Rory's Last Ride
There's no telling what skeletons buried in your closet may show up on your doorstep. When a man's wife conspires with an old friend from college, he's forced to wake up and face the past.
Robert was looking forward to another day of drudgery. He’d been stuck in that rut for quite some time now. Years, you might say. Not much of a rut at that point. More like a canyon; a grand, long, tedious canyon of uniformity. In other words, a hallway.
Hallway.
Yes, Robert’s life was like a hallway that never turned. He could see its entirety charted out just before him. No surprises on the horizon, just the same old, predictable drab. He found comfort in that. Nothing odd, exciting, or outside of the norm ever happened in Robert’s life, and he was happier for it.
Well, that was before Tuesday rolled around.
Why Tuesday? And why the Tuesday just before Robert’s forty-seventh birthday? Well, no reason in particular. Odd things care little for reason.
So, it was the Tuesday before Robert’s forty-seventh birthday, and things were shaking out to be perfectly normal. He’d woken up exactly three seconds before his alarm went off, silenced it before it could buzz more than twice, and rolled over to kiss his wife. Only, she wasn’t there.
“Rebecca?” Robert did not feel panic. No, he felt… concern. Concern for the fact that things were, in fact, not off to their usual start. “Rebecca, where are you?”
So much for normal.
Reluctantly, Robert rolled his legs off the side of the bed and planted his feet firmly onto the carpet below. He had half the mind to fall back asleep and try for a do-over, but his curiosity won out in the end. Rebecca was not a morning person, and she worked remotely. What reason could she possibly have for being up so early? Robert’s birthday wasn’t until tomorrow, so there almost certainly wasn’t a surprise party waiting for him downstairs.
Concerned though he may have been, it was not enough for Robert to forgo his morning routine. He had to keep it together. Surely this mystery could wait until after he took a piss and brushed his teeth.
The answers to all of Robert’s questions were found not long after. As he walked down the stairs of their little two-bedroom condo in New Callisto, he found Rebecca hunched over a cup of coffee at the terminal in the living room — a tube that ran from floor to ceiling, which had a monitor and a keyboard built in near its base. Similar in function to a landline from the ancient days of the late nineteen-hundreds, or perhaps a home computer from only a decade or so later.
“Morning, dear,” Rebecca said as she sipped from her mug, face illuminated by the terminal’s blue and white screen.
“Rebecca, what are you doing up so early?” Robert, feeling the morning chill, gathered his robe around himself.
“Couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d heard the terminal go off in the middle of the night. My curiosities got the better of me.”
“And did it? Go off in the middle of the night?”
Rebecca nodded.
“And what does it say?”
A faint smile traced its way across his wife’s face, lifting up the bags beneath her sleepless eyes. “Do you remember Rory? From when we were in college?”
If pictures are worth a thousand words, then names are worth a thousand pictures. Two people may have the same name, but never the same memories associated with them. Robert knew only one Rory, there was no mistaking that.
“Yes, I remember Rory.”
For the smallest of moments, the dust that had settled on a life lost long ago had been wiped away, and Robert could just barely see glimpses of it through the glass in his mind. He could see Rory, faintly, along with many late nights full of drunken revelry: singing, dancing, drinking, talking about girls and money and other things that seemed so important at that age. The good stuff. And… the not-so-good stuff. Fist fights, running from the cops, shouting matches at two in the morning. Loneliness. Loss. Betrayal.
“Did he message you?”
“Yes,” Rebecca said, “though I’m not sure why.”
“What does he want?”
“Well, he sent a poem. For you. Kind of odd isn’t it?”
Not for Rory. “Let me guess, Shakespeare?”
“No, Longfellow.” And so Rebecca read aloud.
“‘I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.’”
Rebecca continued. “He ends with this: ‘My dearest friend, it has been a lifetime. I would sure like to see you again. You must only tell me when and where, and I’ll be there. Your brother, Rory.’”
Robert could not believe it. He and Rory hadn’t spoken since graduation. Not a single word in nearly twenty years. Not even when Robert and Rebecca had gotten married, or when Rebecca was in the hospital, or— No. Robert shoved the memory down, and lifted his chin high. “Tell Rory I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t want to see him. Not now, not ever.”
“Too late. I already told him you’d like to see him tomorrow. He’s on his way now, and will be here in the morning.”
“You what?” Robert’s world began to spin.
“Consider it an early gift. Happy birthday, love.”
If Tuesday was a wreck, Wednesday was a disaster. Robert had taken the day off weeks in advance for this birthday, and was now intent on never leaving the covers. Perhaps he could fake being sick, or better, fake his death. Yes, he could say he died peacefully in his sleep.
But Rebecca had other plans.
“Alright, up and at ‘em!” She pulled the curtains back and let the light of the morning cut through the room. “I won’t have you sleeping all morning, not when Rory’s almost here.”
Oh, how he wished he’d died last night.
“I don’t want to see Rory.”
“You’re being a child.” Rebecca tore the covers away then, exposing Robert in just his boxers, lying in the fetal position. “I don’t know what happened between you and Rory all those years ago, but you need to squash this.”
“I told you, I don’t want to see him!”
“Well, tough shit, my dear. You’re forty-seven now. It’s time you grow up. Now get your clothes on.”
Robert caught a t-shirt to the face, followed by a pair of jeans Rebecca had scooped up from the carpet, belt still looped in.
“Why are you doing this, Rebecca?”
She stopped at the door. “Because I love you, Robert. You’re a grown man and you don’t have any friends. You’ve lived your whole life in your little bubble, too scared to let anyone pop it. It’s gotten quite sad, frankly.”
“You think it’s sad?”
“Yes,” she said.
Ouch.
“You need friends, Robert. Not just me, but real friends. I’m not going to let you turn Rory away, no matter what happened between you two.”
The bell to their apartment chimed loud over the intercom. Someone was here.
“That’s Rory. Should I tell him to come up now?”
“No,” Robert sighed as he slid the day-old shirt over his head. “Tell him I’ll be down to meet him.”
Despite being more bald and wrinkled than Robert remembered, Rory hadn’t aged a day. He was still the same clueless, charismatic, full-of-life-and-meaningless-wisdom idiot Robert had known from their old college days.
“Well, well. If it isn’t old Robert Rocksides himself!” Rory approached his old friend and threw a few pretend punches towards his gut. “Or, should I say, Rubbersides? You’ve gotten fat! When’s the baby due?” Rory flashed a pair of bushy eyebrows hidden behind his sunglasses, then patted Robert's belly for added insult.
“Hi, Rory.”
“Jesus, man. Twenty years and all I get is, ‘Hi, Rory?’”
Robert was already at his wit’s end. It had hardly been thirty seconds.
“C’mon man, bring it in!”
The two of them shared a lopsided embrace. Where Rory was cheerful and inviting, Robert was cautious and stiff. Hardly anyone would have believed the two of them used to be best friends.
“Rory, what are you doing here? And what the hell is that thing?” Robert scrunched his nose and nodded towards the hunk of metal sitting in front of the apartment lobby. It was a car, which Robert could only assume Rory had driven here.
“That’s Roxy! And she’s not a thing, she’s a woman.”
“Are those… tires? Did you dig Roxy up from an old landfill or something?”
Rory patted the machine like a prized pig at a fair. “It’s a ground car! You know, one that drives on the ground. Hard to do that without tires.”
The sound of traffic overhead cascaded down through the skyscrapers, mocking Rory’s car from the heavens. Cars didn't drive on the ground anymore, hadn’t for over a century. Come to think of it, Robert had never even been inside a ground car before. He’d only ever seen them in vintage movies, or in museums. They were completely obsolete. Hell, dinosaurs had made a comeback before cars had.
“What is that awful smell?” Robert asked.
“That, my friend, is petrol. Smells quite lovely, doesn't it?”
“No, it’s nauseating. How did you even get petrol?”
“I know a guy. You wouldn’t believe how much of that stuff is just sitting in pools beneath the ground. Barrels and barrels of it! Used to be worth millions and now it ain’t worth a toenail.”
Rory was leaning against his car now like the protagonist out of some old greaser film. And perhaps he would have been, were it not for the fact that he was completely bald, and not at all handsome. Robert’s mind was reeling. Perhaps it was the fumes. Or maybe it was the company. That was more likely.
“C’mon Robert, get in! We’re gonna go for a ride.”
“You actually want me to get inside that thing? You must be out of your mind. Do you even know how to drive it?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Rory said as the car sputtered to life. He gave the gas a few pumps and sent Roxy into a coughing fit. “I didn’t know you'd given your balls to Rebecca for safe keeping. Of course I know how to drive! How do you think I got here?”
“Oh, to hell with you, Rory.”
Regardless of where Robert thought Rory was going when he died, it wasn’t enough to deter him. After some more cajoling, and some references to Robert’s manhood (or lack thereof), Rory managed to strong-arm his old friend into the passenger seat. And from somewhere far up above, Robert could feel his wife smirking down at him and laughing to herself.
Rory did not know how to drive. No well, at least. Their departure through the underbelly of New Callisto had been a herky-jerky endeavor, complete with not one, but two eleven-point turns. Rory had gotten turned around a few times and needed to back track. The cities of old may have made space along the ground for cars to navigate, but those days were long gone. City life today was lived up high; far, far away from the cramped muck and grime of the byways below.
Robert had heard the term “lead-footed” before, but he always assumed that was in reference to speeding. Rory had a lead foot alright, but it seemed to have a preference for finding the brake pedal and not the gas. On numerous occasions, Robert thought he’d be sent through the windshield.
After the third turnaround, he finally snapped.
“Rory, where the hell are we going? We’ve barely made it a mile from the apartment.”
“Don’t you worry, my friend! We’re getting there. I just seemed to have lost my way a bit. There's an old service road somewhere around here… Aha!”
With a wheeze, Roxy lurched forward and burst through a cluster of discarded boxes, scattering a nest of raccoons that had been dwelling within. The tires hydroplaned along a layer of city goop momentarily before finding traction once more on an old asphalt road lined with faded yellow paint. Robert swore he’d heard the exhaust fall out the bottom of the car.
“Here she is!”
“You call this a road? It’s hardly wide enough for me to lay across.”
Rory adjusted his shades and gave Roxy a pat on the dashboard. “You bet it is! One of the last remaining roads this side of the Rockies. It leads to the PCE, which, believe it or not, is now a National Park managed and maintained by the FBCC.”
“The PCE? Is it even legal to drive on that road anymore?”
“Is it legal? Robert, have you seen any cops around? Don’t get your lady parts in a twist.”
“Unbelievable,” Robert sighed. He reclined back in the adjustable seat and tried, unsuccessfully, to relax. Whoever said these things were made for comfort was mistaken.
“Speaking of lady parts, how’s Rebecca doing?”
Robert scoffed. “Really? That’s how you’re going to start that conversation?”
Rory had them moving at an even speed now that they were on an actual road. The sensation of riding in a car all together began to fade as the blur of the passing buildings lulled their senses.
“Something’s got you in a mood, pal. I don’t remember you complaining this much back in our heyday. I’m not sure what it is, but mark my words, we will squash it before this day is over!”
“I’m not in a mood,” Robert said. “And Rebecca’s fine. Just fine.”
“Oh, I can assure you she’s more than just fine, Robert.” Rory nudged his old friend with his elbow. “We all know you married the prettiest of the ladies. Johnny’s still jealous.”
Another name, another set of memories. “God, I forgot about Johnny.” Robert could see him clearly now, what with his crooked nose and too-big shoes that made him look like a duck.
“Well, Johnny ain’t forgot about you. He told me to give you his love.”
“Did he, now?”
“No, actually he told me to flick you in the balls, but I won’t do that to you. Not on your birthday.”
“That sounds more like him,” Robert said. “How is Johnny these days?”
Rory ran a hand over his bare scalp, which he had shaved to an impressive sheen. “Same old Johnny. Still boozing his way through life, and bulldozing his way through shallow relationships. The girl he’s with now ain’t too bad though. Might finally be the one to fix him.”
“That’ll be the day. And what about Addy? And Frank?”
Rory laughed. “Those boys haven’t changed either. Addy’s got three boys of his own now, each one a firecracker just like him — all gingers too. I saw them all yesterday on my way to the city. And Frank’s still Frank. He and his wife are trying for their second. Mary’s had a hard go at it with the pregnancies.”
“Good for them.”
“And what about you and Rebecca? You two tried for kids yet?”
That was the question Robert had been hoping to avoid, but Rory had seen the thread and pulled it.
“We tried, but it didn’t work,” Robert said.
Rory nodded, then with a sly smile, said, “Just can’t get it up for her anymore, eh?”
Rory, always the jokester. Unfortunately, Robert wasn’t in the mood for jokes that day. Especially about his wife.
“Fuck you, Rory. Seriously. How could you even think to make a joke like that?” Robert could feel his face turning red.
“Woah! I’m sorry man, I didn’t know it was such a sore subject. It was just a joke.”
“You’re right, Rory. You don’t know anything.”
“Damn, man. I said I’m sorry.”
The two of them were quiet for the rest of their drive through the city’s underbelly. The air between them was taught with tension, and far too tender to prod with words.
Robert watched the featureless buildings blur by his window as the hazy city air breezed over his head. Then, as if emerging from a tunnel, the city stopped, and the skies beyond opened up. They’d officially reached the edge of the New Callisto. The veil of manmade structures had been lifted, and the beauty of Earth beneath was revealed. White clouds and sage mountain ranges reflected one another like mirrored images for hundreds of miles around. Beyond the confines of the city, you could actually smell the ocean on the breeze.
“Welcome to the Pacific Coast Expressway.” Rory said, risking the silence between them. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Mhmm,” Robert replied.
Rory tried, and failed, to ease onto the breaks. He pulled the car over to the side of the road and squealed to a stop.
“What are you doing?” Robert asked.
Rory took the keys and tossed them. “Your turn to drive.”
Robert caught the keys with his chest. “What? You can’t be serious?”
“Serious as a heart attack.”
“But I’ve never driven before.”
“It’s easy, I’ll teach ya.”
Rory was right. Driving was pretty easy once you got the hang of it. Simple. The gas made it go, the brakes made it stop, and the wheel turned it. Robert found the whole process quite enjoyable, once he could ignore the potholes and focus his mind on something other than the driving.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Rory asked.
“It’s not so bad.”
“People used to do this all the time. They’d just drive around for the fun of it, letting the road take them wherever. Imagine the conversations they used to have in these things. There's something about being in a car that just knocks all the walls down, you know?”
“Uh huh.”
“It’s a shame. You don’t know what you’ve lost until it’s too late.”
Rory lit up a cigarette in the passenger seat. Robert watched from the corner of his eye as Rory took a drag, then dangled his hand out the window as he held the smoke in his lungs.
“Those things are gonna kill you, Rory.”
Rory smiled as he exhaled. “That would be a mercy, my friend.”
Robert shook his head. “You’re sick, you know?”
“Ha! You don’t know how right you are.”
Not wanting to start another argument, Robert let it go.
“I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” Rory said, changing the subject. “I was just trying to make a joke is all.”
“It’s alright.”
“So, what happened?”
“Hm?”
“You said you and Rebecca tried and it didn’t work. What happened?”
Robert had hoped this topic was behind them. “Nothing.”
“You expect me to believe that? I know you, man. I know when you’re holding back.”
It was a lucky guess. Rory didn’t know anything about Robert. Not anymore.
“C’mon, tell me, Rob.”
“You really wanna know?”
Rory flicked his cigarette. “Hit me.”
“Fine.” Robert tightened his grip on the wheel. “It… It happened about fifteen years back. We’d been trying for months with no luck. Rebecca was devastated. After the fifth negative test we were ready to give it up, but we decided to give it one last go. So we did, and she got pregnant.”
Rory nodded along, content for once with just listening.
“We made it seven months before Rebecca started having a lot of pain. Too much to be normal, so we went to the hospital. That’s when we found out our little boy — Casper — decided he was ready to come out early. We didn’t leave the hospital for another seven weeks after that.”
Rory winced and muttered a curse under his breath.
“Our boy didn’t make it… Rebecca barely did. It was— it was dark. Real dark.” Robert cleared his throat a few times, hoping to choke the emotions down.
“I’m sorry, Rob. I had no idea.”
“Yeah, well how could you have?”
“What?”
“You’re right, you had no idea. No clue what we were going through.”
“Rob—”
“No! I don’t want to hear it.” Rory was right, there was something vulnerable about being trapped in a car with someone. Robert couldn’t stop the tidal wave of emotions from knocking his walls down. “What happened to you, Rory? We were best friends for five years. Five whole years. And then once school was over, it was like you fell off the face of the earth. I haven’t heard a single word from you in over twenty years. How can you sit there and be shocked that Rebecca and I didn’t tell you what was going on?”
Rory tried to defend himself, but there was no stopping Robert.
“Do you know how much I’ve done for you? I was there for you when your dad died, Rory. I paid your way home so you could make it to his funeral, because you didn’t have any money and your mom wouldn’t help. I was there when Stacey broke your heart. And Jodi, and Leah. You were always chasing after the next girl, but it was me who had to come and put you back together after you fell apart. I was there for you every time, but you were always off partying with all your other friends, and I never so much as got a single invite. You never once stopped to think about me, so don’t sit around and act like the victim when I decided to quit thinking about you. That’s not on me, it’s on you, Rory.”
Rory was stunned, swaying with his back to the ropes like a boxer who’d taken one too many punches. “I— I’m sorry, Robert.”
“That’s it? You’re sorry?”
“What else do you want me to say? You always had… your own stuff going on. I didn’t want to ruin it.”
“Well so much for that.” Robert had been waiting years to speak his mind, to hear Rory apologize for everything he’d done, but there was no satisfaction now that it’d finally happened. “Damnit! Why’d you even bring me out here in the first place, Rory? Was this your plan all along?”
There was a long, silent moment before Rory said anything else. When he’d gotten his voice back, he said, “I’m dying.”
Those two words stopped Robert in his tracks. “What?”
“That’s why we’re here right now, Rob. I’m dying.”
“Oh, shut-up. I don’t wanna hear it.”
Now it was Rory’s turn to get angry. “I’m not messing around! I— I’m fucking dying, man.”
“You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack,” Rory said. “It’s cancer. Told you I was sick.”
Now Robert was on the ropes. He felt himself growing faint, decided it best to pull the car over before he wrecked it. He turned the keys, but left them in the ignition.
“How bad?”
“Huh?”
“How bad, Rory?”
Rory swallowed down the stone caught in his throat. “It’s stage four pancreatic cancer. Doctor gave me six months to live, and that was four months ago.”
Robert punched the steering wheel, not surprised to find that the horn didn’t work. “You don’t get to do that, Rory! You don’t get to ignore me for twenty years and then show up out of nowhere when you’re on your deathbed.”
“I know, it’s not right.”
“Why did you wait until now? I could’ve done something to help if you’d told me sooner!”
“Oh, there you go, trying to fix everything again,” Rory said, throwing his hands up. “You think I shaved my head for fun? That I wanted to be bald? No, the doctors already tried everything and it didn’t work. And now all my fucking hair is gone! There’s nothing to do. Besides, I did try to tell you. I sent a message to your terminal as soon as I found out, but you ignored me. Why do you think I had to message Rebecca instead?”
Robert remembered seeing the message a couple of months ago now. He hadn’t even opened it or told Rebecca about it before deleting it.
“I guess I wasn’t the only one hiding things,” Rory said, and there was no condemnation in his voice. Just sorrow.
Robert threw his head back against the headrest, fought back tears. Only Rory could do something like this — show up after twenty years of silence and make you feel like the bad guy for it. Robert, for the life of him, could not stop himself from crying, so he decided to laugh.
“You’re a real bastard, Rory. You know that?”
Rory laughed with his friend. “Yeah, I’ve been told.”
“So what do we do now?”
That was the question, after all. They were parked on the side of a dilapidated highway with no destination, and no desire to turn back. Not yet.
“We keep on living, until we can’t.”
“How poetic,” Robert said.
“My time may be up, but I’m damn sure going to make the most of it. It’s crazy how much life you can cram in when you don’t have much of it left.”
“So, what? Was this on your bucket list or something, then?”
“Something like that.”
“Was it worth it?”
Rory smiled and threw his arm around his friend. “Buddy, this was worth every penny. Sorry we didn’t do it sooner.”
Robert couldn’t help but curse Rebecca then. She knew all along this was what they’d needed. Perhaps she even knew Rory was dying. “You know,” Robert said, “I almost didn’t even come.”
“Why did you?”
“Rebecca made me.”
Rory shook his head. “God, I love that woman. She’s a saint.”
“That she is.” Robert remembered something his wife had said the day before, from Rory’s message. He recited it. “Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; and the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.”
“Now look at who's the poet.”
“So this was your plan all along?” Robert said. “Trap me in a car with you so we could work it all out?”
“Bingo,” Rory replied as he reached into the backseat and opened up a cooler. He returned with two beers and handed one to Robert. “Shall we toast?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to drink and drive.”
“What are they gonna do, kill me?”
The two of them laughed and cracked their beers. Robert held his high.
“To you, Rory. The friend I didn’t know I missed.”
Rory lifted his drink in return. “You don’t know what you’ve lost until it’s too late. Cheers. To one last ride.”
One last ride.
If you made it this far, then I sincerely thank you! I post stories like this monthly, so if you liked what you read then I encourage you to follow me on Substack or subscribe to this publication so you can be notified when my latest stories release.
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Good stuff. I wish all lost friendships had such happy endings.