Inexplicable

Nobody on the ground was hurt in the crash, Thames Valley Police said, but the extent of the pilot’s injuries is unknown.

***

My wife saw him first. She’d heard my stories, even liked the song I played for her. Lyn pushed me forward. “You’ve met him already. Just say hello,” she said. “I can see the resemblance. Though you’re wider than him. And he’s better looking.” She made a show of wiggling her eyebrows. “Ask him if he’s single. I might trade up.”

“Thanks.” I rolled my eyes.

“I’ve got some shopping to do for Wren…and you.” With a quick peck on the cheek, she took the kids and wandered off.

It was 2015 in the quaint town of Bicester, near Oxford, at the outlet mall. The excess of tinsel and fake snow was doing its strained best to make Bicester Village a “destination” for Christmas shopping.

The bar, adorned with a blend of faux rustic charm with chintzy glass baubles adorning…well, anything not fast enough to run away. Christmas vomit didn’t even cover it. I had to wonder if the owner was American or just had shares in the city in China that makes all the decorations. The White Oak was a trap for people like me. It was a place to park partners, so those with the purse strings could try on “just one more” pair of shoes, jacket, sunglasses, Christmas jumper, or whatever.

I took a deep breath and went to the bar. Mr Davees sat alone, sipping a gin and tonic. The UK is generally considered safe for famous people to walk, drink, shop with somewhat less chance of being molested by fans. I was just about to break that social norm, but, as my wife said, I already am an acquaintance. “Corbin. Nice to see you again.”

He put on a smile and nodded, not enough to show he recognised me.

“Jonah Bug, we met some thirteen years ago at the Brixton Electric, then at some parties.”

“Oh…Jonah… Yeah, how are things with you?”

I was reasonably sure he didn’t recognise me at all. “Sorry, I know there’s a lot a people, and only one me.” I gestured to the seat next to him.

He nodded.

I moved the seat back a few inches. “I’ve put on some weight, don’t think my zoot suit even fits anymore.” There was a slight brightening when he realised I was one of the more serious fans. The type that attended his shows ready to dance. Besides going bald, he hadn’t changed at all. Same scrawny body, gaunt face, wonky English teeth. Even with his tie loosened and top button undone, I felt underdressed next to him.

“What are you drinking?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

I waved down the bartender and ordered a lager. He traded my credit card for a numbered disk.

“Mind if I ask you something?” I played with the wooden disk. “Kinda fan-boy stuff.”

“Sure.” He looked at his watch.

I enviously took in Corbin’s calm demeanour. Here was a man living his dream—frontman of an indie band, modest fame and fortune, days filled with artistic pursuits. He exuded a relaxed air of contentment, comfortable in his own skin in a way I never managed. Eton College confidence and the fitted suit to match.

“Before we met, a friend of yours asked if I knew who you were.” I straightened up a bit and tried to suck in my dad-bod. “I told her I had seen some of your performances. She said that I looked a lot like you. She took a photo of me and texted it to you.”

“Sorry. I don’t remember that.”

“No worries.” Honestly, that hurt. I’d got some mileage out of saying that I looked like the famous Mr Davees. “What I really want to know about, well—one of your songs mentions something that happened in my childhood.”

He hummed the tune for You’re So Vain by Carly Simon.

“I deserve that.” I smiled, though the joke was a tad predictable. “It’s just a coincidence. But when I was four, I pointed my finger at a car, and it crashed.”

“Ah, Inexplicable. That song did well.”

“Yeah, crucial difference—my bully was my brother.” I rubbed my index finger. “He broke my finger when I warned him about my superpower.”

“Hilarious. Probably not the best idea to talk about the finger before using it.” He smiled, then gently shook his head. “There was a target on my back from year two through GCSEs. Kids are relentless.”

“The song said you waited till you were nine before you lifted your finger at a bully.”

Corbin finished the lyric. “Who had attacked me for the twenty-fifth time.”

Corbin glanced away and took a long breath in. He turned back and looked me over, lingering on my nose. He had the same sharp angles just over the nostrils.

I twirled my drink, noticed the bar had Christmas themed coasters. “I’m sorry to say, but I became a bit of a bully.” The lager was awful. I drank half my pint in one go to get it over with. “My brother’s frustrations passed through me to my friends. My father taught me to use my fists, the way his father taught him. Still got bullied at home even though I could defend myself.”

Corbin took a long swig of his drink and checked the time. “I was too skinny to fight, good at curling into a ball really quickly.”

Imagining his thin limbs twisted around and poking out of a ball made me smile. “It took a while, but I found my way out of that phase. Though I think it stopped me.”

“Hmm?” Corbin looked at his phone again. It flashed 16:30.

“Powerless to make it stop,” I quoted his lyrics. “I blocked my power.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know, growing up, you go through that phase where you aspire to be a doctor or lawyer. I didn’t want anything to do with hurting anyone. It became an obsession.” I took a moment to study the bar. The entire shopping complex was only a few years old, not around long enough to show much wear. The wooden tab disk had seen better days, but it was an exception. “I got active in my local garage band scene, wanted to start a band that was modelled on the swing period, just with modern instruments, remixing music, throwing in some hip-hop.”

“You came up with the idea for Electro Swing on your own?” Corbin looked up and to the side. He wasn’t the creator of the craze either.

“Kinda, but it was just a feeling that it would be important. No one understood my vision. This was around 1989 or so—a second generation of DIY punk music was just taking off in my hometown.”

Corbin nodded. His crooked smile was uncanny in its familiarity. My smile twisted on the opposite side. He had a single dimple. It matched the one I’d seen every day of my life.

“I tried selling the idea of resurgent swing music. Oh, I even made one of those tubes. I don’t know what they were called, it was just a tube of plastic with a little handle to sing through.”

“Ah. Like the American cheerleaders.”

“Yeah, but smaller. I’d seen a movie where some old crooner was singing with one, and thought it sounded cool.”

“I think they’re called megaphones.”

“Huh.” I’d convinced myself they were called something else for so long—never considered the real name would be so obvious. “Soon I learned my talent wasn’t with music. I thought maybe my superpower could be focused on other artistic pursuits, like painting or sculpture. I just wasn’t skilled enough to get into Rhode Island School of Design.”

“Ah, you are from the states?”

“Arkansas, my father is English.”

“It’s an unusual accent. I thought you were Canadian. Did you keep painting?” Corbin had gone to Edinburgh College of Art after Eaton. I’d seen several of his portraits over the years.

“No, I was still involved in the local music scene. I learned how to fix guitars, then amps, microphones and the lot. Found a natural talent for electronics. Then moved to London.”

A large guy with bags of shopping bumped into Corbin hard enough for him to have to lift his glass off the bar. It took a moment for him to focus back on me.

I sucked in my cheeks and looked into the bar mirror. We looked almost identical, besides the hair and my expanding waistline.

“Your band got me to dance. I ate it up. My girlfriend and I were proper groupies for a while.” My smile faded a bit. “Yeah, maybe you remember Shaz?”

Corbin held his arms out to mark her large bosom.

“Please don’t. But, yeah, that’s the one. She dated your drummer, but kept me hanging around. She said Mike wouldn’t mind. That’s why I was in the green room at the Electric. She was introducing me to Mike.”

Corbin turned his head. He focused on his drink.

“Anyway, she dumped me for him. We were still friendly, though. Mike just didn’t want to share. Not everyone is up for it. How is he? Still dropping Jungle beats?” My teeth peeked through my smile. I rubbed my hands together.

Corbin, an unassuming figure despite a tall frame, shrank. “He passed.”

I sat for some time, trying to think of what to do. Remorse, I thought, maybe sadness would be appropriate. I opened my eyes wide. “Oh, gosh, sorry. When?”

“Three years ago.” Corbin continued to deflate for another moment, then finished his drink.

The bar noise took over.

I raised my glass and said, “To Mike, superstar.” Then finished my drink.

The guy with the bags got his drink, then turned to Corbin to apologise. Corbin waved him off.

I was pretty sure the conversation was crushed beyond repair, then remembered another link between us. “Once at a show in Angel, I went to take a piss, and a guy cornered me and asked when my next album was coming out.”

Corbin drummed his fingers against the bar and lifted himself up again. “Thinking you were me?”

“Yeah.”

“Funny.” A small smile returned. It stretched enough to dimple his cheek. “You should get round-framed glasses.”

“You know, that’s what you said in response to your friend’s photo of me.”

Corbin tapped his phone on the bar—16:35. “I’m due to paint a portrait in Oxford. If you see Shaz, send her my love. She was a lot of fun and Mike was crazy about her.”

“His name is Sean now.” I looked down and brushed my chest.

Corbin shrugged with his palms out. I smiled and nodded at him.

We both raised our pointer fingers to get the attention of the bartender.

He brought our bills.

“Let me,” I said, before Corbin could get his wallet.

“You sure?”

“I’ve been talking your ear off. It’s the least I can do.” My finger ached. I rubbed around the second knuckle.

I settled the bill.

We heard the faint sound of sirens in the distance. Emergency vehicles zoomed past on the nearby road, their urgent wails piercing the quaint backdrop of Bicester.

“Something must have happened,” Corbin remarked. “I hope everyone’s alright.”

He slipped on a cap, nodded to me and walked towards the car park. It was a little odd to see him not wearing spandex, or sweaty from his frenetic dancing.

There’s something about meeting your heroes. Sure, I’d met him before, but only as a wallflower, too shy to talk despite the obvious resemblance. I hadn’t grown up at the time, hadn’t realised any of my potential. I watched him go, not as a friend, but just as a human.

I’d been carrying a part of my past for more than a decade too long. The span where I was dealing with depression, going to wild parties, dating multiple women, working through all the spins and momentum of youth. I’d never been able to shuffle it off because of the memory of dreams, passions.

I’d moved on.

He was still living that life. And that was okay. He’s truly a well-rounded person.

I’d read once “objects have three dimensions, humans had six”. The extra three are social status, culture, and self-sabotage. Maybe I was the inverted image of Corbin’s success. Where he followed his dreams, I fell toward the daily grind. The passion for art was never nurtured. I became comfortable with the nagging sense of roads not taken. My bitterness and unfulfilled dreams were a dark mirror to his luminous creative spirit.

Perhaps I was the evil doppelgänger—the one who allowed societal pressures to corrupt youthful optimism. The one who fed that vital spark to the rut of the mundane until it was smothered.

It felt odd to appreciate my dark musings as I wandered back to my sensible sedan with my wife and kids in tow. I alone bore the regret that had weighed upon me like a shadow, feeling as though I tainted something precious simply by crossing paths with my distorted reflection. And all the while I’d been living part of my life in my dreams, not in the now.

The echo of sirens in the distance was an ominous soundtrack.

“What’s that sound?” asked my toddler, who promptly put her hands over her ears.

“Probably a car crash,” I said. “Those sirens mean the helpers are on their way.”

“E-mah e-mah,” said the one-year-old.

After putting my littlest in the car seat, I kissed her forehead. She grabbed my index finger. “It’s ok sweetie, just aches a bit.” I rolled her fingers into a little fist.

Wren, the toddler, held up her fists, then quoted the line from her favourite movie, her voice straining to sound like the old wizard from Willow. “The power to control the world is in which finger?”

I held up my fists in our private family salute.

She giggled.

***

A pilot has been taken to hospital after a plane crashed into a block of flats in Oxfordshire. In Upper Heyford, near Bicester on Saturday afternoon shortly after 16:35 a Cessna Citation XLS+ fell into trouble when both of its engines failed with no warning. The aircraft smashed into the unoccupied building 475m short of the active runway’s paved surface and about 630m from its threshold. The lone passenger, Cayetano Godino, an industrialist from Argentina, was pronounced dead on scene. Inspectors report the Black Box recorded an unspecified electrical fault. Several birds were found dead along the plane’s route over Bicester, but so far investigators have no evidence of bird strike.

-Thames Guard News, November 22, 2015

This fictional story was also prompted by the lyrics to the song Inexplicable by the Correspondents. No birds were harmed by the author’s index finger.