Keiko Alvarez

The man in the suit smiled and walked towards Ricky and Kristy. When he was less than three feet away, he asked, “A friend of yours?”

“Not our friend,” Ricky blurted.

“Hey, that’s not nice,” Frank laughed.

The man in the suit backed up and shouted, “Is he anyone’s friend here?”

The audience murmured.

Someone called out, “I don’t think he has any friends.”

The crowd laughed.

The man in the suit ambled over to Frank. “Looks like you’re alone,” he said.

“I got Connie here,” Frank laughed.

“Are you desperate, Connie?” the man in the suit chuckled.

“Listen, asshole,” Frank sneered. “Getting insulted wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Oh, really?” the man in the suit snapped. “What about the actors you insulted?”

“That’s different,” Frank said.

“Is it?” The man in the suit put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a revolver and smashed Frank on the side of the head.

Frank screamed in pain and fell to his knees.

“Hey,” Connie shouted. She dropped to Frank’s side and tried to help him up.

“Come here, honey,” the man in the suit growled. He grabbed Connie’s arm and dragged her away from Frank. When she was in a dark part of the scenery, he appeared to punch her in the stomach. She began to moan and cry. The man in the suit returned to Frank. He hit him in the head with the gun again and pulled him to the center of the scene.

The man in the suit shouted, “What should I do with this asshole?”

“Kill him!” someone replied.

“Kill him!” Ricky yelled.

Soon the audience was chanting, “Kill him! Kill him!”

“See?” Ricky laughed. “I told you he was part of the act.”

“If you insist!” the man in the suit laughed. He aimed his gun at Frank’s head and pulled the trigger twice. The entire scene lit up with each blast from the gun while loud explosions rang in the audience’s ear.

The man in the suit faced the audience and yelled, “What about the bitch?”

“Let her go,” Kristy cried.

“Nah, kill her, too,” someone else shouted.

Again, the audience was again chanting, “Kill her! Kill her!”

“If you insist,” the man in the suit mumbled. He aimed his pistol at the sobbing woman and pulled the trigger twice, again assaulting the audience with harsh bright lights and loud explosions.

“What a fucking hoot!” Ricky laughed.

“That was the first part of this stupid show that I enjoyed,” Kristy giggled.



* * * *



Twenty minutes later Kristy had her head buried in Ricky’s lap. She was trying to gain her composure while Ricky talked with a uniformed policeman. “Don’t you get it?” he said. “We thought it was part of the show. I mean, we probably would have helped, especially the lady, but…”


He wilted under the dismissive stare of the cop, and his voice trailed off. “Don’t you get it?” he mumbled.

 

Dead Man Walking—that’s what they used to call prisoners on Death Row. In my case, Dead Man Rolling would have been more appropriate. When you’re strapped into a gurney with your head immobilized, you have nowhere to look but straight. You can’t look left, you can’t look right; you can only look straight up at the glare coming from the lights overhead. You’ll do anything to slow down time, to lengthen the few minutes of life you have left.

I tried counting the squares in the plastic panels covering the fluorescent lights as I passed under them. One, I noticed, covered a burned out bulb, the dark gray empty space providing relief from the bright glare cascading down on me.

“Clarence,” I shouted. “You have a light out.” I had a brief, insane notion that they’d actually stop to fix the bulb.

My only Death Row friend, a guard named Clarence, responded in a deep, baritone voice. “I’ll see that it gets fixed.”

“That’s good, Clarence. You…you always do the right thing.” So much for that idea.

“Yes, sir.”

How many times have you gone into a supermarket, pulled a cart from the hundreds that are lined up, only to find out that it had a wheel that jiggled? You try to ignore it for a while, but the more you feel it shake, the more it gets under your skin. Well, I had a gurney that jiggled. I tried to ignore the shaking that rose from the floor to my body, but then I heard an unknown voice mumbling something about God.

Before I was strapped down, you see, I had decided to go out with dignity and ignore the little things that ate at me, like my crappy last meal and the cobweb in the corner of my cell. What was the point of complaining, anyway? No one would listen. They just wanted to get on with it, to get rid of me and move on to the next prisoner. But the jiggling gurney drove me mad, and I changed my mind. Go ahead and complain.

“I think there’s a wheel out of whack on this gurney, Clarence. The whole thing is shaking. It’s very, very annoying. Could we take a few minutes to fix that? Can we fix this fucking thing?”

“Now, Phil. We got the reverend…”

“**** him! And **** his prayers! Tell him to shut up. I don’t want to hear about God. If there was a God I wouldn’t be in this situation!”


“Ladiezzzz and gen’lmen. We seem to have a bit of a problem. We’re going to…”

The plane dropped. Nancy felt airborne. The woman in front of her was airborne. People screamed. Nancy screamed, “Holy shit!”

She and Don took one look at each other and linked arms. “Hang on to me,” she cried.

Don, his eyes wide with panic, cried, “I will!”

“We’re going to make an emergency landing mumble mumble…”

Don looked at her with mournful eyes. “I cheated on my fiancé.”

“What?”

“Twice in six months. I…I have to tell someone in case we…in case we die.”

“Die,” Nancy shouted. “Shut up. Shut the **** up!”

“I had to tell someone!”

“Why? Why did you cheat on her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then,” Nancy snarled, “You shouldn’t get married.” Despite the insanity of the situation, Nancy was pleased to be thinking about something other than the airplane, even if forced her to talk to the idiot next to her.

“I know,” Don moaned. “If we make this…”

The plane dropped again. The airborne feeling hit them again. Oxygen masks fell from the overhead compartments. More screaming. The old man in the window seat, his face pale, trembled as he tried over and over to get the mask on his face. Don pulled the mask over the old man’s head, pulled on his own mask and looked at Nancy, his expression a combination of fear and sadness.

“Passengers! This is the Captain! Please! Get in crash position. We’re going to…”

Loud noises. Upside down. Right side up. The world turned gray. Everything seemed to moving in slow motion. Blue skies appeared above. Billowing smoke and flames ahead rushed towards her. The right side of the plane disappeared.

The sound of screeching metal assaulted Nancy’s ears as the plane skidded to a stop, and then there was nothing but silence. As Nancy and Don sat stunned and unmoving in their seats, the smell of burning fuel filtered into their nostrils. The old man next to Don slumped forward in his seat.

As Nancy looked up at the billows of smoke drifting in the clear blue sky, a sense of calm washed over her.