Between Twilight and the NIght

It had been a long day, the traffic was terrible as usual, and Frank was feeling the frustrations of being between. Between youth and old age, between beginning a dreadful job and a retirement that already looked dismal. He parked his ten-year-old car in the driveway of a cookie-cutter house in a bargain neighborhood, and went into the house. He exchanged meaningless pleasantries with Katherine, his wife before retreating to his chair in the Den. Choosing between Jeopardy and the Lakers was an easy choice. “What would life be without Magic, Magic Johnson, that is", he thought.

“Did you bring home the groceries?”; it seemed that somehow Katherine’s voice had gotten strident without his ever noticing it. “I forgot, and then the traffic…” Frank didn’t get to finish his thought “Well dinner will be on the table in twenty minutes. Go get the things I specifically asked for on the phone”. Whatever changed Kate to Katherine, he wondered. Frank could feel the room emptying and sighed, as he rose from his chair. He shrugged his jacket on and went to the front door. “It’s nice out; I think I’ll just walk down to the market. I should be back by dinner.” Without bothering to listen for an answer, he closed the door and went down the steps to the street.

To get to the market Frank would have to cut through the park, and he looked forward to enjoying even that little piece of contrived nature. By the time he entered the park the sun was setting over the office towers down by the freeway. He paused to admire the pastel sky made colorful by automobile exhaust, and then turned into the darkening park. The street lamps, controlled by light sensors, were still unlit. It occurred to Frank that he had never actually witnessed the streetlights coming on. Frank sat on a bench to await the modern miracle of turning night into day. His head nodded, and he thought, “Whoops, must be more tired than I thought. Best get going, or Katherine will be even more irritable than usual.” He checked his watch, but the second hand was frozen on twelve. “Damned cheap watches!” It was a small park, built in an election year, so Frank was soon standing before Stu’s Stop-N-Shop. The lights still hadn’t gone on.

Frank pushed a cart up and down the aisles collecting the vital items on Katherine’s list. The store was largely empty, and only one clerk was checking out customers. Frank got into line. He idly looked up at the large clock over the doorway, and was startled to see the little hand pointed at eight and the big hand was half way between two and three. Where had the time gone? A fat man stepped into the line directly in front of Frank. “Hey Yahoo, there is a line here.” The fat man ignored Frank and sat his six-pack onto the conveyor belt. Frank began to fume, but being civilized held his temper. The fat man paid and left without ever acknowledging Frank’s presence.

The clerk looked right through Frank, and put down a sign reading “Cash Register Closed”. The clerk walked away as if he didn’t even hear Frank’s belligerent shouts. Frank’s anger and frustration seemed to expand to the furthest reaches of the cosmos. “Closed? All right, if you don’t want to take my money, then I’m taking these groceries!” He put the items into a paper grocery bag; Katherine hated plastic, and started for the door expecting the manager to appear. The manager didn’t appear and, feeling both guilt and shame, Frank began to jog homeward. The park lights still hadn’t come on. “How strange”, Frank thought. He found the house as he left it, though the front door was ajar. He carried the grocery bag into an empty kitchen, and set it on the counter top. The clock over the sink read ten twenty-six, but outside it was no darker than when he had left.

Katherine walked into the kitchen, switched on the light and without saying a word opened the refrigerator and took out a can of diet soda. Frank reached out to her, but she walked through his outstretched arm as if it weren’t there. “What’s happening to me?” He stamped his foot, but that made things no less mysterious. “Am I sleeping? Dead? What the hell is going on here?”

Frank followed Katherine into their bedroom, and shouted, “can you hear me? Can you see me? Christ, Kate tell me what’s happened to me.” Katherine continued to ignore him, so he began dumping drawers onto the carpet. Katherine merely turned on the bedside lamp, and picked up the television remote. A sports reporter on the late night news was commenting on how inspiring it was to see Magic Johnson handling his retirement from basketball so well.

“What?” Frank collapsed onto the bed. How much time had passed? He looked in the mirror and saw his own familiar face unchanged. In a corner of the mirror frame was tucked a brief news clipping. It was a six-year-old report of his going missing; he turned and noticed for the first time that Katherine was crying. His picture still stood on the bedside table. Katherine didn’t look any older. Six years and the streetlights still hadn’t come on. Frank stood up, stunned.

Like a zombie, he shuffled out of the house into gloaming. Cars passed him, and he noticed that all of them had their headlamps lit. For the world it seemed to be night, but for Frank the world was somewhere caught between. He slowly retraced his steps along the street to the park. The sunset over the office towers hadn’t changed in the least. Frank turned and entered the park for the third time that day and found the park bench where he had earlier rested.

“It all started here. Right here, I was sitting waiting for the street lamps to come on. I was thinking something, but what was it? I nodded off for a moment. Wait now, could it have been for six years that I slept? Rip Van Winkle, no that wouldn’t explain why I seem to be invisible. The Invisible Man, or maybe I’ve just gone crazy. Maybe this is just a dream I’m caught up in. God, what if this is like Groundhog Day, and endless closed loop of reruns. Then again, I could be dead, couldn’t I? What made my watch suddenly stop, or did some factory slave do a bit of sabotage? Questions and questions, but I have to do something. Maybe this is purgatory, just waiting and waiting for the Second Coming or the Beatles to come out of retirement. But, what was it I was thinking just at that moment? That this bench is coincidentally half way between the house and the market? That seems right, but so what?” Frank glanced down at the offending watch and saw that the second hand was slowly picking up speed. “I don’t know what happened, but this has just got to be ending.”

Frank ran back to his neat little house on its unassuming street, and found the door closed against him. He tried the knob and it turned. Frank pushed the door wide and rushed to find Katherine, his Kate. She wasn’t in the bedroom crying, or in darkened den. He found her in the kitchen. Crossing the little room to her he said, “Oh Kate, I just need to tell you how much I love you and how I could never stand to be parted again from you.”

Katherine pushed aside his embracing arms and asked, “So where’s my groceries, Frank?“