Lazarus and the Fountain of Youth

Fictional

“My fingers are pruning up.” Was the first thing I said aloud all day. I said it to no one in particular, or maybe I said it to my hands up in front of my face, just to inform them of their unfortunate situation. Old-like. I was sitting in the bathtub and I had been for about an hour, idly sipping a coffee and swirling my hands about in the lukewarm water. I had been fired from my job the day before on account of my constant absences and I was bored out of my mind. I had been calling out of work to sit around and do nothing at home for weeks, and now that I didn’t have to skip work anymore to sit around and do nothing at home, I found that I wanted something to do. The terrible irony and the boredom together held hands around a metaphorical blunt instrument and bludgeoned my brain flat. I set my coffee down on the floor, closed my eyes, and slid down underneath the water, letting my body go slack. I wanted to know what it was like to die, or to be dead. To be a corpse floating gently down the river, inoffensive and cattle-like, being herded through the city by the movement of the dirty water. Maybe a child would find me and think I was sleeping.

I slid back up, rubbing the water out of my eyes. The cold air rushed to my skin like a long-waiting cavalry as I stood and I briefly mourned the womb-like warmth of the water, attempting to replicate it with the tattered old green towel on the floor beside the bathtub. It wasn’t as womb-like, but it did the trick. I tied it around myself and trudged soggily over to the window, picking up a pack of cigarettes I’d left on the windowsill the night before. My fingers were wrinkly and a little bit clumsy on the lighter, and I failed to light it about four times before I finally got the flame going. I felt a little bit pathetic. Looking down through the window, I saw a young woman walking a dog. It was a nice dog, clearly very well taken care of. It kept tugging at the leash in desperate, wonder-struck attempts to smell various mundane objects, and the woman lunged forward slightly with every tug. I tapped my cigarette on the edge of the window and sent the ash flying down three stories below onto the pavement.

The second thing I said aloud that day was: “I have got to get out of this apartment.” And so, I got to dressing myself, pulling on a dark pair of jeans and a wrinkled white t-shirt from my bedroom floor. Then socks, grey, and dirty old Reebok sneakers I’d bought in Chicago a few years back, when I was still in college. I checked to make sure I had left my wallet in my jeans last night, then took one final drag of my cigarette and smashed its ashy remains into the windowsill on my way to the door. As I walked down the hallway and to the stairs, I realized I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. I thought about it as I walked down the grey concrete steps. I decided I might get on the bus and go to a coffee shop or some other quaint, sensorially rich nook of the city where I could sit and let my life wash over me. I finished my descent down the stairs and opened the outside door, bracing myself for cold. It was March and had been decently warm for a few weeks, but I was still used to winter. My body relaxed once it realized it was no chill to tense for and I started my way down the sidewalk to the bus stop. As I turned the corner around a big grey concrete building, I was confronted with an unusual scene. There was a large group of very curious looking people all huddled up in a mob, and as I got closer, I could see they were grouped around a car. Closer to the car were two very stern looking policemen all dressed up in dark blue, and leaning up against it was a visibly distressed man in a yellowish suit with his head in his hands. He was mumbling something very desperately.

“What happened?” I asked a woman beside me. She was dressed in a scratchy looking purple cardigan and had thick black glasses that distorted her eyes in a disturbing way.

“He hit a lady, that man over there,” she replied, gesturing to the man by the car, “says she ran right in front of him.”

I considered this for a second. “Like, on purpose?”

“That’s what he says.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her middle finger. “He seems shaken enough, I’m inclined to believe him, though I don’t know what kind of fool would do something like that.”

I thought that quite unsympathetic. “Well maybe she’s depressed, or maybe her mother just died. I don’t think she’s a fool.” The woman just shrugged. Suddenly, an ambulance appeared on the scene, sirens blaring, and two sharp-moving paramedics whisked the body of the street-runner up onto a stretcher. I got a glimpse of her through the mass of people before they covered her with the white sheet. She had red hair and looked quite dead. Her eyes were open and lifeless, her mouth slack. I was glad for the white sheet. As they wheeled the stretcher up into the ambulance, her arm fell out from under it and I watched her hand wave limply back and forth as she was carted into the cramped interior of the ambulance. I again thought of the corpse in the river. I supposed it might not be peaceful at all. I imagined it again, but with the wide-open eyes and slack mouth of the street-runner. It was disturbing and accomplished nothing, the death that is. Why did they die? Maybe it was suicide, or maybe it was just a mad coincidence. Maybe a particularly large bird swooped down, hit them on the head, and knocked them over as they were taking a nice afternoon walk along the river and they just happened to have never learned how to swim as a child. I thought of them floating down the river, wide-eyed, slack-jawed, never to eat a sandwich or see a movie again. I shivered.

I shivered, and I continued my journey to the bus stop, looking around the street for something to take my mind off the street-runner’s dead eyes. I saw a hot dog cart on the other side of the street, manned alone by one old man with a large nose. He looked crooked with age, but cheerful nonetheless. I crossed the street briskly, keeping an eye out for cars driven by disheveled men in blue-grey suits, and walked up to the stand, pulling my beat-up wallet out of my pocket.

“What can I do you for?” He said, in a bright but slightly creaky voice, his hands parallel on the silver metal stand.

“Just a hot dog,” I hesitate. “Ketchup, no mustard.”

He got to work. Bun, dog, ketchup, no mustard. He was swift and methodical, and whistling some sort of old-fashioned tune, a tune I imagine was previously accompanied by lyrics about a carnival or swift-hopping bunnies. Lyrics lost to the sieve of time.

“That’ll be four dollars.” He chirped as he held the hot dog out to me in a little white cardboard boat. I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and started leafing through it, pulling out four wrinkled ones. I handed them to him.

“How long have you been doing this?” The question slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Working this stand, I mean.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” His eyes turned to the side. “Time flies.” I felt a little bit bad for asking. He slipped the cash into a drawer in the cart. “I remember when the dogs used to be fifty cents, and that was a long time ago. A long, long time ago.” Wistful, his voice. Notes of cloudy memories and lavender.

“Do you like it?” Again with the flappy lips, I’ve always been like that. My thoughts just slide right out from my brain to my mouth. I look down at my hot dog, at the clean, almost cartoonish squiggle of ketchup. “Do you ever wish you’d have done something else with your life?”

“Oh no, I’ve lived the right life for me.” He paused for a minute and smiled softly, clearly reminiscing. “That’s how it usually goes.”

The conversation was clearly over. “Well, have a good day.” I said with an awkward smile, turning away, thinking of what he must’ve looked like when he started with the stand. Dark hair, bright eyes, straight spine. Maybe he meant to become a businessman, working in a big glass building and living in a big glass penthouse. It didn’t happen. That’s time for you, I guess, the cruel mistress. But he seemed happy, working the stand, whistling his time-sieved tunes. Small man, small life.

I kept walking, my bus stop intentions all but dissolved. I picked a direction and went, staring aimlessly around the city, trying to see the world with new eyes. The eyes of the street-runner, the eyes of the old man, the eyes of the relentlessly sniffing dog. My own eyes are tired, bored, dull. I spot a lonely pigeon on the sidewalk, grey, purple, green. Pigeons are beautiful, really, we take them for granted. I pinched off a bit of my hot dog bun and threw it in its direction, watching it run forward and accept the gift. I did the same to myself, pinching off a bit of the bun and eating it. We ate together, a communal lunch of city wonders. My eyes are tired, but I’m alive and I’m eating hot dog buns with a pigeon. I take one last glance at my lunch partner and keep walking along the cracked sidewalk, my feet moving with a little bit more life. Music. That’s what I’m hearing. I hear music, outside of my head. Trumpet, forward, to the right. I walk forward, to the right, like a child behind the Pied Piper, the movement lead with my chest. I come to a corner and I turn it, walking into the scene of the sound. A man stands on the sidewalk with his back to the grey concrete wall, blowing spiritedly on a golden brass trumpet like an angel at the rapture. He’s wearing a grey hoodie and ripped blue jeans, with long, thin hair on his head and brown boots on his feet. I stand watching him, both of us all wrapped up in the work, my eyes open wide and his closed, mine closed his open, eyes together and one. His fingers on the trumpet buttons are dirty and worn, his face covered in a scraggly beard and thin, sunken skin, but he is fresh. He is alive, his mouth to his trumpet and his head to the sky, as young as a fresh-born baby in the hospital, wriggling and new on his mother’s chest. At his feet is the case to the golden trumpet, housing what seems to be about fifteen dollars and a to-go coffee cup. I pull my wallet out of my jean pocket, clumsily pulling out a twenty-dollar bill, the last of my cash. I walk over to the case and put in my bill, along with my near-untouched hot dog and my weary eyes.

“God bless!” I hear him call, separated from his trumpet. His voice seemed disembodied, like God and his host of angels all speaking as one above me. I hear the music again; he’s back to the trumpet before I can say anything. So, I don’t. I rise and walk away, looking forward towards the city of light, my heels springing up like tiny little yipping dogs. My eyes are wet and new, shining like the water pooled around the Fountain of Youth, Lazarus climbing out of them and spiraling into smoke up into the bright golden sky. I pull at my leash, eager to sniff the wonder of the world.