by Luke Boyd

It looked dead with the hood yawning open and two blown tires, so I told Carlo I wanted it cheap. Just for parts. His sales pitched that the sirens and lights still worked and the original factory cabinetry was still in the back. $900 firm.

Now I advertise in the yellow pages and have my phone number painted in bold block letters on the side, captioned under the words “RealLife Emergency Transport”. I tried to paint one of those zigzag heartbeat lifelines down the side of the van but it came out like a mountain range or something. The heart I painted at the end of the lifeline, it looks like it was drawn by a three year old. Lopsided. Uneven. When it rains the rust spots near the roof stream with copper colored water and the heart looks like it’s bleeding. Some people pay thousands for effects like that—I just watch for storm clouds, or take it through the carwash.

Just in case you’re wondering why I feel the need to pass this on, all this shit that means nothing, I’ll tell you.

It’s not my choice.

I mean, it was my choice originally to get it down on scraps of paper and cardboard, but putting it all together, trying to make some sense of it, that part’s not me. I was content with the story as pieces of disembodied paper and cardboard, fluttering all around me. It sounded just fine as disconnected poems and verbal snapshots scribbled on pizza boxes and used tissues.

But then it happened. I became someone else’s emergency. The most pressing issue in somebody’s life—my health and mental clarity consuming someone else’s life. Specifically, my habits filling up pages and pages of Dr. Leznick’s observation journal and my voice thin and watery on dozens of audio cassettes. The file folder with my name got thicker and thicker, then it was emptied into a carton. Now there’s an entire vault in the basement below Dr. Leznick’s house full of cartons. All dated in chronological order with session numbers in black sharpie.

And it’s all for me!

What a challenge! How many tapes can somebody possibly fill up talking about nothing? So far eighty-seven—but now the good doctor is converting them to CDs to maximize recording time. Sometimes he seems pleased with the progress I’m making and other times he insists I get to the point, stop digressing. As always, he can’t help me unless I help myself.

In all fairness though he has been very good to me. He always speaks softly with sincerity and he takes our relationship very seriously. After all, I’ve become his personal number one, four-alarm capitol emergency. I’m a crop circle, a map to the golden city of Cibola. Ever since the first time I was wheeled into his office bells and buzzers have been going off in every corner of his scholarly brain. They say, “This one’s a keeper, doc!” as he measures me up sedately from behind the large desk.

The initial amusement for me has worn off but that’s the predicament of my present tense—trying to convince strangers of the sanity of my past tense. Because it really all goes back there, back to Robin, and I’ve tried to explain that to Leznick and the other labcoats, too. Nobody listens though. They’re too busy listening to all the other bells, bleeps and beeps in their own heads, trying to decide whose emergency needs attention next. Meanwhile, I’m out here on stage trying to speak calmly and rationally into the mic, trying to make my present tense a plausible cause-effect chain. Trying to throw the blame.

So I’m in business for a few months and really getting the hang of it. Really getting the feel for what people need, what kind of things drive them crazy, or constitute emergencies. I’m in between calls driving through the south side with Bill after a late night breakfast. I don’t have the sirens on or anything, we’re just cruising. The air rushing in through the open windows is cold and biting, but not the kind of cold that makes you want to close the window. It’s the kind of cold that makes you want to hold your breath until your lungs burst. The kind of cold that lets you know just how warm and alive you are deep down inside at the core. Where things matter.

Bill and I are passing a bottle of port back and forth. It’s one of those big gallon jugs with handles on both sides of the bottleneck. Each time one of us passes it the wine sloshes around and splashes out the mouth. It’s OK though. It’s vinyl upholstery. And I own every stained and cracked inch of it.

We come up on where the railroad crosses south Sixth and the crossing lights are flashing. The gates are down too so I can’t just scoot through. It’s OK though, like I said we weren’t in a hurry. So I throw the van in park and smell the exhaust leak from the manifold seeping in through the firewall. It feels like November—the open wine, the exhaust, and Bill taking his first pull on a fresh cigar.

Then the train comes.

A hulking black demon, roaring down the rails like some underworld god from a Tolkien book. The single eye-light doesn’t search out prey or enemies, it just illuminates in a sick forecast anything on the tracks about to be erased. As it gets closer I can hear the cars banging against the sides of the track, getting louder and becoming more distinct, not just a mess of sound anymore but a repeated furious hammering. As the engine blows past the front of my van the conductor lets out two long blasts on the air horn. It shakes the van so hard Bill loses his cigar and I have to roll my window up to save my eardrums.

Then I see her.