by Jeff Siamon
The stop at the bridge was the worst. Not just for Connie but for everyone standing or sitting in the car. At rush hour, the platform was so crowded that only the front line closest to the subway cars ever managed to get on.
The train braked at that stop and slowly glided still. But the doors remained closed for several seconds. It was as if the train was taking a deep breath before the onslaught. Its air brakes even let out several sighs to punctuate the impression. Then the doors opened and everyone ─ both inside and outside the cars ─ braced for action.
There were no “excuse-me’s.” Not even a polite hesitation. It was more like two teams at the line of scrimmage. Bodies on both sides of the doors pushed forward. Squirming. Slithering. Shoving. The people on the inside of the car were either trying to exit or to maintain their once hard-fought position. The people entering the car had no position. They had nothing to lose, having already lost any sense of polite behavior. And the only thing both sides had in common was the belief that there was no way any more people could be crammed into the car.
Connie was wedged between a youth humming tonelessly to something on his headphones and a woman aggressively wearing a backpack. Aggressively, because it was one of the few rules of riders not to wear backpacks. They took up too much space. He was fortunate because he was facing a window. He could look out at the anxious faces of the riders who weren’t boarding this train. For most of the other passengers in the car, their look-outs were either someone’s head or body, depending on how tall they were.
There was a train on the other track. When there was a break in the line-up of people still trying to get into his car, he could see some of the faces of the passengers. Because the train wasn’t going into town, the car wasn’t crowded. The faces he saw evidenced that. They were relaxed. A few peering at his train with what he thought were smug, satisfied looks.
The other train began to pull away as the door-closing tone of his train sounded. That meant one last push. One last resistance. And then one last tone as the doors closed, clamping the odd arm or leg until the unfortunate boarders removed their limbs. Once accomplished, the train began to move.
He’d take a taxi tomorrow and damn the expense, he vowed. Take a taxi until his car was fixed. If he thought his dreams had plopped him into some kind of hell, he now had a real, not imagined, taste of it.
The people on his platform stopped their shoving when the train started to move. Then they began, almost in a civilized manner, to form another phalanx for the next train. Someone’s foot stepped on his toe. He tried to move his body to get away from the stomper but couldn’t. In the process, his head leaned across the bodies sitting in the seats in front of him. Towards the window. He could see, through a gap in the people on his platform, a stairwell leading down to the other platform. As the other train’s rear end passed from view, he saw a woman scampering down the stairs. She threw up her hands in frustration when she reached the platform. Missed the train, he thought. And the thought might have lingered except that she looked across the tracks at his train. At him. Suddenly. It was as if she had heard someone on the other platform call her name. Jerked her head up and stared at him. As Connie did at her. And before the instant that she would pass from his view, their eyes locked onto to each other.
Recognition! He knew who she was. The dream girl. There was no mistaking the same dark eyes. The pale face. The black, shoulder length hair. The sensuous gash across her face that was her lips. She was dressed in black, too. Pants. Top. And from its sheen, what must have been a leather jacket. And crazy as it seemed to him, he was sure that she recognized him.
Then there were more suddenlys.
At the same moment of recognition, the motion of the train froze. Suddenly. Connie froze with it. As did the hopeful riders on the platform. The passengers in his car. The girl on the other platform. All frozen as if they were elements in a photograph.
The next suddenly might have collapsed him on to the car’s floor if he had been able to move. With the force of a migraine, his head exploded into pain. His eyes widened impossibly wide while they remained transfixed on the dream girl on the other platform. When he thought he couldn’t bear the pain any longer, his vision began to blur. Then lose its color. The dream girl; the people on the platform, the heads of riders around him ─ shimmered away until what was left was a bright whiteness. As if the Earth had suddenly vaporized.
Then there was another suddenly.
After the last hint of color and shape had disappeared, there came another shock to his head. But this was no migraine attack. It was another triad of communication. As he had felt at the hospital. Three forms of intelligence merged into his brain ─ the dream girl’s, his and this chimera thing. He felt it first as a shock of fear that wasn’t his own but tried to darken his thoughts by squeezing the whiteness from his vision. Darkening everything as it had in the desert. That’s when he heard the dream girl’s plea for help. And the louder her words came to him, the more this thing ─ this other invisible force ─ began to suck at the white brightness until only blackness remained.
And then another suddenly.
Inside what seemed to be this darkness that now enveloped him, an inhuman howl of a great wind crashed into his hearing. And into him. Its force took the breath out of him. Its fury blew away the dream girl’s pleas as well the darkness. Everything became colorless again without shape or form. He could feel the wind whipping across his body. Tearing at his clothes. Doubling him over. Forcing him to collapse onto the floor while his desperate hand clung to the subway car’s pole.
But that wasn’t the suddenly that so alarmed him. It was this white nothingness. For now, it had become swirls of driving snow. They hammered his body with a hurricane’s fury, forcing him onto the floor that wasn’t a floor but some rocky surface. The hand that once held onto the subway car’s pole now gripped something round and woody. And his wrist beneath the cast ached something horribly.
Instinct, not logic, kept him from being swept away. Logic would have had him stand up and wonder just what the hell he was imagining now. But he held fast to what was actually a root imbedded into the rock. Gripped it as if his life depended up on it. Which it did. For there was nothing imaginary about the snow and ice pellets that stung his face. Or the cold that wanted to shiver loose his hold on the root. Pulling him forward.
What he realized before the force of the wind and snow made him shut his eyes was that he was lying prone on a rocky ledge. His free hand was outstretched and dangled over its edge. Even though he was pulling on the root with all the strength he could summon, he could feel himself sliding towards this edge. It was as if his outstretched hand was attached to some weight tugging at his arm.
Of course, he knew without opening his eyes what it was. A softness dangled in his grip. A hand. A soft hand. The dream girl’s? The apparition in the desert? He was completely lucid as to what was happening. Too lucid to think this was another dream. And he knew ─ as if the thing had spoken to him ─ knew that if he should let go of the girl’s hand, he could save himself. Otherwise the root he held onto was going to break and both of them would plunge to their deaths.
Lucidity told him to hold fast. To try to lift her up onto the ledge. This thing howled at him with images of what was about to happen to both of them if he didn’t let her go. While the pain in his damaged wrist pleaded for him to let go.
It was stalemate. The power of the wind, the weight of her body, the throb of his wrist, the rage of this thing ─ all against his will and strength. But there would be no ties in this contest. Release her and survive. Hold on and die.
He opened his eyes on the blowing snow. He pulled on the dream girl’s hand with every force he had in him.
And he nearly succeeded.
First her hand came over the edge of outcrop. Then her arm. Then a mass of blond hair. Then her head appeared. It wasn’t the girl in his dreams. Yet when they looked into each other’s eyes, there of shock of recognition. Though he
had never see the face before. The whole time, this thing shrieked its disapproval until there was one last suddenly. His cast split apart, tearing the sleeve of his shirt. The root gave way and both of them slid off the ledge. Silently airborne except for Connie’s brief howl of rage. Still determined not to release his grasp of her hand.
28
More faces. Now curious. Concerned. Questioning. Subway faces. They all had come back to life.
“Hey, mister, you all right?” one of the faces ─ a man’s ─ asked Connie.
“The paramedics are on their way,” another face told him. A woman’s. “Just stay calm.”
“I wouldn’t move, sir,” still another face said. “You could’ve rebroken your arm when you fell.”
“What?” Connie murmured something else but neither the faces or himself could understand his words. And he couldn’t understand why all the faces were looking down at him. He tried to move his legs and arms, not realizing that he was lying on his back. A hand on his chest stopped him.
“Just lie still, mister,” the face that belonged to the hand told him. Connie’s vision was blurred so he couldn’t tell if the face was a man’s or a woman’s.
“I think I’m all right,” he said.
This time when he moved his legs and arms, he did realize he was on his back. And when that thought became impressed upon his consciousness, what had just happened to him flooded his imagination with sensations. Like a drug flashback. He felt the wind. Heard its roar. Saw the woman’s face. Pleading. Now his arms ached. His injured wrist felt like it had been struck by a hammer. And his body was numb as if he had been lying too long in the cold. But it was his emotions that shivered him. He had lost her. That’s what he thought. They had fallen into an abyss and only he had survived. He had lost her as he had the woman on the bridge.
He tried to blink away his blurriness. His growing depression. Peered at all the faces hovering over him. Hoping to see some hint of the woman he had tried to save. But she wasn’t among them. He had lost her. The thought kept repeating itself until he voiced it: “I’ve lost her.”
“What did you say, mister?” a face asked him.
Connie sat up despite the restraining hand. He surveyed the faces that were pressed around him, blurry as they were. A bearded man, elderly by the grey of his beard; the grey around his eyes. A youth with heads phones ─ he remembered the boy. A man wearing a sports sweatshirt ─ he was the face that belonged to the restraining hand. His eyes matched the bearded man’s. Like he hadn’t had good night’s sleep. There were more faces but he didn’t have the mental focus to examine them.
“Here, give me a hand,” Connie said while he rolled over to stand up. His emotions were still running on instinct. Get up. Get out of here. Find some place quiet to think. To nurse his pain. Something’s catastrophic is about to happen. Or perhaps has happened.
“Now, mister,” a different voice told him. “You just lie still and we’ll get you some help.”
But another face extended a hand to him and he was able to stand. His eyes side-swiped across the other faces, now subway-rider grey. His body walked to the open car door. He had to push his way through the would-be riders on the platform, as well as two subway agents who were there to keep people from getting on.
“Mister,” a face in the subway car called to him. “You forgot this.” A hand thrust his case into his injured hand. Connie cried out in pain and dropped the case. Another hand rescued it and gave it to his good hand.
Have to get out of here, his emotions shrieked at him. He started walking towards an exit sign. Not seeing anything but the sign. Not the two paramedics who passed him. Or all the faces on the platform staring at him.
“Is that the man?” one of the paramedics asked the subway officer. When the man nodded, the paramedic shouted at Connie to stop. But by this time, Connie was starting up the exit stairs. He didn’t hear the shout because the only sound in his head was the memory of the howling, windswept ledge and the unknown woman’s frown. Hopeless. Nor did he see the subway agent handing the pole that Connie had been gripping to one of the paramedics. Its steel was bent in the middle. No longer attached to anything but the paramedic’s hand.
By the time Connie reached the top of the stairs, he, too, was bent in the middle. From the pain of his injured wrist.
“You okay, mister?” he heard a voice ask. He straightened up to answer but only managed a nod. Then he shuffled towards another exit sign by an escalator. Nearly tripped when he got on. And only was able to keep from collapsing by holding onto the rail with his good hand. He wasn’t okay, he told himself. Neither was the woman he had to go.
He stared at his injured arm on the ride up the escalator. At his torn shirt and the crack in his cast. They seemed unreal. Like they belonged to someone else. The only real was that snowy ledge and the woman’s hand. He could still feel its softness.
Reality came crashing into his senses when he fell at the top of escalator. The end of its moving steps had come without warning. That brought more faces into his view. More hands to help him up; to hand him his case. All of which he accepted while at the same time feeling that he was more a spectator than a participant. But by the time he reached the street entrance to the subway, his aching wrist had convinced him that he was the victim not the onlooker. Until his wrist would stop hurting, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to have a clear thought. And logic told him that clarity was important.
He got into a waiting taxi and told the driver to take him to the nearest hospital. Then lay back and held onto his injured wrist to keep it from jiggling. He wondered as he closed his eyes on the pain whether little Connie in the case beside him felt as bad as he did.
✽ ✽ ✽
“Where are you? I’ve been waiting for you all morning to come in.” It was Marlene’s voice on Connie’s phone.
“I’m at St. Elizabeth’s.” Connie was sitting on a bed in one of the smaller emergency rooms.
“St. Elizabeth’s! Don’t tell me something’s happened to you too.”
“Not exactly. I cracked my cast. I’m waiting to get a new one put on.”
“Well, thank god you’re still here.”
“What?”
“It’s pandemonium here. You’re never going to believe this.”
His shoulders hurt and when he tried to wiggle them into some kind of comfort, he twisted his injured wrist.
“Connie, are you still there?”
“Barely. What’s happening?”
“What’s not happening. I think the whole world’s gone mad. At least everyone here. The police are everywhere.”
“Police!”
“The Board called them in. Now Suzuki’s disappeared. Along with the CFO. What’s her name?”
“Emerald. Emerald Perez.”
“Yeah. Weird name. Gone without a trace and the police think that they’re all in collusion to embezzle from the company. Hal, Nabil, Suzuki and this Emerald. Her car was found abandoned on Merchant Street. But I talked to one of the Board members, and he says there’s no record of any money disappearing from the company’s accounts. And to top it off, Tony’s gone missing, too. Went out for a smoke and nobody’s seen him since.”
“Hell!” It was happening, he thought. But exactly what was happing, he had no idea.
“You got to promise me, Connie, you’re not going to disappear. Come in right after you get out of the hospital. If you’re feeling crummy, you can always lie down in the nurse’s room. She didn’t come in today, either.”
“Sure.” But he needed time to think. That is, if his damn wrist would ever stop hurting.
“And Connie,” Marlene said after a long silence. “That’s not the worst of it. You know Darwin Weiss? He’s the Eureka in Systems Management.”
“Yeah.”
“Well …” She sounded out of breath to him. “Just like Mai Lin. He jumped out of a window. No warning. Just did it. From the eighth floor. No warning at all.”
Connie felt a spa
sm of pain in his wrist. Long enough to make him close his eyes on the pain. He sucked in his breath and his hold on his phoned tightened. Tightened until he heard the case crack. Then he let go of the phone. It fell onto the floor.
“Connie? Are you still there?”
He could hear Marlene’s voice and he picked up the phone. Now it was his turn to sound out of breath. “Yeah. That’s horrible.”
“What’s happening to this place?”
“I don’t know.” He remembered what it felt like when he had connected to this thing. “Nothing good.”
“If you feel up to it, come in after you leave the hospital. Please.”
“I will.”
The call ended. He put the cracked phone into his shirt pocket. The case with “little Connie” was on the only chair in the room. He stared at for a long time. Still wondering if somehow those few cells of his DNA could be at the heart of what seemed to be happening. To him. To the people at his company.
29
The doctor and the nurse who were replacing his cast were cheerful. They bantered back and forth about an upcoming slo-pitch tournament between the doctors and the nurses.
Connie wasn’t. Wasn’t cheerful. The pain medication they had given him had begun to work on his wrist. But not on his thoughts. He just couldn’t shake the memory of being on that ledge. Looking into the blue of the woman’s eyes. Feeling her desperation. His despair of having lost her.
And that wasn’t all. While the doctor and nurse joked with each other, he felt that niggle again. Something he should remember. Or know. It started when Marlene told him what was happening at work. It had something to do with that clairvoyant moment on the ledge. But something was as far as he got.
Once the cast was done, he thanked the two of them and followed the directory signs to the emergency waiting room. Marlene had wanted him to come to work immediately. But he needed time to think through this niggle. And in lieu of a really good cup of coffee, he’d settle for whatever the hospital restaurant offered.