Where's Waldo

Waldo. Where’s Waldo?

Those haunting words echoed inside as he stared out the window of the clunky old green Plymouth. The same, taunting words he’d heard over and over and over from the neighborhood kids. And today, peering out the windshield, he caught a glimpse of his round rimmed glasses in the rear-view. He remembered the small spectacles well, and the boy who wore them—and the wide-eyes that floated aimlessly, like a lost astronaut swallowed up inside a new galaxy; but he could just never seem to find the constellation. Where’s Waldo...Where’s Waldo…

He shrugged, turned, and thought about Julie as he drove into the rainy sky. And how she looked standing under the porch light: arms crossed, red nails tapping the white satin sleeve of her robe; she was tired of calling, looking, asking: Where’s Waldo?...

He never got up the nerve to tell her where he’d been every night: sitting on the empty steps of Al’s Café. In the back-alley after closing time, gazing at the moon, staring into the night: maybe the answer was encrypted somewhere inside that far-off silver orb? Yet, he’d trudge home, undefined, still and quiet, without constellation.

Snapping back from times’ past, Waldo stood over the imported oak conference table inside his high-rise office, adjourned the business meeting, and dismissed the room of men wearing black suits and neck ties. And adjusting his round rimmed glasses, he stared at the cartoon figure they’d made of him: the brown haired boy that peered from behind lost round spectacles. The caption, written atop the cluttered mess of cartoon read: Where’s Waldo?

“You ok?” asked Buddy, his newest intern. “You looked lost there for a minute.”

“I’m fine…fine…” Waldo quickly snapped. 

That night, inside his waxed Bentley, Darby, the chauffeur, drove while he stared out the back window. He wouldn’t have it any other way—yes, he knew for sure he’d make a grand appearance pulling up at Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. They wanted to interview him…his overnight success…and how he’d done it…the idea that sold millions to children. He thought of how he’d answer.

Darby tipped his hat and opened the door under the gleam of the neon lights. Stepping out, Waldo caught a glimpse of the cartoon they’d made of him displayed on the city’s billboard sign. He gazed up, and the counterfeit boy reflected like starlight against the spectacles of the grown man behind the tailored suit. And the deep-set, Where’s Waldo, still loomed inside the constellation he never found.

Ouida D.W.