Ripped - Peter Wallace (fantasy novels to read .TXT) 📗

RIPPED

Peter Wallace

While Gregory yammered endlessly about his idiot clients, I just sat there staring at the blood on my hands. Or maybe it was ketchup. The salmon things I was eating needed ketchup. They were spicy but without much afterburn. The restaurant called it a Cajun thing but it was definitely pasteurized, white-breaded. It had a fishier taste than salmon usually does, which told me it probably wasn’t very fresh. In fact, it was most likely yesterday’s leftover fresh catch ground up and pattied and spiced over and breaded and egged and pan fried and served up with a sprig of parsley (at least that was fresh). I always eat the parsley sprig. I think it freshens the breath. And God knows my breath needed freshening after the salmon.

It dawned on me that I was focusing rather intently on my Cajun salmon cakes and was kind of tuned out to Gregory rambling on about the advertising project he was working on. He’s an art director. Every creative person I’ve ever known, and I’ve known at least three, constantly bitches and moans about how crucified they are, how their brilliant ideas are perpetually shot down by idiot clients, and Gregory is no exception. I tried to nod and look into his eyes between my sorry bites. I would murmur an occasional uh huh or huh! or oh yeah or wow so he’d know I was listening but of course I wasn’t really because I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

No, try as I might to expunge it from my consciousness, it refused to leave me in peace. The sound of it still echoed in my brain cells like a bad movie sound effect. It was a gristly thud that sounded as though you’d stomped on a glass syrup bottle inside a burlap sack. A strong yet fragile sound. And gooey.

He’d stepped right out in front of my car, bolted actually, from behind a parked car. I didn’t see him coming. He was just all of a sudden in front of me and my right front fender cracked into him and bounced him a good three or four yards directly in front of me.

Then my car wouldn’t stop in time and I ran over him. It was as though I could feel every individual bone cracking under the tire treads as I passed over him.

Thinking about it caused me to shiver as I sat there eating my Cajun salmon croquets or whatever the heck they were.

There was no doubt I had killed him.

I stopped the car, got out, and looked around. The street was a fairly deserted side street between a row of warehouses, a street I short-cut through nearly every day. I guess people who worked in the warehouses parked on the street. No one was walking around. No one drove by.

I looked at my front fender, realizing how callously I was acting by ignoring the violent death I had just caused. I didn’t see much damage, although the bumper had buckled under slightly, causing the fender behind it to push in slightly. But you couldn’t really tell unless you were looking hard at it, and besides the back bumper had a similar dimple in it.

As I studied my 2006 Jetta, I heard a deep, burbly breath behind me, and then a strong exhale along with a little whimper at the end, and then nothing.

Oh God, he was dead.

I scrambled back around and climbed in my car and took off. Five minutes later I was greeting Gregory at the restaurant. He’d arrived before me and gotten us a booth. And I ordered that salmon whatever. I burped that spicy salmon up all afternoon. And my breath--yeesh. I wished I had another sprig of parsley.

It was a beautiful dog, maybe a Labrador or Setter. Reddish hair. But probably not purebred. I felt so guilty about killing it. Someone would be missing that dog. Someone would probably be crying when they found out it was dead. Killed by a car. And the driver didn’t even stop to help.


We paid for our lunch and then walked to our cars. Gregory said you’ve been kind of quiet today. Are you okay? I said yeah, I’m fine but the salmon things weren’t too good. And oh by the way I killed a dog on the way over here.

No, I really didn’t tell him, but I almost did. It crossed my mind. I thought it, but stopped myself from saying it because I didn’t need any more grief from Gregory. I was already late getting back to work, and I didn’t want to get into it. He’s skilled at making me feel guilty and I hate him for that, and especially I hate him because he is almost always right, I should feel guilty. I feel guilty enough already without him reminding me how guilty I am. He has this way of asking a question and then just staring at you blank-faced in silence, waiting for you to confess or defend yourself. He doesn’t even blink. I didn’t need that today.

After work I got in my car and drove back to that street. It was, after all, on my way home, going the long way. I hoped no one would see me. I just wanted to drive by nonchalantly and see if the dog’s corpse was still there.

When I had left it, it had been lying in the gutter in an empty parking space in front of the car it dashed out from behind. Probably someone had moved it, maybe the official county dead dog picker-uppers—although sometimes they leave road kill on the road for days at a time before they get around to scooping it up and hauling it off. Or maybe its owner found it and carried it home to bury tearfully.

I turned on to Dansle Street, which was the name of the street. I noticed it on the sign as I turned. Though I had driven there hundreds of times, I had never noticed that sign before or known the street’s name. In fact I had never seen a dog on that street. Maybe it was homeless, or lost. Maybe no one would miss it. Maybe it was old anyway. It looked old. Did it wear a collar? Did it have animal control tags? I confess I didn’t really look.

I slowed down ever so slightly as I neared the area where I’d hit the dog. It was getting dark. I had my headlights on but my eyes were squinting, straining to see in the darkening dusk beyond the splash of light.

Damn. I saw a lump in the road, a dark form. But it looked larger than I remembered. It didn’t look like a dog. It looked like a man.

I braked suddenly, threw it in neutral and pulled the parking brake. Could it be? I fumbled with the door handle and finally got the door open and walked around.

It was a man. But he was lying right where the dog had been, I was sure of it.

Crap! Did I hit a man? Was I that deeply in denial? Did I lose my mind, try to cover up my guilt by convincing myself it wasn’t a man I hit but just a dog? And he’s just been lying here dead since lunchtime?

I bent down over the form. The man appeared to be in his early fifties. He wore a dark wool overcoat, which struck me as odd; it really wasn’t cool enough to wear an overcoat.

My mouth was open, in shock. I knelt down and tentatively stretched my hand to him. He was lying on his right side, his left leg pulled up almost to his chest, his right leg stretched out straight. His head was cradled on the bent elbow of his right arm. He was smartly dressed.

I touched his left arm. He moved, took a sharp breath. His eyes fluttered and he gasped at me.

He mumbled incoherently as he strained to stand up, which he did rather quickly, then dusted himself off and stood erect and strong as though he’d just walked out of a board meeting in an office building on Peachtree Street.

I just stood there with my mouth agape.

“Hello,” he said cheerily. “Where am I?”

“D-Dansle Street,” I said, as though that would explain everything but clearly it did not.

“Odd. I was downtown. On Peachtree Street. I don’t have the foggiest idea how I got here.” He kept looking around, as though searching for a clue.

He seemed fine, maybe a little shaken. His beautiful coat had a lot of street dirt and dust on it, despite his attempts to brush it off. I even helped him brush it for a moment but then felt stupid, afraid he’d think I was groping him or something.

“Can I take you somewhere? I’d be glad to,” I offered. Frankly, I was afraid of a lawsuit, thought it would help my case to be as friendly as possible.

“Well, actually, if you don’t mind, could you take me downtown? I suppose I should call a cab or something, but--”

“Oh no, allow me! No trouble at all, really. It’s only, I don’t know, maybe ten miles or so from here.”

“I suppose I should return to the office,” he said as though to himself. I got the feeling he had no earthly idea where else he could go, as though he’d lost all memory of everything else.

“Maybe I should take you to the hospital, just to check you out.”

“Nonsense. I’m fine.”

“Okay, then I’ll take you to your office.”

“I accept your offer,” he said with a formal sideways nod of the head.

He seemed very distinguished, with a clipped northern accent. Well under six feet tall. His short sideburns were almost pure white, his hair a silvery gray. He stood there looking around, and finally found a charcoal gray felt fedora in the gutter, brushed it smartly with his hand and placed it snugly onto his head. I mean, it was as though he had been ripped straight out of the early sixties.

He sat stiffly in the passenger seat of my Jetta, glancing from side to side with a perplexed look on his face. As we took off, I checked around to see if I could find that dog anywhere, but no. The man didn’t say much as I drove.

Finally I broke the awkward silence. “Do you feel okay? I mean, no broken bones or anything?” I asked, as though I had hit him as I had the dog.

“No, I feel fine. Just a bit, I don’t know, woozy.”

“I’m, uh, Friend Carlson,” I said, a little self-consciously, wondering if I should reveal my name to this stranger. I extended my right hand haphazardly between gear shifts. He took it and shook with a solid, firm grip.

“Friend? An interesting name.”

“Yes, it is. My grandparents were Quakers. You know, ‘Friends.’”

“I see. And... um....” His voice trailed off. I realized he hadn’t given me his name. And it occurred to me that he didn’t know it to give it. We fell into silence.

I flipped the radio on to