Flashes 

Mark Connelly

Walking into Starbucks, Katherine spotted Ted sitting alone by the window.  He seemed preoccupied and did not look up even when she pulled a chair closer to join him.  Looking out the window, he tapped his cardboard cup lost in thought.

“Did the meeting go well?” she ventured.

Ted turned and smiled.  “Oh, yes, all good.  She approved the budget. I’m just a little…” he shook his head with a bewildered sigh.

“What is it?  You feel OK?”

“I’m fine.  Well, not really.  Something strange happened today.  Eerie.”  He paused, twisting his cup left and right on the table, before looking up.  “I saw myself today.”

“Saw yourself?”

“Yes. I saw myself.  Watched myself.  But not me now.  Me fifty years ago.”

She leaned forward.  Ted was never given to whimsy or fanciful stories.  The flat soft tone of his voice was troubling. “What do you mean?”

“I met with Bess Andre at the Fairmont at eleven.  We went over the budget. She liked what she saw and said she just needs this month’s bank statements to approve it.  I told her she’d get them end of the month.  Meeting went great.  No questions.  So we chitchit-chatted a bit, took a few pictures, then I headed out.”

“OK,” Katherine said softly.

“Well, I parked down on Pine.  So, I crossed California to walk down Mason and froze.  I just froze.  In the driveway plaza of the Mark Hopkins, there was a 1973 white VW bug.  What caught my eye was the rear fender.  It had a crescent-shaped crease, a dent.  I had a white ’73 VW with the same dent in the same fender. That was my car! But new.  I drove that thing into the ground back in the Eighties.  I sold it for junk for a hundred bucks to a friend who wanted parts.  But this morning it was back, brand new but with that dent I got just after I bought it.  The trunk lid was up, and I could this guy arranging things.  And he was left-handed like me.  He held the lid up with his right hand the way I used to.  And he wore his watch on this right arm like I do.  And it was one of those thick leather cuff watchbands from the Seventies.  I had a band like that and the same watch.  Gold with a black face.  And he was wearing what I wore then – Dingo boots, flared jeans, black turtleneck, tweed jacket with leather elbow patches.  And he had mirror aviator sunglasses.  My girlfriend Toni got me a pair for my birthday that year.  I tell you it was me.  Then it hit me.  The Mark Hopkins.  April 1974.  My sister and her roommate flew out from Wisconsin on spring break and stayed there.  My friend Ric and I took the girls around all week.  Fisherman’s Wharf. Chinatown.  The Cannery.  End of the week I drove them to the airport.  So I watching myself packing up their stuff in my car at the Mark Hopkins getting ready to take them to SFO in April 1974.  I swear it was me.  Same car.  Same clothes.  Same watch. Same sunglasses.  It was me!”

She nodded, sensing his unease.

“I could see the license plate, but who remembers their number from fifty years ago, right?  But I know I have old snapshots. I’m sure they’d show the plate.  So I picked up my phone to take a picture.  Just then, the kid turned to face me.  And just as I snapped the picture, he was gone.  Nothing.  He was gone.  The car was gone.  Just like that.  Here, look.”

Ted held up his phone, scrolling through pictures.  “Look, this is us last night.  This is Bess and me this morning.  And this last one is the picture I took in the driveway of the Mark Hopkins.  No VW, no driver.  Just that delivery van in the background.  But I swear that guy and that car were there.  And it was me.  I saw me in April 1974.  I Googled it.  Easter was the 14^th that year.  The girls flew home that Friday.  Would have been April 19, 1974.  Just before noon.”

“Experience anything like that before?”

“Never.  You know me.  I taught physics.  Only believe what I can see and touch.  But this today.  The car and the guy.  If I saw one separately, OK, a weird coincidence.  But the guy dressed like me and my car in front of the Mark Hopkins?   That was me, April 1974 getting ready to drive the girls to the airport.  Just too many coincidences at once.  Look, if I saw that car last week in a parking lot in Houston I would freak.  Looks like my old car with the exact same dent.  That would be something in itself.  But that car in the same spot fifty years later with someone dressed like me, same build, left-handed?  Same sunglasses, turtleneck?”

“What are you going to do?  You seem so rattled.  I’ve never seen you like this before.  Are you sure you’re OK?”

He waved his hand.  “I already booked an appointment with my internist.  Maybe it’s the new meds.  I’ve had some intense dreams lately.  Vivid lucid dreams.  Maybe that’s it.  It must be my new meds.”  He nodded as if repetition would reassure him. “That must be it.  I hope.”

“What’s wrong?  It was just a flash maybe.  Like a memory.  You walked by the Mark and remembered your sister.  Just a vivid memory.  You have a good memory.”

“I dunno. . .” he muttered softly.  “I keep thinking of my grandfather.  I  flew home for Christmas one year and visited him at the VA.  He was seeing things, too.  Dementia.  When I walked in the room he kept calling me Johnny.  ‘Johnny, where you been?  Johnny, you OK?  You all better?’  My grandmother told me he thought I was his army buddy Johnny who died of flu in 1918.  She tried to explain to him that I was Teddy, his grandson.  ‘You remember, Moira’s boy?’”  Ted’s eyes watered, and his voice quavered.  “Katie, I will never forget him looking around confused and panicked, asking, ‘Moira?  Who’s Moira?’  He didn’t remember my mom. His own daughter.  He died a few months later.  I never forgot that.”

She reached across the table and took his arm.  Suddenly, and for the first time since she met him, he began to look his age.  “It was nothing, just a flash.  An episode.  We all have moments like that.  It was nothing.”

“I dunno,” he said.  “You hit seventy-four and something like this happens, and you wonder if it’s a sign of what’s coming.  The start of something.”

“Look, you put that budget together, and two CPA’s and a lawyer went over it and never asked us a question.  I’m sure you’re OK. I never saw any changes, and how long have we known each other?  Just see your doctor about the meds.”

He forced a smile, then shook his head. “But I swear that Volkswagen and that guy were there.  They were real.”  He pointed out the window.  “See that Volvo and the crossing guard?  As real as those two.”

They both watched as the light changed, and the crossing guard waved at the Volvo driver who nodded and pulled forward to make a slow right onto Folsom.

“Hey, Teddy, get the girls off on time?”

“Yeah, no problem.  Ran late as usual, but their flight was delayed twenty minutes.  Saw them off.  Jan said she had a great time.  You made a big impression on her.”

“Well, too bad she’s in Wisconsin.”

Ted looked up from his beer.

“You know, Ric, something really weird happened today. Like Twilight Zone weird.”

“What?”

“OK, I’m at the Mark Hopkins packing up the car.  You remember all the stuff they bought in Chinatown?  I wondered if they could get it all on a plane.  So, anyway, I’m packing up the trunk in front of the hotel, trying to make sure I don’t break anything.  And I see this old guy out of the corner of my eye run across the street, and he stops dead and stares at my car.  Like he’s never seen a Volkswagen before.  Just standing there staring.  For a second I thought it was my grandfather.  Built like me, same hair, but older, you know.  He had a moustache, though, and my grandfather doesn’t.

“I thought he must be looking at something behind me, so just kept packing things.

Then, and this is the strange part, he picked up something.  Looked like a piece of black glass, size of a postcard.  He holds it up, and from the corner of my eye; I see it light up like a miniature TV.  So, I turn to get a good look, and he vanishes.  In a flash he’s gone.  He didn’t run away, he vanished.  I mean if he turned to run, I would see his back, right?  One split second he’s there, then he’s gone.  How do you explain that?”

“You’re the physics major, Einstein, not me.”

“Hell, I just stayed in school long enough to dodge the draft.”

Ric pointed to the sunglasses on the bar.  “Maybe it was those.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh the guy was real, but he was probably a mirage, a reflection.  The guy was there all right.  But he was behind you, standing in the doorway maybe.  Someone opens the glass door, and his image is reflected and you catch it in your glasses.  You said you only saw him in the corner of your eye, right?  So you move your head a few inches or maybe someone closes the door, and the image disappears.  He was a reflection, uh?” Ric suggested, cocking an eyebrow.

“This guy was no reflection.  He was 3D.  I could see his necktie.  And he had some kind of pin or button on his lapel.  There was substance there, texture. Flesh and blood real.  He was there.”

“Hey, weird things happen.”  Ric tapped his temple.  “These things aren’t cameras.  You see things and your brain processes them.  Or doesn’t.  I tell you about my wallet last week?  I swore I lost it.  I always keep it on my nightstand.  Last week, I’m getting ready for work and can’t find it.  OK, I left it in my jeans.  Not there.  I check my jacket. I look under the bed, on top of the dresser, the jackets in the closet.  I pull the nightstand from the wall to see if it slipped on the floor.  I check the sofa in the living room.  Then it hit me.  I must have left in the car when I went to the drive thru to cash a check.  I run to the car, look all over.  Not there.  I search the bedroom again.  Phone rings, so I run down to the kitchen.  It’s Jessica. I tell her I must have left my wallet at her place.  She tears her place apart, nothing.  I hang up, go upstairs, and there’s my wallet on the nighttable.  It was there all the time.  A black wallet on a white table.  How could I miss that?” 

Ric glanced down at Ted’s change on the bar, “Hey, Deal of the Day!  Trade you a buck for a dime”  He jerked his thumb toward the pay phone.  “I gotta call and see when my car’s ready.”  He tossed a bill on the bar and slid the dime into his palm.  “Be right back.”

Ted picked up his sunglasses, watching the reflection of the bottles, then put them on, turning left and right, trying to catch sight of the jukebox behind him.

“Can you believe it?” Ric muttered when he returned. “Twenty-eight-fifty for a new tire.  Believe that?  But, hey, you don’t like my mirage idea?  Got one better for you, Einstein.  It was the Dodge guy.”

“Dodge guy?”

“The guy who hit you.  You said you were walking toward your car and saw a guy in a black Dodge back into your bug, bang the fender, and drive off.  You chased after him, but he never stopped.  So today he spots you and the car, and he freaks.  Maybe he stands there wondering if he should do the right thing and apologize and give you his number?  Then he decides to runs off.  Something makes you turn, and you think you still see him, but he was already gone.  You did not see him, you just remembered him standing there. Just a memory flash.  Cops and lawyers will tell you eyewitness testimony is always shaky.  Think of magicians. They can fool a whole crowd with ‘now you see it, now you don’t.’”  He twisted his palm back and forth like an illusionist with a trick coin.

Ted shook his head, “I dunno, he was really there when I looked up.  At least for a second.  And then he was gone.  And something else.  I felt he knew me.  Like we were connected somehow.”

“Course he knew you.  His Dodge connected with your bug, remember?  Look, my car won’t be ready until three.  Let’s grab a round.”

Ted sighed, then slid the dollar across the bar and motioned for two more Buds.

The End

Image by Rundvald: Volkswagen 1300 “Beetle” 1960s from Wikimedia Commons