Fiction

The tank-like yellow Hummer pulled slowly onto the cracked asphalt of a massive, deserted parking lot, sliding into one of the middle spaces as if the place was full of cars. The early morning air had a crisp clarity that belied its icy temperature to Morgan even before he jumped down out of the chest-high seat. His legs screamed as they always did when he chose this young manly method of getting his older achy body out of his prized machine.

No one was watching, of course, not at seven on a Sunday morning. The jump was for Morgan alone. It was a salute to himself if nothing else. And the pain shooting through his middle-aged bones and especially into his heels and sharply across the base of his toes simply cut a bright gash across his own thoughts. It was piercing. But today he wanted to feel and think and drink all of it.

He glanced up at the design on the door of his Hummer as he bullied it shut. Someone - maybe one of his girls at a simpler age - had said it looked like two yellow jackets dancing. He never saw that and probably told her as much. He created the logo, after all: two big, fancy black C's over a license and phone number. Folks told him that by not adding a web address or e-mail he was giving business away. But he resisted, and did just fine thank you very much. And he was glad on this day that he had stuck to it. CC was still all his, right up to today.

Realizing his mental meanderings, he turned away from the Hummer and paced across the cold pavement, feeling ridiculous as he pushed the alarm button on the key before he tossed it over his shoulder. The Hummer gave its satisfying beep as the key flew through the icy air. That beep always spoke security. But now... now it just seemed another silly aspect of life. Another unnecessary.

The building, three hundred yards distant, was almost completely blocked by the giant yellow machines parked chaotically across the lot. They had come to rest as if they had arrived from six different directions and stopped when they got in each other's way, almost as if they were facing off for battle.

The excavators would win any battle, Morgan knew, with their massive arms and hydraulic claws. They were the muscle, the lead men, even though the loaders, haulers and handlers were just as important for a job like this. He smiled at them all as he moved through. The pink and orange building now poked through the golden steel with each of his steps.

Morgan stepped over the orange cones, ignoring the yellow warning tape, the sawhorse blockades and the huge red-lettered signs screwed mercilessly to the building's colorful brick walls. Instead he saw the sign. Once raised well above the building's peaked roof on forty-foot scaffolds, it now leaned in two pieces against the building, bigger at ground level, but sadder as well. It was almost too real. When joined, the great, swirling, golden letters of the sign had read "Trojan Skate World".

Now it said nothing. Now it meant nothing at all. After forty years and along with the rest of the building, it was simply landfill.

Morgan pulled a smashed pack of cigarettes from his flannel shirt pocket, slipped one out with his teeth and lit it easily. After a deep drag he exhaled pointedly at the sign remnants and then coughed into his hand. The smoke curled lazily over the worn boards and drifted away after a few seconds.

An unseen bird blew an optimistic note, warbling foolishly. It sounded mocking to him, as if belittling his life and the course it had taken. He threw the cigarette down, along with the remains of the pack and the small lighter that skittered happily across the asphalt.

"Bird, you don't know half of it," he said hoarsely, his voice strange as it broke across the almost silence. He looked around to make sure no human at least had come across him while he gawked at the ridiculous, broken sign.

He was alone, he and the bird anyway.

He turned his attention to the main doors, all dusty glass and dull metal, the handles chained tightly and held in place by a shiny, brass padlock. He pulled a loose key from the same pocket that had held the smokes and pushed it into the lock. It bounced open with enthusiasm and he pulled the chain away, letting it drop as soon as the doors were free.

His stomach stirred as he stepped into the entry hall of The Troj, an expansive, carpeted area with worn velvet ropes meant to control hundreds of anxious children as they approached the two pay booths near the other double doors at the far end. Whether his guts turned from the emptiness of the place, the still-lingering reek of long-spilled soda, brewing memories or his commitment for this day, he couldn't have said. But it didn't matter. He steeled himself and walked quickly to the emergency fire exit halfway through the hall.

Outside again, he held the door open with one of the rope stands, walked around to the front doors and replaced the chain and lock. He returned to the fire door and let it close behind him as he strolled the rest of the hallway's length, through the rear doors and into Troj proper. He glanced at his watch in the faded light and was satisfied to see only ten minutes had passed since his arrival.

He had plenty of time to see things through, but not enough time to lose his nerve.

Perfect.

Morgan remembered the first time he had stepped into The Troj. He was just ten and no skater. The place, the very idea of the place, terrified him. High ceilings domed over an open space, too vast and varied to take in all at once. His young eyes had darted from place to place, from point to point, taking it all in, but too overwhelmed to really see what he was seeing.

Directly in front of him, the snack bar sat, kids crowding their way to the front to further harass the single, harried teenage girl who seemed astonished that she was expected to do anything so degrading for minimum wage. Still she moved about, grabbing bags of popcorn, pouring dark orange cheese over stale chips, sliding old dogs into damp buns and salting giant pretzels. The sodas were the worst, the stickiest, the most spilled and the hardest to balance. She hated making sodas for the kids, and for that reason Morgan never asked for one that first day or any day thereafter. She was a teenage girl, after all.

The disco music vibrating the ground was like a bad smell in the room. It attacked everyone's senses and was way too loud for anyone's taste. But no one reacted to it even the tiniest bit. If one of the older girls had danced a little, it would have been better than the absolute lack of reaction. Ten year old Morgan felt as if he stood in a room full of deaf kids and the music played simply because someone forgot to turn off the record player. For that first visit at least, he didn't realize that ignoring the samba beat was part of being cool in a place like The Troj. He also didn't realize that the music came from the small booth to the right of the snack bar where a teenaged boy in a referee outfit spun the records.

To the left was the rink. It was such a giant to those little eyes, a mile deep and nearly as wide. The surface was deep blue and slick as ice, strobes and colored spotlights dancing across it and over the crowd of kids who flowed in a circle as if caught in a draining sink and swirling towards the hole in the middle. A single giant disco ball cast racing stars over everything, video games, the wall of shoe lockers, the skate rental counter, the line of rooms against the far wall, water fountains, snack bar and hundreds of wide, excited eyes.

He was terrified. But if he had known, had any inkling of the deeds done within those walls two years later and the inevitable tragic result, he would have run out to the parking lot that first day, flagged down his mom and never returned.

Thirty years later, Morgan gazed around the too-quiet space and was overwhelmed once again, this time at the smallness of it all. The snack bar was barely a counter, the DJ's booth wasn't even a phone booth and the rink…

Was it possible that little slab of polished concrete was the same massive rink of his childhood? The adult Morgan did not think so.

But it was, of course. In the brightness trailing from the skylights installed sometime in the 80's, he could see the same blue sheen of the rink, faded now certainly to a turquoise. And as the light sparkled briefly off floating bits of dust, the effect reminded Morgan of that disco ball, now long gone, that once spread stars throughout the room.

He turned around to face the wall of rooms. They were gone. He knew before he bought the building that the rooms had been taken out, were walled up as a matter of fact, over a quarter of a century earlier. If they were still there, the ghosts in those rooms might have kept him from going through with what he came to do today.

The wall of rooms: four separate doorways leading into lightless areas about eight feet square with a small table bolted to the middle and booth seating all the way around. He supposed at one time the owners served meals in those rooms. But during his childhood, they were only good for the darker dreams.

During an all night skate, cigarettes appeared in those shadows. Sometimes a bottle of something nasty would show up and kids would take turns as lookout or sipper of whatever it was. And as the children became preteens and then teenagers, those rooms were reserved for more salacious endeavors. It was understood that if one was able to talk mom and dad into allowing an overnight skating party, that one could expect to at least be dared to spend time a room with someone else.

Morgan dug into his jeans and pulled out a small, silver flask engraved with the CC logo. He drained it, the whiskey burning his throat as it dribbled down, but warming and settling his lurching stomach almost magically.

He sighed and dropped the flask. It thudded dull against the stained indoor-outdoor carpet that seemed to cover everything at The Troj except the rink itself. As he walked towards the center of the rink, his sneakers sliding easily across the smooth surface, the inevitable memory of his life's biggest mistake washed over him like a shower of hot coals.

He remembered songs from that night as if they still bounced around in his head, echoing for all his days. As he walked into The Troj that night it was Disco Lady by Johnnie Taylor, an all night skate standard in the late 70's. Alfred found him before the song ended. Alfred was a friend from Mrs. Darrow's class and they had been talking about this particular outing for nearly a month. The all night skates had been postponed through the holidays and this was the first Friday night of fun in several weeks. In addition, Mariam Joyner was supposed to be there and she and Morgan had hit it off fairly sweetly before the break. Morgan was certain this would be his night.

At twelve years old, he didn't know exactly what his night was supposed to be, but he had at least a notion. That and the twist in his groin was enough to get him there for sure.

"She here?" Morgan yelled to Alfred before the boy could speak. Alfred grinned back, his teeth too numerous for his giant mouth. He looked like a shark as he nodded, waggling his pale eyebrows frantically.

"Oh, yeah, man, she's here," he yelled back. "And hot to trot I must say. A real disco lady." He pointed to the nearest speaker as it spewed out the last of the song. They both laughed.

They moved around each other for most of the night, Mariam and Morgan. Time flew by quickly as one song found the next, Wild Cherry chasing the Bee Gees. The Bee Gees going after the Commodores. They'd skate, get a snack - no soda for Morgan - and talk with friends, all separate and always watching one another. They kept a good distance from the rooms, which were occupied anyway with other shadow seekers.

And suddenly there was only an hour before the parent pick-up time of seven in the morning.

Morgan put his head back against the cool rink surface, lying flat, his fingers and palms pressing against it as well. The coolness helped ease the heat of the memories. He was surprised to realize he couldn't remember much about Mariam's features. He remembered long, dark hair in braids and a white dress. He thought her skin was dark as well against the lightness of that fabric, but he couldn't be certain. The pictures he saw in the paper and in articles over the years all seemed to be in black and white, but her eyes always were blue in his mind.

He thought about his girls then. He had two and they were now terrific young women, full of life and stamina and promise. He had been fiercely protective, but Allison was easier about it and would quietly let them get away with certain concerts, parties and dates that Morgan never would have allowed. He only knew it now because the girls, after they were both safely into adulthood, educated him one night, relishing every moment of his exasperation. Allison smiled privately to herself as well, though he forgave her completely. She didn't know, could never know, what had happened all those years ago.

He had made provisions for them, of course, as any successful businessman should. He had no life insurance, but this circumstance would likely not pay off on any policy anyway. Besides the houses, the vehicles and the boat, Morgan used a variety of investment tools, long and short, risky and safe, bonds and securities, to create a diversified portfolio that would care for them all for many years. They were safe, and they no longer needed him. He had done his job, fulfilled his responsibilities. He had served his family well, even cared for his mother in her final years.

All responsibilities but one.

This last one.

This last debt to pay.

He was surprised to feel cool tears stream down his temples and into his graying hair and suddenly wished he had one more cigarette for this final five minutes.

The potential of returning to school Monday morning with no make-out story threw Morgan into a panic he hoped didn't show on his face. Don't Take Away the Music from a group called Tavares was bumping out of the speakers throughout The Troj, a high-tempo number that added to his angst and sense of urgency.

Sometime during that song, though he couldn't say how it happened, both Morgan and Mariam ended up at the entrance to one of the small caves of illicit behavior, staring at each other. Starland Vocal Band kicked off Oh What a Night and they walked in together, hand holding clammy hand as they circled around the table to sit facing the doorway.

There were no doors on these cubbies, so if someone was going to fool around in any fashion, a watchdog was necessary. Alfred stood with his back to them, just to the right of the opening, his eyes forward and his arms crossed in a pose of stolid defiance.

The air reeked of stale cigarettes and something else, something sweet like bubble gum that might have been a kid’s perfume on Mariam.

She smiled at him. At least he remembered it that way. They moved together and kissed, intense and awkward, both full of the reckless passion of lust, no more fierce than in those first couple of years. His hands moved over her, sought her dress and somehow reached under it, seeking.

At that most vulnerable moment, whatever would have happened, however far it would have gone, an extra flash of light blasted into the cave and they both looked up to see Alfred holding an instant camera and offering his shark smile. He waved the new photo at his own face and waggled his pale eyebrows at them.

Morgan looked back at Mariam and saw she was crying. Had she been crying before the picture? He would never know. Had he been forcing himself on her? Was she resisting him? He couldn't put it straight in his young mind.

She ran from the room, not after Alfred but out of The Troj altogether.

As the massive machines rumbled to life outside, Morgan cried. He had recovered the photo from Alfred and knocked him down with a hard punch to the chest. He put a lighter to it before anyone could get a good look. He saw it though, saw the strain in her arms and legs, the way she seemed to be pushing against him as if she was trying to get away. The image itself had burned, but the questions that image had created within him would last the rest of his life.

Morgan Crain - president of Crain Construction, father of Abby and Aubrey, faithful husband to Allison, recent purchaser of the property and improvements of Trojan Skate World, employer of the crew revving up the machines out on the worn blacktop - curled up and cried thinking of the girl who ran out of The Troj twenty-eight years earlier.

He hadn't tried to stop her. Why would he? The source of her sadness was that picture, wasn't it? Was it? He didn't know.

But when her body washed up out of the river three days later, what Morgan knew without doubt was he was responsible for her death, one way or another.

The building rattled as one of the excavators began to dig into the bricks and steel. Morgan thought the thing would probably collapse within the first ten minutes or so of demolition. The ceilings were so high that once the first wall was mostly gone, the whole thing would lose cohesion and collapse like a house of cards. He had petitioned the city to approve explosives, but they turned him down flat because of surrounding apartment complexes. He almost did it anyway. What consequences could there possibly be after the fact? But in the end the idea of a fine for the new president of CC - the widow Allison Crain - had stopped him.

This would be hard enough for her.

The sun streamed in from the hole growing in the wall, bricks falling away faster and faster as now both of his excavators were at it. Another five minutes and he'd be done, finally free of the nightmare and the guilt.

The collapse didn't come. He realized he had been braced for it so intently that he hadn't heard the diesel engines shut down. But when nothing happened, he gradually came out of his ball of determination and his senses began to work again.

He heard a voice.

"Morgan?"

It was Allison, though her throat sounded as ragged as it did when she was very sick. Had she been crying?

"Morgan? Where are you? I know you're here." She had definitely been crying. After all their years together he knew that sound as well as his own breathing.

"I'm coming in," she said.

He heard one of his crew protesting, but it didn't matter. He was already up and running towards the sound of her voice. After years of torturing himself with the guilt of Mariam's death, he was ready to go. But he would not be taking the love of his life with him, no matter what. Something fell behind him, hitting the rink with a thunderous crack, but he didn't flinch.

They met before he got out of the building. She had come in a hundred feet or so, ready to comb the entire collapsing building all by herself if he knew her at all.

She wrapped her arms around him, squeezing tightly, her head buried in his chest.

"How dare you?" she whispered.

He felt the urgency to get out of the building, but couldn't bring himself to pull her away.

"Honey, you don't understand," he said as some other piece of structure fell to the rink.

She looked up at him, her eyes bathed in tears, her eyebrows crunched together the way they always were when she was stubbornly angry or hurt.

"About the girl? Is all this about the girl?"

He was surprised but didn't say anything.

"Of course I understand. I've known about that night since before we were married, twenty-five years ago. If I thought for one second that you were still blaming yourself for her death I would have watched you more closely." She shook her head and whispered again. "How dare you?"

"I can't…" he began, but something crashed down not ten feet behind him and his feet suddenly found the ability to move.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the light of the hole.

She planted her feet and pulled back.

"Allison!" he screamed. "We have to get out of here now. I won't… do what I was going to do. I'm sorry."

"Swear," she said, her voice calm.

"What?"

"Swear you will never do anything like this again, or I go down with this stupid building."

A great mass of the wall fell on itself, the incoming light suddenly doubled. He saw her face clearly. She meant it and he didn't hesitate.

"I swear, Honey. I swear to everything. I swear to the girls. I promise."

Allison grabbed his hand and they ran.