The Cerebral Catalyst

It was late at night and the two circumstantial friends were leaving a bar. The Dodgers had just dropped eight of ten games and one friend was far on his way to blacking out. The other, Omar, was a distant carefree buzzed. They walked the car-less street and watched people, heckled some and tried to talk to others.

"Alright, it's your turn." The near blacked-out friend, Derrick, said.

Omar didn't answer and only changed his direction to see if anything would broach his mind upon this new approach. He'd spent that entire day downtown in a coffee shop playing chess and re-reading Hesse's Siddhartha.

"What can you teach me?" he asked two brunettes sitting on a park bench in the dark night.

They looked up at him after an awkward pause that obliviously passed him. Derrick stood a step behind and closed his eyes as he swayed on his heavy feet. They were two brunettes and they were not the two girls who would appreciate this absurd comment. They stared at him blankly from the park bench.

Then, the thicker brunette on Omar's left widened her eyes in recognition and bolted up, running across the street to two males. The other brunette sat there and watched her friend. Omar turned back from this flight and smiled. He was less drunk now. Still wasted, however.

"So," Omar said as he sat down heavily, miscalculating the bench, and shaking the girl. He looked across and saw the glistening bay. It was cold near the water. "You don't know those guys?" Omar said and looked at her. He raised his hand to his hair and streaked his fingers through it. The hair stayed on its end. She watched this.

"No," she answered in hesitation as her friend ignored her.

"My name's Omar."

"Amanda."

"Beautiful name," Omar quipped back.

"So, honestly," he shrugged, "what do you know?" he said as Derrick swayed distantly. His eyes were closed.

Amanda shrugged her shoulders defensively.

"You're right. What is there really to know...?" Omar mused. "But don't people want an opportunity like this... here I am, a total stranger and I'm sitting here, totally open to what you have to say. I'm a child and I have no convictions and anything you say I'll take and treasure. Isn't that a power everyone wants?"

She turned her head to the side and sighed, he looked at her intensely, like he really wanted an answer and she spoke under his scrutiny.

"I don't know..." she trailed off and Omar heard his friend say, "I'll give you a dollar for a cigarette," to a couple walking down the street. They were half a block from the aquarium.

"Happiness is the goal... money is freedom... power is joy... ideals trump pragmatism... the pursuit of the individual ego is the supreme achievement of mankind... man is nothing and society is God? You like Ayn Rand?" Omar asked, impressed with own speech. "I'm a fucking intellectual," he said.

"Ayn Rand?"

"Which one of those statements is the best?"

She answered with wide eyes and silence. He mouth-fanned empty O's as she leaned away from him.

"Is it better to pick one and run with it, try to convince everyone else of its merit, or is it best to be aware of them all and wander about in some sort of acknowledging median?"

She was getting ready to stand. Omar had a hand behind the bench and he was leaning into her. He stunk of alcohol.

"Fuck yeah. Huh... objectivism, or relativism... something like that. It's up to me? Nice... I'll try it, for a week." Omar said.

"Good. Good..." he retreated his hands back to something normal and smiled slyly. "Now that we have that out of the way... can I buy you a drink somewhere?"

"Um, I don't think my boyfriend will like that."

"You don't have a boyfriend. You haven't been laid in months. You ever had an Arab prick? They're long and skinny. 'Cause of the desert." Omar could hear his friend laugh.

And like that she was gone.

"Derrick was smoking and he slowly stepped toward his friend. "No one likes Muslims anymore."

"I'm not a Muslim you fuckface."

"That's beside the point. We tried to be understood but there's nothing to understand anymore. It's just hate, hating on us. That girl was too happy. You can only get the sad girls. Sorry to say. Leave the happy ones for me."

Derrick walked off, left Omar sitting in his stupor. There was a scummy male with a small girl. They were druggies. They had that layer of apathetic grit and the air of having something profound and INTENSE on the horizon of opportunity that's accompanied by recreational drug use.

"Have you been to the Third Floor?" The guy asked.

"We left that place, man, it sucked... man."

"Word to that homie!" Omar said as Derrick swayed.

"You guys play hackie sack?" the girl asked.

"Are you kidding?" Omar turned intently.

The girl looked with a blank stare.

Derrick took a drag and smirked, "Fuck yeah, we're champions, best in the city."

They walked down the cobble road toward the bay.

"I'm drunk," Derrick said and burped. They turned a corner and began walking along the water.

"I don't know what to do with my life," Omar said and shook his head.

Derrick made to speak, then stopped. He laughed then said, "shut it."

Omar felt embarrassed for saying that and smirked at himself. "I'm bored."

"Go to business school."

"I know."

"Drop out and move to Panama."

"That's it."

"Ski Alaska 12 months a year."

"I know man."

"Shut it," Derrick said. It was a joke, saying, 'shut it'. It was a joke they shared because they were spending a lot of restless time together.

They walked on and their talk moved away from these dangerous confessions. It roamed back to the sarcastic belittling of everything and it was comfortable and distant. They walked along the waterfront and heard the distant noises of the closing bars.

There were rocks to the right and Omar jumped down on them as the quiet sloshing of the water rose and fell, carrying plastic bottles and corners of Styrofoam.

Omar stopped and Derrick walked on, standing on the raised cement barrier between rocks and walkway. Derrick turned and walked back and saw it too.

It was a dead body.

"Wow," Omar said and they stared together, standing motionless.

"Shut it," Derrick said softly and Omar smiled lightly.

"That's a dead body," he said looking up.

"I guess so."

"You ever see one before?"

"I watched my father die."

"Call the cops, I guess."

Derrick looked at the body and didn't answer.

"You think you should call the cops?"

"No," Derrick answered.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to."

"Why?"

"It's... too much of a hassle. I'll be on record... it's too much... of an intrusion. I'm not calling the cops... I'm not doing it." Derrick said, strangely defiant. Omar watched him and wondered.

"Okay..." Omar said and watched the body gently rise with the lulling dark liquid. "The body is floating in the ocean," Omar said in a strange childish pronunciation. He looked to Derrick and they laughed. "The body is floating in the ocean," he said in a singsong.

"See if there's a wallet."

"I'm not reaching in its pocket!" Omar said as he turned to his friend. Then tentatively stepped a rock lower and bent over the water, pulled the corpse by the back pocket, and fished out a wallet.

"Shit," Derrick said.

"You can make an anonymous call," said Omar, "from a payphone," as he held the wet wallet in his hand.

"No. Why should it be my responsibility? Some authorities will find it tomorrow."

"The States need more chaos," Omar mused distantly. "In so much of the world there's extreme chaos." Omar finished and Derrick had turned, he was looking at the skyscrapers behind him.

"You wouldn't want your family to know you were dead?" Omar asked.

"Not necessarily... why not be a mystery? Maybe this guy decided to start a new life and's living on an island in the Indian Ocean. What if his family could think that instead?"

"Travis Gardner Anderson," Omar read. "119 Sunset... 6-foot-1, blue eyes, black hair. Organ donor," Omar read and looked up for Derrick to make a joke. Derrick saw this invitation and shook his head. "Shut it," he said quietly.

"Well, shit, man. What do you want to do?"

"Pass out."

"Are you serious?"

"Absolutely."

Omar stared at him and waited as if Derrick would change his mind.

"Let's go to his address and see if he's got family there."

"Why? Your license is still from Colorado... mine's the previous apartment I had... he probably doesn't live there."

"Why are you so opposed to helping out?"

"How is this helping? It'd be better to let him sink and decompose."

"How? ...Put a rock in his mouth then. Sink him."

"I'm not touching him. I'm walking on. I didn't see shit. I was up here on the sidewalk. You were walking down there."

"Fuck," Omar said and waited with the wallet in his hand. He watched Derrick move on without turning. He looked back to the corpse as it swayed and he scrambled up the rock and chased after his friend.

They walked together in silence and Omar said,"Thirty-three dollars."

"Split it?"

Omar looked at him and handed him a ten.

"Cool." Derrick easily accepted it.

They walked on and Derrick was leading them back to the train. They spoke little and none of the body. On the platform Omar said tonelessly: "I have no idea where on Sunset that is," and stood looking out on the tracks. Derrick stood next to him looking out as well. There was a drunken bum, singing to himself several paces to their left. To their right, further down, there was a violin and cello playing eerie, echoing music. Derrick was obvious in his listening. He took out a quarter from his pocket and mindlessly flipped it in the air. He then sent it tumbling to the tracks below where it bounced to a stop. Both watched the quarter tumble to a stop.

"We could Google the address," Omar said rising his intonation in a question.

"Let me see the wallet, what's his address?" Derrick said, annoyed. The violin soared with long, vibrating notes.

Omar said the address again and slowly handed the wet wallet over. Derrick took it and flipped the thing over in his hand. He opened it and there was a credit card, no pictures, a Blockbuster card, a grocery card, and a soggy punch card for coffee. The light from a train could be seen and the rumbling below could be felt. The train began screeching in its approach. Then, just before the train arrived, Derrick tossed the wallet onto the tracks where it disappeared under the heavy train.

______________________________________
Joel Van Noord, upon discovering that he lacked a tagline, submitted the following: "What, wait... uh, eh... fuck. Ok. Eeee uh, Iiiiiiiiiii, sch, bbbbuuuuuuuuurrk. Man, I really don't know. Ok. Um. Shit. Shit shit shit. Ur. I don't, maybe. Iiiii. Ok, wait... like this... heeeet ur a bleeee s tar uh. I don't er, ah. Ok... ok." Also, he likes friends: myspace.com/jvnjvn.

posted 01.14.08.

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