September, 1993. Boston.
It is the third time, in the last twenty-five minutes, that his rugged thumb grazes the bump that has taken up temporary residence on his forehead, smack dab between his thick, and, for the last same twenty-five minutes, chronically creased brow.
Twenty-five minutes of feeling utterly helpless. Twenty-five minutes of cursing everything and everyone under his breath, occasionally over it, too. Twenty-five minutes of putting together all of the hypothetical scenarios that would not have led him here, on what he's sure is the warmest night of the goddamned year, sweating like a mad man through his favorite polo shirt, and elbow deep in motor grease.
Twenty-five minutes of an embarrassing wait for a savior that should be rolling in any minute now, on bigger wheels than the ones he's guarding with close to exasperated zeal.
Twenty-five minutes of feeling his ass morph into a square-shaped-rock against the hood of the car that has seemingly decided it's had enough for the night.
Enough of his clownery, he suspects.
Enough of his hands gripping its wheel, forcing it to veer anticlockwise, when eeeeverybody knows a clockwise movement would have been the one to put him on the actual, the unmistakable no questions asked path to his place.
Enough of his foot, stubbornly lifting off the accelerator and skidding over to the brake every. single. time. they would circle back and approach that street. Yep. You know the one. The street where that place unmistakably stands, dark and looming like a worn out spectre. The place whose facade he visits at least once a month - sometimes twice, if he should forget to check the calendar hanging in his office, directly behind his chair, for that red cross he's drawn over the one day out of thirty he calls his "okay-to-lose-your-cool day".
The place she used to occupy, that used to be hers, and oftentimes theirs - back when there was such a thing as theirs - and couldn't have belonged to anyone else then.
Couldn't belong to anyone else now, even though, realistically, - and that is what makes this whole ordeal as dumb as a bag of hammers - it does.
It belongs to someone - maybe two someones - blissfully unaware of the comings and goings of its previous owner. Of broken doors, and stuffed animals thrown off windows; jealousy fits culminating in warm embraces. Of strands of blonde hair found on his pillow in the morning, and forgotten razor blades on the immaculately white sink of her bathroom. Of 2AM fights washed down with 5AM caffeine bathed lips.
The best part of it all though, what truly takes the cake, really sweeps the damn board, is that his trusty steed on wheels has managed to stage the very first stroke of its not that long life right across from said place. Not around the corner from it. Not two doors down. Not one street over; right across from it.
And so, it's also been twenty-five minutes of trying not to stare up at that window on the top floor, the one that ominously stands perfectly perpendicular to the satellite dish, for fear that the sight, or even the illusion of a light being shone from the inside out, might send him over the edge, and he'll watch himself fly up a pack of stairs to no doubt frighten the unsuspecting stranger or two before he can get a grip on himself.
As a result of this pile of nonsense, not only does Sam's neck feel strained from being folded into his chest for ages, but he's also fairly sure he would be able to accurately describe each of the faults on the slab of concrete he's been staring at, if pressed for it.
Twenty-five minutes of successfully taking on the role of Sam Malone, the ostrich.
Every so often, the Corvette seems to hiccup under his weight and a blow of hot smoke is exhaled from - he believes - someplace or other close to the engine, though he can't be one hundred percent sure, having stopped panic-checking at least seven huffs and puffs ago. In fact, if he didn't know better, he'd swear the car to be simply scoffing at him, the cheeky chunk of metal.
Sam brings his hand down a few inches from his face and scowls at his thumb, like he's expecting to see blood pooling across the prints of its pad.
"It wasn't that hard a bump, you big baby".
He can hear the sneer, sharp in her voice as if she were right next to him, talking into the shell of his ear to be heard over rush hour traffic, legs dangling off the hood of his comatose sports car. So real, he can almost feel the warm mugginess of her breath prick his skin.
For a moment he looks up, as if expecting to find her eyes shining cerulean-tinted mischievousness down on him through a toothy grin. The very grin he's finally, finally come to realize, is indication she cares well beyond her cantrip.
"What?" she'd then inquire in a high pitched tone, raising her chin to the night sky, her eyes dead set on him from above. A bat of her eyelashes would follow, maybe a twirl of one of her blond tendrils. Both, if he were lucky.
"You're trying to rile me up, Diane. But you can quit while you're ahead. It won't work." he'd attempt, knowing all too well that if she'd keep talking, things would end in a low growl and an attempted murder, once he'd be finally be tapped by one single extra round. What a loser.
To shut her up, - and only to shut her up, officer - he would proceed to slip his fingers underneath the hem of her flowy skirt, drive his weak-as-an-empty-plastic-bag-in-the-wind point home; run his hand slowly up her soft, creamy thigh.
Up, up, up.
Because the eyelash batting and the hair flipping would never not cause a chain reaction. Not even when it'd be dream-Diane doing it. And did dream-Diane do it a lot.
Dream-Diane is about to part her pink lips and no doubt have him for breakfast, when he blinks to find her gone, dissolved into the night by a loud honk that nearly sheds the skin he wears straight off of his bones. He palms his chest in an attempt to steady his heartbeat. Jesus.
And it could have indeed been Jesus Himself coming straight at him, all lit up and glowing. A halo (or two) of blinding light, a crescendo of white noise, betrayed only by the deep sigh of the exhaust pipe.
Not Jesus, then. Rather, but not less than at the moment, his knight in shining armor: the tow truck.
Another twenty-five minutes ensue, - or so it seems, as tonight his life seems to pass by in twenty-five minute increments - of oh's and ah's and I see's from the not-so-shining looking tow truck driver. Whatever it is he does see, Sam finds himself praying he'll see it faster.
"Yep." Sam flinches as the mechanic drops the hood of the car like it's a hot potato. "Gonna have to take her in for a closer look. Should be able to hand her back to you in a couple days." he dusts off his end-of-a-work-day dirty hands as if they could get any cleaner just by rubbing them together. "How'd this come about? You got a shiner on your forehead there, did you get into an accident?"
"Huh?" Sam rubs his forehead absentmindedly. Another twenty-five minute increment must be up.
"What happened?"
What happened? What happened. There's a loaded question with no straightforward answer, if Sam's ever been asked one.
What happened, proverbially speaking, began long before tonight. Long before this ill-fated d-tour on his way home from Cheers. Long before the right side of his forehead's attempt at rivaling a camel's back.
It began months ago, in fact. Sam thinks months, but he could just as easily change that to years, though, in truth, he's only started blind-driving down this particular street last May.
Love of Christ, last May.
What happened, literally speaking, went something like this:
#
10 minutes to incident.
Sam's foot presses down on the brake pedal (again) at tortoise speed, almost like he doesn't want to do it - like he wishes he wouldn't have to. Though if he has to admit it, no one's forcing his hand at making a left turn (again) instead of a right one, on his drive home from the bar tonight.
His Corvette hums softly - perhaps a prelude to what the evening has in store - as it slides down the rain slicked street in Boston he'll deny having visited monthly since 1987, and more often since that last day of May.
"No, Sam, no."
The events of that day, and the one that followed, replay in his mind again, and again, as if she's saying the word from as close as the passenger's seat, and not from as far away as three months to the day.
"No, Sam. No." She'd repeated.
A small smile breaks through the grimace he isn't aware his face is slowly contorting into. No. Two, three, four times. Goddamn it, he remembers thinking then as he is thinking it now, the woman's addicted to the word. Like a defiant toddler, who says no for no other reason than to disappoint you.
But he had pushed. He had pushed like he's seldom ever pushed anything or anyone in his life. And it had worked. Briefly. He had managed to… He had actually managed to... And she had changed her answer. And she had said… And things had seemed to be... And not hours later he had just... they had just… he had just…
Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!
He's fully committed to his third or fourth slap palming of the wheel when the Corvette comes to a halt, after a hitch and a blow.
Incredulous, and as if pulled into one of those out of body experiences people talk about having when you temporarily pass, Sam sees himself attempt, time and time again, to revive the Corvette. Watches from above as the look on his own face turns from hopeful to exasperated, back to hopeful, and exasperated anew, when a sound surfaces from the turning of his key in the ignition, only to die down a few seconds later.
What happens next is so Sam Malone to T, it will later occur to him his shiner, as so fondly put by the two truck driver, was nothing if not well deserved.
With a low grunt, Sam exits the car, walks over to the front and pops the hood open to have a look at the engine, thinks this must be a quick fix. While feeling optimistic, even a little buoyant at the realization that he may finally put his - in reality few and loosely learned - mechanic skills, another car slows down, honks at him.
"You in trouble, stud?"
And even though Diane would never utter as simplistic a sentence as that, the fact that she's been on his mind since he's pretty much woken up that day, has him look up so abruptly at whoever is speaking to him, that the not yet attached hood of the car falls off his hand and hits him straight on the forehead on its way down.
#
A lot of cursing, gone girls and one throbbing headache later, here is one Sam Malone now, gazing confusedly at a tow truck driver, unable to answer the man's question because what happened is rooted so deeply in something set in motion so many years ago, that describing a metal hood falling on his skull would only account for a microscopic fraction of an honest reply.
Yes, a microscopic fraction of what had wound up with him numbly following the neon green exit signs scattered across the labyrinth like makings of an airport like he couldn't be bothered to turn around and keep pushing for something that had bothered him enough, and for enough years, to leave more than a laughable shiner on his forehead.
And that was three months ago.
And this is the first time he isn't sure.
In six long years, standing outside Diane's old apartment watching his injured car being driven down the road he' somehow never managed to cross off his mental map of Boston, this is the first time Sam isn't sure about next May.