Borrowed Time
by Scotty

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“The Second Ring of Power.”

Justin looked through the shelf in the direction of the voice. “What ?”

“What she's asking for is “The Second Ring of Power” by Carlos Castaneda. Should be in Philosophy or check New Age. Sometimes it’s there.”

It was in New Age. In fact there were two copies, both in hardback, between a book on mood stones and another on the laying on of hands. Weird section. Justin had to smile.

When the customer had gone, he returned to the stacks to reshelve the pile of books he had pulled down during his search.

“Thanks for the help. I’m just babysitting the store this morning and I would have felt really guilty losing that sale.”

The dark-haired young man who was still browsing the next aisle did not turn around as he spoke. “How old are you ?”

Surprised by the question, Justin made his answer, "19" sound like "old enough".

“Then you have no excuse. You should have read that by now.”

When he finally looked up, Justin felt his breath catch. There were two of the bluest eyes he had ever seen, and for a moment he stared, wondering if what he he was seeing was real. The eyes smiled and Justin turned away. He had wanted to keep talking, but instead laid the last book across the top of the others, blocking the view, and stepped down off the ladder.

At once he felt a rush of warm air as the storeroom door opened and Audrey, owner of “The Changing Hands Bookstore”, plunged forward with three large shopping bags leading the way. Justin checked his watch. Exactly 1:00. He took the bags from the older woman's hands and set them on the floor at the end of the long counter.

“You are a life saver. My worthless nephew hasn’t come back yet, I take it?”

“No. But I didn’t expect him.” Justin reached under the counter for his backpack. “I thought I might get some work done but it’s been a busy couple hours. Oh, that box came Express Mail. And there were just two calls. Both Barry.”

Justin raised his eyebrows and smiled devilishly, kissing Audrey on the cheek as he squeezed by.

“Now you stop that,” Audrey protested. “We’re just friends.”

“Absolutely.”

Then, remembering those blue eyes, he turned back and nodded to his right.

“Science Fiction. Very knowledgeable.”

He deliberately raised his voice on the last two words and then, when there was no response, he winked at Audrey and disappeared out the back way.

Audrey looked after him and had to smile. Of all of Jack’s new friends at school, she liked Justin the best. Anyone who loved the written word the way Justin did got her vote. But there was something else about him. He made people open themselves. Every conversation turned into an event and no one could resist that kind of attention.

Audrey had cooled off and poured herself a glass of iced tea when JC finally approached the register. He placed two books on the counter and then reached for a rear pocket that didn’t exist, looking for his wallet. He was chewing methodically on a toothpick and looked down and away, not making eye contact. Audrey found that same behavior in a lot of the young people Justin’s age and she didn’t like it at all. Not rude really. Just detached, indifferent. Too many hours with Walkmen stuck in their ears. It might be taboo in some other cultures, but as far as Audrey was concerned, American parents still taught their offspring that eye contact showed good manners. But to please herself, she made polite conversation anyway.

“Ah, another Spenser fan.”

She was putting the second ISBN number into the computer for inventory when she stopped and looked closely at the book’s back cover.

“Oh, wait, you didn’t find this in that aisle, did you, in Science Fiction ?”

She seemed genuinely concerned. The young man pulled the toothpick from his mouth, laughed gently and then smiled at her. It was a handsome face with the chiseled cheek bones and five o’clock shadow that the media today called rugged. Audrey wondered if they still used words like chiseled and five o’clock shadow . When he finally did speak, she was surprised by the gentleness of his voice.

“I'm sorry. Daydreaming, I guess. Yes, I like Spenser. It’s a guilty pleasure. Helps to pass the hours on the bus. And no, not in SciFi. In New Age.” He said the words as if they amused him.

Audrey wasn’t quite sure what to make of the bus comment, but she liked anyone who liked books and she was quite sure that this wasn’t the first copy of either author that he had purchased.

“Where would you have put it ?”

“New Age is fine. Whatever gets it off the shelf and into somebody’s head. It probably gets more attention there than it would in Philosophy or Religion.”

Audrey smiled again. She liked being right and she was right to like this young man. He put two twenties on the counter and looked around the store and then past Audrey into the storeroom.

“Can I help you find something else ?”

He narrowed his eyes as if quickly sizing her up before speaking. She apparently passed the litmus test.

“The guy who was here. I guess he’s gone now ?”

It was more of a statement than a question and Audrey noticed a change in his demeanor. He was actually a little shy. It was nice to see in a young person these days. Very nice indeed.

“My babysitter, you mean ?”

He nodded, amused by the familiar phrasing. She put the receipt and both books into a small, brown bag and counted out his change.

“I’ve always called this store my baby, so Jack and his friends call working here, babysitting. But yes, he’s gone home now.”

He pulled the books back out of the bag, sliding the receipt into the copy of “Hush Money” and then pushed the empty tote and Carlos Castaneda back to Audrey.

“Would you do me a favor ? The next time you see Jack, will you give him this? He’ll know who it’s from.”

He smiled slightly and held the door for an elderly customer before walking out into the bright Arizona sunshine. It was only then that she too noticed the startling blue eyes. As if he could read her thoughts, the young man stopped to slip on a pair of dark glasses and nodded back at Audrey through the window.

It was well after three o’clock as she was closing the shop that she saw the book he had left behind. She couldn’t imagine her nephew being remotely interested in this story and she wondered how the young man even knew of him. As she pulled a bookmark from the display and started writing his name and the date, she paused and looked out the front window, feeling like she had forgotten something important. Then, nodding knowingly to herself, she crossed out the name she had already written and replaced it with “For Justin”.

• • •

Justin squinted as he crossed the plaza near the campus. Even dark glasses didn’t help against El Sol at this time of year. If he'd been driving, he'd have been blinded. Adjusting his backpack, he negotiated the melange of students and tourists attempting to peacefully co-exist in the crowded streets of Tempe. These were the last few weeks before 120 degree summer temperatures would close down the Promenade. Then the Valley of the Sun essentially turned into a ghost town. Locals called it the vacation season. Most of the students went home and a like number of residents headed for the San Diego area for relief.

But this was also a great atmosphere for a writer and that’s basically how Justin defined himself. He never tired of watching people and listening to the sounds of life. He thought about the man he’d just seen on the news who had spent the last twenty years of his life searching for the quietest places on earth. He’d climbed mountains and ventured deep into caves and jungles, all in the name of escaping humanity and the soundtrack of being alive. It was something Justin would never really understand. Except for today. Today was different. He had expected Audrey’s book store to provide a peaceful and quiet haven on a Sunday morning, but he had been wrong.

The last day of regular classes had long passed and most of Justin’s finals were over, but he still had one project hanging over his head. So he'd spent most of the afternoon holed up in the Hayden Library finishing the final draft of a paper that still had to be presented to his seminar group in the morning. God, how he hated reading his work aloud. Writing was such an intimate process that sharing it with strangers, even other emerging writers, was physically painful. The thought made him shudder.

The class had been called ‘The Literature of Obsession’ and Justin had loved everything about it. A disciplined writer by the end of his junior year in high school, he got up early every morning and devoted a minimum of two hours to whatever he was currently working on and to some pieces that would probably never be finished to his satisfaction. To him, that was the great part about being a writer. Every day was new and yet open later to revision.

He glanced at the old Spanish clock near the corner and realized that by the time he got back to the house, it would be time to turn around and leave again if he was to meet Jack and the others by 5:00.

“Meatballs,” he said aloud, absent-mindedly.

A man who stood next to him glanced his way, but said nothing as they both stepped into the crosswalk. Justin smiled and wondered how often he did that when there was no one around to notice.

As crowded as the streets were, it made no sense to keep going, so without warning, he turned back against the flow of foot traffic, and bumped jarringly into two women who had also just stepped off the curb.

He mumbled apologies at no one in particular and stood stockstill, letting the other pedestrians pass around him like water. He didn’t realize that he had also squeezed his eyes shut, like it was actually water splashing by, until he felt someone take his arm and guide him to the curb.

How embarrassing! Whoever it was had obviously mistaken him for blind or, at the very least, lost. He looked down and let himself fall in with the gait.

“That was interesting. Do you try it with cars, too ?”

The voice sounded strangely familiar. When he dared to look, the same startling blue eyes from the book store were studying him closely. He felt the flush before it rose in his cheeks and he did the only thing he could think of at the moment. He laughed.

“Well, I could say I was doing research for a paper I’m writing, but that would ignore the obvious. Talking to yourself in public and bouncing off other pedestrians doesn’t do much for one’s image. Don’t judge the university by your experiences with me. There really are intellectuals here who don’t play tag in the street and whose first thought isn’t that Carlos Castaneda sang “Oye Como Va”.

His eyes smiled first and then he started to laugh. He had not really moved back except to release Justin's arm and at that very moment, Justin became aware of his remarkably subtle cologne. The French writer, Marcel Proust, had said that the sense of smell invoked our deepest memories and Justin was certain that he would remember this moment vividly if he ever again encountered that fragrance anywhere. The stranger suddenly seemed aware of Justin too and took a step away.

“Hello again. I’m Josh.”

“Justin.”

He took his outstretched hand and repeated the name as if testing it out.

“Justin. Well, Justin, I’ll take my chances with you. Is there time in your schedule for coffee before taking your act on the road ?

He was about to protest, but instead saw the twinkle in his eye. Those eyes really were a problem. Justin guessed that he used them generously to get his way. He didn’t look like an axe murderer, but then neither did Ted Bundy. And there was something intriguing about him. No harm in having coffee this one time.

“I actually do have some time to kill before I’m supposed to meet my roommate.”

Had he really said ‘kill’ ?

The stranger seemed genuinely surprised by his reponse. “Well, killing time isn’t exactly flattering, but okay.”

“Sorry. That came out wrong. C'mon. There’s a Starbuck’s over on Mill Street.”

He again used his head to indicate the direction, a habit that he'd picked up while working as a waiter the summer after his senior year. Someone always wanted an answer just when your hands were full.

“Does it involve crossing many streets ?”

This time Justin did not check for the teasing look, but simply pushed him ahead down the street. He didn’t seem to notice when the stranger slowed to put his dark glasses back on or the heads that turned to stare as they weaved through the crowd.

The hands that fingered the coffee cup were smooth and delicate, and the mouth that sipped from that cup was full and beautiful. Justin hadn’t noticed these things before because of the eyes. His clothing was very expensive and the haircut probably cost a lot more than any Justin had ever had. He wore a thick, leather-banded watch on his left wrist which probably meant he was right-handed. No rings, but he did wear an unusual braided bracelet that he twisted every few minutes either out of habit or because the Arizona heat was making him more aware of it.

He was taller than Justin remembered from their brief encounter in the book store. Of course he had been on a ladder at the time, so his perspective was off a bit. A couple things about him definitely pointed east of the Mississippi. He crossed his legs at the knee, something Justin had only ever seen while visiting his aunt in New York. And the way he ordered coffee. Arizona got enough ‘Snowbirds’ each winter that the girl at the counter never even blinked when he ordered it ‘neat’. Justin filed away the character profile and refocused to find that his attention to detail had not gone unnoticed.

Justin laughed suddenly at the irony of his response, inhaling coffee and then choking it back out. He held up his hand in protest as the stranger started to get up to help.

“I’m okay. Sorry. How does someone from Florida look like they’ve never seen the sun anywhere but on television ?”

The stranger smiled and withdrew his hand.

“I travel. A lot. And that's a foul. Two questions in a row.”

“Oh, more rules now? I get it. Like in ‘Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’.”

“What?”

“You know, the ‘questions only’ scene.

He stared at Justin blankly.

“Okay, I’m finally starting to like this. You mean I might have 'read something that you haven’t but should have'?”

He studied Justin closely, playing with the napkin under his spoon. “You can’t know if 'I should have' already. You don’t even know how old I am.”

“How old are you ?”

“No way. That’s three questions in a row for you.”

“Okay. Take your turn.”

The stranger shifted in his chair and stared at Justin for a long minute. He really was a card player or else just overly cautious.

“Why didn’t you give me your real name a few minutes ago ?”

Justin started to protest when a man not much older than he who wore a green Starbuck’s shirt tapped the stranger on the arm.

“Excuse me, sir. Sorry to interrupt. I’m the shift manager here, and I’m not even sure how to handle this, but I think you might want to follow me. Now.”

Justin was still trying to figure out what he had meant about his real name when he saw the change in his face and an immediate, almost mechanical response. He'd reached for his dark glasses and picked up the novel he'd been carrying with him since the morning.

Then he stood and turned purposely to the manager as if they were old friends, whispering quietly with his face angled away . The young man started to raise his arm as if to point and the man who'd called himself Josh slowly but deliberately interrupted its path, shaking his head.

Justin wasn't sure what caught his attention just then, but when he turned his head slightly, he saw a large group of people on the sidewalk just beyond the window; some of them were actually at the window having stepped into the planter that separated the shop from the sidewalk. They were looking right at him.

Actually they were looking past him and he knew why. He must have realized who the stranger was at some point in their conversation. But acknowledgement of that recognition might have brought a swift end to this incredible day. And he hadn't wanted it to end. Not yet.

What happened next was like slow motion. The stranger touched his shoulder and leaned down to speak.

“Let’s go,” he said.

As Justin stood up, he suddenly felt very light-headed and had to sit back down. This time he heard his name.

“Justin.”

But he merely shook his head.

“I can’t. You go.”

The stranger inhaled and then released the breath again, almost reluctantly. It was clear than he had been here before. Justin couldn’t have known exactly what the look in his eyes meant. The writer in him would have seen some confusion, some surprise. Later he would call it closer to sadness. Even regret.

More slow motion frames. Ther man with the beautiful hands crossing to a swinging door where other employees gathered in a small group of their own. Him looking back one last time. Police cars that parted the crowd, escorting him away. The people who'd whispered his name and then, in frustration, had asked Justin instead for an autograph.

What he would remember as he walked home alone in the fading light were not those images. Not even his cologne or his beautiful his eyes. It was instead the haunted sound of his breathing.

When the time he had borrowed from a world other than his own was at an end.

It was a sound that Justin would not soon forget.