Pete Cawdron: Feedback

In the darkness, Lee had no way of knowing how deep he’d been dragged beneath the waves. Feeling with his hands, he tugged at the drawstring on his life vest. Immediately, a tiny gas cylinder inflated his vest, propelling him toward the surface.

His ascent seemed never ending.

Lee convulsed.

He couldn’t stop himself. He was suffocating, dying. He had to breathe. The urge was primal, instinctive, overwhelming. His lungs demanded air. They would be deprived no longer. A reflex reaction took over and he inhaled, coughing on a mouthful of sea water.

In those final few seconds, with his brain starved of oxygen, Lee’s mind drifted. Memories flashed before him in muted scenes. Far from seeing his life in miniature, Lee saw only one image, that of a young girl terrified of leaving him. Her arms were outstretched. She was frozen in time, etched in his mind. Bereaved of her entire family in a single night, and now forcibly taken from her rescuers. Her eyes begged for compassion, for understanding, for respite, but the past could not be undone.

The surface never came.

Darkness washed over him.

Jason loved New York. He sat at an old wooden desk overlooking the intersection of Columbus and West 67th, barely a block from Central Park. His rundown apartment was small—a single room with a kitchenette and a bathroom/shower barely larger than a closet. The carpet was worn and paint peeled off the walls, but it was home.

From the second floor, he looked out across the street at an Italian deli on the far corner. He could hear an old woman singing some archaic, operatic song as she set up a wooden stall outside the deli, loading it with bagels and freshly baked sourdough bread. Her voice carried on the wind, drifting above the cars and trucks speeding by. She was irrepressible, and he loved the sense of character she brought to the neighborhood.

The smell of coffee drifted up from an independent coffee shop on the ground floor below his apartment. Originally, the shop had been a Starbucks and the smells had been predictable, but there were so many other independent stores and restaurants in the area that they could encourage consumers to boycott big name chain brands. It was Jason’s claim to fame. That he lived above a failed Starbucks. Thankfully, the 7-11 across the street had fared better or he would have had a three block walk to the nearest grocery store.

The new owners of the coffee shop were Moroccan. Hints of cinnamon, cloves and cardamon floated on the breeze. The allure of freshly roasted Arabica coffee beans brought customers in from miles around. The line for a morning cup of coffee stretched around the corner. Jason smiled. Although it was the smell of the dark coffees, the espressos and cappuccinos that brought people in, most customers left with a latte or some other weaker coffee. For him, the smell was enough to get his synapses firing. He sipped at his generic brand instant coffee, smelling the Moroccan coffee wafting through the open window, trying to fool his taste buds.

Jason looked at his phone: 7:10am and already 85 degrees. It was going to be another scorcher.

Jason was a first generation Korean-American. His parents adopted him from an orphanage in Seoul. He was too young to remember anything other than their warm, smiling faces, but on coming to America they never let him forget that they regularly endured humid summer temperatures of 100 degrees without air conditioning. In Jason’s family, you weren’t allowed to complain about how hot it was until you’d baked under a ceramic tile roof on the Korean peninsula.

He was doodling when his cellphone rang. Jason was absentmindedly drawing symbols and equations on a scrap of paper. He put down his pen and picked up the phone. Before he could say anything a deep, husky voice said, “Hey, baby.”

Jason didn’t bite.

A male voice that sounded like Barry White with a chest cold asked, “What are you wearing?”

Jason shook his head without saying a word.

“Come on, baby,” the caller continued, speaking with slow deliberation. “Talk dirty. Tell me what you’re wearing. Don’t make me come over there. I swear, I’ll bring riding whips and chains.”

Finally, Jason laughed, saying, “You are sick. You know that, don’t you? You need professional help.”

The voice on the other end of the phone laughed. “You know you love it, you gigolo!”

Jason couldn’t help but grin as he replied, playing along with the charade as he added, “Whore!”

“You sexy minx!”

Through tears of laughter, Jason forced a reply with, “Tramp!”

“I know your kind,” the rough voice continued, “You need a good spanking!”

Jason was out. He’d been beaten. He had nothing else to come back with. The provocative voice on the phone added, “I’m going to slap some fluffy cuffs on you and stretch you out naked on the table.”

“So what’s up, man?” Jason asked, fighting through his laughter. “Why did you call?”

“Sugar daddy doesn’t need a reason to call. So what are you wearing?”

“All right,” Jason replied, sitting there wearing gym shorts and a Nike T-shirt. “I’m naked.”

“Liar,” the voice said in rough, sexy tones. “You’re wearing leathers, aren’t you? Skin tight black rubber latex?”

“All right. You win, Mitch!”

Mitch loved playing the fool. Anyone listening in would probably have been offended, but Mitchell was just being silly. A little banter between friends kept things lighthearted.

The voice on the phone lightened, no longer dark and mysterious. “Hey, so are we on for our wild Fourth of July weekend down in Atlantic City?”

“I can’t, Mitch,” Jason replied. “I’m doing Fifty Shades of University Catch Up over here. I’ve got to finish this paper on M-Theory.”

“M-Theory my ass,” Mitchell replied. “It’s a goddamn national holiday tomorrow; birth of a nation and all that crap. Don’t tell me that bully Lachlan has you working through your Independence Day! What would Thomas Jefferson say?”

“It’s my fault,” Jason confessed. “I missed the deadline. He gave me an extension, but I’ve got to have my paper on his desk by noon tomorrow.”

As he spoke, Jason’s attention wandered. He found himself staring at a beautiful Asian girl across the street by the deli. She was standing on the street corner by the lights, but she didn’t cross as the lights cycled through. She had been standing there for a while. She must have been lost.

“Tell me you’re sticking to the study material,” Mitchell said. “Tell me you’re not going off on your own theories again.”

Jason screwed up the piece of paper he’d been doodling on, feeling guilty and tossing it in the wastepaper basket beside his desk. That he didn’t answer seemed to tell Mitchell what he wanted to know.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Mitchell continued. “You’ve got to walk before you run. You can’t go proposing some J-Theory just because you don’t like M-Theory.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jason replied sheepishly.

“And quit with the doodling,” Mitchell continued. “Lachlan will flunk you. He doesn’t care how smart you think you are. He cares about the curriculum.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jason repeated, staring at the scrap of paper in the bin. The crumpled paper was covered in multiple formulae and calculations, hastily scribbled over the top of each other.

“OK, listen,” Mitchell said, “Forget Atlantic City. Let’s do breakfast at Mario’s Diner tomorrow.”

“Sure.”

“And no more distractions. Promise?”

“Promise,” Jason agreed.

“All right, catch you later, bitch! ”

Jason smiled as he ended the call. Mitchell was right. He needed to knuckle down and finish his assignment. He grabbed his notes, pulled out his laptop and got to work.