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“Snap”

  By Kenny Jackson

  Copyright 2015 Kenny Jackson, all rights reserved

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  The Story

  More Stories and Contact Information

  To understand my story you have to understand that I’m a people watcher. I don’t mean people watching as a once in a while thing. There isn’t any sitting on benches in the mall laughing at haircuts, jewelry, and nascar jumpsuits, not for me. I watch all the time. It’s a part of my routine. When I go to the grocery store, I buy groceries and I hear and see next to me, as one example, a woman and her daughter. Does the daughter check off the shopping list? How far apart do they stray? What does the mother do when her little girl asks a question she isn’t old enough to have answered?

  To understand, you have to understand that I know people. A lifetime of watching’ll do that. The little things people say and do are my native language; I started watching long before speaking my first words. That’s how I knew what it was that I told my fat little psychiatrist, and what he knew, and that’s why I had to kill him. I understand your insides. Cath and I are proof of that.

  What do you call me? Call me Ben. It’s the name Cath called me.

  At first I saw her the same way I see everyone, as a part of my daily routine. Before long that routine moved to put me next to Cath more often. I watched, and what I saw was just beautiful. Cath was so open and alive. A lot of the time, I see into people through what they hide. A person hesitates or they turn their head away and I know what they’re afraid of, or what they’re ashamed of. I had my eye on Cath for months. She never hid a thing. Understand, I didn’t pester her. Not one single time did I even speak to Cath. I watched her and that’s all I did until I knew her well enough to feel comfortable.

  I think people call it a “meet-cute.” The weather man was dead on with his forecast. It was raining sheets. The question wasn’t when would the sun come back out, it was how bad would the rain get? I was driving with the wipers on full and I saw Cath’s car pulled over on the shoulder. The front-left tire was blown out, that much we could see even through the rain. I had my nephew with me. The kid rounds his age up to nine. I pulled my car beside Cath’s to ask if she wanted our help. We could see in through the window she was already wet. Later on Cath told us she’d gone back to her trunk to get her spare tire, but it wasn’t there. I offered to drive Cath to the nearest gas station. She agreed and slid into the car beside me. I drove, carefully, while she drip-dried and answered my nephew’s questions.

  “How old are you?”

  “Don’t worry, least you’re not as old as my Uncle.”

  “My Mom’s pregnant. You ever been pregnant?”

  “Well my Mom says it’s easy. Bet you could be pregnant if you wanted.”

  In the middle of this inquisition, a front tire on my car went flat. It blew so that you could hear the sound and there was no doubt about it. I didn’t have a spare either. We laughed. The gas station wasn’t too far away anymore. We could walk it. I had an umbrella, and I insisted that Cath and my nephew share it. She insisted the three of us would share it together, it was big enough. The umbrella wasn’t big enough for three and Cath knew it wasn’t. We pressed in close but my nephew was the only one who stayed dry.

  Cath and I saw each other often after that.

  We went to the botanical garden. A distant relation of mine was marrying an acquaintance of hers. People get married at the botanical garden sometimes. I didn’t like the guy too well and Cath rolled her eyes when she heard the girl’s name. We decided to pretend like we’d come to the wedding on purpose and ran a whispered commentary through the service.

  Another time we did a Karaoke crawl, and tried out all the local bands and none of the local karaoke machines. Cath sings because she likes to sing. She knows exactly how good she is, and isn’t. When I sing karaoke I either do a parody of the actual performer, or arrange with the band what I call a counterintuitive cover. Such as: a piano-only, easy-listening “Back in Black,” or a heavy-metal version of Shirley Temple’s “Animal Crackers.” I know the guy who plays bass in the band that was on the last stop of our crawl. Near the end of their set the guitarist started getting sick. It was food poisoning, apparently. Cath and I both play a little guitar. My friend said we could step in for the guitarist if we wanted. He wasn’t happy about the guitarist getting sick off the place’s food and he said the crowd was too drunk to know the difference anyway. Cath and I switched off songs. My friend rigged it so they only played ones we knew. The last song, Cath did the strumming and I did the left hand.

  To Cath, these happy twists in our evenings seemed providential, and I appreciated each fortunate turn even more than Cath did. They were providential in a way. It wasn’t how Cath hoped. It wasn’t fate or God or cupid bringing us together. It was me. In my opinion, the best kind of still-small voice is the one that says exactly what you want it to say. Manufacturing fate isn’t hard. Cupid asks mainly for a lot of watching and some careful planning. The things themselves that you have to do are simple.

  Watching for where a woman hides her spare keys takes a little patience, and that’s all. Once you find out she keeps them in the big, hollow geode rock beside her garage, taking them out after it gets dark is a cakewalk. Now stop and think. How many doors have you unlocked in your life? How many car trunks? Do you a lot of times, when you’ve got the right key, try to unlock a door and you can’t get it done? It was just as easy as that for me to take the keys, unlock Cath’s garage, unlock her car trunk, and move the spare tire to some likely place in the garage.

  If you apply patience and an attention to detail, people’s lives open right up for you. Every weekday for the last month, Cath took a shortcut to work. The road was a gravel road. No one knew about the road and no one used it. Going out to that gravel road early in the morning and spreading bent nails across two sections of that road wasn’t even as hard as most household chores.

  Understand, I know you. You read this and think to yourself, “I am much more careful with my keys. I only drive well-traveled roads.” Cath welcomed me in her own way. If she’d taken better care of her keys or if she’d ridden the bus to work I wouldn’t have said, “there’s no getting’ to her,” and given up. I needed Cath.

  You welcome me in your own way. Do you ever type in the garage code without hiding your hand? I’m in your garage. Do you ever use public wifi? Your pictures are tacked up on the ceiling above my bed. I think about you every waking hour of my life. How often do you think about me? If you interest me, I don’t get bored. It was raining for Cath and I, for our cute-meet. How do you think I did that? I waited.

  Cath and I were, as people say, a dream come true. I had all of Cath and Cath had all of me. We were perfect and we were happy and healthy. Imagine my surprise when I saw her name two spaces down from my real name in that swollen, balding psychiatrist’s appointment book. Cath was so together. She was so self-aware. Why see a psychiatrist at all? That was my reaction the second I saw her name. When I really thought about it, it was one of those things that reinforces a person in your mind. Cath wasn’t effortlessly together. She worked at it, and I knew that. Knowing the details made me love her even more.

  That night I got Cath to tell me about her appointment with the psychiatrist. The more you know about another person, the closer you are to that person. Her old doctor’d moved away. She’d switched to mine on a friend’s suggestion. Cath wasn’t an independent woman. She was an independent person, and I loved that about her. This time, it just meant I’d have to get her to decide and leave Doctor Allen.

  Much as I’d have liked to, it was out of the question for me to switch psychiatrists. An ancient court order chained me to Allen. Cath didn’t know I saw a psychiatrist; she did
n’t know about my past. The name Cath called me wasn’t my real name. If she’d looked in Allen’s appointment book, she wouldn’t have even recognized me because none of the names written there were Ben.

  It was a risky situation but I know I would’ve come up with a way out, and it would’ve been one that didn’t hurt my Cath. A little time to watch and to plan was all I needed. But the good Doctor Allen got in our way.

  I knew all about Doctor Allen before we even had our first session. A situation like that where the other person has all the power is one you want to approach cautiously. Doctor Allen had a very high opinion of hypnotism. He did it to everyone and I knew I wouldn’t be the exception. Still, I made an effort. When I met with my psychiatrist for the first time I explained to him a case that I’d read about. This man was convicted of a whole score of terrible crimes based only on the testimony of his victims. It wasn’t your regular testimony. At the time of the crimes, the victims were just children and they couldn’t remember anything about what happened. So a doctor hypnotized them, and that made the victims remember all sorts of things about the man and what he’d done to them. Because of the testimony he was convicted and spent decades locked up. Then one day, thanks to