ST1.9 | "Well Beyond Sorry"

PROMPT: It’s the little things that happen every day, the ones we don’t think about. Sometimes it’s an accidental shoulder bump on the bus. Other times it’s a shopping cart collision, a parking spot dispute, accidentally cutting in line. Small things that are inconsequential moments in our lives. What happens, however, when it’s a bigger deal to the other person? When their notoriety, infamy, celebrity grants them a sense of entitlement you violated? The theme of this month is Trip into Fall, and we want your stories of a tiny mistake having major, perhaps fatal, consequences.

WELL BEYOND SORRY

by Tom Andes

It started with a bump, brushing the guy’s shoulder as they passed through customs in Arrivals at Gatwick, and sure, maybe Derrick had leaned into it, not wanting to give ground, not wanting to cede territory to a guy wearing a suit that looked like it cost more than Derrick had in checking and savings combined. But he’d just gotten off a six-hour flight from Boston, and he was tired. And his head was swimming, thinking about Karen’s long legs, her big brown eyes, her smile.

And anyway, it was just a bump.

Fucking American prick, the guy said. Derrick was pretty sure he’d heard that over the noise of Siamese Dream in his headphones. And yeah, that baseball cap was a dead giveaway that he was a Yank. And he knew how people felt about Americans overseas, especially with that whole situation in the Persian Gulf a couple years back, which Derrick wasn’t going to pretend to understand, so he didn’t have an opinion about it.

But he was a homer, a lifelong Red Sox fan. His grandpa had given him that cap a few weeks before the old guy died, and Derrick never left Boston without it, not even when he was going to London to see his smoking hot Argentine girlfriend, Karen, who was waiting for him in her family’s apartment near Hyde Park Corner, which they were going to have to themselves for a week.

And anyway, it wasn’t more than a bump, and that should’ve been the end of that.

But the guy was waiting for him outside the terminal, and Derrick felt like he’d stepped into that scene in The Long Good Friday where they stuff Bob Hoskins in a car, a pre-Remington Steele Pierce Brosnan turns around in the front, and you know the Hoskins character is going to die.

It was absurd, like so stupid, man.

One minute Derrick was coming out the doors, trying to figure out where to catch the train, realizing he had to go back inside to get to the station, and the next minute this guy was standing in front of him, all of like five-four, shoes spit-shined, in a blue custom-tailored suit, wearing so much fancy-ass cologne he was probably a fire hazard, a faint smell of mint or maybe it was tea tree oil, from the toothpick he was chewing.

“You should watch where you’re going.”

“Might say the same thing to you,” Derrick said, “buddy.”

 “I’m not your buddy.” And the guy bumped Derrick’s chest, shoving him back a step on the sidewalk.

“What’s your problem, man?”

“You ran into me.” The guy was breathing hard, his nostrils flared, a day’s growth of stubble on his face, with a fierce-looking blackhead on his chin. “That’s my problem. Man.”

He said this last in a broad, flat Yankee accent, taking the piss—wasn’t that what these Brits said?—and now that Derrick was closer to the guy, if he had it to do over, maybe he would’ve stepped out of his way. Dude’s neck was thick, scar tissue and a few white slashes like checkmarks through his eyebrows, like he’d once been a fighter or at least taken a few shots to the face.

Derrick’s grandpa had been a fighter. The old guy had shown Derrick a few moves: he could handle himself.

Music was clattering from the headphones around Derrick’s neck.

“You could’ve stepped out of the way,” Derrick said, “too.”

And now the guy was touching him, mashing the pudgy tip of a forefinger into Derrick’s chest like he was putting out a cigar.

“Tell me,” the guy said, “that you’re sorry.”

Derrick started laughing.

Right, that’s all it would take to defuse the situation, and it seemed so easy.

And he might’ve done it, too.

But what if Karen was watching? Karen, the super-hot, blonde, Argentine International Relations major he’d met last semester as an exchange student, who’d invited him to stay with her for a week. If Derrick was a solid seven, she was a 10, and he couldn’t believe his luck. And he couldn’t get it out of his head, what she might think of him backing down.

“All it’ll take,” Derrick said, “is me saying sorry?”

He didn’t want to say it, not with the Karen in his head watching, not even if she wasn’t the kind of chick who went in for stupid displays of machismo. Not even if he wasn’t a macho dude. Not even if it was the smart play, and the sooner he got past this chump, the sooner he’d be at Karen’s flat.

“All it’ll take,” the guy said, “if you do it now.”

And Derrick was about to do it.

He just had to choke down a big old chunk of pride.

Now the guy was grinning, showing a gap between his front teeth.

“And you have to get on your knees when you say it, mate.”

The guy wasn’t going to throw down, not on the curb in front of International Arrivals at Gatwick at 11:00 on a Tuesday morning, with all the, what-did-you-call-them, lorries driving past, and those black cabs, one of which was waiting at the curb, its door open, tailpipe chugging.

And anyway, it was just a bump.

“Out of my way.” Derrick shouldered past the guy, not caring this time that he was the one who’d initiated the contact, even though the check he gave would get you whistled playing ice hockey like he’d done growing up.

Mate, he called the guy, putting a little stank on it.

***

He couldn’t say how he ended up in the car.

One minute he was walking past this dude in his thousand-dollar suit, looking up at the blue sky, thinking about how good a shower would feel when he got to Karen’s place, and the next minute his arm was jacked up behind his back, until he felt something give, maybe tendon, maybe bone. And the minute after that, he was in the backseat of that cab that had been idling at the curb, with his right arm dangling at his side, that psychotic dude he’d bumped into back in the terminal sitting in the jump seat across from him.

A man with slicked black hair was driving. For one disorienting second, Derrick almost gave the cabbie Karen’s address in Mayfair. Then the pain hit him.

“You dislocated my shoulder.”

The guy was looking out the window, scratching his chin, thoughtful, like he was considering what Derrick had said. As they left the airport, fields rolled past, maybe the same ones he’d seen from the plane, rape, and linseed blooming purple and gold, like in that song by Sting. This couldn’t be happening. He closed his eyes, tried to wish himself back to the airport terminal, but he was still in that car, the pain in his shoulder too much to ignore.

“I think there’s been a mistake.”

“There’s definitely been a mistake.”

“I’m sorry, man. There, I said it. Isn’t that what you want to hear?”

“I think this has gone well beyond sorry, mate.”

Years ago, when Derrick had played left wing for his high school team, this big Canuck had checked him into the boards and popped his right shoulder out of its socket. Now, gritting his teeth, he reached behind his head, grabbing his opposite elbow with his good arm and pulling, until, with a sickening scrape of bone and cartilage, the arm popped back into place. Retching, he leaned forward with his head between his knees. Bile dripped onto the floor of the cab.

“Fuck’s sake.” Glancing over his shoulder, the driver swerved.

The guy in the suit said, “He’s just lucky he didn’t puke on my shoe, isn’t he?”

And he flicked his toe in the direction of Derrick’s nose as if to kick him in the face, so Derrick flinched, covering up.

“Just make sure he don’t shit himself,” the driver said. “I don’t want to have to clean some bloody Yank’s piss and shite out the back of me cab.”

Derrick’s stomach dropped, a cold feeling working its way through his intestines. Next to him on the seat was his green Army surplus duffel. His headphones were still around his neck, the music coming from them tinny and distant, Billy Corgan singing “Today is the greatest day I’ve ever known.”

Karen loved that song. She’d turned him onto Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Massive Attack, half the stuff he listened to that was cool that year. A society girl, an ambassador’s daughter, she had the best taste and the cash to drop on whatever music she wanted.

Maybe he was never going to see her again.

“Look, man, I’m sorry I bumped you. I guess I was kind of an asshole about it, and I’m sorry for that, too. But it was just a bump. I didn’t mean it.”

“He still doesn’t get it,” the cabbie said, “does he?”

“No,” the guy said. “He doesn’t get it at all.”

Sometimes Karen talked about the other men in her life, including a guy who wanted to marry her in London, a real gangster type, she’d said, part of that fast crowd she ran with, and it made Derrick jealous, sure. But she was her own woman, a free spirit, nothing was going to hold her down, and she made it sound light and fun, like they were just dating, maybe holding hands and going out for ice cream. Anyway, what could Derrick say, since they weren’t exclusive, and there was that whole issue of citizenship and the fact they lived across an ocean?

“Is this about Karen?”

Something was behind the guy’s smile. For the first time, he looked uncertain, his chin balled, that blackhead ready to pop.

No one in the world knew where Derrick was right now—not his mom, not Karen—no one except these two men in that cab. His grandpa who’d taught him how to throw a punch and take care of himself had been dead five years.

“You shouldn’t go picking someone else’s peaches,” the guy said, “if it’s not your tree.”

“But they’re not your peaches. And it’s not your tree.”

“Not yours, either.”

“It wasn’t anything between us except a little fun, anyway. It isn’t serious.”

“It isn’t serious?”

“Yeah, it isn’t serious.”

“This,” the guy said, “is serious.”

They were driving through the outskirts of London, one of those red double-decker busses boxing them into a roundabout, and Derrick let himself hope this was a joke, that these guys were going to drop him at Karen’s, or maybe back at Gatwick, where he could hop the first flight home, like the coward he was. At a stoplight, across from a pub called The Red Lion, he lunged for the door, yanked the handle.

“Locked,” the guy said, “from the front.”

“What do you want from me?” Derrick said.

“Maybe I want you to open that bag, pull a hundred thousand quid out.”

Shaking, Derrick knelt in the back of the cab. Thank God Karen wasn’t here to see him beg for his life. “Please.” But the guy was laughing.

As the sun broke through the gloom, they turned toward the South Downs, leaving London behind, heading into those green, rolling hills.

“No.” With his thumb, the guy brushed a tear from Derrick’s cheek. “This isn’t going to be that easy, mate.”

Tom Andes’ (@thomaseandes) writing has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2012. He won the 2019 Gold Medal for Best Novel-in-Progress from the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society. He released his debut EP, “Static on Every Station” on Bandcamp in 2022.