationship.”

“The relationship?!”

“Yeah.

“What relationship?” demanded Freddy firmly. “You met her once, got her number, finally talked to her three months later and now you have a relationship?!”

“I don’t want any negative emotions going on,” Max ruled. “I want to get rid of that stuff right off the top.”

“What emotions?!” yelled Freddy in utter frustration with Max’s delusion. “You can barely say you know her!”

“No, the way she looked at me at that party. She wants me.” Everybody wanted Max; he was the life of the party.

“Is that why she didn’t call you for three months either?”

“No, see, she was testing me too.”

“What?!”

“But I showed her.”

Freddy could not speak. Even if he could have, he would not have known what to say. The words would not have made sense. All he could do was make a few strange hand movements to express the overloaded circuits in his brain. He shook his hands slowly in front of him, tapped himself on the forehead, slapped his thigh a few times.

Having convinced himself of his own lie, Max shook his head, and scoffed, “Women.”

“No!” screamed Freddy. “You!”

And that’s all he could say. That was the end of that. There would be a new name a few weeks later. She would be a model. And Freddy would live vicariously again. Until then, he squinted in the sunshine.