In the meantime, I would be incommunicado. I would explain everything later.
Instead of receiving a profanity-laced reply, I received a text containing only information – I was to pick her up at three p.m. Tuesday at her doctor’s office in Midtown, it was an outpatient procedure. She didn’t call me a dickhead without a dick, or some other charming and obscene slur in all caps. That meant she knew I was up to my neck in it and didn’t want to bother me - or she was incredibly pissed but still needed my help.
I almost cried while I wondered which one it was.
I finally got back to the island around dinner time. I was standing in the hallway, unlocking the door to my apartment, when somebody emerged from what had been Leg Sore Larry’s door. I had already noticed that all the Scarlett Johansson pictures were gone, even though you could still see where the tape had taken off some of the paint – but I had no clue somebody had actually moved in so quickly.
The new neighbor was tall and musclebound, maybe early thirties, with red close-cut hair and a scar or two on his forehead. He was wearing a tank top and sweat pants and he seemed vaguely threatening, even though he was trying his best to give me a neighborly grin.
Of course, something was wrong with this picture. Leg Sore Larry had only been dead for a week and a half – and somebody new was in the apartment? Wouldn’t it take a month of constant Lysol treatments to just make the place fit for human habitation? Now I had to wonder if Larry’s demise was perhaps engineered. Could you be too paranoid? I didn’t think so.
“The name’s Skip,” he said, offering a hand. “Skip Skipperson.”
“Skip Skipperson?”
“Real first name is Mike. ‘Skip’ is a nickname.”
“Figured.” I shook his hand. “Can’t believe they moved you in here so fast. Where you hail from?”
“Here and there. Were you on a trip?”
I looked him over. “Just a long lunch.” Then I took a glance out the hall window at a small storm that was gathering. “A real dark sky out there, huh?”
I came back and met his eyes just to find out what being too cute would get me.
“Yeah,” he said. “Very dark sky.” And his eyes never left mine.
I opened my door and said “Nice to meet you,” then I slammed it behind me and went down the flight of stairs into the apartment. I walked around opening a few windows to get some air circulating, because what was around was stale and humid.
For the next few days, I drank. It wasn’t enough for me to call it a bender, but I was mildly pickled the whole time. I had a few delivery sandwiches and not much else, while I watched baseball and the news, where I learned there was some kind of tropical depression forming in the Atlantic around Jamaica that showed signs of being something serious. I didn’t see how it could be all that serious, I knew from my couple of years in Miami that hurricane season didn’t even start for a few weeks. But television reporting was all about making everything as dramatic as possible, which is why I wasn’t about to buy their Chicken Little act this time around.
Tuesday morning.
I showered and shaved for the first time in a couple days and checked the news, because Chicken Little was screaming louder than ever. The meteorologists had a giant storm-watch hard on, the bottom line being that the former tropical depression, which had since morphed into a full-on hurricane, just might hit Jersey again the way Sandy did in November of 2012. And if it did, it would probably be tomorrow evening.
And, by the way, its name was “Mel.”
I don’t know who was in charge of naming these things, but it was going to be hard to get people to get scared of something named Mel. It was like nicknaming the Apocalypse “Cuddles.”
In any event, I headed over to Jules’ doctor’s office to pick up the patient. I had texted her earlier that I would be there as promised, so she didn’t worry. She texted back a simple, “k,” which again worried me that World War III was right around the corner. I got there a few minutes early, so, as an act of good faith, I started a few new Words with Friends games with Jules’ unattended phone and then waited.
Finally, the doctor led her out. She was wearing a simple black dress and flats and looked good. She was the first nice thing I had seen in a while.
“Are you Max?” the doc asked. I nodded. She came over and hugged me and held on for a while, and I didn’t mind at all.
“Julie’s pretty much out of the anesthetic, but maybe still a little groggy. She’s been told about a million times – but I’ll tell you too – she is to do NO talking until she comes back for her follow-up visit this coming Monday. She should drink a great deal of water – no caffeine, no alcohol.”
She made a frowny face at that last instruction. The doctor turned to her.
“Julie, you have the reflux medication? Remember, you need to take that every day.”
She pulled it out of her purse and showed it to the MD like she was his star student.
“Okay, if there’s any severe pain or discomfort, you let Max know, Max, you call me and get her back in here. All clear?”
She nodded. I nodded. We got the hell out of there.
I didn’t want to subject her to the subway in her condition, besides, it was too far a walk to the F train, so I grabbed us a cab and told the driver to take us to 2nd and 60th, where the tram station was. Inside the cab, she put her head on my shoulder. She was still a little sleepy. At one point, she made a little heart symbol with her two thumbs and forefingers and gave me a questioning look. I gave her the finger, and she knew everything was okay. She put her head on my shoulder again.
As we got off the tram, we caught the little red bus that traveled the length of the island and back again. I had been avoiding the thing for years, but, again, I didn’t want to make Jules walk. I caught her looking at me, studying me as if she knew something bad had happened to me. I wanted to save it all until we got back to the apartment.
However, as I helped her off the bus in front of my building, I saw, sitting on the bench inside the small glass-encased area that was between the entry door and the inner security door, someone who was going to delay our catching up with each other.
PMA.
With the new carry-on I had bought him on the ground next to him.
Jules saw my reaction and looked back and forth between PMA behind the glass wall and my face with a look of pure WTF. I opened the entrance door.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked. I should have been happy to see the kid, but I wasn’t happy to be reminded of anything that had happened while I was with him.
“Sorry, Max…I…is this Julie?” he asked.
She nodded in a big cartoonish way.
“She just had the surgery,” I explained. “She can’t talk for a few days.” I turned to Jules. “This is Jeremy, but I call him ‘PMA.”
“Nice to meet you.” He extended his hand and she shook it.
I looked around to make sure Skip Skipperson or anyone else questionable wasn’t watching us, then I unlocked the security door and got everybody to the elevator. We were the only ones in there, so PMA told me how he lit into Angela about lying to him, not to mention me. She claimed she didn’t know about any of this Dark Sky business, just that Robbie was working for some private military organization and wanted her to make sure the General didn’t find out he was still alive. According to her, Robert just needed to talk to somebody, he thought he was losing his mind being so isolated and confined to that Montana base. For her part, she was worried about him staying there, but more worried about what would happen if he got out.
Jules had a hard time following the conversation.
We got back to my apartment. I got Jules a glass of ice water and put her in my bedroom with the TV tuned to HGTV. I had a hunch she’d be asleep in about three minutes. Then I came back out to the living room to talk to the kid.
The General wasn’t improving, he said. But he couldn’t stay in that house anymore, not with everything he knew, n
ot with a mother who was complicit in this whole deception. He was wondering if he could crash with me for a few days. I told him he was welcome to use the queen bed in my office – but he should know I was being watched. I told him about Skip Skipperson and he knew enough to be as paranoid as me.
“Max, it’s like I said, we need to fucking do something about all this,” PMA said.
“Why don’t you write a letter to the Times?” I asked, shutting down the discussion.
A little later, as the kid and I were watching the bombastic hysteria over the approach of Hurricane Mel, Jules came out wearing my bathrobe and texting with her phone. My phone buzzed and I read her message as she pointed to PMA.
HE’S CUTE – CAN WE KEEP HIM?
“I still haven’t agreed to the dog,” I answered. She sat down next to me on the couch and kept the text talk going.
WHO IS HE
“He’s the grandson of General Donald Davidson.”
Her eyes went wide open.
“Yes, THE General Donald Davidson. His uncle, who’s supposed to be dead, is actually alive in Montana with half a face. It’s pretty fucked up.”
PMA turned to Jules. “Max is a good guy,” the kid said, warming the cockles of my heart. “He got us through a lot. You’re lucky you have a guy like this.”
NOW WE FUCKING HAVE TO KEEP HIM
I shook my head. She texted again.
MAX CAN YOU FUCK ME NOW IT’S BEEN DRY DOWN THERE FOR TOO GODDAM LONG
That message wasn’t for the family, so I didn’t read it out loud. I just got up, excused myself and escorted Jules to the master bedroom. After she did that thing she did with her vagina and I laid there enjoying the memory, she motioned excitedly to my ancient clock-radio and I didn’t know why.
“What, it’s ten after seven, that why you’re pointing? What, you want to get some dinner in here?”
She shook her head and grabbed her purse from the chair next to her side of the bed. And she pulled out a CD with no label.
“You want me to play that?” I asked. Then I remembered – oh yeah, that ancient clock-radio had a CD player built into the top. I put the disc in and waited to see if the thing still worked.
A beautiful voice began singing Moonlight in Vermont. I listened for a minute or two.
Then I looked at her questioningly.
She nodded and pointed to herself.
I couldn’t believe it. “That’s you? Holy shit, really?”
She nodded vigorously. I was starting to think I had just fucked Marcel Marceau, because she was becoming a very talented mime.
“I didn’t even know you had a CD of yourself. How come you never played it for me before?”
She shrugged and looked a little embarrassed. Julie Nelson, shy? A new one.
“Wow. And you’re going to sound that good again?”
She teared up and nodded. If I had been a younger man, I would have fucked her again right then and there. I had to be happy just knowing I didn’t need boner pills yet.
We ordered some dinner for ourselves and the kid. Over the Chinese, Jules texted me a question for the kid that I couldn’t quite believe I hadn’t asked him in all the time we spent together.
“Jules wants to know if you have a girl.”
He looked a little embarrassed.
“There was somebody, but then I got the CIA summer job thing.”
“She disagreed with that move?”
“We had a huge fight about it.”
“So I guess your dad’s not the only one who disapproves.”
“People need to stay out of my fucking business.”
We moved on to less volatile subjects and it ended up being a very nice night. God knows I needed one.
But it didn’t last long. I woke up around three a.m. worrying about the kid and Jules. I didn’t know why Skip Skipperson was next door – maybe just as insurance that I would do what I was supposed to do if the General recovered. But it bothered me. Jules was sleeping like a rock, so I got up, put on my bathrobe and went into the closet off the hallway. And I dug in the back of it until I found what I was looking for.
The small box with the handgun and the bullets that went in it.
Howard, who believed that no household was complete without firearms, had sent me his old gun as a joke when he traded up to a newer and more powerful model. I had taken some shooting classes while I was with the CIA, so I knew the basics, but that was all I knew. I started to take the box into the living room, then remembered something and doubled back to the bedroom, where I quietly unplugged the clock radio and took it with me. I had only listened to a couple of Jules’ songs and I was anxious to hear the rest.
As I checked out the gun, I listened to the CD at a low volume. Son of a bitch, on the next track, she sang Nice and Easy and did a good job of it. The gun itself was in its original packaging, so it was clean and ready for action. I carefully loaded it, leaving the first chamber empty so I didn’t accidentally shoot myself. Guns made me nervous and I wasn’t afraid to admit it, but I had to get past that so I could at least try to protect Jules and PMA from whatever might happen next.
When I was done, I put the handgun in a pantry in the kitchen, on a high shelf behind a bunch of shit I never used. Hopefully, I would forget I ever put it up there.
Then I sat back down on the couch, turned on the TV but kept it muted, because I was still listening to Jules belt out the standards. Hurricane Mel was looking big and monstrous on the CNN radar – they were still holding to their Sandy-sized prediction. It would be making landfall in fifteen hours or so. Tomorrow afternoon, we’d start seeing rain here on the island.
Meanwhile, on the CD, Jules started singing Good Morning Heartache, the Billie Holiday standard. Gutsy move taking on a legend, but Jules held her own. As the song went on, the melancholy got to me. She found the profound unhappiness in the lyric and injected it straight into my heart.
Then I heard a noise and wondered why I had hidden the gun in the kitchen. That wasn’t very practical if something happened fast.
I turned. It was just Jules standing there in the hallway, wearing that godawful Anchorman T-shirt and nothing else. I saw it in her eyes – she wanted to know what had happened to me. She knew me too well and she knew something had changed. So she came over and sat next to me, and I told her about my daughter and what she had left in the trash, and somehow I made it all the way through without breaking down. She hugged me and held on. She was going to stay with me.
That was all I needed to know.
The Hunt
Wednesday evening.
Outside the wind was howling and the rain was pounding. Mel was launching his assault on the shore, which meant many television reporters standing by beaches on the coast of New Jersey were hoping things would get bad enough to get them on YouTube - but not bad enough to kill them. I was somewhere in the middle - maybe just a few bloody noses or near-drownings. It was a win-win; I’d get some entertainment value and they’d get a few million online hits.
Along with the gusts and the downpour, it was also dark as night outside, even though sunset wasn’t due for another hour; the thick clouds were blocking out whatever light was left in the day. It was around seven p.m. and Jules was searching the kitchen in a panic. I watched her, not sure why she was spooked, as she picked her phone up off the counter and started typing furiously. I pulled mine out of my jeans and waited for my latest communication from headquarters. It was a good thing I had an unlimited text plan or I would have gone completely broke in the past twenty-four hours.
THERE’S NOTHING TO FUCKING EAT IN THIS FUCKING CAVE
“I’m not going out in this shit!” I yelled as I headed into the living room, where the kid was waiting for the Weather Channel reporter to get picked up by the wind and thrown into the side of a building.
YOU HAVE TO. STORES MIGHT FUCKING CLOSE MORON
I sighed at my phone screen. More incoming.
I’M NOT GOING TO LIVE ON MOLDY SALTINES AND WATER
SHITBIRD
“Make a list,” I wearily said. I really didn’t have to make the suggestion, because text after text started coming through of all the things I needed to buy. Milk. Eggs. Chocolate-covered pretzels. Bananas. Ben & Jerry’s. Basil. Chocolate-covered potato chips. Cheese.
I turned to PMA. “Get your shoes on, I’m going to need help.”
As we rode down in the elevator, I asked the kid if he had heard from his mother. He said he had had his phone off since yesterday morning because she was calling constantly and he didn’t want to talk to her. I asked him to turn it back on in case we needed to know anything. He wasn’t happy about it, but he did it.
Maybe I made more of the trip downstairs than I needed to, because we were literally out in the harsh weather for about ten seconds, the time it took to run from the exit from my building to the entrance to the bodega. On a covered walkway. I didn’t even put on a coat and neither did the kid, which turned out to be a mistake, because Mel’s winds turned the rain horizontal, so we were soaked by the time we got in the store.
Inside the bodega, chaos was in full swing. Everybody and their brother and their mother and their brother from another mother was in there thinking what Jules was thinking, that if this storm was as bad as the media said it was going to be, anybody without supplies would be SOL come tomorrow morning. We each grabbed a shopping basket to gather up what was left on the shelves and when we were done scavenging, we made our way back to the end of the long, long line that wound its way from the front counter all the way to the back of the aisle with the cookies and the cereal. It would be a while.
After what seemed like most of the rest of my lifetime, we had made it almost halfway through the line, inching our way up a couple of footsteps every so often, when my phone vibrated with a new text. What, did we need Nutella too? I pulled it out and checked the screen.
Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) Page 21