Previous installments of Missing Time - Part 1.

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Tim discovered that these golden years that everyone worked so hard and sacrificed so much to achieve are one of the biggest scams in history. Being an adult in this modern world is like being housed in a prison of falsehoods and each time you wake up to a truth one of the bars disappears. The trouble is, by the time you’ve eliminated enough bars gone to escape, it’s too late.

Tim had been a tumbleweed since midway through Reagan’s second term. He’d grown tired of life in smaller towns. He found the people in these places eventually made an effort to get to know him. Subconsciously, Tim had been inching his way closer to a city large enough to disappear into for a long time but doubted he would ever make it.

Good fortune had a way of turning up in the unlikeliest of places. One day in the summer of 2010 luck showed up while Tim was unloading semi trailers in a dingy warehouse with Matt, a anarchist-leaning kid with a penchant for porn and Metallica. A conversation with Matt typically consisted of a detailed account of why guns are good, how taxation is theft, and a myriad of his, clearly fictional, sexual escapades. On that particular day the kid was all jazzed up about something called bitcoin.

Tim was dismissive about almost everything the kid said but Matt was extraordinarily insistent about bitcoin.

Did you buy some yet?

Dude, tell me you bought some last night.

You’re going to regret it if you don’t get into bitcoin, mark my words dude.

Over the next few weeks Matt wore him down. On a particularly bright Saturday morning in mid-January the two met at a coffee shop and he helped Tim buy bitcoin with his meager holiday bonus check. It was a small price to pay to shut the kid up. Matt made him swear to bookmark the website where his coins were housed on his HP laptop, write his password down, and keep it in a safe place.

The last thing Matt said to him was, “You’ll thank me someday.”

Not long after that Tim got the itch to move on to another city, never saw Matt again, and completely forgot about his investment. One dark midwinter morning, seven years later, Tim was getting ready for work with the TV on in the background. Something Katie Couric was blabbering on about caught his attention, Bitcoin. She did a ten minute segment on about how the price of Bitcoin had skyrocketed to seventeen thousand dollars. As best Tim could remember, the price he paid was around twelve cents. At first he didn’t believe his ears but after a quick Google search he discovered it was true.

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Something Katie Couric was blabbering on about caught his attention, Bitcoin. She did a ten minute segment on about how the price of Bitcoin had skyrocketed to seventeen thousand dollars. As best Tim could remember, the price he paid was around twelve cents. At first he didn’t believe his ears but after a quick Google search he discovered it was true.

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That morning he phoned his supervisor and, with the best phony cough he could muster, took one of his five precious sick days. He dug out that old HP laptop from the back of his closet and spent the next few hours trying to remember the username and password for his cryptocurrency exchange account.

After he discovered the faded slip of paper with his username and password tucked away in the innermost recesses of his wallet he began feverishly selling his bitcoin. The sell-off continued well into the afternoon and before he knew it Tim had almost fifty million reasons to never have to live by anyone else’s rules again.

A few hours after the adrenaline subsided, paranoia began to settle in its place. That’s when he decided it would be important to keep his newfound wealth a secret. Those first few weeks of unstructured freedom were sumptuous. It was reminiscent of the mania he experienced during those first few days of summer vacation when he was a boy in school.

The very first thing Tim did was get rid of his alarm clock. He did so in a dramatic manner, smashing it to bits in his garage with a hammer. He made the drive to the local Rolex dealer in Pittsburgh and picked himself out an understated white gold model then went about searching the internet for European river cruises. These were the three things he always told himself he’d do if he lived long enough to retire or if he won the lottery.

The honeymoon phase of his new life wore off quickly. After a couple months of sitting idly around his apartment his brain became foggy. The droning sound of daytime TV grated on his nerves. He started memorizing commercials, forgetting why he walked into rooms, talking aloud to himself, and sliding down a slippery slope of day-drinking.

By the time spring rolled around it was typical for Tim to have caught a buzz well before lunch. He relied on his Rolex to remind him what day of the week it was. The daylight hours seemed to stretch to infinity but the weeks and months passed with an incomprehensible quickness. From the moment his eyes opened in the morning he would struggle with little wisps of loneliness and guilt that seemed to follow him like a shadow.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world continued to buzz outside his windows. Everyone was out there, playing their roles, fulfilling some kind of purpose, even if they hated it. For sanity’s sake Tim dug deep to find creative ways to pass all these idle hours and, if he was lucky, he ended the day feeling like his life had a shred of meaning.

One morning, in the midst of an especially low mood, self-preservation kicked in. Tim decided that he would start forcing himself out the door each day with the goal of accomplishing just one good deed. He started off that week doing little things like secretly paying for a family’s meal at a restaurant, buying someone’s groceries, or gifting a tankful of gas. This put a smile on his face and made him feel the warmth of human connection.

As they say, no good deed goes unpunished. It didn’t take long before people started talking and a local news reporter caught on. A few days after Tim saw the Greensburg Good Samaritan story on the evening news he packed up his belongings. Without telling anyone he left that charming little town in the southwest corner of Pennsylvania for New York City.

The only person he felt any remorse about leaving behind was Deb, his favorite waitress at Applebee’s. He knew she would probably always wonder what happened to him and the thought of this troubled him. Deb was interesting to talk to, a genuinely kind soul, and attractive for her age. To this day he couldn’t stop thinking about how she winked at him after he ordered and how the scent of her drugstore perfume lingered long after she left his table. Tim even considered asking her out on a date until reason got the better of him. He didn’t have the patience to suffer through anyone else’s idiosyncrasies and sure as hell didn’t want to burden anyone else with his.

As the subway car swayed, Tim propped his head against the window and tried to set his mind adrift. Panic attacks could strike him at any time and sometimes without warning, and it happened a lot in the subway. Daydreaming was how he learned to deal and he’d become quite adept at it. On his best days he appeared at his apartment building’s stoop, with absolutely no recollection of how he got there.

As the subway entered the dark tunnel the lights inside the car grew brighter. An ache of melancholy settled in, then passed as quickly as it came. He hadn’t thought about his parents like this since he was shipped off to Vietnam in the late-sixties. Not a damn thing was ever the same after that. The phone calls and visits between him and his family eventually tapered off. Somewhere along the line the continuity of his life became severed. Now, the gulf between him and anyone he ever loved seemed much too large to traverse.

As he hobbled up his block he decided he didn’t have it in him to do his good deed for the day but promised himself he’d make up for it tomorrow. Sometimes the stark contrast of being secretly rich in the city where people had to hustle just to make ends meet made him feel like he had made something of his life. These feelings of adequacy never lasted long. Tim would invariably be reminded that his fortune was made in a way he couldn’t replicate if his life depended on it.

Tim was feeling more and more out of touch in a society where people delighted in finding new and ever more absurd reasons to be offended and where wearing pajamas in public was a fashion statement. He wanted to see cars that flashed with chrome, strangers in suits and hats acknowledging one another with a nod as they passed on the street, to hear people laughing and telling jokes again.

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Tim was feeling more and more out of touch in a society where people delighted in finding new and ever more absurd reasons to be offended and where wearing pajamas in public was a fashion statement.

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Even before Tim had turned the final key in the last of four deadbolt locks of his apartment door he had decided he would pour himself a double to help chase the chill from his bones. He emptied his pants pockets of their contents into the red silk lining of his overturned newsboy cap: keys; wallet; Swiss army knife; and a fat roll of crisp hundred dollar bills.

He switched on his vintage Linn LP 12 turntable, lifted the tone arm, and rested the needle onto the outermost groove of Kind of Blue. Miles always had a way of setting his mind free. Tim grabbed a low ball glass from the counter, added three cubes of ice, and generous pour of Bushmills. As he swirled the glass, the strong, sweet vapor of the whiskey made his nostrils tingle.

Now he would settle into his recliner, angled just right so he could watch the evening’s events unfold. Five stories below him people were living their lives, as best they could, among the shops his window framed. There was the little trashy bodega that never closed, the old Greek restaurant with its faded yellow sign, and the gay Asian florist. The endless parade of humanity on the street before him were the characters, his imagination provided the plot.

Like he did every afternoon, Tim would sip the whiskey and swirl the ice at a perfectly practiced pace until all three of them eventually melted together as one. The process was a dance to the very edge of intoxication, then a deft retreat. The tango continued with every sip and every pause until the sun dipped below the horizon. When nightfall came, Tim would know he had again survived another day.

Read On

With Gratitude,
~Eric Vance Walton~

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*I am an American novelist, poet, traveler, and crypto-enthusiast. If you’ve enjoyed my work please sign up for my author newsletter at my website. Newsletter subscribers will receive exclusive updates and special offers and your information will never be sold or shared.

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