Keynote

Magnolia blossoms drifted down past the horse-head carriage posts onto the wet brick street. The tone of the day would quickly change, though; the vacation was over. His train didn’t leave until tomorrow, but the conference had concluded and his bags were packed, save the toiletries bag and the clothes he had on.

He still felt nervous about the keynote he had given. Surviving prostate cancer hardly made him a hero — yet that’s what the conference organizer had called him in her introduction. Was it guilt he felt about such praise?

He bent down and picked up a lone petal, smelled it, and pressed to his cheek. His subtle stubble roughed up its soft skin.

Tires screeched around a corner behind him. The engine roared and, before he could turn to look, the passenger threw something that shattered the window of an ice cream shoppe, and a blast sent glass shards toward the street. Everyone around fell from the force and the noise and the heat. 

He wanted to ask, as he looked around, if everyone was okay. He couldn’t hear himself well enough to know if he did.

The doors of a van parked illegally near the window showed warped whorls of iridescent paint from the heat, and the windows had spiderweb cracks. Across the street, a mother passing by with a stroller had shielded her baby — neither hurt but both in silent shock.

He didn’t figure anyone had gotten down the license plate, if the vehicle was even registered. Through the shattered plate glass window of the shoppe, he saw clusters of flame dying out.

A doorman of the hotel and a bookseller across the street rushed outside, phones already in hand. Another man and a woman were charred and disfigured, and the mistake of thinking he could look away had been so easy to make. Of course, everyone felt confused. But even amid the initial shock, he tried to think things through.

Since he wasn’t one of the victims, he figured he couldn’t have been the target, of course, if there even was one. Who this far from home would want to hurt him? And there’s nothing he could have done to stop it — nothing anyone but the perpetrators could have done.

So why was he repeating, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” as he crisscrossed the destroyed storefront with his hands pressed to the sides of his head, scrunching his paper hat?