by Mark Tufo
“Are you alright, Jandilyn?” Mike asked, leaning down so he could see her. His left eye was squeezed shut from the pain and he had his right hand up to his forehead trying to ascertain if he had split his skull open.
She still looked somewhat dazed, either from the blow or the events that had just transpired. She reached over and rocked Roger with a slap that came from somewhere deep in the corner of Fenway. “Now we’re even!” she yelled.
Roger’s eyes closed. Mike thought at first he might be playing possum to avoid any further retribution but on second glance he thought Jandilyn’s strike was the last straw that had sent Roger hurtling off the edge of consciousness.
She quickly got out, making sure to kick the passenger door shut and leave a sizable door ding. She ran into Mike’s arms. “How?” she asked. “Are you alright?”
“Are there any brains leaking out?” Mike asked, showing her his purpling skull.
“I don’t think so, I’m not sure you could afford to lose any,” she said now sobbing.
“It’s okay, honey, it’s okay,” Mike said over and over. They slowly walked away from Roger’s car.
Mike had the receptionist at the library call the police. He was certain if he hadn’t that Roger would find a way to turn this around and blame the assault on Mike and Jandilyn.
Mike was sitting on the rear bumper of the ambulance, an ice pack in hand and he was applying it gingerly to his aching head.
“So tell me again what happened,” the cop asked for the third or fourth time. Mike was having great difficulty focusing.
“You might have a concussion, kid. You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” the EMT asked.
Mike shook his head slowly. Any faster and he swore he could feel his brain moving and the pain became unbearable. “This is the last time,” Mike said, defiantly. “Then my girlfriend and I are going home.”
The cop was silent, neither confirming nor denying Mike’s intentions.
“Jandilyn, with a K.” Mike elaborated when he realized the cop wasn’t writing anything down. “You’ve got your pen and your little notebook—why aren’t you taking copious notes?” Mike asked.
“Don’t you worry about me, I’m just trying to corroborate your story.”
“So you’re saying you pretty much know what I’m going to say, you just want to make sure I say it the same way? Am I right?”
The cop again did not reply.
“I’m done,” Mike said, getting up off the bumper, he had to catch himself from falling back as he did so.
“You’re done when I say you’re done,” the cop said evenly.
“And people wonder why folks have issues with authority. Go fuck yourself,” Mike said.
The cop started to reach for his handcuffs. “Sergeant Gibson!” A plain clothes detective yelled as he approached. “Do you have everything you need from the witness?” The detective grabbed the small notebook.
“Almost, sir,” the cop said, hating to have to kowtow in front of Mike.
“I think we’re done here,” the detective said, looking through the notes quickly. “We have your contact information if we need anything further, Mr. Talbot. Why don’t you get your girlfriend and head home?”
Mike didn’t say anything as he turned to leave. He had to fight a real desire to stick his tongue out at the uniformed officer. He walked over to Jandilyn who had a small blanket draped across her shoulders. She was talking to a female detective and she was holding an identical ice pack to her cheek. She smiled when she saw him coming even though it most likely hurt to do so.
“We’ve got him now,” the female detective told Jandilyn. “You were lucky, we found these in the car.” The detective held up a roll of duct tape, clothesline, and a large body bag size sheet of plastic. “I think he meant to kill you.”
Mike’s head ached even more when he realized just how close he had come to losing Jandilyn. “You ready to go home?” he asked, extending his free hand to her.”
“Yes, very much so,” she said, getting up from the detectives’ car.
“We’ll be in contact,” the detective told Jandilyn.
Jandilyn nodded and tightly gripped Mike’s hand as they walked to her car.
“I’m shaking so bad, Mike, I don’t think I can drive.”
“I’ll give it a shot.”
“Comforting,” she said as she placed her head on his shoulder. “I just barely escaped one life-threatening event, what makes you think I’d be so lucky a second time?”
Mike’s mile-and-a-half drive home was almost as scary as their earlier encounter. He was all over the road, nearly sideswiping a parked Ford pickup and then overcompensating into the oncoming lane of traffic.
“Oh, dear God,” Jandilyn said, completely forgetting her ice bag as she clutched at any hand hold that might help spare her from any further damage.
Mike had his tongue out and clenched his jaw tightly as he tried his best to concentrate on the task at hand. When they finally came up to their apartment building, Jandilyn’s color and Mike’s, for that matter, had drained. Mike jumped the curb as he thankfully brought the death ride to a halt.
“I can barely see.” Mike turned to Jandilyn.
“That was plainly evident,” she said as she vacated her car almost as quickly as she had Roger’s. “Can you promise me we’ll never do that again?” She came around to help him out of the car and up the stairs to their apartment.
The driving or head-butting Roger?” Mike asked.
“Both.”
When they had finally sat down on the couch Jandilyn looked over to Mike. “What were you doing there, Mike? Don’t tell me what you told the cops—there’s no way you thought I was cheating on you. And no, I wasn’t,” she added when Mike’s eyebrows shot up in a question. “Roger set the whole thing up. He said he had told the entire class. Then when I got there he shrugged it off as being Saturday morning and nobody wanted to get up early and study. I almost left but I’ve got so much work, I figured what could it hurt? Sure, he’s a little bit of a jerk, but he’s also pretty smart.”
Mike let his head drop a bit before he answered. “I was about to go to sleep when you were leaving, I just happened to check out your gorgeous backside to lull me into sweet dreams and then I just lifted my patch for half a second. The colors surrounding you looked wrong, there were angry reds, tinged with black and some swirling deep purple that looked the color of bruises. It didn’t look right, Jandilyn. I’d never seen that before and I was concerned. I ran down to the library and spent about an hour looking for you.”
“Did you see us at the table and then get up to leave together?”
Mike nodded.
“That would look a little suspect. Mike, do you believe I love you with all of me, with everything that I am? Sometimes, I don’t know where I end and you begin that’s how closely I feel intertwined with you. You’re my hero… again.”
“It’s what I do,” Mike told her, half-jokingly.
“Are you precognitive? Did the accident somehow allow you to see into the future?”
“I don’t think so. I think I can see energy—the energy that surrounds us all, I just don’t normally know what it means.”
“He was going to kill me, Mike, his eyes were flat like a reptile’s. Do you think that’s what the ‘black’ was all about?”
“Probably.”
They both shuddered, although their apartment was relatively balmy inside.
“How am I going to go through life like this, Jandilyn?”
“You’re just going to have to make sure your contact is in all the time.”
“If it had been today, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
“Mike, I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am that you saved me, but we can’t live our lives afraid to do anything. We’re not supposed to know when our time is up.”
“But if I have the ability, aren’t we obligated to try to stop it?”
“No, because then yo
u start to disrupt the natural order of things,” she said tenderly. “You have to promise me on all that we are you will not take that contact out again.”
He agreed on principle. He didn’t want to argue with her, Mike could count on one hand and have fingers left over how many times she’d let him win a fight. But he planned on making sure he snuck a peek at her through his left eye as often as possible.
That night Mike went into the bathroom with the sole intent of taking a shower. He did something he had rarely done since the accident; he stared at himself in the mirror without bandages, patches or a contact covering his eye. He choked back a strangled scream as he peered at his reflection.
On one side he looked like the normal Michael Talbot, albeit a little more tired and worried than the one from yesterday. But this time he was surrounded by a pulsing undulating cloak of black, occasionally a flicker of silver rippled through like mercury coated lightning but mostly it was blackness.
“You alright, Mike? You sound like you just choked on a cat.” Jandilyn called from the bed.
“Good,” Mike answered monosyllabically. He knew he was going to die, now he was left wondering in what fashion. He waited for his heart to stop beating, wondering how much pain he would be in when his chin slammed off the corner of the vanity as he plunged to the ground. He wondered if he would be blocking the door with his lifeless body. Would Jandilyn beg him to let her in? Was it fair that he should save her to die in return? He thought it was more than a fair trade, but he was going to miss her all the same.
“I thought you were taking a shower?” Jandilyn asked when she didn't hear the water turn on.
Mike stood there waiting for the inevitable to happen. “Is today not a good day to die?” he asked himself.
“What?”
“Sorry,” Mike answered, turning the shower on quickly to avoid any further discussion. Mike walked on eggshells the remainder of the weekend, waiting for the end to come. When a piano didn’t land on his head Monday morning, he was no closer to an answer about what the black shroud meant, but he was still alive when he got into Jed’s car that night.
“What the hell happened to you?” Jed asked, fixating on the angry purple greenish knot on Mike’s forehead.
“Got into a wicked bad pillow fight with Jandilyn.” Mike responded.
“Did she put a bowling ball in hers first? Damn, kid, that looks like it hurts.”
“Would you mind, Jed, if I maybe told you about it someday but not right now?” Mike asked with pleading eyes.
“Sure, Mike, sure,” Jed said as he pulled away from the curb.
Jed was concerned for Mike. The kid hadn’t said more than a handful of words the entire week even during the few games of cards they played. Even not paying attention, Mike cleaned his clock at poker. The rest of the time Mike had spent writing in a yellow legal pad he had found in one of the visitor kiosk drawers.
“That must be one hell of a shopping list,” Jed said on Friday when Mike was digging through the drawers again, looking for a blank pad. The one he had got on Monday was full and sitting upside down on the desk.
“Got a second?” Mike asked.
“Actually, about five hours,” Jed said, pointing up to the large clock.
Mike laid out everything that had happened Saturday except for the part about what his left eye saw and about what he glimpsed in the mirror that evening. When he was through, they still had four and a half hours left on their shift.
“Holy shit,” Jed said, taking in a breath with a distinctive whistle to it.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“You’re an idiot to think that girl would cheat on you.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.
“You kicked his ass good then?”
“Believe it or not he’s in worse shape than me.”
“Should have killed him, Mike. Should have just put him down like the rabid sick man that he is.”
“Maybe, Jed, but that wasn’t my first concern. It was Jandilyn’s safety.”
“Well, I guess paranoia pays off sometimes,” Jed said, reflecting on the entire thread of their talk.
“Jed, I was this close to losing her,” Mike said, holding his thumb and forefinger a hair’s breadth apart.
“You didn’t, though, Mike. That’s what you need to focus on. You didn’t. Don’t think about what might have been. Think about what is. That’s much more important. Many people waste their lives mourning what has past, never once enjoying what is present, and dreading the future. That’s no way to walk through this life. We live and learn from the past only to help us walk into the future, to reside solely in what has already happened leaves us wholly unprepared for what comes next.”
“Maybe you missed your calling, Jed.”
“How so?”
“Those are some mighty philosophical words.”
“You think I could have been the next Descartes, maybe Socrates? Well, I’ll tell you what, kid; night guardsman pays better and I have dental.”
Mike laughed for the first time since Saturday. “Thanks, Jed, I needed that.”
“Good, now sit down, I need to make some of my money back.”
“How much do you owe me?”
“Let’s just say the gift I was going to get my granddaughter for her birthday is now on hold.”
“I take installments. I mean, of course I’ll have to charge interest.”
“Wonderful. Sit your ass down.”
***
They fell into a routine like that, Mike would write furiously most weeknights whilst almost simultaneously taking Jed’s money except for one day late in December when Jed had finally broke through and come out on top.
“About time!” Jed had screamed, standing up quickly from his chair, hands raised high. “Hallelujah!” he said enthusiastically as their Friday shift came to an end.
“Jed, I hate to be the bearer of mediocre news, but you’re only up by a dollar sixty-two,” Mike said.
“That’s not the point, not the point at all. I can finally hold my head high this weekend.”
“This been wearing on you a little bit?” Mike said, putting the poker chips and cards up.
“You could say that. The dog has been leery of me since me and you started playing.”
“I finished this today,” Mike said putting the last full yellow legal tab into his small backpack.
“Can I ask what it is?”
“I wrote a story.”
“Well, it sure wasn’t a short one.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“You going to let me read it?”
“Hell no. No one is reading it.”
“What did you write it for then?”
“I wrote it for me.”
“Well, what’s the title at least?”
“I’ve been going back and forth, but I’m thinking about calling it the Hanging Tree.”
“Romance then?” Jed asked with a straight face.
“Yup, right up your alley.”
“Come on, let’s go home, I’ve got to apologize to Bailey.”
“Who?”
“My dog. Aren’t you paying attention?”
“Not usually.”
“At least you’re honest.”
Mike walked into his apartment and placed the last pad with the rest of the filled tablets located in the back of the cabinet by the crock pot Jandilyn had to have that was still unused in its box. They’re safe here. He thought.
He quickly stripped off his uniform and climbed into bed with her, content for seemingly the first time since his friends had died. On some level he knew it had to do with the completion of his story but he hadn’t put the pieces together.
***
Freshman year for Jandilyn thankfully ended without further incident, sometime around mid June she was again able to take a shower without Mike present or the door open in case she had to make a hasty retreat. In late June unbeknownst to either of them, Jandilyn’s parents sent her an air
line ticket to come home on the Fourth of July weekend, Mike’s invitation was suspiciously missing.
“I’m not going!” Jandilyn cried indignantly as she shook the envelope under Mike’s nose. “The nerve of her. Of them both!”
“It’s first class,” Mike said trying to get a clearer picture of the ticket as it shook violently back and forth.
“I don’t care, Mike, how could they be so rude?”
Mike grabbed Jandilyn’s hand and took the accompanying message from her. He paused to read it for a minute. “It says they’re having a family reunion. I’m not family Jandilyn. I really hate to not side with you on this one, especially since the other side has your mother on their team, but I think it’s pretty nice of them. It’s first class and at least it’s round trip. I’d be more concerned if it wasn’t.”
“That’s not the point, Mike. They know we live together, we should go on trips together.”
“Jandilyn, you know I don’t get any vacation time for another few months, I couldn’t go if they had invited me.”
“I know you’re just being understanding, Mike, and I love you for it, but I’m not going.”
“They give you free cookies in first class.”
“Oatmeal?” she asked sniffing.
“I would imagine. Probably even white chocolate macadamia nut.”
“Really?” she asked, her mascara now starting to run.
“Jandilyn, go. Go see your folks, you know you miss them. If you stayed here, they would blame me for it. Your mom already has enough stacked up against me, don’t give her any more ammunition.”
“Will you be alright without me?” Jandilyn asked sincerely.
Mike was going to say, “What could possibly go wrong?” but he didn’t want to mess with that kind of wording even if it was only rooted in superstition. “It’s only four days; most likely I’ll go to Jed’s, watch some fireworks, and eat some barbecue. I’ll be fine.”
Three weeks later Jandilyn said a special goodbye. Mike made sure to get a good left-eyed look at her as she left. He was still smiling with the remembrance of her heat on his body as she closed the door and drove herself to the airport.