Free HBO
The Jackie Gleason Bus Depot at dawn is no country for middle-aged women, but here I am. Twenty-two years in bus lighting. I’m tracing the wiring harness under a Nova 2024 when Aunt Carmen calls.
Uncle Tony is dead.
“It was fast,” Carmen sobs. Heart attack. Mets game on. Petting the cat.
Fast. Thank God. That’s how he lived.
In the eighties, Uncle Tony worked the Hudson Valley. FREE HBO was emblazoned on motel marquees across the Catskills. He’d point at those signs and laugh.
“There’s no such thing as free HBO, kid!”
When the signal went, it was Tony they called. He read the picture, traced the fault to the line or dish, and repaired it.
He trusted tools more than people.
“Find a niche, Catherine,” he’d always say.
June 1988. Summer break. Night of the big Tyson–Spinks fight and the HBO at the Kingston Inn was kaput. Uncle Tony let me tag along.
“Our sign says ‘FREE HBO!’” the plum-faced night manager shouted when we arrived.
Uncle Tony didn’t react. Just grabbed his toolbox.
The picture was up before Gladys Knight sang the anthem.
The night manager hugged Uncle Tony.
The fight itself lasted ninety-one seconds. We watched it at the Phoenicia Diner.
“Like a street fight,” Uncle Tony said, uppercutting the air. “Fast.”
I slide out from under the chassis.
Climb the ladder.
Check the eight-lamp warning system.
The mayor wants to make buses free, I hear.
But Uncle Tony was right.
There’s no such thing.
Aaron F. Schnore
Aaron F. Schnore is a writer, filmmaker, and musician whose short fiction has appeared in Blood+Honey, BULL, Fiction on the Web, The Gorko Gazette, Sci-Fi Shorts, 101 Words, and more. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.