Susan's Choice

Dave

This is ridiculous, he thought. His time was valuable and there were at least five things he could be doing that would more useful than to standing on this unremarkable street corner in this unremarkable section of town 10 years after the all-too-commonplace event that had shaped his life.

He was an accomplished plastic surgeon, cold as ice in the operating room but today an assemblage of nervous spasms and tics, so terrified he could hardly walk, let alone pay attention to his surroundings. He slammed the car door shut and clicked the key fob to lock it. Then he concentrated on the abdominal breathing learned in his psychology courses, waiting for the butterflies to subside.

The street had hardly changed. A grimy road running off a four-lane highway. Identical one-storey houses with stucco walls and gray shingled roofs. Over the years the owners had bordered their yards with hedges, now mostly overgrown. Old cars littered the street, one missing a fender, its windshield festooned with parking tickets. Small trees, leaves scarred by urban smoke, lined the sidewalk. His knees were still shaking. He looked down, not being entirely sure his feet were still on the ground. The sidewalk, he saw from the letters stamped into the cement, had been poured in 1952.

He began walking up the street. The house she'd lived in was only a hundred metres ahead, just past the tree at the top of the hill. Of course she didn't live there any more, but the young man now in charge of his body insisted she would appear over the horizon any minute, an unspeakably lovely girl, skipping eagerly towards him with a grin that turned his heart over. Damnit! Damnit! Damnit!

He shut his eyes as he walked. "Susan?" he whispered, hoping that if he just wished hard enough she'd pop right up in front of him. As always he heard her voice: 'Right here, Dave!' He kept his eyes closed, hardly daring to believe what he'd heard. Could she really be there?