The Arcade

Cosmo was silent for a long time. He peered into Sal’s face trying to find just the faintest hint of madness, senility, drunkenness – anything that might explain away what Sal had been telling him. None of it made any sense. How could Sal know him, and - more importantly – how did Sal know what he had been thinking this morning as he was leaving for the office?

Apparently these and many other questions rolled across Cosmo’s face like a Broadway marquee, because Sal spoke up at that moment to explain: “Listen Cosmo,” he began “you have been granted a rare opportunity to undo what you think were some very unwise choices, and change the potential outcome of your life, with the added benefit of knowing what the outcomes of those previous choices would be, thus allowing you to better and, it is to be hoped, more wisely and carefully choose differently.

“You have been brought to this point in time because it is on this day in the fourteenth year of your life that you made what became a cascading series of choices which affected your future and circumstances.” Cosmo just blinked. “Are you with me, sonny?” Sal asked

“Erm…let me see if I have this right – this morning I wished for a do-over – not out loud, mind you – and you somehow heard me ?” Cosmo hardly believed he’d even asked the question.

“That’s right – I heard you.” Sal replied, pointing to his forehead.

Cosmo crossed his arms and looked at Sal with a cocked eyebrow “and just who are you, exactly, and why are following me around the mall, and – oh yes, you still haven’t told me how you know my name.”

Sal let out the slow, measured sigh of one trying to explain to a 5-year-old why the sun is warm. “Listen to me, and try to understand. You are in the mall. In this mall is the arcade wherein you spent most of your time as a teenager. Are you with me so far?” Cosmo slowly nodded. “Good,” muttered Sal “all that college tuition wasn’t a total waste.” Sal continued “On this day, twenty-nine years ago, you walked out of that arcade and made one decision that affected every other decision you made, thereby affecting the events which shaped the outcome of your life up to this point. But for that one decision, your life would have been very, very different.”

Cosmo continued staring hard at Sal. “Exactly what decision would that be?” he nearly laughed. “Did I run out the doors and into traffic? Did I fall up the escalator at some point? Or maybe I got mugged by a rampaging gaggle of Brownies imposing the will of The Girl Scouts of America, and forced into buying a dozen boxes of Thin Mints. Is that it?”

At this, Sal boxed his left ear and replied “No, you moron! Although - seeing you mugged by a herd of cookie-pushers would be hilarious…and entirely unsurprising. No, the mistake your 14-year-old self made was not chatting up that lovely young lady at the pizza place in the food court. That one decision – or rather lack of nerve – is what put you on the path to mediocrity and loneliness which brought you right back here.”

“What do you mean? How does that affect the rest of my life? She and I hardly talked. We just said ‘hi’ to each other once in a while, usually when I came here with my friends.”

Sal held up a finger and exclaimed “Exactly! That young lady was infatuated with you, my boy. She tried everything to get your attention short of stripping down to her underwear and doing back handsprings in front of you! How could you have been so blind?!”

Cosmo had a sheepish look on his face. “Well, I really didn’t know what to do,” He protested. “I kinda figured she liked me, but she was so cute, well - more than cute, actually – and popular, and I…I just didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. It was always just me, Bobby, and Theo.”

On hearing Theo’s name, Sal’s face darkened with pain for the briefest of moments – so brief, in fact, that Cosmo was sure he must have imagined it. “The point is, now you know where you screwed up. She waited for you to ask her out for four years, Cosmo. Four years! She never even looked at another boy the rest of the time she sat next to you in high school. Oh – what? You never noticed? Every single year until you graduated, she and you shared at least one class together, and she always made sure she sat right. next. to. YOU.” Sal poked Cosmo in the arm. “Are you getting this? She LOVED you!”

On hearing this, Cosmo just stared at Sal. After a few moments, during which time Sal had been absently cleaning his glasses with his handkerchief, Cosmo quietly asked “So what now? If this really is the second chance I asked for, what do I do? How do I know that I’m doing what I’m supposed to do to keep from doing the things that I did that I don’t want to do?”

Now it was Sal’s turn to stare – and then blink, which he did rapidly three times. “Wha-huh?? Wait – oh, right. Well…here’s the way it works: You are going to walk back in to the arcade. The moment you pass through the door of The Wizard’s Asylum, you will be your fourteen-year-old self. It will be 1984, and your friends Theo and Bobby will be in there as well. The year 2012 will not have occurred, of course, nor any of the events which led you to this moment. Clean slate.”

Cosmo took a moment to absorb this, after which he asked “What about my memories of you, this conversation, and everything up to this point? I’m not going to – like, not know what you just told me, will I?”

Sal grabbed his shoulder and exclaimed “No, my boy! That’s the best part! You go back knowing everything you know now about the events that brought you to THIS future, which will help you to make different decisions – better ones, hopefully.” Sal smiled with a wink and said “What you don’t get to know is what changes those alternate decisions will bring. For example, you ask that young lady out to the movies, she says ‘I’d be delighted!’ – or something like that – and there you go. You’ve begun to re-write that part of your history. Where that takes you remains an evolving destination.”

“But wait -” Cosmo began, “you implied earlier that you already know how and where I can change things to make my life better, and now you use the word ‘evolving’. Which is it?”

Sal held up both hands in defense “Whoa there, Nelly. I said that you made a decision that affected every other decision you made afterwards. I never told you that I knew what those other decisions actually were, now did I?” Sal grinned. “And even if I knew – and I’m saying I do, mind you – but if I did, I couldn’t and wouldn’t tell you. It’s sort of in the rules, you know.”

Cosmo looked in the direction of the food court and asked “Rules? What ‘rules’? Sal, I just don’t understa…” He had turned to look at Sal, only to find an empty seat where the old janitor had been sitting. With surprise and confusion, Cosmo looked all about the walk where they had been sitting and saw no sign of the old man.

For a moment, Cosmo thought perhaps he had imagined the whole conversation. He couldn’t, however, shake the excitement of knowing just the little that Sal had shared with him. So the decision remained: did he dare to walk through the door of the arcade? What was the risk, really? If the old codger was right, he had the chance of a lifetime that few – if any – people ever got. If not, well – what had he really lost? Five dollars worth of quarters and an afternoon. He stood up, and started in the direction of The Wizard’s Asylum.