PART I: Chapter 1 - The Last Shot

Coincidence Speaks

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Welcome to the beginning of Coincidence Speaks - the novel! A thousand days in the making of a moment. I hope you enjoy.

Chapter 1

The Last Shot

Paul Endrum punched open the car door and erupted out, steeling for battle at the Gold’s Gym across the street from his office. He strode his way towards the entrance on autopilot, mind moving miles a minute, preoccupied with the day’s business agenda. Hoping there was still enough time to squeeze in a workout on his lunch break, Paul risked a glance down at his watch.

Paul was a family man, with a lovely wife named Clara and a toddler daughter and a house and a dog and yard with a fence. And a really nice watch. 

The watch seemed frozen in place, and he wondered if it was broken. It finally kicked into gear, the insect antenna second hand snapping over with a tiny click. 

A sudden memory landed of a game he played as a little boy, waiting for popcorn to cook in the microwave. When he looked away and then looked back at the countdown at just the right time, in the space between the seconds, everything stood stock still and that short moment would stretch out into its very own eternity. Sometimes it would drag out so long he would start getting uneasy, worrying time had somehow actually stopped.

“What the heck was that about?” he wondered, a little taken aback by the unexpected strength of an ancient twenty-five-year-old memory.

Thirty minutes later, Paul pushed through his last rep on the bench press, weights wobbling upwards, muscles and sinews screaming in protest. He ignored the pain, forcing a path upwards through sheer will, focused solely on setting a new personal best. But even as his arms finally locked out in triumph, he’d already started thinking about the next set. There would be time later that evening to congratulate himself for this latest achievement, preferably in his Man Chair recliner relishing an expensive single malt scotch.

Paul took his workouts seriously. In fact he took most things very seriously, most especially himself. Paul was a businessman—and that meant presenting himself in a certain professional way, thinking and acting practically, and being the principal financial provider for his family. It also meant never taking his eye off the next box to be checked—and above all else, never slowing down.

A part of Paul didn’t like to slow down, because that would risk noticing—or even worse, feeling—that undercurrent that had always been there, lurking beneath every single second of his life for as long as he could remember. The “splinter in his mind,” as he called it, echoing the phrase he’d picked up from the Matrix movie.

The nagging feeling there was something inexplicably wrong with the world.

Paul let the dumbbells drop to the floor with a little extra emphasis, their booming thud an echoing affirmation of his impressiveness loud enough for the whole gym to hear. One of the weights spilled out further than intended, and a hundred pound wrecking ball now rolled straight towards the ankle of the woman on the bench next to him. There was no time to warn her. 

Paul panicked.

Something haunted the life of material comfort Paul enjoyed—a terrible, uncomfortable feeling.

He knew how fortunate he was to have been born into an intact family in a country like the United States as a peach-colored baby boy, and the educational and social and financial trappings that came with that. Along with this recognition though, came a deep anxiety that he had a hard time putting a finger on.

Society itself seemed to encourage, nay demand multitasking, multi-faceted, frantic-paced lives filled to the brim with so many responsibilities and obligations and activities that there was hardly enough time in the day for Paul to take care of everything he was supposed to—let alone himself, or anyone else. Even his “free” time needed to be locked up into blocked out calendar slots—structured activities complete with goals and deadlines. 

There were bills to pay, and life as a young thirty-something was certainly no time to slow down. But Paul knew that if he worked hard enough, for long enough, one day he wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore. Just like if he ate right and worked out with enough discipline, his health would take care of itself.

And there was honor in the American relentless drive for achievement—he was forging a life that provided for his family, that would keep them safe. He was giving his daughter, Noel, every opportunity for a bright future. 

But how many other little girls were out there? Who didn’t have enough to eat, or even access to clean water? Girls his own daughter’s age?

The woman next to Paul kept churning out triceps extensions, totally oblivious to the impending doom approaching her ankle. He cringed, eyes squeezed shut, bracing for the inevitable. 

Nothing happened. 

Paul cracked an eye, only to see she’d moved her foot out of harm’s way at the very last moment. “Thank God,” he breathed in relief as she fished out her cell phone, thumbing in a breathless text. She hadn’t even noticed it rolling towards her. 

He slid over and hauled away his runaway dumbbell, mumbling a sheepish apology. She didn’t notice him either.

Paul didn’t mean her or anyone else any harm, after all, and was just doing the best he could with the hand he’d been dealt. Sometimes he helped with fundraising on local community boards, and Clara was a nurse practitioner and animal lover who donated to multiple charities.

Plus, facing up to his own blessings relative to the splinter in his mind got overwhelmingly disheartening, really fast. It wasn’t just the sense that something wasn’t quite right—it was the sinking feeling that he’d somehow forgotten something.

Something more important than anything in the world.

Paul poked his head through the double doors of the indoor basketball court adjoining the weight room, hoping to have the whole place all to himself. “Yesss!” he grinned, greeted by an empty gym. Of all the minutes in any given day, the five or ten shooting hoops alone after a demanding workout session were always some of his favorites.

Basketball was such a welcome respite, especially compared to the rest of his day in the office. In the business world, everyone pretended to have answers whether they actually did or not, and the best pretenders often seemed to be the ones who got paid the most. But when Paul was out of his desk chair and moving around—especially just for the fun of it—his analytical brain finally shut up, and he could enjoy himself.

The faster he moved, the slower all of the events around him would seem to unfold. The faster his feet moved, the higher he would jump, and the longer he would stay in the air. The closer it felt to flying.

That’s all Paul really wanted out of life—that feeling of pure, unadulterated flight. The feeling of freedom. But there was one problem he just couldn’t figure out for the life of him: at the end of every flight, was a landing. 

As he came back down after trying out a reasonably impressive slam dunk, Paul caught himself thinking about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a favorite book from childhood—probably from around the same time he used to stare transfixed at microwaves—where the secret to learning to fly was to completely forget about the ground, thereby missing it altogether.

His allotted lunch break kept on dwindling, the minutes and seconds getting more and more insistent, working overtime to pull him back to his office. But Paul wouldn’t leave the gym until he’d made his Last Shot. His Dad had taught him about the Last Shot when he was little—“Always leave on a high note, even when you’re just practicing!”

He lined up a long range jumper way outside the three point line, feeling his feet gather momentum to launch off the springy hardwood planks. All of a sudden he got that feeling—the pure knowing that his Last Shot was going to be perfect before it even began. 

The world itself seemed to stop in its tracks, and he forgot everything as he rose, ascending into the apex of the shot, hanging there in perfect balance between up and down.

Floating in the air, he watched in awe as the ball traced a flawless invisible arc from his pointer finger to the faraway goal, its familiar smudged rubber scent reuniting childhood with adulthood. It felt sublime up there, cradled by a seamless union of gravity and levity, carving out his very own unseen air currents. Time itself hung suspended with him, and he had all the space in the world to watch and to feel. 

Paul was so immersed in the immaculate beauty all around him that it seemed the future had become a foregone conclusion, a natural extension of the present moment, like it was somehow funneling backwards towards him. Like past and future had merged into one fluid spontaneous moment.

A funny sound permeated his ears, coming from the future. Or was it the past? He couldn’t tell. It sounded a little like the crunch of potato chips between the teeth of a politely closed mouth. Paul wondered what it might be.

Time sped back up like an old VHS videotape scrambling on fast forward, and the answer came. His right ankle landed awkwardly against the wall of the gym, imploding with so much force that his standard Dad Edition New Balance shoe ripped off of its own sole. The odd crunchy sound was, in fact, the sound of cartilage and ligaments tearing from bone.

Only then did he finally come to realize he had taken off just a little too close to the wall, and as his perfect Last Shot approached the basket, the sickening crunch of his ankle collapsing blurred into another sound—the swish of the ball snapping the net inside out as it went through the hoop. He couldn’t tell when the crunch ended and the swish began. 

Pain, sharp breathtaking pain flooded in then, and there was no more room for anything anymore. He writhed on the floor, a fish out of water gasping for breath, clutching his collapsed ankle.

Mesmerized by the magnificence of his Last Shot, Paul had managed to completely forget about the ground. But evidently that particular distraction just hadn’t been convincing enough. The ground clearly still existed—the throbbing spike of pain in his right foot was more than enough assurance of that. As rational thinking returned and he assessed the situation, an icy feeling overtook him, and he was afraid. 

His shoe looked like it had been melted. It was now permanently twisted into an unnatural boomerang shape.

Paul limped his way back to the locker room, re-donned his Three for the Price of One suit he’d bought at the same One Time Only Sale that happened every month, and hobbled back into the world of business. At a very slow rate of speed.

End Chapter 1

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Next Chapter➡️

Chapter 2 will post next Friday, February 2nd. Thank you for being here in interactive real time! Comments and feedback are always welcome.

In gratitude,

E.T. Allen