Aaron was still staring at the puddle and since other people's feelings were beyond him, now he started wishing that he himself could be the one to drown in it.
Man up now, Aaron! Don´t get awkward now! Remember that you have a goal! You have to do what you came here for, because Prof. Dr. Aaron Curbler is an overachiever, not a quitter. He will not go home before the goal is reached.
This was what Sascha told him in his head. So Aaron thought, but really he was whispering it out loud into the empty space in front of him. That no one took any notice was only for Maureen´s rage and for Bob´s…
Oh my God!
Aaron turned towards him.
Was Bob Melanski crying?
No, crying wouldn't even begin to describe it. Faced with the raging woman in front of him, all of a sudden, Bob started sobbing, until the rage fell off Maureen´s face and the fury turned into the caring mother of three that she was and was proud to be. She took her hands off her hips and, still close to Bob´s ear, started whispering. So silently, Aaron had to concentrate hard so he would hear it.
"I know, I know, but haven't we been through this a thousand times?" She lowered her voice even more. "I know how bad you are hurting, and I know how much you miss your family. I will give you another drink, alright, but for your own sake, leave the car here tonight. You are in no state to drive, and I would have told you the same thing on the night of the accident." She shrugs pitifully. "It breaks my heart that I wasn't the one who was serving that day, you know it does. But, please, you have to let go of the past. Or do you want to spend the rest of your days sitting right here, crying about something that you cannot change?"
Bob did not hear her. In this state, he wouldn't hear anything. However, Aaron heard Maureen´s words, loud and clear, and, all at once, there it was: the opening that he had been waiting for. Slowly, hesitantly, and somewhat reluctantly, he took his eyes off the puddle and sent them towards Bob, who was now - his head on his hands that had formed fists on the counter - crying even harder than before.
"That's guilt for you," Aaron said. "You no one can heal it and, trust me, I'm speaking from experience when I say: not even time."
Maureen crossed her arms and, displeased with a stranger listening in on a rather private conversation, she shot Aaron judgemental glances, as if to kill him with them.
"Oh, you don´t say," she rolled her eyes, "and who are you, anyway, that you seem to know so much about the guilt that Bob here feels?"
Aaron was never good at conversation. Not only for his lacking interest in the all too mundane things that all too ordinary people would casually exchange and the reason for it wasn´t, either, his lacking interest in other human beings, quite generally speaking. His bad achievements when it came to conversational practice had another simple cause: In his past, he hadn't been talked to enough to have had the chance of developing proper communication skills, and because he hadn't ever been around other people much, he wasn't only lacking those. What he was lacking just as well was empathy and, with it, the ability to put himself in someone else's shoes, a crucial element for a successful dialogue.
Faced with Mauree´s distrustful glances, he would usually have swallowed his tongue and left. However, that day wasn't a usual day and Sascha didn't let him, but forced him to indulge in his obsession.
He had fully committed himself to the idea of Bob Melanski. For weeks he had looked at everything there was to look up about the man and for the past few days he had begun to follow him around. A hood pulled deep into his face he had hid behind corners, bushes, houses just to study every of his moves. Then ever since he had eventually made the plan to meet Bob here - in a shady and dim looking pub where he had seen him come every day - he had been practicing their encounter. He had written down the sentences that he had thought would play a chord with Bob. He had said them to himself in front of the mirror to decide which tone of voice would be appropriate when saying them, what volume and what look on his face. Frankly, when Aaron had come here earlier he had come prepared, and however many more judgemental looks the bartender would shoot him - however much she would question his person or motives - Sascha would force him to stay.
Because wouldn't it be sad if their preparation would not bear fruits, at all?
Even if Aaron had not practiced what to say - even if he had not foreseen that Bob, as he would on a usual day, was going to end up crying at the counter of his dim and shady looking local - the two of them would probably have found the common ground that obviously connected them. Both, Bob and Aaron, had lost someone close to them through an accident and in contrast to Bob, who has actually been at fault for it, losing his brother Sascha had never been on Aaron. But for all his life he had been made to feel like it had been, regardless.
Maybe he hadn´t been entirely innocent, either, in regards to Sascha´s death. Looking at it from some distance, you could have said that it was quite simple: If Aaron hadn't been born, then Sascha wouldn't be gone. After all, his parents had only missed the car that had run his brother over, because Aaron - the narcissist that he was even when younger - had constantly been crying, as if demanding their full attention and - who knew? - perhaps he had intentionally distracted them from Sascha, not caring what would happen to his brother.
Aaron would normally not feel comfortable to share anything about the incident, not with friends or relatives, and least of all with strangers. However, according to his plan, and the dialogue he had prepared for himself, today in the shady and dim looking pub he would share what he had gone through with the stranger that was Bob.
He sat up and answered the bartender´s glances with a smile, so calm and steady that it looked just as practiced as it was.
"Well, I know guilt, you can be sure of that," he replied, and, like a mask, his practiced smile was blown off his face during the storm that broke loose inside of him when, for the first time in his life, he expressed to someone else what he said next. "I know, because when I was three I was the reason why my brother got killed."
Abruptly Bob lifted his head off his hands. In the dim light the tracks of his tears were still visible on his cheeks, but he put his sobbing on halt as Aaron spoke. His voice was shaking, even though this wasn't what he had practiced. It came naturally and so did the emotions that he could feel all of a sudden. An entire ocean of emotion, so freezing cold that his limbs went numb and his heart was about to stop as he was carried away by waves of guilt, sinking into currents of pain, touching the ground in his waters of grief, and drowning by the regrets that he had.
Due to his lack of actual interaction with other human beings, Aaron had overlooked something when he had come up with his plan. Emotions were the core of human interaction, and they couldn´t be controlled. So whatever plan Aaron had made: He really couldn't control what was going to happen, at all.
As brilliant as he wished he were, this came as a shock to him. For a few moments he was too surprised to react and in those same few moments his feelings took over again. All at once, he felt terrified.
He barely heard Bob´s voice as he started talking, but he saw him move his lips and tried to read the words off them, like time off a sundial. That Bob was still slurring every second one, didn't make it easier on Aaron to make out what he was saying.
"3 years old, a child! They can't be responsible, they are not even yet responsible for themselves. I was 50 years older than 3, a grown man. A father who had full responsibility for his family, and I came here and got drunk, before I drove to pick them up." Aaron heard Bob´s voice only muffled, as if his ocean of emotions had left water in his ears, yet what he clearly heard was the anger that it was carrying when it added: " I killed them, it is my fault that they are dead. What could you, 3 years old, have done that compares to it? A child, for fuck´s sake, they are innocent!"
Aaron felt dizzy. Hot and cold, he felt hot and cold. Hot at the core, in the neck and in the face, but cold, freezing cold at the limbs, until he couldn't feel his fingers anymore.
Fucking emotions! How could anyone concentrate when faced with them?
They were intoxicating. They were worse than drink and drugs, processed food and mundane thoughts. They would only ever harm him and put his mind at risk.
Wake up, Aaron, you cannot let that happen, he heard Sascha in his head again. You are supposed to be better than that! Just think of mom and dad! Can you imagine how much you would let them down if you selfishly decided you would rather feel than achieve something? You have to strive and thereby prove to them that there is a reason why you are alive. Get rid of your feelings, Aaron, do me this favour! Otherwise, just look at him! Look at Bob Melanski, slumped on the counter of a shady bar, and why? Because he is feeling so much. Don´t be like Bob, be smart and lock your feelings out! Do it now, just do it, and make your brother proud!