Eight months before his death, Ahmed’s father, Kenneth, sat at his dining room table blowing out birthday candles, saying, ‘Not bad for lung cancer, eh?’ Ahmed began planning out in his mind the necessary arrangements for his mother, Nura, to move into his apartment. She had breast cancer but doctors were saying she had at least three years left. Three good years for them to be together. Nura heard the news about her husband, though, and decided. She was only alive for four more days. Ahmed arranged one funeral. He refused to speak. Both caskets were closed. They were positioned at the front of the funeral home like two towers.

Ahmed got a job as a car salesman right out of high school. He walked onto the Chevrolet Dealership lot in Seekonk and asked the first person he saw in a suit if they were hiring. He happened to be talking to Ron Born, the Finance Manager for the branch. Ron asked what experience Ahmed had and he said, ‘none, but I’ll be the best decision you’ll ever make.’ The line worked. Ron was taken by Ahmed’s confidence. He took a chance. Ahmed couldn’t believe his luck. He’d barely graduated high school and, compared to his friends, the majority of them going off to college, he didn’t have too many prospects. That feeling of walking into his parent’s apartment, where he was still living at the time, and telling them the news was something he’d never forget. ‘What a relief,’ Kenneth had said with his arm around Nura. 

The job panned out all right. His first year numbers were solid. He made customers feel comfortable. He was fun to be around. He didn’t have the best knowledge of cars, but he held his cards close to his chest and made it work. Those years and traits were behind him though. He grew tired of the job and it grew tired of him, too. Before his parents passed, his numbers were already below mark and their deaths made it all the worse. Grief consumed him. The calendar now read March 15th and, year-to-date, he hadn’t sold a single car; partly due to the time he’d taken off – they’d died at the end of December – but partly because of something more. 

One month, when Ahmed was 21, he had sold 14 cars. For the size of the dealership, this was superb. It was like he knew whoever he talked to in the showroom or out on the lot was going to buy. He had the hot hand. But these prior accomplishments made it all the tougher for him to hit March with no sales.

On February 9th, Ahmed was alerted by his health insurance company that his gastric bypass surgery, or gastric bypass revision, would not be covered, which meant that the surgery was impossible. He’d been waiting for 16 months to learn whether he could move forward with the procedure, and during that time he dreamt often of what it would be like to look and feel differently; for the weight to just start falling off of him. To change. He received the news at work, and while it affected him, the wave of disappointment was subdued by the loss of his parents. He’d heard the cliché, “when it rains it pours”, and he’d heard the other one, that things happen in threes, but it seemed to Ahmed that he was counting four: his mother, his father, the sales, and the surgery. It made him think that these things were just going to keep piling up. Maybe there will be six; two sets of three, he thought.

On March 15th, Ahmed considered calling into work sick, but he felt he was encroaching into firing territory. The excuse of his parents would only grant him so much leniency with his boss, Greg. Still, he felt better after walking into work. It was sunny out and when the sun shined on him,  he felt a shred of hope, and though it was small and squirming, it was something. After speaking with a woman out on the lot who told him that she had to talk it over with her son, he went into his office to check his emails and take a break. Elizabeth walked in without knocking. Ahmed felt like weights were tossed into his lower abdomen.

Elizabeth and Ahmed had lived together for three years. Four months before Ahmed’s parents died, Elizabeth had met someone else and Ahmed moved out. His new apartment was quick to feel like home, something he was grateful for. 

Ahmed was silent as Elizabeth sat down in the chair across from his desk.        

‘How are you, Ahmed?’

‘I’m all right.’

 ‘I’m sorry to come in like this. I want you to know how sorry I am.’

  ‘Okay.’

‘You didn’t call me back.’

‘I don’t really remember much of the last few months.’

‘Of course,’ she said, her hands gripping the handle of her bag, her wrist bruised. ‘That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry.’

‘I haven’t made any sales this year,’ he blurted out.

‘No?’ she asked, placing her bag on the ground.

‘No. It’s a block. Something.’

‘I’m sure it’s just everything.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Remember the month you had 21?’ 

’14 sales. I was 21.’

‘Right. Well, you did it then.’

‘Now is different. That was a different time. A different version of who I am, or, was.’

She smiled at him like she used to, but he looked at the floor.

‘What do you want?’ he said in a tone and manner she’d hardly ever heard.

‘I’m just sorry,’ she said.

‘How is Ben?’ 

‘Fine.’

Ahmed looked out onto the showroom, then the lot, and he was struck with the intense memory of a day where he felt like anyone he spoke to would buy.

‘But things aren’t going well,’ he said. 

‘I don’t know,’ said Elizabeth, all of a sudden feeling the concealer around her left eye like it was actually living on her face. 

‘Is that why you’re here?’ he asked. 

‘I’m here because I wanted you to know how sorry I am about your parents. I didn’t feel like it was right to just leave you that message.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You look good.’

‘Please.’

Even though the door to Ahmed’s office was open, Greg thumped on the molding and stood as if the door were closed and he couldn’t see inside. Windows lined the wall. 

‘Ahmed?’ asked Greg, poking his head through the threshold of the door. 

‘I’m sorry,’ Elizabeth said, almost whispering and standing up.

‘Don’t be,’ said Greg. 

‘It was good to see you, Ahmed.’

Ahmed nodded at Elizabeth as she left. Greg smirked and sat down. 

‘How are you feeling?’ 

‘Fine.’

‘Uh huh. Right, well, I know you’re going through a tough time, Ahmed, but I want you to understand where I’m coming from, too.’

‘You don’t have to say anything. I feel bad enough as it is. The sales are… They’re my life, in a way. Especially now.’

‘Next week,’ Greg said. 

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You gotta make a sale by next week or I’ve got to let you go. I know you’re in a spot here, but this is my job, too.’

‘…’

‘Okay?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ahmed, his attention now on his keyboard. 

Greg nodded, Ahmed ignored the gesture, and then Greg left. 

Driving back from work, Ahmed let the sounds of his car mix with the muscle memory of driving home. He usually had to wait at the intersection up ahead, and without fail or change, the streetlight turned yellow and then red as he approached. He rolled the car to a stop. Waiting there, Ahmed’s thoughts darted around like fireflies hovering in the air. The image of a field his mother used to take him to when he was a little boy took shape. He could see with great clarity his mother walking in front of him, her hand reaching back as her face and body pressed forward deeper into the field of gold and light, but interposed with this memory, inside of it, bloomed an image of a man standing on a roof calling out that he was going to jump. All of a sudden, Ahmed was standing next to him on the roof, looking down at the concrete street below, cars passing by beneath their feet like thoughts drifting through someone’s mind. 

Are you gonna do it? Ahmed asked. 

The man kept peering down off the side of the building at the scene below, a non-specific city. Providence, probably, Ahmed thought. 

I think so, said the man, ready to pounce off the building. 

Why? Ahmed asked. 

Because suicide is fine, the man said, and it’s better for some people than life.  

Ahmed reached out to grab the man but it was too late. The light had changed green. The lady behind Ahmed honked and brought him out of his thoughts. Without thinking, his foot hit the gas.

The next morning, Ahmed woke up with a slight headache. Not a migraine, but a nagging feeling in the center of his mind that felt like his head had been put into a vice. He started stirring as he would when preparing for work, but he realized that it was Saturday. There was a feeling of relief, but it was different. He felt a pull toward the lot. He wanted to sell those cars and meet the people who needed them. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by optimism at the prospect of a workless day, he instead lay in bed yearning for something else. He started wondering if there was some way to appeal his gastric bypass rejection, some way to make the insurance company reconsider, but he abandoned this notion, knowing that there was no use. 

The ceiling in Ahmed’s bedroom was like a white sheet glistening from the light coming in from the windows. He’d opened the blinds. It was a slightly overcast day but some sun was still poking out from behind the clouds. He sat up in his bed and began picturing going to the lot and making a sale. He felt what it’d be like to be in the showroom. What will Greg think? he wondered. He’ll pat me on the shoulder and tell me my father would be proud. It’ll be good and it will feel like things are set right and coordinated again, he thought. But then Ahmed thought about taking a gun and putting it under his chin and pulling the trigger. He pushed the thought aside. I don’t even own a gun, he thought. Maybe I’ll see if Elizabeth wants to come over, and as he continued thinking about the gun and Elizabeth, he saw an image, vague and grainy, of Elizabeth’s head blue in a noose. He stood up and walked into his kitchen, trying to leave these thoughts behind. I don’t… no, he thought, but down a long and sturdy hallway in his mind, there was an image of Elizabeth hanging, struggling, her feet flailing in the air, and the sound of gurgling. Stop it, he thought, grabbing a glass, turning on the faucet and taking a drink of water. He started making coffee. The faucet was like a rushing river. Coffee grounds missed the machine and rolled out onto the counter. I should get out, he said out loud. Go to the mall. I need something, he said. I need to buy something. 

After showering and getting dressed and falling into a more controlled thought pattern, more familiar, Ahmed got into his car and started driving toward an uncertain destination. Under layers of who he was and what he wanted truly, there was a deep yearning to drive over to his parents’ apartment and sit down with his father to talk about whether or not he should try to get a new job, or what it meant for him to be alive while they were both dead. Instead, he drove in the direction of the cemetery. On the highway, just before the exit, there was a billboard with the state lottery jackpot. Ahmed made note of it when he pulled in. $240 million. He parked and walked and found their graves, side by side. He hadn’t brought anything for either of them.

‘Hi, Mom and Dad,’ he said. The declaration echoed and bounced off other graves. The noise from the highway got louder. 

‘Can you see me?’ Ahmed asked. Each grave was on grass, their bodies beneath, but Ahmed was standing on a concrete path. He wore work clothes. He thought about lying down on their graves for some reason but didn’t. 

‘Dad, I think you’d tell me to stick it out and try to make a sale,’ he said. I think I’d listen. Mom, I think you’d say that I have to do what makes me happy, he thought.

Their graves looked like buildings. Skyscrapers standing motionless in time. Symbols of the dead and their lives. The lottery jackpot billboard was in view. Wouldn’t that be something? Ahmed thought. Wouldn’t that fix all of this? ‘Someone with that kind of cash doesn’t even need insurance,’ he said out loud. A thought arrived in Ahmed’s mind of buying a lottery ticket at his grocery store and discovering he’d won. He’d go back to tell the clerk who sold it to him that he was going to give him ten thousand dollars, just because. He could feel the applause of shoppers. Elizabeth would probably try to come back to me, he thought. Maybe I’d let her. Then a vision of a handgun formed. Ahmed knew that he wasn’t holding one, that was clear, but his daydream took such hostage of his mind that it was like there was weight in his hand. His palm and fingers felt the cold metal against his skin. He rubbed his hands together to let go of it. But maybe if I buy a gun it’ll make up a new set of three, he thought. A set of three that isn’t full of death and failure, but of retribution and the opposite of my suffering. That could be the start of a new set of three he thought as he walked back toward his car, the image of his mother and father’s graves now gone, but the sight of the billboard with the lottery jackpot still above. 

As Ahmed merged onto the highway off the cemetery’s exit, he jumped at the sight of a massive black Suburban. It’s not that he thought that the truck was going to drive into him, it’s more that he felt uncertain about whether he wanted to drive into it. 

When he pulled into his street and parked, he got out, walked onto the sidewalk that led to his apartment building and Elizabeth said, ‘Ahmed…’

She was standing by a tree looking disheveled. 

‘What are you doing here?’ 

‘I’m sorry.’

He kept his distance. There was an urge to hug her, it seemed opportune, but so much held him back. 

‘What do you want?’ he asked in a cold, undeserving way. 

‘I’m in a spot.’

‘All right.’

‘I can’t really get into it.’

‘Is everything okay?’

‘What do you care?’ she asked, now taking a tone that Ahmed wasn’t used to at all. Who was this person standing before him? So different from what he remembered. No warmth. No affirmation of goodness. 

‘I do care,’ he said. 

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said quickly. ‘I need to buy a car.’ 

Ahmed’s neighbor, Alice, who lived down the hall, walked out of the apartment building, but there was no recognition as she walked by Ahmed and Elizabeth. 

‘Why?’ 

‘I just need to buy a car. Can we go to the dealership?’ 

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you get here?’ 

‘I walked.’

‘Why didn’t Ben drive you?’

‘I don’t want to discuss any of this,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to buy a car from you or not?’

The sun vanished behind the top of the tree. 

After the paperwork was filled out and it was decided and done, Ahmed shook Elizabeth’s hand – more out of routine than anything else – and handed her the keys. She took them, and when she did, he recalled again that same vision of strangling Elizabeth with both hands. She took the keys and got into the car, a green Chevrolet Cavalier, put on her seatbelt and waved, but all Ahmed could see were his hands on her neck and the sound of dire and imminent coughing – of someone struggling to stay alive. But, as she drove off and out of the lot, Ahmed looked down at his shoes, a pair of old New Balances, and realized that he’d made a sale. He wasn’t going to lose his job. Not just yet at least. Sure, Greg would see the purchaser’s name and recognize it, but it didn’t matter. He’d sold a car. Maybe this is the start of a new set of three, Ahmed thought. Good things also come in threes, he said out loud to no one.  

Someone else, an elderly gentleman, stepped onto the lot. Ahmed waved and the old man waved back. The image of the $240 million jackpot billboard arrived in Ahmed’s mind. It glowed in his head. A picture of his parents’ caskets, side by side, emerged, too. He felt steel under his chin. 

The old man didn’t buy a car that day, but he renewed his lease, which docked in Ahmed’s mind as a win. Before leaving work, Greg gave him a pat on the shoulder. You made my job a lot easier, Greg said, and Ahmed knew what he meant.

Before Ahmed fell asleep that night, he imagined Greg going through the paperwork that Elizabeth had filled out and finding a fundamental error that stopped the sale from going through. Some complication with her payment that vetoed the whole thing and resulted in a scenario where Ahmed had given her a free car. Greg would need to report the car stolen. Elizabeth would get pulled over by the police. It made Ahmed’s heart pound. He started to sweat beneath his covers, but he leveled his breathing and convinced himself that this wasn’t possible. Everything went through fine, he thought. There’s no version of tomorrow where I wake up and go to work to find out that this is true. It’s impossible. He went through all the details, each one, all the checkpoints in his mind, and it confirmed that the sale was correct. Elizabeth bought the car and it all went through fine, but Ahmed started wondering why. He’d been distracted with the boost of knowing he was going to keep his job, but why was it that Elizabeth needed the car so urgently? Is she skipping town? he wondered. Should I have been more concerned that she’s in danger? Ahmed stayed up a few hours of the night thinking about it, but then fell asleep. 

When Ahmed went to work on Monday he did so with a newfound confidence. Any concern that he’d had for Elizabeth’s wellbeing had just about completely burned away. The sale counted. The Cavalier she bought was the first of the year. It broke the bad streak. It lurched him out of a terrible funk, and he embraced the feeling completely. The sky above the lot seemed to almost inhale negative thoughts. All those feelings about his parents, his rejected gastric bypass surgery, his inability to do his job, couldn’t touch him. The sky swallowed them up whole. They passed through his mind like tourists, as opposed to the residents they’d once been. I’ll start a new routine, he thought, and I’ll lose weight that way. He remembered standing at his parents’ graves, but he did so with pride. With strength. He still loved them. They were still with him. 

‘Hey, fat ass.’

Ahmed cracked his knuckle, unsure of who said this. 

‘Are you awake?’ said the same voice. It came from a man in a suit standing in the lot.  ‘You sell cars?’ he asked. 

‘Yes,’ said Ahmed, regaining himself. ‘Yes, how can I help you?’

‘Yeah, good question. You ever thought about skipping breakfast, fella?’

‘I’m sorry?’ Ahmed asked, shifting his weight a bit from his left side to his right. 

‘Are you deaf? Have you ever thought about skipping breakfast? Bypassing a meal. Do you hear what I’m saying to you? I’m trying to buy a vehicle, you fat shit.’ 

An empty idling car was parked in the middle of the lot. All of the windows were rolled down and the radio was on. 

‘I hear what you’re saying,’ said Ahmed. 

‘Are you gonna sell me a car?’ asked the man, ‘or are you gonna eat one?’

The man’s suit went from appearing dominant and clean to old and worn out, tired and wrinkled. 

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Ahmed.

‘I’m looking for something I can put my dick into and suffocate it,’ he said. There were heavy, dark bags under his eyes. He was slurring his words.  

‘What do you want?’ asked Ahmed. 

‘You used to fuck my girlfriend.’ 

Ahmed said nothing but an image of Elizabeth formed in his mind. 

‘I’m Ben. Where the fuck is Elizabeth?’

‘You’re Ben?’ asked Ahmed. 

‘Does being fat make you deaf?’ asked Ben, walking closer. 

‘Stop it,’ Ahmed said. ‘Stop talking to me like that.’

Ahmed did not step back. Ben ran his fingers through his hair. He was balding. 

‘Where is Elizabeth?’ Ben asked, shouting now and getting closer.  

Ahmed changed his stance. He stood with a composed posture and said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Where is Elizabeth?’

‘I don’t know.’

Ahmed could smell Ben’s breath. He was right in his face. 

‘Back away from me.’

‘You know where she is. I’ll kill you.’

‘Step away from me.’

‘I’ll fucking kill you,’ said Ben. ‘I’ll kill you right here in this lot.’ 

He pushed Ahmed. Ahmed flinched but did not stumble. 

‘Tell me where Elizabeth is right now or I’m gonna kill you. Do you hear me? Where the fuck is Elizabeth? Answer me!’

Memory is a strange thing. An electrical signal in your brain bringing something back to life. A snapshot of you. One with hands and feet and eyes and a face. Ahmed’s first punch caught Ben off guard. It sent him into mild shock from the pressure to his nose and left eye. The taste of blood in Ben’s mouth seemed like oil. His vision tunneled. He stumbled and swung but his fist grazed Ahmed’s shoulder. Ahmed swung again and cracked Ben across the jaw. He dropped to the concrete and squirmed around, flailing, but Ahmed pinned him onto the pavement, his entire weight on top of him, both of his hands securely around his neck. While Ahmed pressed down onto Ben’s throat with all of his weight, a series of things appeared in Ahmed’s mind. Two caskets; a graveyard; a lottery jackpot billboard. He heard and saw the back of a car driving away. There was an image of Elizabeth smiling through tears. 

As Ben begged without words and squirmed without victory, Ahmed screamed and pressed down. The sounds from Ben were like growls and drowning. As Ben took his final breaths, his life escaping from this world, Ahmed closed his eyes, but in both of their minds it was as if bits of light from another world were shining in brightly through tiny cracks in time. 

About the Author:

Jake Shore’s short stories have been published in Denver Quarterly, Hobart, Litro, New Contrast, J Journal, Ginosko Literary Journal, Eunoia Review, The Pitkin Review and others. In 2016, the Flea Theater presented his play Holy Moly and its tandem novel, A Country for Fibbing. BroadwayWorld states, “it marks the first time a play with a correlating novel has been simultaneously released in the United States.” In 2017, Shore’s play The Devil is on The Loose with an Axe in Marshalltown was selected as one of Playbill’s “13 Shows Not to Miss Off-Broadway.” Shore’s drama Down the Mountain and Across the Stream won the Overall Excellence in Playwriting Award at the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival. His Zoom play Adjust the Procedure was a streaming hit with multiple runs in 2021. He is currently the Director of the Executive Director for Student Services at St. Joseph’s University in Brooklyn, where he also teaches. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College. Find him on Twitter: @jakeshorelit and @jcs_press

*Featured image by Marcelo Russo de Oliveira from Pixabay