Page 34 - WTP Vol. XII #2

John Lennon is dead. Somebody shot him right in front of his apartment building–one of his fans. You can get hurt anywhere, by anyone; even at your own house, even by people who say they love you–espe- cially them. I’m thirteen and I’ve known this for years, but it looks like John didn’t, or maybe he did, but had a momentary lapse in judgment. The newscasters say he sent his security guard home a half hour before it happened. Poor John. He forgot the first rule of sur- vival. Never assume you’re safe.
~
It’s noon but I’m still in my nightgown making a grilled cheese sandwich when I first hear the news.
I rush to the TV, convinced I’d heard wrong, but
then I see John splayed out on a stretcher. “No!” I cry out, spatula raised like a shield. My voice ricochets through the empty apartment. There’s nobody home to come running and see what’s wrong. My younger sister Carol is at school and I haven’t seen my mother since yesterday, when she went out for cigarettes and never came back. It’s just as well. I’m not good with that sort of attention. My mother claims I don’t know how to be comforted. I wonder how that happened, I’m tempted to say but don’t, because questioning my mother only leads to trouble. My grilled cheese is burning at this point, but I’ve lost my appetite any- way. I lug the pan off the burner with a clang. Every noise sounds louder now, making the apartment seem emptier, so I get dressed and go upstairs to 2B to see if my best friend David is home. It’s a Tuesday, but we’re both off from school because of an electri- cal problem at the junior high.
“John Lennon is dead,” I tell him as soon as the door opens.
“I heard,” he says, his head jutting through the crack in the door. David has dark hair with bangs that sweep over his eyes, making him seem brooding and mysterious. He’s neither, but today brooding seems like a good idea. We go outside and sit on the front steps and stare out at the traffic—arms crossed against the December chill, elbows almost touching.
David shakes his head in disbelief. “The guy who shot him asked for an autograph. He literally asked John for a favor, and then killed him a few hours later.” David says literally a lot. He literally says literally all the time.
I picture that scene—John taking the pen, brushing 27
hands with his future killer. “I’m surprised he couldn’t tell something was off.”
“Not everyone is like you Charlene,” David says. He knows about the sixth sense I have.
I’ve always had a pretty good radar when it comes to detecting danger. Once, when I was walking down Stanford Ave. with my mother and my little sister Carol, I got that itchy feeling I sometimes get and insisted that we cross to the other side of the road. I was only seven at the time, and Carol was just two. My mother was in one of her manic phases, which probably explains why it took her so long to listen, but after a lot of whining on my part, she finally gave in. Just as we’d safely crossed the street, a green station wagon came barreling down the opposite side of the road. The car hopped the sidewalk, right where we’d been standing only seconds earlier, and plowed straight through a group of pedestrians, sending them flying into the air at odd angles, like in a cartoon, only stopping when it crashed into a Radio Shack.
David stands up and suggests that we go to the news- stand on Vallejo Street to see if we can find any papers that cover the story.
“I’ve got to be back for Carol’s bus at 3:00,” I tell him. My sister is only eight years old. David nods. He doesn’t ask why my mother can’t get her, because he already knows my mother is missing. I tell him ev- erything. “And let’s go to the stand on Fremont” I add, knowing, somehow, that the one on Vallejo will have already sold out its stash.
~
My mother claims I inherited my psychic abilities from my grandmother on my father’s side but my
Dominoes in Motion
alison BullocK