Crashing Hearts

“Hey, psst,” whispered the strange man in the brown wool jacket. “Psst… Psssst!! Do you want a little love?”

Robert’s head turned to both of its sides and behind, trying to figure out if that man was talking to him.

The strange man in the wool coat ensured he maintained his locked eyes on Robert’s, to confirm that yes, he was the one he was talking to.

“What?” said Robert, his eyes squinted and still swiftly flashing around him, to make sure he wasn’t somehow being set up.

“Come here, come here,” motioned the unfamiliar man.

“No! What’s up? What do you want?” Robert spoke in regular volume, making it possible for anyone within earshot to easily hear. Fortunately for the man in the wool coat, there weren’t many others around. At least not any who would much matter—many of them appearing even stranger than him.

“Do you want a little love?” the wooled-cat man asked again. “I got some I can spare.” He began partially opening a flap of his coat.

“What?! No. Are you crazy?!?” Robert first yelled, only to then lower his voice once he thought better of it. “Are you crazy?”

“Nah, I’m not crazy, man. Look. I’m just trying to help you out. I saw you there walking by yourself, looking all pitiful and miserable…like you’re a few of ya’ own slugs away from the Heaven above, or—” he then spoke behind the back of his hand—“that other place, below. And just thought you might could use some love, that’s all.”

“What are you talking about? You don’t even know me,” Robert asserted.

“I may not know you, but I know sadness when I see it. It’s one of our most natural human emotions, recognizable in any face, race, nationality, culture, or community around the world, since the beginning of time!”

“Whatever, well I don’t need whatever you’re talking about—“

“Love?”

“Whatever it is!”

“Can you even say the word?” the man asked. 

“Look, I don’t have time for this—"

“Wow. You can’t even say it, can you? They got you that brainwashed that you can’t say the word of one of the greatest types of feelings and expressions the good Lord saw fit to bless us with.”

“Umm, you’re not even supposed to be saying the word—“

“Oh I can say the word. I can say it, feel it, do it. Make it,” the man chuckled. “I’ll be hindered by no man.” He then sucked his teeth. “Man gonna tell me I can’t say the word ‘LOVE’. LOVE. LOVE. L-O-V-E, L-O-V-E—”

“Stop that!!!” Robert shouted above a whisper.

“Stop what? Love?”

Robert’s frown deepened, and his eyebrows sunk lower into his ‘lids.

“Look, I have to go,” he said. "I’m running late for work—”

“Is work more important than love?” the man asked. 

“Work is legal. That…thing…is not.”

“Is work natural?”

“In some ways, yes,” said Robert.

“The kind of work you do is natural?”

Robert lingered for a few moments, contemplating his corporate office in a dull, grey cubicle that awaited him.

“Look, man,” the wooled-coat man continued. “I’m not trying to trick you or get you in trouble or anything. For real. Man-to-man, I just… You looked like… A little something to get you by… might not hurt.”

Robert’s eyes which turned slightly from clear impatience and annoyance to…a sort of…something else…gave him away. For a brief moment, they seemed less-impatient. Less-annoyed.

 “Hey, you don’t even have to say anything,” the man saw and hurried to jump in the that tiny window of possibility. “Just let me show you what I got!”

Robert’s hands in his own coat pockets, his body which had mostly turned away from the stranger began to slightly turn back in his direction.

“Look, I got everything from crush love to ol’-fashioned making love. I’ve got a little love, I’ve got a lotta love. That sweet ol’ family-type love, that enriching loyal-friend-type love, even the more relaxing pet love. I’ve got the juiciest kind—the spicy, mind-blowin’ lover kind of love!” The man smiled slyly and air-jabbed his elbow a few times in Robert’s direction.

“No, this is crazy,” Robert interrupted. “I’m going to get in trouble, and you’re going to get in trouble. You’re going to get us both in trouble, if anyone were to ever find out!!”

“If anyone were to ever find out. Who’s tellin’? asked the man. “Not me!”

“How about me,” Robert said coldly.

The wooled-cat man stood there, quiet for the first time.

Robert turned and walked on to his office, leaving the wooled-cat man frozen in place like a statue behind him.

*********

“You know, the craziest thing happened to me today!” Robert said as he removed his coat in his home’s foyer and tossed it on the rack later that evening.

“What’s that?” asked his mom, Pauline, as she walked in from the kitchen. Robert’s 15-year-old daughter Alaina barely looked up as she scrolled her phone on the couch.

“This crazy man downtown stopped me on the street, asking me if I want some…some…”

“Some what, honey?” Pauline asked.

“Some l—…some luh—-” Robert still couldn’t bring himself to say it. “You know, that word.”

“No, I don’t know, Robert, use your vocabulary, son. Some what?”

“Some luh—”

“Love?” Alaina offered, her eyes still glued to her mini screen.

They both looked over at her. 

“Now you know you’re not supposed to say th—”

“I mean, grandma asked you several times what you meant, and you wouldn’t say, which… I don’t know why,” she rolled her eyes.

“Young lady!!” his voice raised.

“Robert, so what happened with the man?” Pauline tried to defuse the father-and-daughter interaction.

Robert inhaled and slowly exhaled, taking a few beats to re-aboard his train of thought. “Umm… Oh yeah, he just was like ‘Do you want some l— What she said.”

“Hmm, but how would that work?” asked Pauline. 

“You’re asking me?” said Robert. “I have no clue, nor do I want to.”

Still scrolling, Alaina chimed in. “You basically just go up, tell them what kind of love you want, and then you can either have them give it to you directly, have them bottle it up for you to take home and use it on yourself, or you can use it with someone. Someone you trust,” her eyes finally glanced up and at her father for a few moments, and then they returned to the screen.

Robert’s and Pauline’s mouths hung open.

“And how, pray tell, do you know all of that, young lady?!” asked Robert, who was both surprised and appalled. 

“Umm, school,” she said like he’d just questioned her answer of one-plus-one equaling two. “Kids talk. Oh, and of course, social media.”

“Well, you’ve never done anything like that, yourself, have you?” Robert asked, secretly, desperately praying she would say no.

Her eyes momentarily looked up at him again, and her whole face washed with a sort of devilish expression. She let his question hang in the air for a few extra seconds.

“Well?!?” Robert demanded.

Pauline smiled and waited just one last second.

“No,” she then said quickly and looked back down at her phone.

“Good,” Robert exhaled with relief. “And I really do hope you’re telling the truth!”

“And what if I had?” she continued to taunt, her gaze still downward.

“Then you would’ve been putting this entire family at risk for getting in some serious trouble. So, I’m glad you didn’t,” he said and tried to make that the end of that conversation.

Alaina contemplated speaking further but decided to leave things there as well.

“So, what did you say?” Pauline interjected.

“Huh?” said Robert.

“That man on the street who made that offer… What did you say when he asked?” 

Robert became bewildered. “What do you mean, what did I say? Of course I said no.”

“Said ‘no’ to what?” asked Robert, Sr.—known by everyone as Skip—as he walked in from the backyard.

“Dad is freaked out because some man downtown offered him some love—” Alaina smirked.

“Some illegal… That,” Robert corrected her, and her eyes rolled again.

“Oh,” said Skip. “And what did you say?”

“Oh my God, I said no!!!” Robert found himself increasingly exasperated. “What else is there to say?”

“Oh, I don’t know… ‘Yes’?” quipped Skip.

“First of all, why would I say ‘yes’ to something that is clearly no longer legal, and then on top of that, why the hell would I be additionally stupid and get it off the black market?”

“I mean… Better than not at all, right?” said Skip.

“BUT IT’S ILLEGAL!!!!” Robert’s voice somehow echoed throughout the brick home.

“Son, calm down,” Skip followed. “‘Illegal’ to whom?”

“Illegal by the law, Dad, c’mon. Are you guys serious?”

“Dad, why do you have to always be such a rule follower?” chimed in Alaina, now with her phone down and looking at her father fully.

“Because it’s what you’re supposed to be, Alaina. It’s what I taught you to be. Why do you always have to be such a rule breaker?”

“And what do you think we taught you to be?” Skip asked.

“A rule follower,” said Robert.

“Yeah, rules that make sense,” said Skip.

“But this rule does make sense. Look, man had their chance at luh—”

“Go on and say it, Robert!” shouted an increasingly impatient Pauline. “For goodness sake, ain’t nobody listenin’ but us!!”

“Yeah, we don’t got the place bugged or anything,” Skip smirked. “And unless you plan on tellin’ on yo’self…”

As Robert’s eyes shifted between both of his parents, he deeply exhaled in defeat. 

“Ok. L—…Luh—…Love,” he sighed again, suddenly feeling a very real, increased possibility he might actually hyperventilate. It felt like he’d just uttered a dirty word—arguably, the dirtiest of the words. Robert used the occasional curse word pretty well and comfortably, but that word? It had become quite the pariah in his personal vocabulary.

“For thousands of years, man had its chance of that. Of…’love,’” he said as he thought as carefully as he could about his next choice of words and the route he was choosing to taken, given his current audience. “We had plenty a chance of love, and you know what that got us? Lots of premature deaths. Violence. Destruction,” he performatively counted with his fingers. “Drug addiction. War. Poverty. Hell, it even led to an obesity epidemic in most of the world, due to people in it tending to be less-active and more likely to sit around, overindulging in crap together… and ‘close’ families passing along bad eating habits to the next generation. And the next!!”

This time, Skip’s eyes were the ones that rolled.

The room was quiet. He continued.

“Nearly every destructive, harmful thing that has happened to humans since the beginning of time could be, in one way or another...traced back to it. I mean, it’s been proven. And so all the governments of the world finally did something about it. We saw it was the cancer, so, they did away with it. And now, that is the law we all have to follow, or risk—” 

“We know, we know. Death,” Pauline mockingly exaggerated.

“No, no! Not death!” Robert slightly wagged his left index finger. “Necessarily. You know there are different penalties for different degrees of love you practice, and for how long. They do it based on the nature of the love, your intention—if they can determine it, and the length of time you committed it. If you just hug someone in passing, you might get just a slap on the wrist—a fine of some sorts, or maybe a few hours of community service.”

He continued, “But if you’re caught in a full-blown romantic relationship, where you’re making love and doing arguably so-called ‘loving’ things for one another, yeah that… That could end up with the more…severe…consequences. A life sentence or… yeah. Could be, but it has to be pretty extreme!!”

“But all of that is when you’re out and about in the world, son, where people can see you,” said Pauline. “Or anytime you’re around folks who will open their big mouths and tell on you. But what about when you’re home?”

“What about when you’re home?” asked Robert, genuinely perplexed. 

Pauline was perplexed, too, but for different reasons. Her eyes squinted. “Just what do you think we do in here, son?” she asked.

“What are you talking about?” asked Robert.

“All up and through here,” she waved around her. “This house. This home. Us. Your family. What do you think it is that exists between us? Toleration?”

“Mom, come on, we aren’t doing anything that would break those laws in here,” Robert said, confused.

“Says who? You love me, don’t you? And I love you? And your father, and Alaina. You love Alaina, don’t you?”

Robert thought about it for a few moments. “We can’t… That isn’t what we’re supposed to do.”

“But it’s what we’re doing, son. It is what we’re supposed to do. We’re human! And that’s part of it. No matter what man says!”

“But we live in man’s world, so we have to follow his rules,” her only child insisted.

Alaina loudly exhaled.

Her dad nearly matched the audible frustration. “What, Alaina?”

“Dad, for real?”

Robert slightly shook his head, unsure where she was going with this latest interruption.

“Don’t you ever miss it? Miss being in love? Thinking about when mom was alive—which wasn’t that long ago, by the way—and the kinds of things you felt whenever you were around her? I swear you were never happier. What about when you two first met? I remember you used to love—yes, love,” she let the word linger for a few seconds, “—telling me the story. You loved telling me about how you two fell in love…and how much you wanted it for me some day. Well, I do want to experience that with a special person one day—-”

“Alaina—” Robert tried to jump in.

“Naw, naw,” Skip inserted instead. “Let the young lady finish.”

Slightly taken aback by her grandfather’s permission, she gave a slivered grin of gratitude and continued.

“Think of how much you used to tell me you love me… And all the ways you used to show it. Your hugs, your kisses, the silly laughter we’d share at dumb things. Our father-daughter dates… You singing me to sleep…” she slid a finger under her eyelid. “You saying the words—those three words—‘I love you’…every time we’d get off the phone or when one of us had to go somewhere…?”

Robert took in another deep breath, his eyes already long-ago misty… And then he let out another, slowly.

“Do you remember?” her voice whispered with a crack. “Don’t you want that back? Don’t you want to have that again, no matter what anyone out there—” her right hand motioned towards the front door—“says. Like grandma said, we’re human. That’s what humans do. Dad, don’t you miss it?”

“Baby girl. I hear you,” said Robert, seeming to stop there and Aliana’s eyes slightly raised, thinking something she’d said might’ve finally landed and she could have hope after all.

“But it’s the rules,” said Robert.

“Screw the rules!!” his daughter screamed as she broke down.

“Young lady! Okay, that’s enough, that’s enough,” Skip butt in and walked over to pull Alaina into an embrace, which seemed to make Robert uncomfortable.

He stood there, alone, feeling helpless. In this new kind of world, in a moment like this, he really wasn’t quite sure what to do.

“We can’t screw the rules. Someone might tell,” said Robert with sincere concern in his voice.

“Who, Robert? Who would tell?” Asked Pauline. “Not any of us. You wanna know why? Because we love you. That’s why.”

************

The next day, as Robert drove home, he spotted a familiar face walking along the sidewalk in the opposite direction of their home.

It was Alaina.

In that moment, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he recognized in her what it was the man in the wool coat must’ve seen in him those several days back. It was a sort of…coldness. Hopelessness. Misery. Endless emptiness.

He didn’t realize how obvious it’d been.

What was worst, he remembered the kinds of things that had been on his mind when that man in the wool coat had called him out about it. Some very dark, very final… Things.

The stranger hadn’t been totally wrong.

Robert’s heart nearly broke almost as fast as it beat.

He couldn’t let anything like that happen to Alaina. She wasn’t going to go through life thinking the same kinds of dark things he’d come to think. He had to do something. He first didn’t know what, just that he was desperate. 

And then the idea struck him.

He turned the car around and raced it downtown.

On the way, he tried to rationalize how what he had in mind would be okay for him to do, within himself.

After a lot of analyzing, he came to the conclusion that, maybe if he could get a bottle of some of that love from the man in the wool coat, he wouldn’t have to be the one to give it to his daughter, himself. And so he could technically still say he was following the rules.

But as he approached the area where he’d seen the man in the wool coat before, he saw he was nowhere to be found.

He asked the other strange men nearby, if any of them had seen him around.

One of them said he had.

“Oh, I’m sorry, man,” he said. “He actually passed this morning.”