The Diffident Hero - NaNoWriMo 2012 - Day 2 pt. 1

“I’m not in marketing.” He felt the beginnings of a mild headache coming on. The kind you get when the kids are unexpectedly home from school and just won’t shut up and the phone keeps ringing and there’s a knock at the door and you’ve got something on the stove that’s going to boil over at any moment and suddenly there’s hippopotamus in the middle of your living room. It was shaping up to be just that kind of day.

“Unless you’re paying someone else to do it for you, yes, you are. Your work is amazing, and you never let anyone know about it. This is your chance! The whole world is going to hear about this story. I’m shocked that your phone isn’t ringing your ear off already!”

As though it had been waiting for those words to be spoken, Brandon’s phone rang. He checked the caller ID. Mom. He took the call.

“Hi Mom. No, I haven’t seen the news yet. No, it just happened, I’m still on my way home. Yes, I really caught her. No, I don’t know how it happened … no, I don’t know anything about the fire. Yes, I’m fine, they checked me over, no glass hit me, no burns, nothing … look, Mom, I’ll call you later, I have to go. Love you too.”

As he disconnected, he saw his notifications pop down. Two messages. No, three. Then the phone rang again, this time an unlisted number.

“Oh frak,” he cursed, the headache gaining new shades of depth and color. He let it go to messages. He’d read whatever they had to say later.

“Frak? What is wrong with you? Look, it’s really easy. When these people talk to you, and they will, just mention your work. It doesn’t get much easier than that.” He was equal parts exasperation and incredulity, and Brandon had to smile despite the growing pain between his eyes.

“Okay, okay, fine. I’ll do my best to cash in on this … whatever this is, I swear.” His art was just a hobby to him, not something he really had any intention of making a living at. He liked to spend his time holed up in his studio messing around with different artistic styles and subjects. Sometimes he put his work online to sell prints, but Derrick was right; he didn’t really put any effort into marketing it.

Despite that, he actually did have a few fans, and he usually sold enough in a month to supply him with coffee the next month. Most of his friends were firmly convinced he could do a lot better with a bit of a push. Derrick was determined to do the pushing. He was an internet marketing genius, and it drove him crazy to see Brandon wasting what, to his mind, was such a simple and easy opportunity to make what could be a lot more money.

Brandon had struggled long and hard with how to explain himself to Derrick, even though he really had no need to. Brandon was very happy with keeping things simple, staying on the low end of the attention scale, letting his “online business” grow at its own pace, if that’s what it was going to do.

“You won’t regret it. Man, if only I had an opportunity like this. I can’t believe you didn’t jump on it when you were on with those TV guys! But yeah, yeah, I know. Anyway, I gotta go take care of some stuff. Catch you later, Ben!”

“See you, Derrick,” he said, grimacing as the headache increased another notch. He swiftly walked the rest of the way home, ignoring his phone, which was now ringing regularly and silently; he’d had to put it into silent mode after the first five calls. By the time he passed through the lobby of his apartment block and hit the button for the 7th floor, his notifications informed him that he had 23 messages waiting for his attention.

He squeezed his eyes closed and rubbed his temples with a groan. It was going to be a long night. He let himself into his place and wasted no time pouring himself a double scotch, neat. The clean, sparsely-decorated apartment soothed his agitated mind; the headache grew a little less as he just soaked in the familiarity.

The colors were a bit muted and dark for most people’s taste, but he liked the effect. While the apartment wasn’t huge, it wasn’t tiny either, not for a two-bedroom anyway. The colors made the place seem a bit smaller, which was okay by him, and the shelves that lined the walls of the living room enhanced that impression. They were filled with books and nick-knacks from various times of his life.

He sipped the scotch and sighed with relief. He glanced at the phone and frowned at the steadily-climbing number of messages; it was now up to 33. He set it down on the counter, plugged it in to charge, and and vanished into the comfortable, quiet familiarity of his studio.

The Diffident Hero - NaNoWriMo 2012 - Day 1

“So I was walking down the street just keeping to myself, and suddenly the whole block explodes.”

“I know that part, I watched it on the news. C’mon, tell us about how you saved that baby’s life!”

Brandon sighed. “I’ve told you, it was an accident! She fell into my arms. She literally just fell right into my arms as I was walking. That’s how it happened!”

“But how did you know it was falling? How did you catch it?” Derrick was eager, talking as much with his hands and arms as with his voice, was clearly not listening to a word he said.

Brandon grunted in exasperation. “I didn’t know the baby was falling. I was just walking. How many times do I have to go through this? She basically just hit me in the chest and I caught her by reflex.”

It was completely true. It had happened just about an hour before. Brandon had been walking home from work, planning nothing more special than a stop at the coffee shop between the office and his place. Before he’d reached it, a building had exploded with fire and debris. It had certainly felt and sounded like a whole block had gone up a the time, though.

He’d barely had time to react or even panic when he’d been hit in the chest by a heavy falling object, and had instinctively grabbed it. It had turned out to be a baby; he’d saved the little girl’s life. And with just that one single, instinctive action, his life for the past hour had been turned upside down.

He hoped it was just for the hour. There’d been something about that kid that had unnerved him slightly, and it was more than just unfamiliar human contact. Brandon led a very solitary life, with just a few close friends and coworkers, but …

It had been the eyes, he thought. The little girl had looked at him after he caught her, and he’d been transfixed for a moment. Those eyes never belonged in a baby’s face. They were old, and deep. They knew things; they saw things. They’d seen him. They’d smiled at him, and he’d felt a shiver, then, as though a chill breeze had blown across his spine.

He’d been stunned, of course. Not just by the baby he held, but by the blast itself, and by the sudden wave of applause that had gone up as people around him realized what he’d done. The cheering and clapping had gone on for at least five minutes, though all he remembered was the shocked gratitude and joyful tears of the child’s mother as she thanked him for saving her life.

Then had come the sea of hand-shakes, and he was pawed at by people who for some reason he’d never understand just wanted to touch him as he passed through the crowd; an endless successful of pokes and prods and brushes on his arms and shoulders, as omnipresent as the dull roar of the adulation, yet fleeting sensations, gone as fast as they came.

Just as he’d been starting to get a grip on himself and was making his way to the edge of the crowd to break away, the police and fire services appeared on the scene, followed closely by TV and other media trucks, and he found himself blinking and stammering his way through not one but several interviews as the local news caught up on what had happened.

First game the glitzy blonde, the face of the evening news, a woman who’s name he barely registered as Belinda Press (”All the Press that’s fit to view!”) before she was holding him up as an icon of the city, an example for the community, someone to look up to for young and old alike. “N—not at all, I was just in the right place at the right time,” he protested, but she cut him off.

“And such a model of modesty he is, too. Mr. Brandon Burns, hero of the hour, thank you so much for being on the show!” And with that he was in the clutches of the next, a local radio report, and then the next, from the city’s largest newspaper, giving up sound bites with no chance to think about what he was saying to all of them.

Then the police escorted him out of the limelight, much to his relief. An officer was on hand with a water bottle for him; the survivors of the fire were huddled around, having already given statements. As the most prominent witness/participant, he was questioned about the events. “Did you see anything unusual leading up to the buildings’ windows blowing out?”

The police had explained that that was what had sounded so loud; the building hadn’t actually exploded, the windows on several lower floors had blown out due to the pressure of super-heated air from a raging fire. He shook his head. “No, detective, I didn’t notice a thing. I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, not really paying any attention to what was going on around me when it happened, and then it all happened so fast …”

“It’s alright, sir. You’ve done a very heroic thing today. You should be proud.”

“Is it alright if I go?”

“You’re free to leave, sir. We’d just like to get your contact information first, in case we have any followup questions to ask.”

He’d given his address, email and cell number, then looked out at the crowd. Most were staring at the burning building from a safe distance as the fire department worked to extinguish the flames, but a few cheers went up as he stood and prepared to leave. He cringed and headed back to the other side of the police line tape that had been put up while he’d been questioned.

Finally his friend Derrick had found him, and together it took them another 10 minutes to get lost in the crowd and head out of the area.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw the smoke. My phone started going crazy, everyone was asking if I’d heard about what happened, if I was okay, if I was near when it happened. Then I saw the whole story—did you know you’re all over the media?”

“Yeah, I was there,” Brandon said with a touch of sarcasm, though truth be told he was taken aback that word had gotten around so quickly. He was used to the speed with which news of events could spread, but it felt very different when you were involved in them.

“Right, well this is huge! Everyone knows you now, there are pictures of you holding that kid on all the news sites. They’ve even got security camera footage of you making the catch!” Derrick was wide-eyed and animated with excitement.

“They’ll forget all about it soon enough,” he said. “It was a fluke, just blind luck.”

“Not if you act fast, Ben,” Derrick said. Brandon suppressed momentary annoyance. ‘Ben’ was not short for Brandon, and yet everyone seemed to want to call him that. Derrick was usually much better at avoiding that these days, but when he got particularly excited by something, he’d still slip on occasion. “I keep telling you that you could be doing so much better if only you’d talk yourself up a bit, let people know you’re out there! It’s Marketing 101.”