Fireworks At Midnight
Not rockets’ red glare fireworks. Real fireworks.
The booming music, the roar of voices, the swirling lights and bodies and party hats and screaming noisemakers . . . too much! He had to escape!
The big boss, CEO Maddox Carlton, towered over everyone at the far end of the room, his back to the bar, drink in hand, laughing, joking, waving expansively with his free arm. He looked like a GQ cover in his perfect blue sports coat and perfectly styled black hair and devilish mustache. Everyone nearby paid him rapt attention, for he was simultaneously host, guest of honor, and star of the show. He had summoned everyone in his employ, no exceptions, here to greet the new year, to celebrate a successful launch, to gaze into a future that held even greater things, guaranteed.
A great night for center of the world Maddox Carlton but not so much for insignificant technical writer Fred Hollins, who hated crowds, hated noise, and especially hated showoffs. The venue irritated him, too, this exclusive waterfront hotel such as he could never afford to set foot in, not even to buy a candy bar from the vending machine. He even hated the drink in his hand, which was guilty by association. He set it on a table and pushed through the crowd, not bothering to beg anyone’s pardon, and slipped into the shadows at the side of the room to sulk.
But that proved no escape at all. The tidal wave of noise engulfed Hollins and dragged him out to sea to drown. Even with eyes closed and hands pressed to his ears, the roar penetrated his bones. Giving up, he surrendered himself to the tsunami.
He wasn’t the only one it had swept off. At a dim table by his side, a thirtyish woman picked at a plate of nachos, not quite eating them, more likely sampling for poison if the look on her face meant anything. She must be a kindred spirit, Hollins thought.
She knew he was watching; she pointedly looked the other direction, out the window to the beach.
Hollins nearly recognized her. She worked in accounting, maybe. Or not. He couldn’t match a name to her heart-shaped face and dark hair. Wondering what she saw in the night, he looked out the window, too. The ocean beckoned, whispering he should leave, come to the sand, come to the shore, escape to that tree-lined cove he knew and loved where he could mark the passing of the year in his own way. The night was perfect for it, more perfect even than last year.
But what about the woman? Did she have an escape, or was she stranded? It would be heartless to walk out on her. Not that he could suggest it, probably. She’d get the wrong idea. But he couldn’t leave her to drown. Could he?
“Hi,” he said before he knew he was saying it.
“Bye,” she replied.
“Horrid party, isn’t it?”
She swirled a corn chip in cheese sauce and half-heartedly scooped up a chunk of tomato.
“I’m Fred. Fred Hollins.”
“Who cares?” She popped the chip into her mouth.
“Would you like — “
“Nope.”
“But I didn’t even — “
“No need. I don’t want a drink. I don’t dance. I certainly don’t care to celebrate a non-event with obnoxious buffoons. Let me eat my dinner in peace.”
Hollins couldn’t see how nachos qualified as dinner.
“This is the part,” she said. She took a sip of her drink. It looked like water: no color, no fizz, no nothing. “Where you hit on someone else.”
The verbal slap pushed his injustice button. “I’m not hitting on you. I’m rescuing you.”
The woman raised an eyebrow without looking at him.
“We both hate this.” He motioned around. “I’m leaving. Come with me.”
“I’m not going home with you, or to a hotel, or anywhere resembling a bedroom.”
“I didn’t suggest it.”
“You thought it.”
“I did not.”
She ate another chip, plain.
Give up, Hollins told himself, but he’d never been good at taking advice. “You know what I do at midnight on January first?”
“Do I look clairvoyant?”
“Fireworks.”
She took another sip of her presumed water. “Fireworks bore me.”
“Not rockets’ red glare fireworks. Real fireworks.”
That, at least, got her to look. Her brown eyes glimmered in the pale light, laughing at him. “You start a forest fire, maybe?”
“Forget it,” he grumbled. “Stay here. Bore yourself to death. I’m leaving.” And so he did, shoving aside anyone who got in his way, his face taut with anger. Nobody noticed. He left the party room, stormed down the corridor to the lobby, exchanged his claim check for his coat, and hurried into the cold, clear night. He was halfway through the parking lot when he heard her voice.
“Paging Mr. Fred Hollins. Please meet your party by the filthy Chevy pickup with the broken taillight.”
He turned. The woman approached wearing a light blue blouse, a knee-length denim skirt, and a heavy black coat, unzipped. Odd getup for a midnight party. “I’m such a good target,” he guessed, “that you couldn’t resist insulting me further.”
“Collecting on a debt. You promised me fireworks.” She smiled.
He figured it was the only apology he’d get, so he capitulated. “Follow me.”
She zipped up and accompanied him to the edge of the beach where he turned west and led her away from the lights and the cacophony spilling from the hotel. They walked twenty minutes and more with the stars overhead and the waves splashing on the shore. A stand of trees loomed before them, dark and foreboding, but he knew a path through and before long they emerged on a quiet, sandy spit of land. In the dark night, the sparse grasses and the sea and the shadowy forest suggested a world newly created just for them.
“Here we are,” Hollins said.
The woman took it all in, pirouetting in slow motion. “So we are. And the fireworks?”
“Up there.” He pointed to a swath of bright stars. One brilliant diamond sparkled in its midst, silver, blue, yellow, silver, red, silver, blue, orange, silver.
He heard her hold her breath.
“Well?” he asked.
“I’ve never seen such a star before.”
“Sure you have, every clear winter night. You just never noticed.”
“What is it?”
“Sirius. The dog star, the eye of Canis Major, the brightest star in the night sky.”
Lips parted in awe, she watched it scintillate. “Why bring me here now?”
He smiled at the star and her and the star. ”It culminates — reaches its highest point in the sky — at midnight every New Year’s Eve. Watch and you’ll see.”
She tried. “I don’t see anything. The sky moves too slowly.”
“No, it doesn’t. Come here.” He led her down the shore, closer to the trees. There, a branch reached out over the water. “Stand so Sirius is behind that branch. Hold very still, don’t move at all, and watch.”
Sirius crept westward and upward, its movement all but imperceptible, yet within a minute it had full risen above the branch and sparkled silver, blue, silver, orange, blue, silver, red, silver. It took but a minute.
“Amazing,” she breathed. “You can see the sky turn!”
“Not the sky,” Hollins corrected. “The Earth, carrying us along.”
She tottered a little as though she could feel the Earth spinning beneath her feet.
Hollins pulled his cell phone from his pocket and opened his atomic clock app. The red display counted down the final moments to midnight, measuring out hundredths of a second as they watched the Earth shift within the arms of its mother, the cosmos.
Midnight came.
“There,” he said.
Beyond midnight now. Sirius dipped, gliding westward, until it vanished behind the branch once more. Another minute later, it peeked out below, shining silver, yellow, red, silver, blue, silver, orange, yellow, silver.
“Fireworks,” Hollins told her.
“Real fireworks,” she agreed.
“Shall we go back?”
“Why? The show’s only started.”
He was glad she understood. Not everyone would. “What’s your name?”
She laughed. “Who cares? What’s yours?”
The fireworks had probably blotted it from her memory.
He didn’t mind.
I wrote this for Reedsy’s New Years flash fiction contest, but something went wrong in the posting. I don’t think it actually made it into the competition. Oh, well.