Afterimages

There was a sad man who sat beside my bed.

He is one of the first things I remember. Other kids' imaginary friends were much more exciting. They had cowboys and princesses and animals of every description. But all I had was my Sad Man, and he wasn't exciting at all. All he ever did was sit there, and read his book (a different one each time, not that I could tell the difference. This was before I learned to read.) Sometimes he would hum snatches of Gilbert & Sullivan to himself. (I didn't know what they were at the time. It was only later, when I was 19 and saw the Pirates of Penzance for the first time that I recognized the music as the songs my Sad Man would sing.) And he would say weird things. "I tried to smuggle some gin into your room," he said once, "but they caught me." Or once, "remember when your parents found out you were gay?" (I couldn't.) And on one memorable occasion, "how did you manage to blow up that hotel room?" (I didn't know.)

Sad Man liked to pretend he wasn't sad by telling me these things, but I knew better. He would smile, but the smile would wither when it reached his eyes. Sometimes he cried a little when he thought I was sleeping, his fingers quickly coming up to wipe away the renegade teardrops. I let him think I didn't notice.

I didn't know what he was sad about. I didn't want to ask, in case thinking about it would make him more sad. Instead I asked him to read to me, which he did. I never liked any of his books, though. They were grown-up, and therefore boring and incomprehensible.

Later, when I was old enough to read, I mentioned one of those books to my mother, who assumed I had found it lying around somewhere and read it by myself. (Ten Little Indians, I think it was.) She, of course, assumed I was a genius and was sorely dissappointed when she was proven wrong.

I stopped seeing Sad Man when I was eight.

He appeared in my room one night, just like all the other times, but this time he held my hand until I closed my eyes, and pressed a kiss to my forehead, and cried. I didn't see him again.

I had others, after him. There was Nigel the giant rabbit, and Lachesis the goddess of Destiny, and the lizard girl. And they were more exciting than Sad Man, but they never seemed to be quite real. I grew tired of them all, eventually. I grew older, grew up. I aquired real friends, and went to high school, and college, and was never once tempted to blow anything up.

It was as I was walking through the park that I saw him again. He was walking with a woman, and they were laughing about something, and I met his eyes and smiled. He smiled back, but there was confusion there. "Do I know you?", he asked. "You look incredibly familiar."

I looked at him. He was older than I remembered. His hair was grey, and there were crow's feet around his eyes, but he was happy. For the first time in my life, I saw him smile without a hint of bitterness.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I've never seen you before in my life."