Oh Boy!

“Its green tea with lemon, would you like one?”

“Smells good. Could I have it with sugar?”

“Of course, coming right up.”

Anthony shifted his position on the stool, and tapped on the counter. He had suddenly appeared here, after being elsewhere. He couldn’t remember walking into the diner, didn’t remember sitting down in front of the bartender, didn’t even remember how he got into talking about tea.

He felt at ease here. Didn’t know why. The diner wasn’t well lit, and he breathed in a diluted waft of cigarette smoke that emanated from a booth along the front windows. Three men sat in that booth, conversing in hushed tones. Anthony turned back to front of the diner, and watched the guy behind the counter bring a steaming cup to him. The subtle lemony smell tried and failed to drive away the smoke.

“Here you go. Enjoy.”

Anthony nodded, and blew on the cup, pushing the steam away. He sipped at his beverage, letting the warm liquid spread through his chest. He looked up at the man who brought it, and smiled. “Thank you…”

“Sam.”

“Sam, you look at little familiar. Do we know each other?” He did look like a distant memory.

“I don’t think so, but I once sat in your spot, and another in mine.”

Anthony glanced around, and returned his gaze to Sam. “Where am I?”

Sam chuckled. “In Al’s diner. But Al let me take over a few years back.”

“How did I get here?”

Sam smiled. “You don’t know?”

Anthony thought hard for a moment. “No. I all of a sudden found myself in this conversation about tea with you. I don’t remember even coming in.”

Sam shook his head. “Usually its about now when things start to click,” he put down the rag he was holding and produced a mirror from underneath the counter. He held it up in front of Anthony, “look into this. What do you see?”

Anthony looked. A strange face stared back, outlined with the last wisps of tea steam. “What is this?”

Sam looked up for a moment, and then at Anthony. “Its you. Don’t you recognize it?”

Anthony looked again. Then, in a flash, it hit. It was him. Older, complete with lines and gray hairs. His eyes looked tired, a bit bloodshot around his irises. He took another sip of the tea.

“I guess its been a while since I’ve looked at myself. Damn, where have the years gone? I don’t remember looking that old.”

Sam put down the mirror. “You’ve been busy.”

Anthony picked up the spoon in the saucer, and swirled his tea. “Sure seems like it. But for the life of me, I’m drawing a blank.”

Sam leaned forward on one elbow on the counter. “When I sat in your chair, Al was pretty vague with me. Said I had to figure it out for myself.”

“And did you?”

“Yeah, it took me a bit, and my other friend Al came in to help.”

“Two Al’s? Did either of them make a good cup of tea?”

“I didn’t get tea. I got a Schlitz. In my situation, I needed it.”

Anthony shifted on the stool, a creepy crawly feeling running up his legs. “What was your situation?”

Sam started to wipe the counter with a rag. “I was on a long journey, helping people and making the world a better place. I thought in that moment, all I wanted was to go home. The Al’s made me realize that the going home was always in my power, but I really didn’t want to.”

Anthony drained the cup. “Did you make it back?”

“No. There was always somebody that needed me. A wrong needed to be made right. I needed a bit of a rest to actually let go of what I thought I wanted, and find my true purpose.”

Anthony licked his lips. “And you did that here? Why here?”

“Actually right in the same stool you are in. Al explained that every so often, a priest needs a sabbatical. A moment to recharge, refocus, renew. I stopped fighting myself, and stopped worrying about what I was told that I wanted.”

“And what do you really want?”

“To make a difference for good.”

“And that’s why you are tending bar here?”

Sam chuckled. “No. I’m tending bar because I’m basically retired. But the work continues. So Al let me take over for a bit, so I can help others find it too. Its helping but different.”

“But I don’t really know what I’m doing here. Its weird, but I don’t remember things before I got here.”

Sam finished wiping, and put the rag back on his apron. “Well, lets start there. What’s the last thing you remember before coming here?”

Anthony closed his eyes and thought. Nothing popped in his head for a few moments, and then it opened. He remembered stepping into a blue light. He felt his body leap away, and then he saw himself, but with a different face in a mirror.

“Its coming back to you, isn’t it?”

Anthony nodded. “I don’t know what it means yet.”

Sam grimaced. “I’ll be less vague than Al. You stepped into an accelerator, and have been traveling through time.”

Anthony almost choked. “What?”

“Yes, keep thinking about it. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

Anthony thought more. He remembered more faces that weren’t his, more lives he came into in the middle, more awkward situations that we somehow got out of. Oh boy.

“So, you did this too?”

“Yes sir.”

“How did you survive?”

Sam walked down to the kettle, and brought it back. He poured more tea into Anthony’s cup, and then another. He put some lemon juice in both, and a small scoop of sugar into Anthony’s.

“My best friend Al. Not the bartender. But he was always there. Helped me do the most good. And, I was even able to help him. One of the best things I ever did.”

“I don’t think I had my own Al.”

Sam’s smile turned over to a frown. “I know. Part of the reason you are here. You needed a break. And another cup of tea.”

“Why am I not just sent home?”

“Because you don’t want to.”

“I think if I remembered, I would.”

Sam took a sip of tea. “So, if you remembered, you wouldn’t be here. So, lets test that.” He reached out and touched Anthony’s temple.

A flood of memories poured back, and Anthony stumbled in the stool.

“Oh, boy.”

“You said it.”

Anthony remembered before he stepped into the accelerator. His fiance in bed with his best friend, his boss firing him, and the eviction notice on his apartment door. Having more drinks than he should have at Flannigan’s. An overly friendly guy telling him that he had a great opportunity for him.

“I have nothing back there.”

“True. You have much more since then, even if you can’t see it. You still think that you are the passenger of your situation, not the driver. You decided to enter the accelerator.”

“What are you talking about? The guy took advantage of me. If he told me what this really was, I wouldn’t have done it. Plus, they offered no support for me. Nobody to help me.”

Sam drank from his cup. “Well, that is true. But that doesn’t explain everything. There were multiple times you could have done something, but didn’t.”

Anthony scratched his chin. “It wouldn’t have helped. Nothing I do helps. Nobody really needs me.”

“You really believe that?”

“You’ve seen. Apparently you know my life. I’ve amounted to nothing. I’ve been doing this for a long time. So long I don’t recognize myself. Whoever threw me into the accelerator obviously forgot I was there, or figured out that I would just screw it up. Not even worth the effort to recall.”

Sam’s eyes looked down. “I didn’t think it had gotten this bad. I’m sorry. We should have brought you here sooner. There are too many accelerators now, too many who are letting them be used for their own purposes.”

“See, you didn’t care either.”

“I’m not going to argue for my failure, but I definitely do care. I think I know why you are still leaping.”

Anthony was taken aback. “You do?”

“Yes, because you know you have control over it. The thing that you are lying about is that you didn’t have control over the rest of your life. That's why long after someone would have given up, because they were butting their head up against it, you kept going. You didn’t have to face what you did to your life.”

Anthony blustered. “What I did? I’m not responsible!”

Sam’s frown turned back around, slightly. “You are. You stopped showing up to work. You stopped paying your rent. You signed the paperwork after sobering up to enter the accelerator. You did all those things.”

“And my fiance?”

“You chose her. The red flags were always there. You ignored them. Its doesn’t mean that she should have done what she did, but you never had to see her.”

“She said she loved me.”

Sam put his hand on Anthony’s shoulder. “Of course she did. And you saw her tell her last boyfriend she loved him. In fact, didn’t she cheat on him with you?”

Anthony looked at Sam, and nodded. “She did.”

“Then you realize that your problems are because you did something, or did not do something. It is your actions that affect your world.”

“But I was forgotten about!”

“Maybe, but perhaps not. You didn’t need someone else to blame. You needed to see that there was no one else to blame for what you did. And you couldn’t. When you leaped in, it was you, and only you, who made the decisions.”

Anthony felt confused. “But why would anyone contract me to do this? You can see that I’m not the save the world type.”

Sam leaned back to his side of the counter. “No, you aren’t the typical one. But neither was Moses, or Jonah, or Paul. It doesn’t really matter why you entered. It is what you do with it when you are there.”

Anthony finished his cup of tea, and Sam refilled it. “Then what is my purpose for continuing?”

“I think that you want to be better, and until you do, you will continue.”

Anthony sat with that. And for the first time in his life, he felt at peace with a statement about himself. “I think you are right. But I don’t know how to be better. I just know how to be me.”

Sam smiled. “You are better than you think. One of the things my friend Al always told me was how what I did changed things for the better. Did it right before I leaped to my next. You never got that, until now. Do you remember Debbie Rayne?”

He did. A stunning blonde bombshell, Debbie Rayne was engaged to be engaged to Marcus Fallow when Anthony leaped in. But Anthony blew off Debbie, spending time his time with Marcus’s best friend Donald, whose father was dying. “I do. Really screwed that one up.”

Sam shook his head. “You didn’t. If you had an Al, you would have learned instead of Marcus and Debbie getting married, never having children and growing to resent each other so much that Marcus poisoned them both to death,” Sam poured another cup for himself, “instead they both found love with others, had beautiful families and lived happily ever after. You did good.”

Anthony’s face lit up. “I did that? I thought I ruined his life.”

“Anthony, you saved it. Because you did the right thing, even though you didn’t know it. I think you are a great person to change things for the better.”

Anthony breathed in deeply, and felt the chattering negative voices inside him fading into the background. He felt good.

“Sam, thank you. I wonder, are you my Al?”

“No, I am just Sam. You don’t really need me. You just needed a nudge to see what you’ve always known. In that way, you are better at this than I was. I needed Al to help me make sure I did the right things. You did them without any help.”

Anthony’s eyes watered up a little. “I did, didn’t I? I’m not such a loser after all, am I?”

Sam grinned. “Nope. You better finish your tea. Never know when it will be time to move on.”

“You’re right.” Anthony took a big sip. “I’ll try to remember this conversation. And maybe one day, I’ll take your place.”

“You might. But you have a lot of work to do before then.”

“I guess, I better get to it then. Oh boy! Can’t wait!”