Meeting Twice



  MEETING TWICE

  1

  Life is like a drop of rain falling in the gravity of time, ever-rushing to a destiny none can know. Each sparkling journey sings volumes of joy and sorrow and everything in-between, a thousand facets of colour in a spectrum of light.

  In my life, however, I landed in a lake of sorrow. Brought up single-handed by an overworked mum, the closest father figure I had was an aging uncle. He died when I was eight - a heart attack, mum said, but I knew better.

  The last time I saw him, he was sitting in his favourite chair. A wooden pipe stuck out his mouth like a leaning chimney, bellowing clouds of blue-white smog. "Simon," he said, taking a great wheezing breath. "Someday you're going to make a way in life. The sooner you decide what it's gonna be, the better."

  I sat there in silence, glancing up at the old clock to check that time was still moving forward.

  "A man without a dream," my uncle said, "is a man without a destiny."

  He spoke no more words after that, even as my mother came back from work and took me home.

  That was twelve years ago. I've dwelled on what he said for many a long night. I've found a dream. But realising it has not come easy.

  On the estate where I grew up, there were not many avenues to take. Every graffiti-covered brick was an emblem of the barriers that destroyed young dreams. We all wanted out, even though our actions only helped to dig us deeper in.

  Money was the only way. It was a means of escape, a Jacob's ladder leading to heaven. For those who madly aspired to obtain it, and scale the rungs to paradise, there was but one recourse: crime.

  At the age of ten, I was shoplifting from newsagents. By fifteen I had a 'rap sheet' of burglaries and vandalism that rivalled even my older brother's. We formed a little gang that unleashed terror across five area miles, with the odd voyage to previously untouched pockets of tranquillity.

  Yes... it was a time of discovery; pushing boundaries, learning the 'trade', advancing closer to my dream. We saw the celebrities of our vocation every day, often as silhouettes in fast cars that pumped out rap music, their gold chains glittering like war medals. They were placards of success, promises of fortune, envies of our gang.

  As I got older I worked for them, selling their elixir on the barren streets. My brother took a slightly different route, quickly mutating from seller to buyer. Gone went the days of care-free exploration and camaraderie between us. His sparkling, mischievous eyes became sunken orbs, half-eclipsed by crows' feet. He retreated ever further into a shell of decay - until one night it just... cracked.

  I blankly refused to 'lend' him any more money. He reacted by screaming obscenities in my face, fists clenched. Later he slid into the night, no longer a boy or man but a wraith, drifting on invisible force-fields of desperation.

  Drifting to life's finality.

  I will never be certain what happened, but it seemed after I refused to give him money to buy drugs he went out to steal them - from none other than 'Dingo', the Number One dealer in our area. I know my brother was shot and dumped in a canal that night, which was Dingo's 'style'. No one was ever arrested, of course, even though most people on the estate knew who did it.

  In any case, I could no longer work as a seller. Drugs made me sick and the dealers even sicker. My brother's death hit me hard, but it effected my mother more. Our family had been through enough without this happening.

  For a time I went about trying to obtain work, whether it be stacking shelves at Tesco, washing cars, or even selling items from material I found in skips. None of it worked. My criminal record was a bar to any legitimate employment and my pathetic enterprises brought in more pence than pounds. Nor could I go to college - after a decade of truancy, troublemaking and horrendous grades that was a no-brainer. It seemed my dream of riches was destroyed.

  Drugs offered the only world where broken dreams could be re-made, where every disappointment and downfall ceased to matter. But it was all a dead-end illusion. I would not take the same path as my brother. And I could not simply languish on the estate either, gradually getting older; doing nothing but slowly die, being no one but another statistic.

  No. I decided instead to rob Mr. Cranby.

  2

  The small jewellery store at the other side of the city was little known to people on the estate. It was, to put it rightly, a 'hidden gem.' After taking the bus to scout it out I rang Jimmy, my best friend, the next day.

  "All right," he drawled. "I'm in."

  He was a habitual drug user and needed the money, but unlike my brother he stayed away from the heavy stuff. People called him 'weed boy' from as early as the school yard.

  It didn't take long to get two others to join my plan, both of them trustworthy and easily led. They made a strange pair, with Stu going half-way to becoming a dwarf and Matt with his constant dabbling with steroids. But they'd do.

  Mr Cranby was in the later part of middle age. He wore a pair of spectacles that bordered silvery-black eyebrows. A tuft of greying hair only served to emphasize his baldness. Judging by his olive skin, he was from overseas - either that or he went on holiday a lot.

  I had never spoken to him. None of us had. But we knew he was the manager of the jewellery store. Every week he left the store and took the shortest route to the bank, usually on the same day. Stupid, really. I planned an ambush in an alleyway and posted Stu outside the jewellers so he could text me when Cranby left.

  It was a dreary, rain-soaked eve and the streets were empty of shoppers when the long-awaited message finally came through. In my right pocket I could feel the bulge of a brand new army knife. Curtains of rain lashed the pavement as I signalled to Jimmy and Matt to take position. Everything was set. I felt the familiar mixture of excitement and trepidation flood through my veins.

  "What's taking him so long?" Jimmy asked, standing beside me.

  Before I could reply, a figure came into view.

  No doubt about it - here was Cranby, closely followed by Matt. But there was someone else, walking right next to our target. A friend? A colleague?

  It didn't matter. We were ready and eager for the ambush, primed for the anticipated rush.

  Like panthers we leapt into the path of the two figures. Cranby was carrying the case that held my riches, the route to my dreams, and I quickly withdrew my knife and thrust it out. Jimmy did likewise as Matt and Stu blocked the alley behind.

  "Hand it over!" I commanded.

  A sound split the air in reply and it was only then that I realised Cranby's companion was a woman. Her face was cloaked by a heavy raincoat, although even with this I should have noticed earlier. All my attention had been on Cranby and his case.

  The scream echoed off the alley walls and Jimmy stepped forward, holding his knife towards the woman.

  "Shut up!" he demanded.

  And that was all it took. Old Cranby did something I never expected: he made a grab for Jimmy's arm and tried to wrestle the knife out of his hand.

  Some kind of animal red fog clouded my sight then. I never clearly remembered it, but the next second my own knife had plunged into Cranby's side. He exhaled a strange wheezing shout before falling. The woman screamed again.

  I crouched down and snatched the case, then shoved Jimmy. He was standing there gazing at Cranby, who was crumpled onto the pavement with the woman kneeling beside him.

  "Let's go!"

  We charged through the streets like mad men. The plan was to get a bus, but that fell to pieces when the sirens came. My panic soon froze into fear as they drew closer by the second. Despite this, I refused to drop the case or even lose my knife in a hedge.

  Running on, past shops and houses, I eventually came to a park. Jimmy and the others had
split up, which seemed to my advantage. The police were everywhere, swarming like mutant hornets in a midsummer's fair.

  Despite this, I managed to extract the cash from the case and get away.

  ***

  If dreams could be set on shredded landscapes, mine would be a flotilla of leaves - coloured red and green and blue, all imprinted with the same Mona Lisa-like face: the Queen's. Yes, money was the conduit to every need and want; the fluttering foundation of every castle and kingdom. And what kingdom, I heartlessly thought, wasn't built without a little blood?

  Cranby's hoard set me up as a king for five days before the police swooped in. They took it all: my new-found wealth and future; freedom, friends and even family... everything but my dreams.

  I was sent down with Jimmy, Matt and Stu as leader of our gang, condemned to six years imprisonment. No one shed a tear - perhaps not even my mother. I went down into the dungeons cursing the judge, the guards and everyone in-between.

  Shouting, crying, screaming - there was nothing bright or redeeming to mark the passing days. Imprisonment only fuelled my anger and bitterness at losing the best chance I had for a better life. It did, however, teach me that there were other opportunities out there - ones that offered even greater riches for much-reduced risks.

  If you ever thought prison was full of poor, under-privileged and dumb people, think again. Practically every jail had its real millionaires: kingpins who ruled by guile and wealth, both inside the walls and out. I became a minion of these crime Majors, all too eager for battle on the outside. A place in their ranks was reserved for my release.

  I may have come out wearing the same clothes I went in with, but beneath them I was bigger, stronger... wiser. And sure enough, a car was waiting beyond those evil metal gates. Dark, simmering thoughts stirred behind my angry eyes. This time I was going to be more subtle: go with the flow, following more than leading. My dreams were the same, despite six years of scarring and getting scarred - countless months of unremitting decay and unforgiving darkness.

  When a kid enters a prison he will never leave a man, no matter how long the seasons pass. He will become alike to a creature, a shade who has absorbed the shadows. It was no different for me.

  3

  So it was that the journey unrolled in swathes of anguished triumph. A turtle may lay a hundred eggs, but only one hatchling will reach the open sea. Just so with my fragmented dreams - crushed, consumed, contorted - with one piece alone surviving: escaping from the estate.

  The horizon was no longer bounded by burnt-out cars and ruined wrecks. Gone too were the bars and razor-wire fences of the prison. I headed towards a new future of opportunity, buzzing with the joy of walking free. How to describe those first days outside, except to say they passed so swiftly?

  Soon I was doing business with the gang I'd become a part of - setting up scanning devices at high street ATMs and plundering the accounts of the unwary. Slowly but surely my much-needed assets were mounting.

  Yet no matter how much money came my way, it never seemed enough. There was an emptiness that just couldn't be filled, like a black hole drawing in all light. It drank my spirit, undermining all that kept me strong. Nothing mattered anymore. Breaking my long-kept vow, I took to using drugs. That was when the nightmares started.

  I was haunted by a visage that would never go away: pale skin, wild hair, sunken eyes burning with... something I dare not say. Late one night I turned on the bathroom light and jumped back at that face: the sight of my dead brother. The last memory of him as he cursed me and went storming to his death cemented itself in my consciousness. Through my drug use, I had become him - a living icon of the boy I had murdered. For Dingo may have pulled the trigger, but I basically pushed him into the bullet.

  I resolved to depart this world as my brother would have, dying unchained and painless in the netherworld of drugs... just like my uncle. No ordinary heart attack claimed his life, despite what my mother told me. Even then I knew of the 'special pills' that made his eyes go wild - how he sat in his chair like a corpse, muttering madness. Drug addiction was in our genes.

  I became no further use to the people I'd met in prison. They exiled me from the 'gang' as quickly as a wishing well coin, cast away in the hope of finding better fortune, leaving me hunched over a table with my last few white lines. But although they departed, others only moved closer, waiting for the order to pounce.

  ***

  Jobless, hopeless and hunted, my money almost gone, I lacked the motivation to continue being a criminal. No, the time had come to do the right thing: to leave this sorry world behind, with all my nightmares, fallen dreams and guilt.

  Taking my remaining stash of drugs, I left the flat for the last time and headed for the coast. My last breaths would be of fresh, clean sea air, tasting the crashing salty waves that echoed so freely. Never before had I stood beside the ocean. It was the end of all rivers - the culminating destination of all raindrops - and by its unfurling shores my death awaited. Dark clouds veiled the sky as I drove east, leaving the city and passing through countryside.

  The red fuel indicator on the dashboard blinked insistently as I reached the edge of a small town, where a petrol station stood in solitude. No other vehicles were parked by the pumps as I pulled in and re-fuelled. The ascending numerals of the fuel meter matched the years of my empty life; counting up, one by one, to a motionless 28.

  Even the shop seemed deserted - until an old man appeared at the counter. That was when it hit me.

  His face... yes, I was sure of it.

  Standing a few feet in front of me was Mr Cranby.

  For a moment I felt like turning around and running. Oh God, I thought, Why this? Why now?

  Unable either to leave the shop or approach the counter, I walked up one of the aisles, pretending to browse the shelves. Maybe he didn't recognise me, I hoped. Going up to the counter would change that, for not only did he see my face on the day of the robbery but he came to the court to see me sent down. However, I could not simply leave the shop without paying for the fuel - I'd be stopped before reaching my destination, for certain.

  It was an impossible situation.

  I drifted aimlessly down the aisle to a large refrigerator unit that held a host of canned drinks. The reflection in the glass was a spectre doomed to wander in purgatory - a faceless stranger destroyed by greed. Feeling weak and faint, I crouched down to the floor.

  All my mistakes, transgressions and acts of selfishness flooded through my mind like a series of still pictures. My brother... my mother... Mr Cranby... all the men I scarred, all the women I left in tears - an endless procession of pain.

  Oh God... if only...

  Abruptly a noise rang out, jarring my heart. It was the door to the shop: someone else had entered.

  Still contemplating my doomed reflection in the glass door of the refrigerator, I heard a loud voice.

  "Don't!" The harsh tone resounded. "Just give me the money!"

  Strength returned to my legs as I stood up and turned around, not trusting my ears.

  Standing by the counter was a dark figure, the back of his head obscured by a hood. He tilted statue-like over the counter, obscuring my view of Mr Cranby.

  "Come on! I'll shoot!"

  He was side-stepping, moving like a twisted pendulum, counting out the seconds into long, distorted minutes. And with each swing I found myself stepping towards him... silently drawing closer.

  Mr. Cranby leant over the till, handing over notes in rapid motion. He didn't show any signs of seeing me.

  "All of it!" The robber roared.

  It was an angry, impatient tone I knew only too well. I was close enough now to smell his pungent sweat mixed with that of a alcohol. His right arm was outstretched, holding the unmistakable grip of a hand gun.

  Two metres.... one. Now was the moment. There was no room for hesitation, no other chances. I lunged forward and swung for his head, intending to knock him out.
/>
  He cried aloud but did not fall.

  I made a frantic grab for his arm as he swept the gun around. Mad blue eyes swam in the sockets of a balaclava - pupils like pins.

  A shot rang out, blasting away the frozen beats of my heart. Searing pain ripped through my chest as I continued to struggle. A wave of fierce power surged across my body as the adrenalin took over, allowing me to force the robber's arm down.

  Another shot burst forth, flinging up a blur of dust as the bullet whined off the ceramic floor a centimetre from my left shoe.

  Locked together in a death grip, we both fell.

  His leaden weight almost knocked me unconscious. It was useless struggling: I had lost. My limbs were frozen, pinned to the floor. Grained mists slid across my vision as I saw the masked face above me, creased into a black smile.

  At least I went down fighting, I thought, finally surrendering to the darkness.

  4

  Blinding light faded out as the face of my nemesis swirled into view. Many figures surrounded me, all speaking in tones of hasty condemnation, but Mr Cranby presided over them all. There was my mother: on the left. But where was my brother?

  With gradual disbelief, I realised this was not hell or even the limbo half-way there. I was still breathing, still feeling.

  "It's OK, Simon," my mother said.

  "What happened?" I replied. It came out as a whisper.

  "You were shot," a doctor stated. "We removed the bullet yesterday. The surgery went well and, as you can see, you're still in one piece, minus a kidney."

  "What about the robber?"

  "Relax," a new voice said. It was smooth, warm, with a slight foreign accent. I marvelled that this was the first time I had heard Mr. Cranby speak. "It's all taken care of," he continued, "the police have him in custody. I suspect the bump on his head I gave him will take a while to go down."

  "Mr Cranby saved your life," my mother added.

  "Oh, it was nothing," he said. "Your son did the same for me."

  "But six years ago..." I began, only to be stopped short.

  "Yes," Mr. Cranby said, "you robbed and stabbed me. I know. Over the years I've thought of you many times - never in a good way - but you've done your sentence. I thought I'd escape crime by leaving the city, but I was wrong. What you did at my petrol station was nothing short of... heroic. After that, I have opened my heart to something I should have embraced a long time ago. Forgiveness."