Margo

It’s coming to all, it’s a matter of when.

Margo’s on her way back home, walking the 5th uptown, after buying presents for Christmas. The day is fading. There’s a chilling wind but it feels nice. The colors of the autumn remind her of Peter, in college, playing his harmonica in the park. Always in the same bench in central park. Why would she think of Peter now? It’s been almost twenty-five years. She can’t quite remember his face, and that makes her stomach twitch. She can only see him sitting, in a shinny morning, with a big smile but… what was the color of his eyes again? It’s been too long, apparently, and those memories are also starting to fade.

Why Margo deviated from her way home, why did she enter the park instead of keep going straight ahead through 5th, it’s a question that not even she could have answered with entire certainty. It was rather an impulse. Maybe in the back of her head she wanted to see that bench again, although that didn’t mean anything really. That memory of Peter, so unexpected, didn’t mean more than that, an inexplicable moment of the brain, uncontrollable, therefore meaningless. The reality was at home, where Edward, her husband, was waiting with Caitlin and Mary Jo, their daughters that were visiting for Christmas.

Margo must have entered the park by the 72nd, because one of the guys from the carts in front of the Metropolitan, that kind of knows her from the distance and thinks she’s a beautiful and elegant lady, too bad that out of his league, he would remember her walking by. And he did not. Or that’s what he said when the police came asking the morning after.

The wind was chilling and the sun was almost set, and still the street lamps were enough to illuminate the main venues. But the bench was in a hidden spot, on top of a soft cliff, that Peter liked for the view and the peace. The bench was there. Exactly in the same spot. Because nothing really changes even after more than two decades. She wouldn’t have sit, or that’s what Edward thinks. Although he doesn’t really understand anything of what has happened or could have happened.

Margo climbs the soft hill with careful steps, not because she feels limited by her high-heel boots but rather because she has both hands busy carrying the bags with gifts. The view is amazing at that moment, with the sun down and the night starting and all the lights. Like being in an island in the middle of the city. Now the memory of Peter is much precise, his eyes were green.

And she hears a noise, something like a branch that breaks, or a step over dry grass. Margo doesn’t turn. She doesn’t have the time. There’s a shot. There’s pain and burning for a second flat. And then there’s no more.