Recovering the Satellites

As this is a little longer than some of my previous shorts (and because now I know how to do this kind of thing!), you can download a PDF of this story for easier reading instead. Click here to download the PDF.

“Recovering the Satellites” by Counting Crows

For Joshua, mornings were certainly the worst. Some days he just lay in bed, often for hours on end if necessary, waiting until light finally crept its way through the slits between his yellowed bedroom curtains. During one of those dark pre-dawns, he half-dreamt he was caught in an endless cycling freefall from the ceiling to the bed. Other times he saw people’s faces in the blinking smoke alarm above, people from his past arcing across the room as his vision crossed and rolled uncontrollably. And always, he struggled bravely against his bladder’s false sense of need. It was a fantastic exercise in willpower, the theme for seemingly all of his endeavors these days.

On rare mornings - like today for example - he forced himself upright to get the blood moving a little, so as to initiate the skipping of the nasty tedium altogether. It took a few moments for the cobwebs to part, moments he wanly endured. His breath blurted out in wheezy bursts, mercifully clear of the cursed rattling for now. Thought it had been an impressively stifling evening in the valley following the yesterdays’ triple-digit August afternoon, he left the A.C. quiescent overnight. The searing dry air drew buckets of sweat out of him, but also performed miracles on his wretched lungs.

He slid his legs off the bed, testing his limp feet on the cold hardwood. He found a little stiffness in the knees and some pain at the mounds of his outer toes when he applied pressure, but no more. Better than usual. With a grunt he lurched to his full height before bending forward to spare his protesting back. A flash of pain spiked near his right kidney, earning another grunt. He felt for the source with a knuckle, but thankfully it dissipated quickly. What I need right now is a drink.

He cursed the thought and reached for his notebook and pencil on the nightstand. Six AM today, not exactly a new record. He stared longingly at the entry for July 16th, the outlier. Somehow he had made it past lunch without so much as an inkling of the stuff. He winced a smile through the pain to remember that day, one of the very few successes of late. Bill had actually called back for seconds, the first one do to so. That day he actually felt like he was on the right track.

After replacing the pad and pencil to their usual positions, Joshua shuffled over to the cramped bathroom and tried his best to avoid looking at his wrinkled old face in the mirror while he performed his morning rituals. Piss. Fist-full of pills. Gulp of water. Shower. Shave. Another fist-full of pills. Gulp of water. Etc.

It was near 6:30 when he finally made it to the kitchen, now clothed in a loose bathrobe, to brew his coffee. He slid on his ragged slippers to fetch the LA Times from the driveway, because it would probably kill the delivery boy to actually get the damned thing onto his stoop and save him the trouble. The sky teased with lush pinks and purples, as glorious a dawn as could be imagined. But Joshua Rainier never paid much mind to such things. Instead, his attention fell on another explosive turn in the Republican primaries headlining page one.

He lifted his slippers carefully and agonizingly up and over the five stairs separating his home of thirty years from his driveway. He remained upright sipping his unadulterated black coffee and sifting through the newspaper with limited interest. He kept drifting to his recovery project, sifting through candidates, trying to remember. It was a long time ago, most of them. Most of his transgressions were likely long forgotten, but he had sworn he’d try.

Before his coffee was quite finished, but well after it turned unappetizingly cold, Joshua ambled across his living room and into the study. The large oak desk seemed ridiculously barren, its broad, richly stained surface containing only a slight silvery laptop and a mobile phone charging in its cradle. When he first bought it, Joshua made use of every square inch for papers, exams, and stacks of books. First the conversion to the digital age, then retirement... the old professor’s desk turned increasingly antiquated, no matter the quality of its workmanship. He flipped up the screen and began his usual poking around.

Joshua occasionally wondered what the original man behind the twelve steps would think of the internet, in the same way some wonder what the framers of the Constitution would probably be baffled by an AK-47. “STEP 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” It’s that ‘wherever possible’ bit that really screwed him. Hell, twenty years ago you couldn’t find someone who’d moved from Van Nuys to Valencia. Now, something like a dozen people had already accepted “friend” requests.

Arlene hadn’t responded yet though. It was a stretch, to say the least. Those who responded had probably forgotten his cruel drunken jokes and alienating behavior, if not forgiven. Some clearly never realized they’d been pushed away, not passively drifted apart, but all apparently considered it water under the bridge. More like whiskey under the bridge, he thought to himself with a wry chuckle.

But Arlene, that’s different.

For the moment he ignored that particular 800 pound gorilla of an issue and turned his attention towards Ted Applebaum, his newest old “friend”. Ted’s profile picture was a grainy zoomed-out snapshot of a blurry right arm and a six year old boy in full faux big leaguer regalia, apparently documenting a memorable turn at little league practice with a grandson. Joshua sensed with certainty that this photo skimmed over an important detail, namely that Ted now looks like shit. He was able to confirm this undeniable fact in under five clicks, as Ted’s loving daughter Joan provided a lavish cadre of posts from a recent Thanksgiving.

Formerly a terrific athlete (one memorably emasculating summer evening, he actually lapped Josh around the track during a one mile run), Ted now carried what appeared to be a large wine cask under his shirt at all times. That or he had become a total fat-ass. His hair, unsurprisingly absent atop his splotchy naked scalp, seemed to spring forth most lusciously from his ears in a sort of silty, tangled mess. Joshua grinned thinly through his teeth, reveling in pure schadenfreude at the destruction time had wreaked upon his former rival, blatantly ignoring his own wasting features reflected in the glare of the computer monitor.

Joshua slowly scribbled down a few notes on a lined page of stationary next to the keyboard. This entry now read:


[ X ] T. Applebaum: [ 5.0 ] Date amended: [ ]


About thirty names adorned the list, with around half of them X’ed off as friended. Only three had dates, and most had low scores. Coming up with the initial list had taken nearly a year, mostly due to procrastination rather than some kind of deep reflection, as Joshua is more of the watch ESPN type than the meditate quietly type. As for the ranking, he decided early on to wait on assigning priorities until after making contact; it just made more sense that way. But now he wished he’d thought to add a ‘details’ column; he couldn’t remember what in the hell he was supposed to apologize for to Ted damned Applebaum.

Unconsciously, his eyes wandered to the top of the list and stared at the first line:


[ ] A. James: [ 10.0 ] Date amended: [ ]


He’d broken his own rule on that one. The very definition of a ten-point-oh priority amendee.

But back to Ted for a second. He tried to think back to all those years ago, leaning back in his plush captain’s chair. A few weak tendrils of memory floated groggily into recollection. For a moment he could feel the brash young runner pounding the track from behind, his heavily approaching footfalls matching the thrumming of Joshua’s heartbeat at his ears. The runner passed him like a locomotive, forcing him to an outside lane and scoffing at him hollowly, unimaginatively, but ringing painfully true nonetheless.

The comfort of his chair mixed with his lack of sleep, creating a fondue pot in which his memories melded and swirled confusingly with dreams. He saw his teenage self from above, shouting soundlessly towards old fat Ted, wagging at him with his right hand and crushing a beer can with his left. He sat in the backseat of a car at a drive-thru movie with his wife Claire, while young Ted and his daughter Joan sat up front making out. The impossible timeline of this scene - in addition to the clearly illogical ages and incestuous nature of the two up front, Joshua hadn’t met his wife until a decade after high school, not to mention that such theaters had gone extinct before any of them were born - did not occur to him as strange, yet the scene choked him with sheer wrongness.

From behind the wheel of a different car, he slammed on the breaks and nearly slammed into a moose. He woke up startled, but only after the moose told him to watch where in the hell he was going and go screw. The first segments of the strange dream evaporated in an instant, but the vague notion of a near accident stirred something lodged deep in his long-term banks. He also felt a strange shift in attitude towards this man, as if they had been friends not than opponents, but none of his memories jibed with this sense.

Tired again of this futile game, he shut the computer and hoisted himself out of his seat by pushing off the table, his hands shaking lightly as he did so. He made it half way to his favored TV chair when it hit him, somehow in slow motion and all at once at the same time. They had been drinking, Ted and Josh. They were buddies on the track team together, even though Ted was greatly superior at every event. It was well after practice ended, the late spring sun finally heading towards the painted orange and azure horizon. Cans of cheap watery beer littered the bleachers in their wake as their sneakers pleasingly trudged the gravel between the track and the parking lot. Josh convinced his pal that he could hold his liquor better, that he should drive Ted’s car to the party at Jake Gelber’s house. Jake Gelber, how in the hell did he remember that name?

There was no near miss though. And it wasn’t a moose, it was a deer. He hit the breaks and swerved fairly well despite his inebriation, certainly the outcome could have been far worse. The deer limped off frightened into the woods, injured but none the worse for wear. Josh had rung his bell on the steering wheel, but was otherwise fine. Ted and his car weren’t looking as good. Unlike Josh, he’d not been wearing a seatbelt and splayed out across the dashboard, . Had Josh been sober enough to actually hit the breaks in time to avoid the deer, his friend would probably be dead on the pavement. As it was, Ted stirred a bit and groaned softly in wicked pain.

Josh got out of the car and pulled Ted towards him. Without really meaning to, he had position Ted in the driver’s seat. Seeing his friend sitting there, barely conscious, he got a terrible idea. When he was sure Ted wasn’t bleeding heavily or anything, Josh simply ran off towards home.

He never told anyone what happened. And he hadn’t spoken to Ted since.

The police never considered that someone else had been driving, and the doctors didn’t bother to check if Ted had been drinking. Ted was a good kid. He ran fast, got good grades, was headed to Madison that September. Deer crashes happened all the time in Wisconsin. Josh told his parents he’d stumbled practicing hurdles and bruised his forehead. Put it all together and there really wasn’t any suspicion that anything else had happened so nothing ever came of it.

That didn’t change the fact that Josh had wrecked Ted’s car and practically left him for dead. How could he, even as a stupid drunk teenager, have done that to a friend? It’s not something he’d do to his most hated enemy now. Then somehow he just put it behind him, like it never happened, burying the guilt deeper and deeper until he forgot where it lay. Such a shameful, brutal story would churn his stomach if he saw it on TV. Unfortunately he owned it as a true memory, now utterly inescapable.

Without sitting down, he punched out a brief message merely asking Ted to call him at such-and-such a number so they could catch up. After clicking SEND with a twinge of hesitation and a dry gulp, he got a ginger ale out of the fridge and camped out in the living room to watch SportsCenter.

Sleepily, he began to notice that the show was repeating itself. He clicked it off in time to hear the jingly unnatural Fur Elise of his ringtone emanating faintly from the office. He muttered a curse under his breath for leaving the phone on his desk and mobilized as quickly as he could manage. By the time he answered the call, he was panting and a bead of sweat formed above his eyebrows.

“Hello-o?”

Nothing.

“Hi, this is a recorded message from Time Warner Cable to remind you that your payment of ONE HUNDRED TWENTY DOLLARS AND FIFTY TWO CENTS is due on OCTOBER TWENT-“

He hung on dejectedly on the obnoxiously lilting computerized voice. He issued another curse that went unheard and plodded back to his spot by the TV. The ringing had awoken emotions he hadn’t known in years. It was a bit scary, sure, but also exciting and dangerous in a good way.

He felt a bit sheepish about his misguided enthusiasm as he descended into the recliner, but didn’t have too much time to mull it over before the phone rang again. This time it was Ted.

“Hello-o?” Josh answered cautiously, expecting another unwanted solicitor.

“Hi, am I speaking with Josh Rainier?” an old man asked in response.

“Yes, I’m him.”

“This is Teddy, Teddy Applebaum.” An awkward silence dominated several beats.

“I see. Thanks for calling.”

“Sure, sure, it’s nice to hear from you.” Another pause. “It’s been a very long time Josh.”

“Yeah, it sure has.”

“How are you doing, are you okay?”

“Yes well, my wife passed on about a year ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, thanks. Anyways…” He began the rote part of the conversation, a few sentence long script he’d written to break the ice on such things. “Anyways, I’ve become aware that I am an alcoholic and I am now trying to stay sober. Part of the recovery process is to make amends with people in my life who I have done wrong by.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, pondering how exactly to go from there.

“Jeez Josh. I mean, you aren’t a young man anymore. What’s the point?” Joshua’s jaw sagged at his own stunned lack of words for a response. “Sorry, that came off harsh. Better late than never I suppose.”

“Right, right.” He snapped back to alertness with a shake of the head. “Exactly. So, um. I’m sorry I left you there.”

“You’re sorry you what?”

“I’m sorry I left you at the scene of the accident. I panicked, there’s no excuse, I -“

“You left me there? You were a-fucking-wake?!”

“Um. Yeah?”

“I thought they just took you to a different hospital.” There was shock in his voice, and not a little anger. “Jesus man, I thought you were knocked out too. I saw that nasty bruise on your forehead that next week at school… No wonder you didn’t talk to me the rest of the year you asshole,” he growled. His old pipes could barely keep up, and a deathly rattle in his throat wove through his brief tirade.

“Well I’m -“

“You’re a piece of shit. That’s what you are. Human garbage! I can not believe you would do that to me. I was your friend. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“I’m sorry Ted.”

“Yeah, I bet you are. Fuck off and don’t bother me again.”

The phone clicked off. Josh walked back over to the desk and somberly entered the days date next to Ted’s name on his list. It said to make direct amends, not perform miracles. As far as he was concerned, this one counted. By the time he made it back to the living room, the phone rang again. This was turning out to be his busiest morning in about a year.

“Hello-o?”

“Sorry Josh, it’s me again.”

“Mhm?”

“Look, I didn’t mean to go off like that.” Josh thought he could hear a woman’s voice, probably Ted’s wife, in the background encouraging him. But then again his hearing isn’t so great. “It’s water under the bridge, really. That was forty years ago man. Water under the bridge.”

“Well thanks, I have always felt awful about it. One of those things, where if you don’t say anything straight away it just gets more and more awkward.”

“I guess I could see that. Anyways, I uh. I accept your apology. In the long run it doesn’t make much of a difference.”

“So you still ran track at U Dub?”

“Hehe. Bet your ass!” he guffawed, happy to think back on his glory days. “Got third place at the Big Ten championship my senior year, 200 meters.”

“Oh good, I always worried that crash messed you up or something.”

“You could have asked.”

“Not really…”

“True enough I guess. So you ever speak to Arlene?”

“Arlene? No, why do you ask?” he asked cautiously.

“Oh well, me and Jess kept in touch. We split up during college of course, but it’s nice to talk to her some times. Those were some years worth remembering if you ask me.”

“Oh sure. Yeah.”

“I suppose it must have been tough on you, Jess told me all about it.”

“All about what?” His fear turned into curiosity. He hadn’t expected to learn anything about her from Ted.

“Well how she left you and married so soon after.”

“Kids?” he asked, the curiosity curdling back into fear.

“What? Oh, you mean like a shotgun thing? No, nothing like that. They didn’t have kids ’til years later.”

“Oh, that’s nice.” Understatement of the day, Joshua thought to himself.

“We’ll I’ve got to be going now, it’s been… well it’s been very strange. Good luck keeping sober Josh. I mean that.”

“Thank you, and thanks for calling back.”

“No problem. Bye now.”

With that, the most surreal conversation in Joshua’s long life concluded. He stumbled back to the desk, and crossed off the 10.0 next to A. James, replacing it with a 6.0 in the margin. Likewise, he crossed off the 5.0 next to J. Applebaum and marked it 9.0.

Unlike the episode with the deer and the old jock buddy, the business with Arlene was never far from his mind. For so many years he’d wondered if he had a little son or little daughter running around. Now of course it’d be well into adulthood, but he always pictured a tyke around five years old with his features and her smooth flaxen hair. How many hours had he wasted fretting for what now seemed no reason at all. Maybe she was never actually pregnant at all. He hadn’t stuck around long enough to find out.

Above the fridge, hidden in the dark recesses of a cabinet obscured by a lemonade pitcher, he kept a prized treasure. Sometimes, when he really need it, he climbed atop his little plastic step-stool, shifted the pitcher over, reached back and groped for its velvety touch. He would climb down and loosen the golden strings at the top of the lush violet bag and uncork the whiskey bottle within. He would exhale long and powerful, then slowly take in the vapors wafting up off the Crown Royal, sniffing deeply of the glorious sting produced only by the good stuff.

Now was one of these times.

As always, the temptation to guzzle a swing or two gripped him throughout his body. He stared his enemy down, wanting so badly to indulge, but eventually slid the cork back in and methodically completed the ritual by returning the still completely filled bottle to its rightful hiding place.