Page 18 of Help Me Remember
“Somehow I doubt that, but thank you for cleaning.”
I wasn’t too proud to admit that the thanks warmed me, but it also didn’t change the fact that there wasn’t much for me to do otherwise. With all the cleaning done, I was forced to spend the following day watching TV, flipping through the few channels Eric had and wondering if I was the type of person who liked watching TV all day. I’d certainly been the type to enjoy exercise if my constant itch to do it was any indication, but nothing I came across on the TV interested me.
Which was precisely why I decided it was as good a time as any to set out early to meet Eric at the clinic. It usually only took me about an hour to get there, but since I hadn’t gone on my afternoon walk, I thought going out an hour earlier wouldn’t hurt.
After stepping into the warm air, I glanced up and down the street as I always did when I reached a public area. I could hear a couple arguing in the next building and loud music blasting from somewhere further down. The sounds of cars, some rough and in need of repair, others relatively quiet, flowed by on the street.
As I had started doing a few days prior, I walked down to the store on the corner to buy myself something to nibble on and drink. Eric seemed to survive purely on coffee and bottled water, but I craved something sweeter every now and then. Entering the store, I found a small chocolate bar, a bottle of sweetened tea, and a small bag of sweetener from the coffee station. The young man behind the counter flashed me a smile but continued his phone conversation as he took my money, handing me my change with a half-hearted wave.
The man sitting out front bore a strong resemblance to the cashier, though he looked a little too old to be the man’s father. The older man walked with a slight hunch and was never far from his cane. His voice was rough and deep, but when he smiled, showing a few missing teeth, it was warm and deepened the lines on his face.
“Hey, Mr. Reyes,” I said, speaking a little louder than usual to make sure he could hear me. He insisted, quite adamantly, that he didn’t need a hearing aid as his family insisted. I suspected it was less to do with ignoring his evident hearing loss and more with the man not wanting to hear his family all the time.
He looked up, squinting through glasses that probably needed to be replaced and definitely needed to be cleaned. After a second, he smiled. “Well, hey there, Dylan. How you doin’ today?”
“I’m up and around, still kicking,” I told him, opening the tea and adding the sweetener. “How are you feeling today?”
He sat in a lawn chair just outside the entrance, where I’d seen him a few times before. The large umbrella he sat under was in far better shape than the cheap plastic he sat on, and there was always a cup of coffee on the table. It had stained the hell out of his remaining teeth, but that apparently wasn’t going to stop him.
“Doin’ just fine,” he told me, watching as I closed the tea and began shaking it. “I seen you do that more than once now. You from Georgia or somethin’? They’re the only folk I know who can buy sweet tea and think it’s not sweet enough.”
“No,” I said with a chuckle because I knew that much was true. “I’m not from Georgia. I was born and raised here.”
He grunted. “One of your folks musta been then.”
“Could be,” I said because I didn’t know enough about the past to comment one way or another. “And don’t you get hot sitting out here drinking coffee?”
“Don’t bother me a bit,” he said, picking up the steaming cup and taking a drink. “Keeps me up and gets me around.”
“I guess I caught you early today,” I noted. The past few days, I’d only seen the man sitting outside on my morning and afternoon walks. I would see him again in the evening, but only on his walk back to the apartment he shared with the rest of his family.
“Was gonna say you were a bit early today,” he said, taking another sip. “Feelin’ restless?”
“A little,” I admitted, taking a sip of the tea. It was plenty sweet, but I thought it could do with another half-packet of sweetener to make it even better. “Missed my walks earlier, so figured I should get started early today.”
“That’s a good idea,” he said with a nod, reaching into his shirt pocket and drawing out a wrinkled cigarette. He fumbled with a match before lighting it, drawing the smoke deep. “Gotta keep yourself in good health.”
“This from the man who smokes how much in a day?”
“Now, that’s none of your business. Plus, it’s the duty of the old to warn the young.”
“I’m not that young.”
“Young enough. Hell, for a while there, I didn’t think I would ever start feeling old.”
“Oh yeah? What happened?”
“My sixties,” he said with a chuckle. “Oh, there were things before that, o’course, but that’s life. The knees get a little cranky. You get a little more winded than ya used to goin’ upstairs. I didn’t find it harder to start doin’ things until my sixties, but I knew people who started feelin’ like that long before me.”
“So, the key to making sure I hold off the effects of aging is to smoke cigarettes and drink cup after cup of coffee?” I asked with a faint smile.
He eyed me, wagging a finger my way. “Keep yourself walking, find yourself a reason to live, and people to keep livin’ for. That’s the advice I got for ya.”
My smile flickered, but I nodded, hiding my reaction with another drink. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
I had one of those three things going for me. I didn’t know which bothered me more, the fact that I didn’t have the other two or that I didn’t know if I’d had those things before everything changed. Instead of purpose, there was only confusion and a massive hole inside my head. I thought it would start shrinking, but every time I ran into something that required me to pull on previous memories, that hole seemed a little bigger.
I had been sorely tempted to start looking into my past. Eric had a laptop he kept beside the couch. Its battery was shot, and the charging port was so touchy it had to be kept in one precise spot, but it worked. The past three days’ activity had, in a way, felt like I was leaping from one distraction to the next.