The Speed of Light
By Cromwell Greystock
“Now you see? That’s that bullshit. Man, those motherfuckers really piss me off. I mean, that shit was fuckin’ cold-blooded,” said Zack to himself, in disbelief and panic, as the bus driver, even after making eye contact, drove by the bus stop, as if Zack hadn’t been there waiting for the last half hour, and as if he had nowhere in particular to go. I mean, what was that bus driver thinking?
Now, Zack was going to be late for the first job interview that had come his way since his probation hearing last month. Seemingly making it all for naught, the responsible measures he took to ensure that he wouldn’t be just that - late. Almost to the point where he hindered on the apex of sleepwalking, he stayed awake into the wee hours last night, taking the hot iron to his black slacks, starch pressing the creases until they were as sharp as the finest Samurai blade, instead of the habitual knife he was almost always unsatisfied with every morning. But this particular time, even Masamune Okazaki would be proud or possibly even envious. He gave just as much attention to the torso, sleeves, cuffs, and collar of his recently purchased grey second hand dress shirt. That being completed, he now focused his attention, on polishing his two year old black broach Churchill’s, extending his daily shoe time of fifteen minutes for each shoe, to forty-five minutes for the left shoe, and thirty minutes for the right shoe.
Having grown accustomed, during his seven year stint in the Marine Corps., to the time allotted for hygiene rituals, Zack normally, out of military habit, regulated himself to five minutes for his ‘three S’s’ also known as a SHIT, SHOWER, AND SHAVE, but since this was a well needed opportunity staring him in the face, he allotted himself a fat ten minutes to take care of such business. He didn’t allow himself that much time for the ‘three S’s’, even when he was excited about a date with a ‘dime piece’, possessed of his particular taste, appertaining to feminine disposition, and beauty. Before hitting the sack, he set the alarm on his alarm/clock radio, and for good measure, he also set the alarm on his wrist watch. He normally arose at six in the morning, without any assistance. But just to be sure...
“Ain’t - that - a bitch?” complained Zack, while still breathing the black exhaust fumes. “Now, I gotta call this muthafucka and tell‘m I’m gonna be late”, he mumbled in a low voice, to avoid being heard by any passerby within earshot of his foul mouth, all awhile, fumbling through his wallet for the folded grocery receipt, on which he scribbled down the name and telephone number, of the contact he was given by his probation officer. Spotting the occupied telephone booth on the corner, and as such, headed impatiently towards it, at the same time feeling through his pockets for some loose change. Upon realising that he didn’t have any, he dodged the busy oncoming traffic coming in his direction from the left as well as the right, as he ran with somewhat restrained caution across the street to the dime store, in order to procure that which he needed.
“Goodmorning,” Zack said politely as he flipped out an olfactory fresh Andrew Jackson from his wallet. “Would you please be so kind to change this twenty for me, and may I have a dollar’s worth of change please?” Zack asked, blowing his breath into his clinched fist in an attempt to warm his hands, which felt nearly frostbitten from the winter’s cold.
“You have to buy something first,” returned the store clerk, annoyed. Goddamn loon.
“Alright then, erm, let me get a pack of Wrigley’s then – spearmint.”
“It has to be something worth more than a dollar,” she said, even more annoyed.
Her words froze Zack solid for a second or two. “More than a dollar?” What the fuck?
“Do you want change or not?”
“Alright, just give me a pack of Camel’s – and the gum… no, no, the full strength…fifteen, twenty…Okay, thank you,” Zack said, while checking to make sure he had the sufficient amount of dimes necessary to make the call.
Leaving the store, Zack noticed that a queue had begun to form at the telephone booth, and he did not have the fortune of spotting another. Never one to be pessimistic, Zack in his optimism, decided to spend what little money he had left on a yellow taxi.
“YO TAXI! TAXI!” Zack shouted, but not before sounding off the most deafening four-fingered whistle in the history of four-fingered whistles, such a whistle that would be considered barbarously rude by such gently men as Baldassare Castiglione. But since this was the Tribeca area of Manhattan, all was forgiven. “God, I hope I’m not gonna be late to this fuckin’ interview,” he thought out loud.
“Where are you headed?” said the taxi chauffer, as he leaned over the worn out duct taped passenger seat to speak out of the roll down window.
“Can you get me to Trump Tower over there on 56th and 5th Ave? I’m in a hurry.”
“Get in… I’ll get you there faster than the speed of light.”
Settling into the backseat of the recently washed taxi, Zack being in a nitpicking mood, says to the chauffer, “By the way, there is nothing in existence capable of travelling faster than 186,000 miles per second.”
“Eh! What?” said the taxi-driver, while turning down his sun-visor.
“The speed of light… You said you could get me there faster than the speed of light, but that is impossible, as there is nothing that travels faster than 186,000 miles per second.”
“Well, what about two times or three times the speed of light?”
“Nope, nothing,” said Zack assuredly after a pause. “Did you know that if you were travelling at the speed of light it would take you eight minutes to travel from the earth to the sun? That’s just how fast the speed of light is… Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Hmm - that’s deep kid. 93,000,000 miles in eight minutes.”
In mid-action of striking the match soon to have the purpose of charring the tip of his ‘square’, it would be the second time in as much as four minutes that Zack would be frozen still, and brought to a pondering state of silence. You see, the fact that the old taxi driver knew the distance from the earth to the sun right off the top of his head, such an interesting but useless fact most people don’t normally carry around on the top of their heads, thoroughly impressed Zack.
And in the eight minutes it took for the taxi-chauffer to drive Zack, no faster than the speed of light, to his destination, the two men, one young and still wet behind the ears, one old and wise as dirt, talked about black-holes, worm-holes, multiple universes, New York city girls and Coney Island showgirls, and some other consequential and inconsequential events, that unjustly happen to very few people in the ‘Big Apple’ and some other places in world. He, Zack, learned some brief history of the old Irishman, and how things used to be, and the location of the greatest oldest Irish pub, somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen. And furthermore how to properly flip a ‘you fucking asshole’ off in traffic.
“You see there, I told you, faster than the speed of light.”
Laughing, Zack said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have much for a tip,” as he paid the ‘off the meter’ fare.
“Hey, don’t worry about it kid, you just have a good interview… And hey! Remember, shit happens, eh,” said Vincent McSorley, with a wink and a ‘thumbs up’, while leaning over the duct taped passenger seat to speak out of the roll-down window of his just washed yellow taxi, which was now New York City taxi no. 281, license plate 9207-TI, soon to be headed towards the Manhattan Bridge.
“Hey, thanks a lot old man. You take care - alright?”
Looking up at the towering and blinding sun reflecting skyscraper with twenty minutes to spare, Zack wondered, with white streaks of blind spots in his eyes, if such things as ‘thoughts’ could travel faster than the speed of light. He also wondered, out of the blue, if it was actually possible that that bus driver did not see him. He went over the event once more in his head. He must have seen me. He had to have seen me. I mean, I must have been standing in plain sight. And for the third time in as much as nine minutes, Zachary Barrows, as he was called in the ‘Local News’ headlines of The New York Times, The New York Post, and all the other major New York City newspapers, in mid stride walking towards the entrance of Trump Tower, froze for all of two seconds, glanced at the windshields of the passing traffic and considered the possible likelihood that that bus chauffeur did not see him.
“Well, here goes. It’s either sink or fuckin’ swim,” said Zack under his breath, as he went over his upcoming interview in his head, considering some fabricated explanation, as to how he caused a seven car accident, other than, trying to cross the street nearly butt naked to visit the dime store in the wee hours of the night, two months ago.
