Lost in the Big Picture

In Staten Island the wind was blowing in with a sour smell, as Derek laced up his running shoes. He passed by his hillbilly step-father, George, who was wearing a checkered patterned jacket with a black shirt and a red hat with white letters. On his shirt was a picture of the Statue of Liberty, an AK-47, a beer mug, and an orange-skinned trumpet. Above the pictures were the words “LGBT.”

“How’d it workout with the bartender?” George asked.

“The bartender?”

“Yea, the one your mom put you on with a couple weeks back when I did my show.” George was a guitar player in a band and spent the majority of his evenings practicing in the living room. Derek went to one of his step-father’s shows and spent most of the time figuring out a way to talk to the bartender, until his mom stepped in for him.

“Oh right,” Derek said. “Ah, nothing. I texted her, looking to set something up in the future, but she never responded. I was better off looking to set something up that night because she said was working late.”

“Yea, you are better off. You don’t want to get involved with something like that,” George said, shaking his head.

Derek nodded in agreement.

“I mean you said,” George leaned in close while checking over each shoulder, “She told you that she has a kid right?”

“Yea.”

“Oh yea,” he said in a serious tone. “You want to stay away from that.”

“I agree. I haven’t texted her since.”

“Yea, these days you have to be careful. You don’t know if she is married, if she has a boyfriend, kid, whatever. You just don’t know these days.”

Derek nodded his head.

“One time,” George said in a voice low enough that the neighbors couldn’t overhear. “I met this girl in a bar, and I was going upstate to meet her for like six months,” he said, screwing his fist in the sour air. “Then one day I received a call- it was her fiancé. I had no idea. She never told me that. She would tell him she would leave to go visit her aunt. How was I supposed to know?”

We both shared a fearful laugh.

“I was looking over my shoulder for months after that. I didn’t know if he was going to-”

“Did you ever run into him?”

“What’s that?” George asked, turning his head sideways.

“Did you ever see him?”

“Oh no, no, no, thank God,” George said with a sigh of relief.

“But be careful. You don’t know what is out there.”

“Yea, it is like this one time- over the summer actually,” Derek stopped to think about what he was going to say next. It was something good but he couldn’t remember. Typically it would come to him in a second or two, but nothing.

“Yea, it is just scary. You never know.”

George paused for a second. Derek could tell that George was about to bring up a difficult topic.

“How do you think I felt about your father?”

Derek laughed. “That fucker is C-R-A-Z-Y.”

George didn’t agree or disagree, but he put his head down, giving Derek the confirmation he was looking for.

“I’m starting to think they are all crazy.”

George smiled.

“Look, I love your mother. We have similar backgrounds, from the same neighborhoods, experienced similar life events.” He continued confessing his love, but his voice drowned out, as Derek realized that he was lost in the big picture. For the first time he related to his step-father about something. He imagined what it was like to be in his shoes, married to his mother, slightly afraid of his father. There was something relatable about that situation; something that struck a chord.

“I remember,” he shouted, with his index finger pointed to the cloudless sour-blue sky.

“Any girl that is attractive at my age is going to have some baggage. I can only imagine what that must be like when you double their age.”

“Yes, you are right, George said dismissively. “But the best is when… And I was one of those guys at the bar who would’ve laughed about this…But uh… the best is when she is… your best friend,” George said, studying Derek’s reaction. “And I thought that I would never say this.”

Derek shook his head, not having a clue about what his step-father was talking about.

“Find your best friend. That is the best,” George said, as if it was the only true thing he had ever known.

Derek shook his head with a polite smile.

“All right get outta here,” George said. “Go on your run.”