Stories

by Matt Brown
originally published on the blog - September 20 2003

He's about ten years old, I guess, based on his height. He's dressed in nondescript clothes, riding a nondescript bike. His face lacks the angelic simplicity of most blonde 10-year-old boys: it's oddly malformed, somehow; even at this age he's one of those people who looks completely different in a mirror. His most notable feature remains his eyes, the first part of him I saw even from thirty yards away as he rode lazily toward me. Crystal blue, they offset his pupils like a stone in a setting.

He says hello, asks about my day, and reports upon his, all in the half moment it takes for him to ride past me. Around here, they talk to you - I've already passed two men walking, both of whom inquired after my day. I'm used to it now so I reply to his queries openly, cheerfully. He's past me. He's gone.

He's back. "Isn't it nice here?" he asks. There's a laziness to his drawl that matches the ruin of his face. His mouth doesn't keep up with his words, making pasta out of them.

We chat about why we're here - his Grandma's cottage, my friend's cottage. He tells me that his grandmother is sixty but his other grandmother is a hundred and three - and that she's given him her age in dollars every birthday since she turned 20. By his hasty calculation this eighty years of beneficence has led to an accumulation of over a thousand dollars in his savings account - although, of course, his mother won't let him spend it, at least not until he graduates from grade eight. "Yeah, moms are good for that," I say with a grin.

We talk about Nintendo for a few minutes, the resilient common ground for all earnest men in these parts between the ages of ten and thirty. He asks me if I'm a big time gamer. Uh-oh: he's caught me. I admit that I haven't been for ten years but that I want my parents to buy me a game cube for my birthday. He seems satisfied with this and whips a shiny red Pokemon cartridge out of his pocket to show me.

I tell him that I build websites for a living but that they're all boring, just sites for bankers and stock brokers and analysts. He tells me that he built a website once, but his father didn't like it. I fall for the bait: "Why not?" I ask.

"Because it was all pictures of naked girls," he says with a cake-eating grin. He pumps the air with his fist and describes how the girls were all jerking off the guys.

"How old are you?!" I exclaim. He says he's ten. I tell him that I've just turned 27 yesterday. "Cool," he grunts. And he's off in a new direction, saying that there are so many people in his family that it would take him a week to list them all.

In spite of these claims to an innumerable assortment of relations, he's obviously out here all alone. His whoppers get bigger the closer we get to the beach, where he knows he can no longer follow me on his bike. I don't blame him. He's a brilliantly imaginative liar as all children should be. He's far better at it than I was at that age. It was my best friend Geoffrey MacDonald who was prodigiously gifted in that respect. Geoff, whose father was in the secret service, whose cousin was a ninja, who ended up with all my toys in his basement because he'd seen them at my place and asked his mother to buy them all for him. A genius.

My new best friend is halfway through telling me about the cries of the offspring that came of mating his dog and his cat when we reach the edge of the beach. I shake his hand - half a handshake, half a high five. And he's gone.