“No. It doesn't end like this.” It was a thought reserved exclusively for me, but somehow ended up murmuring from my mouth.
“What doesn't end like this?” Penny petted my arm with an extra dosage of delicacy.
My dream. My dream doesn't end like this. “I don't know....It all feels like I've lived this before. Shania, Alex, the headlights, that car back there, New York. It's....” Shaggy is here, somewhere. He's watching. He’s your advocate, I think. Have faith and he'll show.
“Yeah, we've all had that before. It's called Deja Vu.” Richie sighed.
“This isn't the time for Deja Vu, Joshua,” Leah's eyes.
“Leah, if that guy is who dumb-ass in the trunk thinks he is,” I considered the man at the urinal during intermission, “we aren't walking away from this. Not if Hammer Time catches up to us and finds our stowaway.”
Now Leah and Richie added a four-letter word of their own. It wasn't ship. I thought Leah might have put the petal to the metal a little too. Penny didn't threaten either one of them with a bar of soap, either. She gripped my arm, dug several nails into it, and added a third and final word to their vulgar sailing feet.
“I'm not ready to die.” Penny said it so low into my ear that nobody else heard, especially since Shania was letting girls everywhere know how totally crazy they could be, especially if men’s shirts and short skirts were involved in the equation.
“Leah, can you get us on Broadway?” I said.
“I'm on it.” She cut a sudden left from University Place onto 8th or 9th Street, I was unsure of which. So sudden were her movements that Albino Cave Dweller's tires let out a screech of pain. “North or southbound?”
“We're going south.”
“How far south?” Leah accelerated onto Broadway, charging through a yellow light and wheeling left. The man in the Chrysler 300 made no attempt at discretion now. He sped through a red, just to keep on our trail. Otherwise, Manhattan's main drag was almost entirely empty.
“Just keep driving unless I tell you to turn.”
“Even if I continue straight into the East River? It's filthy in there.”
“You figured out my brilliant plan. I thought we'd kill him with pollution.”
“Uh-huh.”
I think it was Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan, at the corner of City Hall Park, where we came upon a red traffic light, but rather than stopping Leah decided to slide right through at sixty miles per hour. Only problem was a delivery truck with the government okay of an intersection green came lumbering by. There were terrible honks from the behemoth and a violent squeal of breaks. More swearing, screams, the stench of burnt rubber, all that and more. Leah somehow slid in front and around the truck before veering back on course, coming dangerously close to colliding with a row of parked cars along the westside curb of the park. When I looked behind us the Chrysler 300 had managed to maneuver around the beasts screeching backside and was back in healthy pursuit.
After we caught our breath Leah said: “Do you want to tell me again how you almost die everywhere you go?”
Penny was eager to jump into the This Is My Life recount. “He and Alex were driving back from Bakersfield, it was just last month I think, when a fuel truck toppled across the road, flew over Joshua's station wagon....” She emphasized flew over with dramatic gestures. “And exploded behind them.”
“I don't think now is the best time, Penny.”
“How come there are never any cops in this city when you need them?” Richie kept his eyes on a donut shop as we passed. No cops.
“Alright then Joshua, where are we going?”
I sighed: “Ground Zero.”
Everyone gave faces that spoke of befuddlement. Leah said: “When I said your PTSD could use a little one-on-one time with therapy, this isn't what I had in mind.”
“This happened to me rather recently....in a vision.....or a dream.”
“Well, which is it? A vision or a dream?”
“Does it matter?”
Leah twitched rear-view mirror eyes towards Penny. “He's not crazy, is he?”
Penny didn't even have to think twice about her answer. “Of course he is. Why do you think I find this man so freaking hot and heavy?”
“Did you hear that?” I grinned into Leah's rearview. “I'm hot and heavy.”
Leah rolled her eyes towards the ceiling: “We're screwed.”
7
LEAH'S MOMENTARY DOUBT about my sanity didn't stop her from taking my directions to the letter, which included a continued southbound chase a block or two beyond Liberty Park to the intersection where Trinity Church and Wall Street met, in which case we veered around to a little street called Trinity Place (that street became Church Street) and hounded northbound past the construction site that had once been the World Trade Center; New York City, 10048. I kept my eyes fixed forward, trying my damnedest to ignore the plot of earth that demanded my peripheral attention on the other side of construction fencing; the same eternally living spirit that I'd shrugged so often in wake but haunted me relentlessly in my dreams.
The Frank McCormick Department Store was there too. It was nestled on the corners of Church and Cortland Street, where Susan presently spent much of her time. Broken windows, busted up mannequins, and the ash of pulverized concrete had long since been cleared, but it was the same building that I'd wondered into all right, bloodied, dehydrated, and dazed, only moment after the North Tower fell. I didn't want to think about that either, but my dreams spoke differently.
Except unlike my dreams, nothing happened.
Which is exactly what I said: “I don't get it. Nothing happened.”
“Damn you, reality,” Leah shook a fist.
Go doggy, go! The child must awaken to be saved! It was Shaggy's voice echoing through my skull.
“Circle around.”
“You're crazy,” Leah again.
“He'd be crazy to follow us.”
“The man has a hook for a hand, Joshua! Of course he's crazy!”
She took Church up a couple of blocks to Vasey Street (the north-east corner of the World Trade Center), cut right, wheeled onto Broadway south, and then continued around in a toilet-like flush rotation with the ever-agitated pursuer getting desperate in his attempts to surrender our will. Only this time, passing Ground Zero, something did happen.
It was at the Frank McCormick Department Store where a man, the Shaggy Man (I recognized him immediately) went swaggering like a drunkard, but at swift inhuman speeds, and into the middle of the road. Leah slapped her breaks in order to avoid him. She swerved to the left but that woman mannequin, and she was even then clearly a lifeless mannequin, stood poised like a deer in Leah's headlights. Screams.
Leah barely avoided hitting her also, and spun A.C.D. into a confusing 180. The man in the Chrysler 300 wasn't so lucky. He simultaneously cracked the teeth of its grill into both the inhuman supermodel and drunkards legs. I saw two bodies, his and the mannequins, topple over the hood, onto the windshield, cracking glass into dozens of jagged puzzle-pieces, and literally catapulting over the rest of it until they landed somewhere dead-center in the street. I thought I might have seen the little girl from my bedside photograph staring silently at us from the steps leading up to McCormick, but it all happened so fast. What I did clearly see, however, was the Chrysler veering off the road to its left and crashing into the construction fence that attempted to keep Ground Zero from penetrating my dreams.
I said: “Is everyone alright?”
“I think I've still got both of my balls.” Richie felt his nether regions with delicacy.
“Figures, concern first for the joystick, then the women and children. There's something that doesn't change based on sexual preference.” Leah turned to her roommate.
“Girl, if only you knew,” he said.
You'll be safe with me, honey. The mannequin had once spoken those words in my dreams. I thought I might have heard them again. Only I could have sworn it had come from the street, and not my
head. When I turned my neck (the pain in it had grown steadily worse) her arms and legs were scattered about on the pavement, but I didn't see its head anywhere. The mere consideration that a dismembered mannequin head could open its eyes and speak gave me a case of the hebejebes.
“Did you see a little girl?” Penny directed her concern towards the steps.
“Thank heavens, no.” Richie clutched his chest next, hopefully not because of heart troubles. Breath had probably escaped him. “I think that was just a mannequin. I can't speak for the street person though.”
“No. I saw a little girl!” Penny cried. “Where did she go?”
“Seriously, little girl. Could you be any creepier Penny?” I didn't like the dishonesty, but the less they knew about what I suspected of my estranged wife's abilities, the better. I mean, how could you explain something like that? Hey babe, my wife has the psychic ability to transport her consciousness into the pre-pubescent body of her child-self and stare me down from thousands of miles away, can I buy you a drink? There's a pick-up line for you.
“Wait right here.” I opened the door and limped out.
“Hey, it’s your freaking dream,” Penny said.
“Vision,” I corrected her.
“Whatever.”
8
SMOKE LIFTED FROM THE HIGH BEAMS that had blinded my dreams. I was cautious to approach it. But the man inside (I was certain now that he and Creepy Urinal Guy were the same), slumped over the steering wheel, appeared to be unconscious. And no big surprise; old Shaggy, always taking a beating for me, wasn’t anywhere to be found. Only the headless mannequin remained. Where its head could have possibly rolled to was beyond me. And truth be told, I was hoping not to find it. There was that eyeball thing, the way she'd just open them up and say things. Here came the hebejebes again.
“So where'd he go?” Leah sprung up at my side like a cat.
“Who?” Another step closer to Creepy Urinal Guy sitting unconscious in Smoky and we both spoke at a whisper. Alex could be heard beating his hands within the trunk again. He spoke something, probably profane, and Penny threatened another slip of the soap.
“That man I nearly hit in the road. With that impact, he isn’t walking again anytime soon, that's for sure. So where'd he go?”
“Beats me.”
“You doing what I think you're doing?”
“Only if what I suspect you think I'm doing is anything like what I suspect I'm doing.”
“Dork,” she laughed through her nose. It's like I said. Laughter was a way to massage the fear.
I forgot all about my knife wound and that killer kink in my neck and crept around to the passenger-side door, was careful to reach my arm through a window of broken glass, and unbolted the lock. The Chrysler radiated an unhealthy heat. I couldn't see his face, being smashed up against the wheel, but his first generation iPhone was on the floor next to a comic book depicting Batman and Robin on the cover.. Leah had stopped at the drivers-side rather than following me around. While I went for his cell phone she reached for something else entirely.
“What are you doing?” My question was stern and forbidding.
Her hand slid into the unconscious driver's trench coat. “Apparently not what you thought I thought you were doing.” She retrieved a wallet.
“What are you going to do, rob him?”
“Oh please, like I need the money. You know I'm a bread winner in this city. Would Mary Tyler Moore rob him?” I chose not to answer that. “He must have a driver's license. Don't you want to know if Arnie the Hammer's mother named him anything else?”
“If he's Arnie the Hammer.”
“Oh, creepazoid's Arnie the Hammer all right. What are you doing?”
“Cell phone, I want to know who he's been calling today.” I held it up for her to see.
“You gonna read that comic book while you’re at it too?” She nudged her chin at the rather cartoonish drawings of Batman and Robin.
“I know it’s kind of weird, isn’t it?”
“It looks old.”
“Beats me,” and then with all seriousness I said: “Don't wake him,” and stepped away from the door as quietly as I could, cell phone in my fingers, but glass was everywhere. The crunch-crunch-crunch sound it made under my heels seemed to scream for him to do just that, wake. Then kill us. But the waking would come first, and the broken glass below my heels seemed determined to materialize our fears.
“Um, Joshua?” Her tone had changed. And she needn't finish her sentence. I saw it too. The driver had a hook for a hand, his right hand (just like those scary campfire stories), rather than a prosthetic one. But instead of moving away from Hooks car, as I thought she should, she stood there at his side and opened the crease of his wallet. His head twitched.
“Leah!” I screamed her name out, somehow managing to slide over the wrecked heap of smoking tubes and metal that had once been the hood of High-Beam's engine. It scrapped and burnt my derrière on the only tissue that Mahoney's hell-goat hadn't rammed. When I regained ground on the drivers-side Arnie the Hammer, there was no question about that now, had managed to grab her wrist with his five remaining human fingers. Blood had made a tai-dai example of his face. It peppered his crooked nose and stained his beard, even his eyes seemed red, but more importantly his hook was poised like a cobra. He even hissed about it as I caught his hook at the wrist, mid-strike, and kneed him in the teeth. He groaned from the pain, released Leah from his grasp, and sheltered his face with five fingers and the hook.
Leah and I forgot all about the man’s wallet and phone as we barreled back towards Albino Cave Dweller. Police sirens howled. Doors closed; Leah's and mine. She struggled with the ignition. Damn engine wouldn't start. Sirens.
“Oh my god, is he coming?” Penny said, clenching the entire chiropractic frame of her body into some sort of clenched fist.
“How do I say this?” I patted her leg. “Yes.”
“Was it him?” Richie said.
His concerns were answered almost as suddenly as he popped the question, but not by us. Hook-for-Hands went for his door, groping the window with the most horrid face you could imagine, think lots of bearded hair and teeth and huge eyes bulging with veins, and an aaaaahhhhh! so loud that everyone’s blood whistled tea-kettle screams as Leah started the ignition and pedaled its wheels into a Cape Canaveral rocket launch. Only Arnie the Hammer had latched his hook to the door handle, which meant he involuntarily came along for the ride, several seconds’ worth anyways. Louder screams all the way around. There was some profanity and painful cawing from his end, more bearded hair and teeth and blood matched with the not-so distant howl of police sirens, before he let go of the latch and went violently rolling like one of Donkey Kong’s barrels behind us.
We must have been in some sort of shock, and it wasn't until a block later when Leah looked to Richie and said: “Does that answer your question?”
9
WE'D JUST MADE IT THROUGH the Holland Tunnel when Wouldn't It Be Nice and caller I.D. pronounced Elise on the other end of my cell.
“Don't answer your phone.” Leah said from behind the wheel. “They can track your whereabouts now with cell tow.....” But it was too late; I'd already slid my finger across the screen and accepted the caller.
“What is it, Hun?” I said.
“If this is important, we could have found a pay phone.” Leah spoke mostly to herself now, and Elise said: “Are you okay? I've been worried.” Even her voice attested to that fact.
“Do you know how late it is back here?”
“Just answer my question.”
“Elise, I'm fine.”
She sighed into the receiver. “No, you're not. Somebody hurt you.”
“Can we talk about this when I get back?”
“Joshua, were you.....stabbed?”
Ever since spotting that little girl during our retreat into the subway I had known that she knew. It was like what Dr. Kennedy had said, there's a clinical and experimental literature whic
h doesn't always refer to each other. Our understanding of western science couldn't explain any of this, and there was probably no use in trying. That little girl, however possible, really was my wife holding the Shaggy Man's hand in the subway station. And that was her on the steps of Frank McCormick. Even her abstract recognition of that fact left me breathless.
“Stabbed. Wow, that came out of left field,” I finally said.
Everyone's heads perked up at my pronunciation of stabbed.
“It's....this intuitive feeling I have. Don't ask me how I know. I just know. I've had the worst headache all night too, the kind I used to get when I was a little girl, and in high school.” Even speaking to me, now that I thought about it, her voice felt strained, as though she were trying to avoid a head-on collision with festering childhood trauma while pronouncing her words.
“I remember. You used to get them bad.”
“All I could think about, with all the throbbing in my head, was you in the World Trade Center, and running through a subway station with a knife wound. And you're not a very good liar. You promised me you'd take care of yourself on the road, that you'd come back.....that you wouldn't die on me. And so far you've been doing a terrible job of that.”
“I'm not dead yet, Elise.”
“That's not a comforting answer. Are you going to the hospital?”
“No, I'm afraid not. It would only....complicate things.”
“Joshua, if there's internal bleeding, or an infection.”
“Look, Hun, rest assured that I'm fine. I've got Penny with me. She's keeping a close watch on it.”
“Hopefully not too close.”
I laughed with a heavy sigh into the speaker. Elise knew Penny well. “And know that I have far more questions for you than you do of me, but can we talk about this when I get back? I've got something very important to do right now.”
From the driver’s seat, Leah gasped with disapproval at my acknowledgement of something very important. “If they get ahold of her and squeeze, she'll talk.....” She said it mostly to herself again since I apparently wasn’t listening. First her suggestion that Alex ride in the trunk and then the Hook's wallet. Since when had Leah become the expert in thuggery? Still, she had a point.
Goodnight Sometimes Means Goodbye (Wrong Flight Home, #2) Page 32