Excuse Me
“Excuse me, sir? Excuse me, but are you going to order anything?” The question was asked by the girl standing behind the bakery counter, directed at the man in front of it. Her face was surrounded by a shock of hot pink hair just barely kept back by the regulation hairnet and cap she wore, a petulant expression of annoyance was on her face. The racks of buns and pastries behind her looked positively plain in their browns and creams when compared to the girl serving them in her purple and blue makeup. “Sir?”
He looked at her then for the first time, a distant look still in his eyes. “Order something… Ah.” He seemed to find his words. “A chocolate danish.” A round belly could attest to this daily indulgence. There was nothing remarkable about the man, which was quite possibly the reason why he managed to come to the same bakery every morning and not be recognized as regular. Short, and just starting to bald, he wore a professional looking suit (though it was obviously bought at an earlier time in his life as it puckered and pulled around his stomach) and carried a sleek black briefcase. He was rather proud of his appearance, even if it did nothing to get him noticed, especially the briefcase. All of his acquaintances in the business world carried them, so he thought that he should too, even if most days the only thing he used it to carry was his lunch.
“It’s a dollar seventy five,” the girl behind the counter said in a bored voice. There was no need for a hurry as the only customer in the store was the man with the paunch. He only went there out of convenience, the pastries were all a bit stale, because the only other bakery in the area was a large corporate chain and he suspected that all the teenagers working there spit in the food. The girl at this bakery wasn’t much better, just older. Too old for hair like that, he always thought to confront her about how inappropriate her appearance was, though the farthest he had gotten was to give her disapproving looks.
He gave her one such look when he dropped the change he had dug out of his pocket into her waiting hand. He took the Danish with the same hand, his other was occupied with the briefcase, and it was only when he took a step away from the counter did he once again remember the extra weight in it. The weight other than that of his lunch.
He took in a shuddering breath, trying not to think about it as he had been instructed. He didn’t usually follow the instructions of strangers, it just wasn’t sensible at all. Though, he couldn’t not follow this particular stranger’s instruction, because he had a nagging suspicion that it wasn’t a stranger at all that had instructed him. The Danish in his hand was lukewarm, it always was, though that had never put off his enjoyment of the treat. The pastry was too brown on the bottom, the chocolate was slightly whitened with age, and it didn’t smell at all appealing as the danish he had eaten yesterday did, and the day before, and the day before that. There was nothing different about it, but still when he was outside the shop he tossed it in the nearest bin.
The morning sun shone bright, casting a warm light on one side of the street. Well, he suspected it would be warm; he was standing on the shadowed side. The cars raced past, the early morning rush was in full swing. The man didn’t live far enough from his workplace to constitute the need for a car, the subway was perfectly suitable. He followed the traffic in the lane closest to him, heading towards an intersection a few storefronts down. This walk was very familiar to him, as he made it everyday. A woman who he had never thought to ask her name stood in a doorway smoking, the scent mingled with that of older cigarettes from the dingy stairwell behind her. A florists shop window was covered in bright red clearance signs, competing for attentions form the also bright flowers. He knew they were going out of business though he had never been in there, he had never had reason to buy flowers.
Most of the buildings were offices, taller than the stores, creating a skyline of jagged peaks. The man walked briskly, not wanting to be late for work though it was barely seven forty. The briefcase bumped against his leg with each step he took, the extra weight making it more noticeable than other days. The man clenched his jaw and set his face, unwilling for some reason to disobey what he had been told. He had to stop suddenly to keep his breathing even, to keep the urge to look away.
If it weren’t for the very real weight in his briefcase, he would have dismissed the encounter as an act of an under stimulated imagination. Though, he had had very few experiences in his lifetime to prove that he had an imagination at all. A chill crept down his spine from the cold shadows he stood in. He couldn’t keep the urge away now, his eyes slid down to his briefcase and his fingers trembled on the handle. The man forced himself to take two steps forward, closer to the sunlight let down by the intersecting road. He had to know. Another forced step took him to the edge of the shadows. He had to see. His jaw was clenched again when he took that last step into the sunlight. He had to know.
A gust of wind hit him before the bicyclist did, and he heard the soft thud and click from his dropped briefcase before he saw it. The man had to take a step backwards to keep his balance, the boy on the bike had swerved and toppled over but was already getting up. He was going to give the boy a stern warning about riding a bike on the sidewalk, he had probably tried to cut in front of the busy traffic that way, when his eyes found the open briefcase. The bicyclist muttered a brief ‘excuse me,’ and ‘sorry,’ before he sped off that the man took no notice of.
He expected it to be bigger; it had been looming over him all morning. The book sat in his briefcase, unassuming, just the size of a regular novel. It was hardcover, and made older looking by the lack of a glossy jacket. It was a deep blue, lighter along the creased lines on the spine as if it had been opened too many times. Once more couldn’t hurt, he had to know.
People passed him on the sidewalk, not stopping to notice as he picked up the briefcase gently, holding it open like he would the book inside. He didn’t notice them either. Even more gently he took the book out of the briefcase, closed it, and put it down at his feet. The large lungful of air he took in didn’t help keep him calm, nor did the next few. His hands shook, and he stayed frozen like that for a long moment.
The memory wasn’t exact, more like a dream, though it had happened only this morning. ‘Happened,’ might be the wrong word for it, he wasn’t even sure of that. He had woken up just like any other day, downed a cup of coffee and walked to the subway station near his apartment building. That was where it had ‘happened.’ The train had come screaming around the corner, none of the crowd seeming fazed by it. The station had a faintly rancid smell; the garbage bins were all overflowing. He had followed the crowd into the train, not looking at which car he walked in to. The seats were all fairly dingy, stains on some bigger than others, he picked the cleanest one he saw near to the door he had come in from. It was then that he noticed that he had an awfully large selection of empty seats, in fact, all of them were empty. There was no one in the car but himself, and he was sure that there had been a rather large crowd out in the station.
The train had taken off then, speeding into a dark tunnel. The man looked around again and found that his initial assumption was wrong; there was one other person in the car. The stranger was, if it was even possible, more unremarkable than the man. He found that his eyes couldn’t help but wander away form the person when he tried to discreetly watch them. It wasn’t long until the man had completely forgotten the other presence sitting at the other end of the car. He did notice again when the stranger moved though, or, more accurately, h noticed the stranger after they had moved. The person was sitting disconcertingly close, and it startled the man that they were able to move so silently. The stranger was sitting a mere four seats away on the same bench the man was on. They had been carrying the book, their hands cradling it carefully. The man was surprised when the stranger spoke.
“It’s tiring, sometimes.” They had said. The man hadn’t been able to distinguish whether the voice was male or female, and their appearance gave no clue as his gaze seemed to slip away every time he tried to look at the stranger.
“Sorry, but, what’s tiring?” He had answered. Usually he would have just patronized someone wanting to strike up a conversation, but there was something about this person that he couldn’t ignore, even if when he looked away he promptly forgot about them.
“Knowing.” The stranger said cryptically, but in a way that seemed truthful. “I believe this is yours.” The stranger had held the book out to the man, not looking in his direction.
He looked at the book, it wasn’t his. “Sorry, but that’s not mine.” He had tried to look at the strangers’ face again, but couldn’t. He was uneasy about this presence, it wasn’t right, it didn’t even feel real. The person sitting four seats away form him could have been a nebulous cloud of gas for all he was aware.
The stranger didn’t respond to that right away, but instead placed the book on the seat next to the man. “It’s more yours than you know.” He looked down at the book at the stranger’s words, “but be careful, I don’t suggest reading it.” His eyes widened, on the front cover of the book was his name, neatly embossed in gold lettering. The train had stopped then and the stranger got up, “Excuse me,” they had said, and left when the doors had opened.
The station had been crowded before, and it was crowded when he got off. He had put the book in his briefcase, not knowing what else to do with it; the urge to look hadn’t set in yet. Now he stood with the book in his hands, the morning sun warming his back. One look. He hadn’t been directly told not to read it of course; it had just been a suggestion. Just one look. The man only even had an idea of what the book was, it could all just be a joke someone decided to play on him. One look.
People were gathering where he stood, waiting for the streetlight to change so they could cross. Cars were still speeding by. He lifted the front cover slowly, reverently. The page where the title of a novel would have been was blank but for an ‘X’ scrawled neatly in the bottom right corner. The light changed form green to red, and the crowd jostled him forward, he forgot his briefcase where he had set it down. The next page wasn’t blank, one word was written in the middle of it. ‘Stop.’ He did. A shudder went down his back and his breathing was becoming uneven.
He decided to do as the stranger had said, he wasn’t going to read it, well, he wasn’t going to read it all the way through. The man closed the book again and put his left hands’ thumb on the side of the pages; he opened it to a random page near the middle, and was surprised to see that days’ date at the top of the page. His eyes locked on the date, refusing to budge. He breathed in shallow gasps, attempting futilely to keep calm. It was only one look, it couldn’t hurt. The next page had the next days date written on it, and the next was the same. He flipped through them faster, looking just at the dates, not the writing under them. Next year, two years from now. His fingers trembled when he reached the last page, on the very bottom two words were written. ‘The end’
He felt the gust of wind hit him before it did, and he understood. It hadn’t been a suggestion, or instructions- it had been a warning. The book flew from his hands and his body crumpled with the force of the impact. Sharp stabs of pain made his vision bright, brighter than anything before. The truck squealed to a standstill, it sounded like the call of a bird; there was a chorus of them with the people’s screams. He didn’t feel any impact of hitting the road, he just kept falling, his vision darkened.
The deep blue book landed some ways away from the man, it landed open to the sky above. Traffic stopped, people did too. The wind was the only thing to move for a long while. The pages of the book were thrown around, whipping from one to another, from blank page to blank page.
