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I slow to a standstill, and they watch me. Daryl speaks.
"Congratulations, Ed."
I catch up to my breath.
"My father?" I ask.
"You are like he was," Keith enlightens me, "and just like him, you were most likely to die the same way--a quarter of what you could have been...."
"So he sent you to do this? He organized it before he died?"
Daryl answers the question, wandering closer. "You see, Ed, you were always an absolute no-hoper--just like your old man. No offense."
"None taken."
"And we've been employed to test you--to see if you can avoid this life." He points casually to the grave.
"The only problem is"--Keith steps in now--"it wasn't your father who sent us."
This takes a while to sink in.
It's not Audrey. It's not my father.
Crowds of questions stream through me like lines of people exiting a soccer ground or a concert. They push and shove and trip. Some make their way around. Some remain in their seats, waiting for their opportunity.
"What are you doing here, then?" I ask them. "How did you know I'd be right here at this exact moment in time?"
"Our employer sent us," Daryl replies.
"He told us you'd be here," Keith chimes in again. They're working well tonight. "So we came." He smiles at me, almost sympathetically. "He hasn't been wrong yet."
I try to think, to make some sense of all this.
"Well," I begin, but it appears that I have no more words to extend the sentence. I find them. "Who's your employer?"
Daryl shakes his head. "We don't know, Ed. We just do what we're told." He begins to wrap things up. "But, yes, Ed, you were sent here tonight to remind yourself that you don't want to die the same way your father did. Understand?"
I nod my agreement.
"And now we have one last thing to tell you, and then we'll disappear from your life forever."
I prepare to listen hard. "What is it?"
They already begin to walk away. "Just that you have a little longer to wait, okay?"
I stand there.
What else can I do but stand there?
I watch Daryl and Keith walk calmly into the night. They're gone and I'll never see them again.
"Thank you," I say, but they don't hear me. It seems a shame that they never will.
A few more days pass and I realize there's nothing else I can do now but wait. I've almost given up when I'm waved down by a young man in jeans, a jacket, and a cap on my way home from work one morning at dawn.
He gets in the backseat.
The usual.
