Secrets
Leopold Café is always crowded. Their Danish and coffee are superb. The service is awful.Bill was at a table sipping his second cup of cappuccino and munching on a huge piece of coffee cake.
Two weeks ago, he sat at this very same table. Back then, his misery was all consuming. Two weeks ago, he was thinking about suicide. He had thought about that for a while. How should he do the deed? How should he go ahead and end his pain? Now? At this moment, he murmured so only he could hear, “You idiot. You can always kill yourself, but maybe not now. Maybe I should put it on my to-do list. Funny. A to-do list that has suicide as one item, along with a need for a haircut and returning my library books. Things change, but can always change again. For now, suicide moved down the to-do list.
Bill, was a 43-year-old, unemployed, depressed software engineer. His wife would often tell him that he was a lazy shit who drinks too much and has become a recluse. His 2 young daughters avoid being around him. His wife also reminded him that he was lousy in bed, a dangerous driver, and had a breath that could kill. Bill laughed, no grimaced, as he remarked to himself, ‘I guess you can’t please everyone.”
His thoughts were interrupted, Someone asked,“Can I share this table with you. All the other tables are occupied.” Bill barely looked up and responded, “Sure, no sweat”.
The man sat down and placed a mug of coffee and a bagel on the table in front of him. He took out his iPhone. Bill thought, “Oh shit, do I have to listen to someone’s chatter. Sharing my table didn’t include inviting his iPhone.”
Bill sighed, with relief, since the man sitting across from him, while sipping his coffee, was reading what was on his iPhone screen. He wasn’t talking.
Bill just stared out into space. He then looked across the table and made eye contact with his ‘table guest’. The two men didn’t say anything to each other. Bill finally broke the silence and asked, “How is the bagel?” and got a reply, “OK.”
Bill then returned to his mind screen, his miserable life.
He put out his hand and said, “I’m Bill, and I bet you’re not.”
The man reached out and shook Bill’s hand and said, “You are right. I am not Bill, or Jerry, or Richard, so just call me Larry. They both laughed.
Out of nowhere Bill blurted out a challenge, “Larry just thought of something out of the blue, or some other color. You might think it is bizarre. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, and we will never meet again so consider this. Why not make believe we are on a plane sitting next to each other. People sometimes reveal all sorts of personal stuff to someone sitting next to them, especially on a long flight. So…in that spirit, why don’t we reveal to each other a secret that we have never told anyone? To make it even more interesting and open ended it can be a real secret or one that we made up. What do you think? Are you game?”
Larry laughed out loud. “Wow. Crazy but maybe fun or who knows what, but a wild idea. If I were to take some time to think about your proposal, I would decline, but what the hell, if this is all spontaneous…it just might be interesting, entertaining. I’ll do it. Do you want to start?”
So, Bill began …” Ok. Here goes.” I will start with the end of my secret story. A year ago, I killed someone.” Larry chimed in, “You what? You killed someone. You mean you really killed someone, not someone died and you weren’t able to help them or..”
Bill interrupted, “No, I mean, I killed someone. I was driving just beyond dusk near Pine Tree Park. I was going pretty fast, but in total control of my car. I did have a couple of drinks about half an hour earlier, but I was fine. Then it happened. Some guy leaps out from behind a couple of parked cars and runs right in front of me. I hit him, straight on. I stopped my car stepped out, and saw, this guy was lying all crumbled up like an accordion, and he was face down in the middle of the street. Dribbles of blood were around his head. His jacket was torn. He wasn’t moving. I could see he wasn’t breathing either. I looked around and there were neither other cars nor people around. I was paralyzed, scared, and then I decided to get out of there. Almost simultaneously, I decided that the guy was suicidal, that he deliberately wanted to be killed. I drove away. I couldn’t sleep that night nor the next. I read in the local newspaper that someone was killed in a hit-and-run accident on the street bordering Pine Tree Park. I gasped. when I read that article. I was the hit and run driver, the killer. That thought kept me up at night and never disappeared.
Larry was stunned. How could you be so sure the guy was dead, and how did you conclude that he wanted to commit suicide, and anyway, the bottom line is that you hit someone and then ran. “Bill interrupted Larry … never forgotten what happened and wished I had not made a run for it. Can’t take that back. That’s my secret, and I have never told anyone what I did that evening a year ago.” Larry asked, “Did you just make up that story. Did it really happen? Bill responded, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let me hear your story.”
Larry hesitated and then began to tell his secret tale. “This happened years ago. I was a young astrophysicist at a University and not telling you the name. I did not have tenure. Getting tenure was a tough hurdle. Things got really tough. Getting tenure consumed me. I was desperate, really desperate. My then-girlfriend left me because, couldn’t deal with my chronic angst. My research project I was working on turned out to be a bust…a bunch of negative results, the kind that are hard to publish and even harder to be useful in getting a competitive grant. I felt I was a failure. My life was over, and then I did the unthinkable. I cheated. What else was I to do? I made up some dramatic findings that would get lots of attention. The data I invented were ones that I knew couldn’t be replicated. I picked findings that were the unique consequence of a super rare cosmic event that couldn’t happen again. I reported that by accident, I was looking at a part of the Milky Way that was generally quiet and of little interest. I wrote a paper that described two stars colliding. One of them broke up into a huge number of fragments and the energy released from the collision was what I measured and wrote about in a paper that got lots of attention and applause. I had made it. I made it, but didn’t. I thought that I would not likely be discovered as a fraud, and yet what I had done never gave me peace. Imagine getting up and giving a talk to a huge audience of scientist who were there to honor you and your scientific findings. Every time I talked about my ‘findings’ I felt like throwing up. It is then that I decided not to accept tenure but instead run, run like hell away from academic astrophysics. I entered the private sector. A well-known company gave me a great, well-paid position. I monitored space travel and the development of new sources of energy. I got rich instead of a famous academic.
Bill was impressed. “Seems like you have a huge amount of talent, smarts to think an elaborate scientific fraud. Quite a dramatic story with a kind of sad end, sad in many ways, but with also a successful conclusion. Success. Well, you reaped the rewards of your cheating, but then you couldn’t deal with what you had done. Can understand that. Larry, seems to me you were resilient enough to create a new professional life. Sad or maybe not. Larry, tell me, is your secret story for real? Did it really happen?
Larry thought for a moment. Like you, I’m not saying whether I invented this story or it all happened, for real. I guess you will never know, nor will I know that your story happened. We are all storytellers about who we are and our experiences. Aren’t all of our stories are a mix of reality and the fiction we use to make our stories fit who we think we are and that goes for the secret stories we have told each us …and ourselves?”
Enough talk about what is real. What is real is that I’ve got to go. Before I leave had a thought about secrets and talking about our history and…ok to get to the point. Bill, I figured that the part of your that contained the conclusion that the guy was crazy, suicidal got you off the hook…maybe. We all tell our story with lots of poetic license like bullshit. ”
Bill didn’t respond. Just sat there across from Larry and then said, “tit for tat, on the subject of massaging your history I guess it helped to know that so many science papers have had to be retracted from journal most often because findings were false made up, so maybe knowing that helped to inspire you to come up with your science fiction.”
Larry, smiled, said nothing but then whispered, “Bill, the answer is yes, I know there is lots of fraud in science but that still left me frozen when thinking about what it would feel like to be caught and anyway …“If you don’t like part of your history change it. Look, enough already. Let’s leave on a high note.”
Larry got up and shook Bill’s hand. I guess neither of us will ever know what was real vs. made up. By the way, I enjoyed my bagel and talking to you and good luck.
Bill repeated, “And good luck to you too.”
