The gunshot
echoes throughout the warehouse, Big Tony squints away from his 9mm,
the flash bouncing sharp shadows across his soft features.
I’m
the one in the middle with the bullet an inch from my face, about to
lose my life.
Wait.
Sorry.
Sometimes
I forget and become too involved; not me, Freddie. It’s Freddie’s
life, not mine.
I
don’t really have one.
I
step away from the bullet and walk around the thin trail of smoke over
to Big Tony and his boys. Tony runs a small chop-shop operation on the
eastside with his two goons, Stitches and Malone. I stop next to him,
looking across to where I was standing, in front of that bullet.
My
partners, Jack and Dean, stand on either side. Jack’s hand is already
inside his jacket going for his piece, like a good partner.
I
turn and face Tony. The grimace frozen on his face almost resembles
remorse. It better be, dammit; I liked being Freddie. But Freddie Stone,
undercover cop, can’t survive a shot in the face from a mere five
feet away. They’d suspect something if he walks away from that.
I could just reverse time or wipe their memories, but that’d be
cheating. And like what I’m doing right now isn’t cheating?
Not really. Tony shot at me, it was a reflex; I just reacted.
Humph.
Now
I’m just rationalizing. I am cheating, the whole point of this
is to try to be human and when humans get shot in the face they don’t
pull themselves out of the timestream to reflect on it, they die.
Goddamn
you Tony, I loved being Freddie. And a gun? Guns are cheap, a coward’s
tool. They’ve made it so easy to kill each other now, how else
could a slob like you even come close to killing Freddie? I remember
when Stalin had Trotsky killed with an ice pick in Mexico, now that
was original, if not a tad dramatic. But not you Tony, you went with
something as uninspired as blowing his brains out. That’s not fair
to Freddie. He deserves a grander death.
Grand
death? I’ve seen it happen a million times, but death is never
grand, just a reminder of how brief a human life really is. Trust me,
though; immortality is much worse.
But
I’m getting ahead of myself, and a little too deep for my tastes.
I was trying to tell the story of Freddie Stone and how living his life
helped me feel human, even if it only lasted for 132 days.
X
X X
The
idea for Freddie came to me when I was performing a routine c-section
as Dr. John Anderson. Let me talk about John a little, just to get him
out of the way.
John
Anderson was boring. Of all my lives, John Anderson, M.D. ranks up there
as one of the worst. So of course, he lasted the longest, 2,199 days,
just over six years.
But
John was good for something, it was on John Anderson Day 2069 when I
realized a very important truth: all humans are human, not just the
good ones.
The
woman giving birth was unmarried, under-aged, and non-white.
“Kids
never acted like this when I was younger,” an older nurse said,
“Filthy, un-Christian barbarians.”
I
would have told her about how many sinners I’d seen Jesus forgive,
dine, and trade one-liners with, but she wouldn’t have gotten it
anyway.
Then
I realized something. I had never lived as the un-Christian barbarian,
as anybody a little rough around the edges. I had never lived any life
that wasn’t an ideal one. I was always the king or the emperor
or the scientist or the poet, never the loan shark or the pimp or the
assassin. And aren’t pimps just as human as kings are? Aren’t
unwed mothers just as human as old nurses are?
All
humans are human, not just the good ones.
But
I couldn’t just kill John off, there are rules. I wrote all the
rules, but still...
I
created an alter ego for John, somewhat of an antithesis and something
to keep me busy while John’s wife Gloria slept.
The
next day, Fredrick Jonathan Stone, age 43, was transferred from the
Chicago police force to the 82nd precinct of the New York Police Department.
I made sure Freddie was an undercover cop; I wasn’t going to stay
up all night to direct traffic.
I
knew I could get away with it; the city was big enough to handle two
separate lives and Gloria never left SoHo anyway. At the very worst,
she might think John was cheating on her. He wasn’t ... not at
first.
On
Day 67 of his life, Freddie met Betty.
Betty
was a prostitute, but when she met her first trick that day, she changed
her mind. They got as far as a cheap motel when she tried to return
his money. He didn’t exactly see things her way. Lucky for Betty,
I was downstairs with Jack and we heard the TV break and Betty scream.
When
we got upstairs, I wanted the naked pervert to pull a gun. He pulled
a knife. All the same. I shot him twice and was Betty’s hero. She
wanted to thank me and I let her.
Pretty
soon I was letting Betty thank me three times a week.
That’s
probably where things started going downhill and I started getting my
lives crossed.
On
Day 2,190 of John Anderson’s life, Gloria began suspecting him
of cheating.
I
had just come in from a night of busting up a prostitution ring as Freddie,
when I looked over and saw Gloria sitting at the kitchen table with
what was once a full pot of coffee.
“Where
have you been, John?”
“Couldn’t
sleep. Took a walk.”
“You
smell like smoke.”
“So
I had a cigarette.”
“You
don’t smoke.”
“Surprise,”
I said, taking off John’s jacket and setting it on a chair. I wasn’t
being fair to John, not really trying to make Gloria stay, but I was
bored with him. My heart wasn’t it anymore; John’s life, including
Gloria, didn’t mean anything to me anymore. I was looking for any
excuse to get out.
“Who
is she? What’s her name?”
“Why?
You don’t know her.”
She
had tears in her eyes now, but they were tears of anger not sadness.
“Don’t
you love me anymore?”
“Define
‘love.’”
“You
asshole,” she said, crying now. She fled the table, knocking over
a chair.
I
picked the chair up, knowing she’d thank me one day. It wasn’t
right to have her put up with me being bored with John; this would give
her a chance to find somebody, somebody real.
Gloria
left John on Day 2,198. Thank God, it was the excuse I needed to kill
John off and immerse myself completely into Freddie.
When
I threw John’s body off the Seagram Building he had a smile on
his face all the way down.
It’s
strange how the false warmth of a whore made me feel more real than
the love of a good woman. Strange how the flawed life of Freddie Stone
makes me feel human and the perfect life of John Anderson makes me feel
like an actor. I guess that’s the point isn’t it? Humans are
flawed, not perfect.
As
John fell thirty-odd stories, I thought how illogical it seemed to me,
what I was giving up and what I was getting into. Trade Freddie for
John? Why? John had what was thought would be the perfect human life.
He spent his days saving lives in a noble occupation, he had money and
mild fame, and he had a loving wife and a nice house in suburbia. All
that for Freddie? Freddie’s a racist cop who smokes too much and
drinks on the clock. He’s a sexist, fascist who lets prostitutes
walk if they blow him.
This
is what I want to be? This is the life that makes me feel human?
And
just two days after killing John off and watching Gloria cry at his
funeral from a thousand yards away, just two days of being Freddie and
only Freddie, Big Tony puts a bullet within an inch of my nose. Is there
a lesson to be learned in that?
X
X X
I
stare at the bullet suspended mid-air right in front of me. Gunshot
wound to the face? That’s not grand enough for Freddie. Freddie’s
got to go out with a much bigger bang at a much later date.
But
what can I do? Freddie’s got to bite it sometime, and I can’t
just wander around outside of time forever. Well, I could...
A
flesh wound? It’s cheap, but it’s the best I can do right
now, I just can’t let myself die...
Can’t
let myself die?
This
whole time, all of these millennia, I’ve tried and wanted nothing
more than to live and die as a human, to experience humanity. But when
I finally come close, when I finally connect with one of my lives, it’s
not enough, it doesn’t last long enough. I don’t want to die.
Is
that humanity?
X
X X
The
gunshot echoes throughout the warehouse, Big Tony squints away from
his 9mm, the flash bouncing sharp shadows across his soft features.
The
bullet rips across the side of my head just above my left temple. Lots
of blood, but not fatal.
“They
got Stone!” I hear Dean shout.
As
I’m falling, I see Jack fire three times, like a good partner.
Big Tony and his goons go down.
“Jesus,
Jesus, Jesus,” Dean repeats over and over.
Jack
is at my side almost instantly, ripping his jacket off and balling it
up, using it to stop all the blood from pouring out of my head.
“Come
on stay with me you son of a bitch,” he whispers.
I
blink and cough, push him away, grabbing the jacket with my left hand.
I sit up a little.
“I’m
okay,” I rasp. “Just a flesh wound ... it’s just ...
just a flesh wound ...”
