flashquake Fiction

Out of Town
by James Simpson

Harold Newman was about to call the front desk for a cab when the pain hit him, a white-hot sledgehammer of fire slamming into his chest, knocking the wind out of him. He gasped and fell to the floor between the two beds, the inexplicable scent of orange blossoms in his nose. He tasted blood before passing out.

Harold awoke some time later — hours or only minutes, he couldn't be sure — his watch still resting on the night stand, the clock radio facing the window. He tried to reach out, but his left arm was numb and his legs tingled, and the slightest movement made his head throb so violently he thought he might vomit or black out again.

The light in the room hadn't changed, the industrial crimson and gold curtains having blocked out any nuances. He lay on the floor sweating in his tight-fitting dark blue suit staring up at the ubiquitous hotel art hanging on the wall above each bed. The thick, scalloped gold frames held bright oil paintings of tropical tree-lined causeways. He had barely noticed them yesterday after check-in, but now he studied them as if they truly mattered.

He thought he must have had a heart attack or stroke, maybe both. He couldn't move and he felt his heartbeat skipping around, fluttering, pausing, then fluttering again. He tried calling out, but only made a cracked, hissing sound, thin and strange, not at all like his voice. He pondered the possibility that he was already dead and lingering in some hospitality industry version of purgatory. Then the pain came again and he realized he was alive, or at least not yet dead. He felt a cold dagger piercing his forehead from within before everything went dark.

Harold opened his eyes again later and looked around. Surely someone at the convention hall would worry, maybe call or send someone to check on him. He still couldn't gauge how long he had been lying on the floor. He wasn't uncomfortable, though, he just couldn't feel anything. At least he wasn't outside; he hated the cold and heard it might snow today. He would wait. Someone would come.

In the back of his mind he knew he had probably asked for this. He had promised Margaret he would lose weight and start exercising, but there was always tomorrow; he would start tomorrow, he said so often. Tomorrow. He thought of that line in a Shakespeare play, but couldn't remember which one. Macbeth, perhaps, or was it Hamlet? He hadn't thought about that since high school. If he got out of here and back home to his family, back to his life, he would find out for sure and memorize that part. He would do it, yes, and recite it for Margaret on his 50th birthday next month. When everyone shouted, "speech, speech" as they always did, he would surprise them all.

He gazed up at the paintings and noticed something new. They were mirror images of the same scene: a curving roadway lined with royal palm trees like those back in Ft. Myers. Actually, the road was similar to the one that ran in front of the Thomas Edison museum just over the bridge from his own house. Harold remembered taking Margaret and the girls there when Tracy and Amanda were in elementary school; how they had loved the rambling old house, the laboratories, and scampering about the ancient banyan trees, laughing in the gardens. They had grown up so fast and would soon be out of the house. Where had the years disappeared to? He desperately wanted to hold his family in his arms, to feel their embrace, their warmth. He stared at the picture, at the tree-lined roadway bending into a distant vanishing point, and could almost hear the palm fronds rustling in the wind, feel the balmy breeze on his skin cooling the beads of perspiration crawling down his cheeks and into his shirt collar. He recalled that Edison required only four hours of sleep each day. He closed his eyes and drifted. If he wasn't mistaken, he also thought Edison died in his sleep. Peacefully. At home.

Harold wept.

He woke with a start, somehow certain it was snowing outside. He hated the brutal Chicago winter and longed for home; he didn't do well in cold weather, never had. He must get out somehow, now, this minute. He could waste no more time lying around, he had to get up and go. He saw himself moving his arms, placing his palms on the floor and bracing himself to stand up. He saw his knees bending, hips swiveling to turn his body over, then slowly standing in the room, looking in the mirror. He saw all of this, but only in his mind's eye; he remained on the floor, trembling now. He wept again, tears streaming down the sides of his face and into his ears. The heater hadn't kicked in for quite some time and the room was freezing, so cold he heard ice crackling on the walls, falling from the faucet into the sink, spilling over and chinking onto the marble floor.

The door opened and two women entered, their keys jingling, whispering to each other in Spanish. One woman left the room and shouted for someone in the hallway. The other woman, a gray-haired housekeeper, knelt beside him and slipped her warm hand into his and spoke softly in his ear words he couldn't understand. Not like this, Harold pleaded soundlessly, please not like this so far from home, so cold. He held the woman's hand, began to feel her rough skin against his, the bones of her fingers, the blood pumping through her veins. He held on tightly until they wheeled him to the ambulance waiting by the curb in front of the hotel. He had been right, it was snowing. It fell silently over his body, onto his face, gentle kisses like a blessing.

Copyright 2002 by James Simpson

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