“Everyone out,” the driver said.
I startled and looked around, realizing I was the last passenger sitting. I stood, moving quickly to catch up with the people heading down the steps. Once we were off, someone outside ushered us to the line. It led to a pier jutting out over the river. A big ferry backed up. When it came to a stop, I noticed it was empty.
That’s when I realized we were being ferried out of the city. My hand shaking, I pulled the license out again, reading the address. Pennsylvania. Though I cannot say I understood where that was, or even where I was, it felt right. Somehow, I’d drifted right to where I needed to be.
When the line started to move, I felt settled for the first time, like I was finally heading in the right direction. Then I noticed the four people holding iPads. They stood just ahead of the stark white railing leading to the slip. As people passed, they spoke to them and typed on the screens.
That visceral feeling returned. I watched those four like I had watched the police officer. My gut told me to run, to get out of there before it was too late. It made no sense to me. I could not logically figure out why I would want to turn away at that point. Why I wouldn’t want to board the boat and get out of the city. Yet my hands started to shake.
“No,” I whispered.
My vision tunneled. I took a step out of line, but it felt as if the ground under my feet suddenly listed. I stumbled and fell to a knee.
“Are you okay?” someone said behind me.
I touched my head. The pain flared and I thought I’d be sick. Hands grabbed my arm. Fingers wrapped around my elbow.
“I just need to sit down,” I said.
“I’ll help you get aboard.”
I looked up and saw the man helping me. He wore glasses and had a beard. I saw the words Water Taxi on his shirt. I let him lift me to my feet and guide me to the front of the line. A woman with one of the iPads waved him through. We passed and she called after us.
“Get his name.”
29
Julia eventually stopped. Standing in the middle of the block, she looked around her. So much movement. So many people. Her excitement seethed, pushing her to action, yet she had no idea how to direct the impulse.
Someone bumped into her from behind. The person, an older man with deep lines around his eyes and the hands of a mechanic, looked her in the eye.
“Excuse me,” he said in a brisk but meaningful way.
“Sorry,” she said.
The lines of his face countered the brief smile, like it might have been his first in years. Then he was gone. She watched him walk away, seeing him meld in with everyone else. It was enough for her to realize that she needed to stop and think, not rush blindly forward. She eased against traffic until she found a spot outside a market. Once out of the way, she closed her eyes.
How can I find him?
The thought came quickly. When Julia was young, her great-grandfather, suffering chronic pneumonia, once got in his car to drive to a grocery store and disappeared for over twelve hours. He eventually came home safe, though a little delirious from the fever, but she remembered her mother calling his credit card company. They had told her that Julia’s great-grandfather’s card had been used at the grocery store and then at a gas station a hundred miles away.
Not wasting a second, Julia pulled out her wallet and phone. She dialed the number on the back of her card. She had to put in her account number and sit on hold. Her foot tapped along with her nerves as she waited.
“Come on,” she said.
Someone walking by noticed. Julia looked down at the pavement, but her foot wouldn’t stop tapping. When she finally got a live voice on the phone, she struggled to make sense.
“I need you to help me find my husband,” she said.
The customer service rep began a speech about privacy and such, but Julia cut her off. It looked bad until she mentioned the attack on Penn Station. Suddenly, the man on the other end of the call changed. His tone went from annoyed to compassionate midsentence.
“Oh, wow, I’m . . . How can I help?”
Julia explained everything, giving way more detail than she needed. Her voice rose in octave and she could hear him typing.
“Someone saw him. So I thought, maybe . . .”
She held her breath. The typing stopped. There was a long pause.
“I’m sorry,” the man said. “It hasn’t been used.”
Julia’s face went pale. She swayed. Her arm holding the phone fell limp to her side. A deep emptiness weighed her down. She wanted to fall to the pavement, to give up. Instead, her head tilted up. She glared at the deep blue sky . . . and screamed.
“MICHAEL!”
People on the street stopped. They stared. Julia barely noticed. She continued to stare at the sky, looking for some hint, some clue that would tell her what to do next.
“Ma’am, are you okay?”
She spun around. A NYPD officer stood beside her, his thumb hooked under his belt. Julia’s face burned.
“Sorry, I . . .”
He shook his head. The look in his eyes seemed to accept the humanity of the moment in stride.
“It’s been a crazy day. Can I help you with something?”
She had no idea what to ask. She just stared at him.
“Do you need to get somewhere? I’m going off duty, but I can give you a lift on my way home.”
“No, it’s okay.”
She couldn’t stop looking into the man’s eyes. He would drive home feeling the weight of the day. But it would be temporary. He’d be returning to his perfect family. Family . . . Home . . . That’s when the thought hit Julia so hard that she shuffled back a step. In that officer’s eyes, she saw her husband. She slipped into his mind. And it became so clear. If Michael was alive, if he was out there, she knew exactly where he would be going, what he would be doing. He would be trying to get home.
“The ferry?” she asked, suddenly.
“It’s running between Manhattan and Port Imperial,” he said. “Homeland’s been trying to get as many people off the island as they can since the attack.”
“I think my husband may have gone there.”
* * *
—
As the police car pulled up to the curb at West 39th Street, Julia saw the mass of people moving toward the pier. She jumped out of the car and ran, totally forgetting to thank the officer. She bolted right past the line and out onto the boardwalk.
A woman with an iPad in her hand stepped out in front of her. “Ma’am, you have to—”
“I think my husband’s on the ferry. He may be hurt.”
“What was his name?”
The ferry blew its horn. Julia took a step toward the woman.
“I need to—”
“His name?”
She forced a breath out. “Michael . . . Michael Swann.”
The woman tapped the name on the screen and shook her head. “Nope.”
But then someone behind her spoke up. “Did you say ‘Michael Swann’?”
She turned and saw a young man in a New York Water Taxi shirt. Julia’s heart jumped.
“Yes.”
“Holy crap! I just helped him aboard.”
“Are you serious? On the boat?”
“Yes . . . but not this one. The one before it.”
“The ferry before this?”
“Yeah. Let her through. Maybe you can catch him at Port Imperial.”
Without a thought, Julia hugged the man. When he stiffened, it made her laugh. And she realized it was the first time she’d done that since everything started.
30
Surrounded by the throng of people from the ferry, I walked through the set of doors into the wide-open, glassed lobby of the terminal. People filled the space, pressing into the partitioned bar to the right and filling the
corridor that ran under a large sign pointing the direction to parking and ground transportation. I let the traffic carry me straight through the building and out the other side.
As I stepped outside, we were once again ushered forward like cattle toward a line of people in bright orange pinnies that read Volunteer. They held up signs outside a line of shuttle buses. There had to be at least ten parked there. I stared at the signs, totally confused. When I didn’t find any that said Philadelphia, my eye caught one that read Newark Bus Station. I moved toward that, thinking of the school bus that had driven us to the ferry terminal.
“Newark bus station,” one of the volunteers said to me.
I just nodded and the woman helped me up the steps.
31
Julia shouldered her way off the ferry and along the slip as quickly as she could. Rushing into the terminal, she slowed, overwhelmed by the crowd.
“Michael!” she called out.
A few people turned but not her husband, so she continued to push through the mass of people, calling out his name, her head swiveling left and right. When she reached the far side of the station, she stepped outside. Even more people stood there, all being directed to a series of shuttles.
“Michael!” she screamed out. “Michael!”
Three shuttles pulled out, one after another. All Julia could do was stand there and watch them slip away.
32
When I stepped off the bus at Newark Station, I felt like I could breathe again. Compared to Port Imperial, it felt empty. I stood in the lobby, looking around. An employee at the station stopped and stared at me.
“You okay, man?”
“Yeah,” I said.
He looked at the side of my head. His attention made me nervous, and I fought the urge to see if it was still bleeding.
“I’m just looking for the bus station.”
“Down past the McDonald’s.” He paused. “You sure you’re okay?”
I nodded and walked quickly away, heading in the direction he had pointed. When I reached the Greyhound ticketing window, I leaned over, my face close to the opening in the glass of the ticket booth. The woman working there watched me, clearly suspicious.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
The woman looked around, like she might call for assistance. Then I put the credit card on the ledge between us.
“I need to get a ticket.”
“Destination?”
My head throbbed. Whenever I searched for an answer, the pain intensified. Maybe I hoped that in the moment, I might remember. Instead, there was nothing. So I pulled my license out of the clip and placed it next to the credit card.
“To that address.”
The woman looked at the license and up at me. She stared for a moment, like she was assessing me again.
“That address?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes rolled. I remember thinking that she must deal with all types in a job like this. I wondered what type she pegged me for. Crazy and violent? Maybe I was. I had just stopped shaking from what happened in the apartment building. Maybe this woman was totally right.
She looked at the address again, then turned her attention to me. Her head tilted. I felt like she stared at my face, at the blood. I still had no idea how bad I looked. For some reason, I remember thinking that she looked at me like a stranger. I was, so the feeling made no sense at all.
She looked at the license again.
“Look, I have no idea where this is. It’s crazy in here today.” She paused, looking at her screen. “This is all crazy. They need more people down here helping you all. I don’t know what they want me to do.” Her frustration ebbed. “I can get you to Philadelphia. Is that close enough?”
I had no idea, really. But I nodded anyway. She ran the transaction without even looking at me. When she slid the ticket, my license, and the credit card at me, her eyes were lowered.
“Next.”
I paused for a second, but another customer came up close behind me. I felt agitated, but I kept it in check. Instead, I wandered away from the window and looked at the ticket and up at the clock. I had a little over an hour. I somehow found my way to the gates and found a bench by the restrooms. I sat and closed my eyes, thinking that soon, at least, I’d be home . . . wherever that was.
33
Julia leaned against the wall inside the Port Imperial station, utterly defeated. She’d checked and rechecked every face. She listened as the PA system repeated her message for the fifth time.
“Michael Swann, please report to ticketing. Michael Swann, please report to ticketing.”
She looked out at the crowd, willing him to appear. Instead, no one even noticed. Everyone continued to move, new faces on the same paths. Eventually, she closed her eyes, having no idea what to do next.
“Anything?” someone asked.
She opened her eyes. The woman from terminal security who had helped her with the PA announcement stood in front of her. She, too, looked defeated.
“Nothing,” Julia said.
“I am so sorry.”
Julia’s head shook. She was about to say something—what, she had no idea—when her phone rang. The woman from security watched as Julia quickly answered the call.
“Hello.”
“Mrs. Swann?”
“Yes.”
“Um, hi, this is Joe from Visa. I spoke to you earlier.”
Julia’s eyes widened. So did the woman’s from security.
“Yes,” she said.
“Well, since you called, I kept checking your account. Um, your husband’s card . . . it was just used.”
“Where?” Julia barked out.
“He purchased a Greyhound ticket at Newark Penn Station.”
Julia met eyes with the other woman and nodded, smiling. “Thank you so much.”
“Is it him?” the woman asked before Julia could get a word out.
“He just used our credit card in Newark. At the bus station.”
The woman grabbed her hand. “I’ll drive you.”
The two women sprinted from the station as if they had known each other for a lifetime.
34
My eyes opened. I think I might have fallen asleep. But the call woke me, somehow.
“Philadelphia Express service from Newark Penn Station boarding in twenty minutes.”
I looked down at my ticket and then up at the gates. I stared at the numbers, trying to remember if I meant to choose that particular seat or if it happened by chance. When I tried to remember buying the ticket, I couldn’t. The sensation, the emptiness in my head, brought with it an overwhelming sense of anxiety. Cold sweat beaded my forehead.
I closed my eyes, trying to picture the person who sold me the ticket. There was nothing. Nothing at all. When I opened them, I had to reread the ticket: Philadelphia Express.
I staggered as I stood up. The case remained locked in my grip as I made my way to the restroom. A dozen people filled the small space, but I found an open sink. I stood there, looking in the mirror, my head swimming and my stomach turning.
Dark blood plastered the short hair to my temple. A stripe ran down and disappeared into my ear. I couldn’t take my eyes off of that for a second. Then I saw my face. The left half, the side with the blood, was swollen. Blood vessels around that eye had turned almost black. My lips were dry and cracked. To be honest, that face, my face, still seemed to belong to a stranger.
Still looking at myself, I turned on the faucet. The white porcelain sink turned red as I lowered my head and splashed water through my hair. The man next to me looked down and walked away. I worked harder, trying to get all the blood off, and noticed both sinks next to me remained unused. Water ran down my back and dotted my pants as I moved over and tore off about half a dozen paper towels. I heard people mutter
ing, but I was still in such a fog that I barely noticed. Instead, I stepped back in front of a mirror and just looked at my reflection. And I had no memory of the man who stared back at me. None at all.
35
Julia had never been to Newark, New Jersey. And she noticed absolutely nothing of the city as they raced to the station. Once there, Julia bolted from the car, calling back her thanks this time before crashing through the doors. The crowd was thin, but it took her a minute to find the Greyhound ticket counter.
An agent sat at one window that was closed to customers. She bypassed the line at the other and went straight there. The man behind the counter spoke loudly to someone behind him.
“If you ask me, we need to bomb them to hell—”
“Excuse me,” she interrupted.
He turned and looked at her. Dark stubble seemed to cover every inch of his face, and his eyes were small and set close together.
“I’m closed.”
Julia ignored that, instead passing the picture of her and Michael across the counter. “Have you seen this man?”
The man wouldn’t touch it.
“Ma’am, you need to—”
“No, please. He was at Penn Station. He’s injured. My credit card company said he just used his card here.”
To Julia, this should have been enough. This man should have been happy to help her. In fact, that’s what she fully expected. All day, a wave of camaraderie had followed her through the city. Like what happened, the tragedy of so many lives being lost, had linked everyone nearby forever. This man must feel it as well. How could he not?
“I can’t help you,” he said.
He got up and walked away from the counter. Julia stared, her eyes wide with shock. She was about to yell after him when someone lightly touched her shoulder. She turned to see a woman in a head scarf. She wore the same transit uniform as the man behind the counter. A radio chirped at her belt.
“Down the concourse to the right,” she said softly, pointing. “There’s a police station there. We can’t give you information on another passenger for security reasons. But maybe they can help.”
The Real Michael Swann Page 12