One thing I know for sure—I don’t want to be a part of any of it. That’s why I have to get out of that apartment now. I’m packing what’s left of my stuff, and I’m getting out of there tonight. Before those two schemers hold some kind of demonic séance over my bed and try to convert me while I’m sleeping. And believe me, they’d do it, too.
I’m on to you, ladies.
rewind
He found himself wishing that he had a spray bottle filled with water and some rubber gloves. That always seemed to be what the experts used when the cat went crazy.
Devious Observations
“WOULD YOU LIKE ANOTHER COOKIE, ED?”
Ed wasn’t sure what Gaia’s problem could possibly be with her new foster mom. Or Tatiana, for that matter. They seemed like two of the friendliest, most generous people he’d met in a long time. And the digs weren’t too shabby, either. The living room was about twice the size of Ed’s, with freshly polished wood floors, brand-new white couches, long, flowing white curtains, and wide-open windows that looked down on posh East Seventy-second Street. What was Gaia doing, cramming herself into Ed’s hospital bed when she could be stretching out on the Upper East Side?
He added that to the list of questions he would ask her if she ever actually came back to her new apartment. His other questions included such classics as: Are you a paranoid schizophrenic? And, Are you in love with me? Trivial things of that nature.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Ed said, smiling at Natasha as he handed her his plate for some more cookies. “They’re unbelievable.”
“Well, thank you,” she said with a wide smile. “They are my grandmother’s recipe. A highly guarded Russian secret.” She winked at Ed and walked back to the kitchen, leaving Ed and Tatiana alone in the living room.
Ed could tell that Natasha was straining ever so slightly to keep things light. He’d heard how upset she’d gotten when he’d told her that Gaia had disappeared. She was obviously just as worried as he was.
It had turned into the mystery of the day. Where had she gone after her paranoid freak-out at school? Ed and Tatiana had formed something of an instant friendship ever since that moment—both victims of Gaia’s drive-by irrational ambush. Tatiana had been kind enough to give Ed their number at home, but he’d called to check on Gaia’s whereabouts so many times, he probably looked like something of a lunatic himself. He and Gaia truly were made for each other.
The incessant calling must have driven Tatiana and her mom so nuts that they’d finally invited him over so he could sit it out there. And so he and Tatiana had been chatting on the couch for the last hour now. Well… trying to chat. Tatiana’s English still needed a little work.
“Ed,” she said hesitantly, taking a pinch of cookie and meticulously placing it in her mouth. “I do not want to buzz into your life, but—”
“Butt,” Ed corrected her.
“But?” she asked, tilting her head quizzically.
“Butt.”
“But what?”
Ed breathed out a laugh. “No.” He smiled. “It’s butt, not buzz. You don’t want to butt into my life. You don’t buzz into someone’s life. Well… Heather kind of buzzes into my life, but…”
“But what?” Now Tatiana looked deeply confused.
“No, that was it.” Ed giggled, shaking his head apologetically.
Tatiana looked thoroughly perplexed at this point but still very determined to get it right. Ed probably wasn’t helping. “So, Heather buzzes… but I butt?”
“Right, I mean, no.” Ed laughed. “I’m sure you’re not butting in or buzzing in. What was your question?”
“I don’t remember!” Tatiana laughed, slapping her hand dramatically to her head.
“I—”
“What the hell is going on here?”
Ed flinched. Gaia was standing on the top step of the sunken living room with her arms akimbo and a killer accusing stare. The moment Ed saw her face, he felt his lungs shrivel. If he’d had any hopes that her head might have cleared by now, he could forget it. Her face was tweaked. Her eyes darted back and forth between the two of them with a look that suggested murder was not out of the question.
Ed grabbed his crutches and hoisted himself out of his seat. “Where have you been?” he asked anxiously, walking toward her. “I’ve been going nuts. I didn’t even hear you come in.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” Gaia snorted. “Where have I been? I’d ask you the same question, but I see I don’t need to. You’re exactly where I left you, Ed. Laughing it up with my new evil stepsister.” Gaia turned to Tatiana and took two menacing steps down toward her on the couch. “Hey, sis! How’s the scheming going? Have you scored yet?”
Tatiana ducked her head and then peeked up at Ed, asking for help with her eyes. Probably something along the lines of, Can you do something about your samurai best friend?
“What is that look?” Gaia demanded. “A cry for help? Oh, now you’re working the damsel-in-distress angle?”
Ed inched himself closer to Gaia, like she was a house cat that had gone wild. “Gaia, come on,” he said with a cautious half smile. “She’s just sitting there. She didn’t do anything.”
“Oh, excuse me, Prince Charming. I didn’t mean to offend your fair lady.”
Natasha bounded into the room, dropping the cookie plate on the dining table and rushing toward Gaia. “Oh, good, good.” She sighed with relief as she approached her. “You’re all right.”
Gaia straight-armed Natasha, stepping back. “Ah, Wicked Stepmother’s here, too!” she announced in a tone of ironic celebration. “And she’s brought cookies! How delightful. Well, it seems like the family unit is functioning just fine without me, so I’ll just grab a few things and then be on my way.”
Ed swallowed hard and made his way toward her room. He found himself wishing that he had a spray bottle filled with water and some rubber gloves. That always seemed to be what the experts used when the cat went crazy. On second thought, this was Gaia he was dealing with. Perhaps a chair and a whip would be more appropriate.
When he entered her room, she was trying in vain to stuff a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans into a minuscule book bag. “Gaia…?”
“Yup?” she snapped.
“Can I talk to you for a second?”
“Nope.”
Ed stepped closer and leaned down. “Gaia, listen to me, okay? There’s something wrong with you. I don’t know what it is, but something’s happened in your head, and I don’t think it has anything to do with a fever.”
“Don’t start, Ed,” she shot back at him as she whipped around. It was so lightning quick, Ed nearly fell back on his crutches. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re trying to screw with my head,” she said. “But it’s not going to work, so just step back.”
“Gaia, listen,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder gently. “Remember when you told me to ignore the crazy stuff coming out of your mouth? Well, I can’t ignore this, okay? You have to talk to me. You have to tell me what’s going on because you’re acting like a total crazy person. A total paranoid—”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on.” She shook his hand from her shoulder, getting up in his face and glaring at him with a kind of mania that was beginning to make him extremely sad. “They’re testing me, Ed,” she announced, loud enough for them to hear. “That’s what’s going on here. They think I don’t know, but I do. So if you want to be tested, then I hope you and the little princess have a lovely time.”
“Gaia, what are you saying?” Natasha asked from the doorway. “Why are you saying these awful things about us?”
“I’m just trying to bring some truth into this house of phonies!” she shouted. “I think Ed deserves to know the truth about you and your little schemer skank of a daughter!”
“Gaia, that’s enough!” Ed barked. “Listen to yourself.”
“Just keep defending her, Ed,” she shot back. �
��It’s making me feel so much better.” She began to back herself slowly toward Tatiana’s bed. “You’re so blind, Ed. She’s got you totally snowed, can’t you see that? If I’m so paranoid, then maybe she wants to explain this.”
Gaia ducked over the side of Tatiana’s bed and began rummaging through the things in her bedside drawer. “Where is it?” she muttered to herself. “Where the hell is it?”
“What are you doing?” Tatiana cried. “Stop that!” She bolted past Ed and lunged at Gaia.
“Aha!” Gaia exclaimed, shoving Tatiana lightly to the side and holding up a small black notebook. “Here we go. You want to know the truth about her, Ed? The truth is right here in this book.” Gaia ripped it open and began flipping through the pages. “Maybe she’d like to explain all her copious notes and devious little observations….”
Gaia suddenly went silent. Her face went blank. She looked through a few more pages of the black book slowly, and then she let it drop to the floor.
“Whatever,” she mumbled. “I’ve had it with this place.” She made her way to the door without even taking her bag, but Natasha did her best to block the doorway.
“I can’t let you go again,” Natasha insisted, holding her arm in Gaia’s way. “You need to stay here, Gaia. Here is where it is safe, do you understand?”
“Safe?” Gaia scoffed. “Like I’m safe here with the two of you?”
“Why do you keep saying these things?” Tatiana finally shouted. “I have done nothing to you!”
“Nothing? You’ve done nothing to me? You’ve been here two freaking days, and you’re already trying to steal my boyfriend!”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Tatiana breathed, looking stunned.
“Bull. Tell it to someone who’s listening! I’m out of here.” Gaia turned around, pushed herself by Natasha, and made her way to the door, leaving the three of them frozen in place. Two seconds later they all heard the front door slam shut.
Ed was momentarily stuck in a daze, desensitized by all the screaming and paranoid accusations. He leaned forward and swiped up the small black notebook from the floor. Sketches. The last few pages were filled with sketches. Beautifully detailed drawings of Gaia lying in bed.
“That is mine,” Tatiana whimpered, grabbing the book out of Ed’s hands. Ed looked for one brief second at Tatiana, and then he snapped out of his daze.
Wait a minute. Rewind.
Boyfriend? Did she just say “boyfriend”?
Ed didn’t even remember getting down to the street. Had he said anything to Natasha or Tatiana before he left? Had he taken the elevator down or the stairs? His mind had discarded everything but the sight of Gaia’s hair bobbing up and down as she ran down Seventy-second Street. And the word boyfriend. She was already three blocks ahead of him as she ran toward Central Park. That was where he needed to be now, and that was all he could think about.
When this whole nightmare was over, Ed was going to teach a course on running with crutches.
To: L
From: QR2
Subject approaching Central Park via Seventysecond Street. Fifth Avenue entrance. Target is two blocks behind and closing. Please advise.
From: QR2
To: L
Patience has been rewarded. These are optimal conditions for a more conclusive test. Target is unquestionably the one whom subject would fear losing most. This should yield the results we need. Attack the target. Once results are obtained, target may be terminated.
To: L
From: QR2
Directives understood. Test results to follow.
Josh after Josh
SEVENTY-SECOND STREET WAS SO hideously sterile. Everything was so disgustingly clean. Where was she, anyway? What was the Upper East Side? Everything so tall, towering over her, utterly characterless. So monolithic and white, set against the black sky, trying to swallow her up, like miles of clean white latex stretching out before her, bending around her, caving in and squeaking under her feet as she ran. Just keep running.
Central Park was like a mass of wild green freedom waiting for her at the end of this cold stone grid of white boxes. Maybe if she got there, her mind would stop spinning. Maybe then she wouldn’t have this grating feeling that someone or something was always behind her, just about to strike. Looming. That’s what it was. The whole damn world was looming over her, like a dark cloud or a pile of falling rocks or a thunderstorm.
At least the park looked alive and not dead. At least there were places there where she couldn’t be seen and she couldn’t be followed. Where she couldn’t hurt people and they couldn’t hurt her.
Drawings. They were just drawings, Gaia. Drawings of you. Not plots to destroy you. You just called a girl you don’t even know a “schemer skank” You just called Ed Fargo your boyfriend. What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?
No people. That was the only possible answer right now. She was doing just terribly with people. God willing, she’d stand a better chance with plants.
She ran through the smaller entrance to the park on Fifth Avenue, and then she cut right into the park. She didn’t head down the main paths that led to the band shell and the fountain and the boat pond. Those were the more populated areas. Although at this hour it was mostly just joggers. Very stupid joggers. Still, she opted to head down a winding dirt path that led into a less landscaped area full of trees. Better chance of full human avoidance.
Wait a minute, she thought as her legs continued to move her forward. Maybe this is a bad idea. Washington Square Park, she knew. Central Park, she really didn’t. Washington Square Park was about the size of maybe six city blocks combined. Central Park was about… eight hundred or so acres.
“Gaia!”
Ed’s voice. No, Ed, don’t follow me. Don’t be a fool. I’ll rip your heart to pieces, and I won’t even know why. She increased her speed and cut into bushier and darker terrain.
“Gaia, will you give me a chance to catch up, please?” he yelled after her.
She picked up the pace, skipping over uneven slippery rocks she couldn’t even see in the dark. Leaping over ditches, jumping over fallen branches, and ducking under leaves as they swiped her face and whipped against her shoulders. But she could still hear him closing in, panting desperately.
“Gaia, come on!”
Not now, Ed. Couldn’t he understand that? Maybe in a little while. Maybe after she’d spent a couple of nights as a homeless lunatic in the park until she was picked up by city services and shipped to a mental hospital, where she could get at least twelve weeks of electroshock therapy or a good, solid lobotomy and then a few more weeks of behavior modification mixed with the proper medications and a not-so-strictly-Freudian therapist and a respectable job weaving baskets in a Zen Buddhist monastery. Maybe then Ed could give her a call.
“Man on crutches here!” he shouted after her between short breaths.
Leave it alone, Ed, please.
“Gaia! Man on crutches, you know what I’m saying? Man on crutches on hills and in bushes, slipping over rocks in the dark trying to talk to—mmpf.”
She heard a loud thud followed by the clacking of wood. And then a thick, eerie silence. She stopped in her tracks, listening to herself breathe.
“Ed?” she called behind her.
She heard nothing but the wind whistling through the trees, rustling the treetops in loud, gusty waves. There was some moonlight sifting in through the leaves and a little reflected light from the lampposts in the park, but it was dark. It was really dark now. Come on…
“Ed?” she called again, much louder.
Silence.
And the first hint of that not-so-pleasant feeling. The one she’d been learning more and more about every four to six hours. The sound of silence where there should have been the sound of Ed was doing very uncomfortable things to Gaia’s chest and throat. Everything tightening. Everything closing, constricting. Sickening.
Gaia turned herself around slowly and began to walk, trac
ing with her memory which direction his voice had been coming from. “Ed, are you messing with me?” she called out, listening to her feet crunch the leaves as she searched for him blindly. No response. Only gusts of wind rumbling in her eardrums. She walked more quickly. “Ed, come on. Talk to me.” Heart rate increasing. Stomach lurching. Breath shortening. “Ed!”
She cut through a patch of bushes into a clearing and nearly tripped. Her eyes shot down to her feet. A crutch. One of Ed’s crutches. And beyond the crutch…
Ed’s body. Blood trickling down his face from the side of his head.
Gaia stopped breathing. Okay, disappear. It had to be another hallucination. It had to be. She revisited every one of her horrific memories again right there in the center of that clearing where Ed’s body lay. Her mother, clamping her hand to the side of her head as she cried. Mary’s entire body thrust forward by the sharp knife sticking out of her stomach. Sam Moon on his knees, reaching out to her with gaping black holes in his chest… But they had all disappeared.
Ed’s body wouldn’t.
Disappear, Ed. “Disappear, Ed.” Now she was saying it out loud, chanting it as her strained eyes stared down at him. She whispered it to herself again and again as she ran to his body and dropped down next to him on her knees. This isn’t happening. It’s not happening. But Ed’s lifeless body wasn’t going away. She placed her hand on his neck to feel for a pulse.
Still breathing. He was still breathing. Gaia’s entire body heaved forward with relief. She lifted his head up off the ground and wiped the blood from the side of his face. “You’re still breathing,” she whispered between her own shallow breaths. “Don’t you worry, Ed, you’re still breathing.”
“Hey, Gaia. Is he dead yet?”
Gaia’s body froze. She turned her head back slowly, looking for the man who had just whispered to her. All she could see were trees—staring at her, reaching their contorted arms down to crush her.
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