Charlie Went Home
By David Accampo
Charlie sets the notebook computer down on his lap, slides the clasp, opens it. Presses the power button. The machine grinds gently to life as Charlie sips from the steaming cup of green tea on the bench beside him.
As the computer screen runs its epic start up screens, Charlie sighs through his nose impatiently, as a child would, in that way that would have caused Gina to roll her eyes and say in that motherly tone she had, oh ok what’s wrong now?
“Nothing,” replies Charlie, “nothing.” And nothing has brought him here, on a Monday, just a Monday.
He leans back on the bench, the thick wooden plank firm against his back, cold seeping through his too light for weather jacket, a simple polyester windbreaker, but it’s the one that looks cool and just a little hip – dressed to impress. He just has to make sure he doesn’t raise his left arm over his head. The stitching under the arm has come loose just under the armpit; Charlie can’t sew, tried maybe once or twice but his clothes ending up unraveling after three and a half hours or, on the other extreme, looking like the inhuman creation of a mad scientist bent on created a glorious new jacket from the remnants of great old jackets, thick stitching, patchwork, crazy quilt, multi-colored thread when the black spool runs out. So, don’t raise the arm.
The air is cold and sharp and dry, it’s like inhaling glass, like icicles, it cuts but the lungs tingle and release and breathe. Charlie hasn’t breathed like this. White cotton ball clouds sink across a bright blue canvas sky.
Unseen, a car rumbles up and a hand brake is thrown back. A car door opens, then closes. There is movement, heavy, slow steps on wooden stairs, up to the front door of the old stone structure.
It’s the post office; had been for as long as Charlie had lived there. Now, on his return arrival, he’s delighted to find it still there, still the same, though strip malls and sprawling complexes have turned up where empty fields once lay, the changes to not interest him. They are the same stores that have appeared like crop circles in cities and town across the nation, signs of an imminent invasion.
And so Charlie revels in the post office, the oversized granite block with a portrait of the town’s founder carved into the second story. It reminds him of Mrs. Berry, the librarian who ran the adjoining public library here, boarded up now, books moved off, redistributed or sold. Charlie wonders if Mrs. Berry died and no one else wanted the job.
He’s avoiding the truth. It isn’t the library that brought him here. It wasn’t even the post office.
The footsteps stop. Charlie turns.
A slightly heavyset blonde woman fumbles through a large burgundy handbag. Charlie hears the sound of pill bottles chattering. She pulls out a ring of keys, opens the door to the post office. Only then does she look at Charlie.
“Hi,” she says with a weak and weary smile.
Then she pauses. Charlie scratches his bald head. He searches her eyes. She’s stopped now, keys still in the door, body frozen in half-motion, routine interrupted. She’s thinking something. She blinks.
“Mailing something?”
And Charlie searches her narrowed eyes, the furrow of her brow. Her eyebrows are neatly waxed, her eyeliner thick and black. Her face had widened, lines dissect, the eyes sunken, the chin gone. If she recognizes him, she doesn’t let him know.
“Just give me a minute to…just give me a minute to open everything up.”
“OK,” says Charlie, “sure.” And he turns back to his computer and his tea, and he doesn’t know why he’s here, why he came back, why he wanted to see what she looked like now, the object of such fantasy when he was 10, 11, 12, when he was so excited to dance with her in the school gym, in her big pink dress, his palms sweaty and his heart beating, and now here he is, once again unable to talk. He shuts the lid to his computer and looks to find a way to slip away as she walks into the dim post office and begins to turn on the lights.
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