Harbinger

by Jack Skillingstead

  But I saw the car again the next day, parked about three blocks from my house. I was out jogging in the morning and noticed it. Of course it didn’t have to be the same car, but it would figure.

  I looked around but the sidewalks were empty except for a German Shepherd that never seemed to be on a leash. She was nosing around in a hedge about a block away. Jeepers was my last dog. Their life-spans were too short, the grief factor too high.

  I stood by the Taurus in my sweatshirt and Nike shorts, dripping, breathing hard. I’d been on the last leg of a six mile run when I spotted the car. The rear deck was pretty dirty. I wetted my finger tip and made a half moon about six inches wide, like a howdy grin. The plate was Washington State. I memorized the number, took a last look around, and started for home.

  Then it struck me: Home is where the stalker is.

  I stood on the front lawn and regarded my house warily. The 9mm was still in the drawer of my bedside table.

  I started getting pissed off, which produced adrenaline, which is like rocket fuel. I slipped around to the back of the house and edged up to the slider. It was open, the cheap plastic latch snapped off. He was in there. My anger mounted. I exercised restraint, picked up a split of stove wood from the pile, and faded back to the side of the house to wait.

  Less than three minutes elapsed and he came out, drawing the broken slider shut behind him. He would have to pass by me to get out of the back yard, unless he jumped the fence and crossed the neighbor’s property.

  I listened to him approach, and I tensed.

  He swung around the side of the house, walking casually, tucking a pry bar under his coat. I lunged forward and cracked him across the knees with my stove wood. He howled and went down.

  “Who the hell are you?” I demanded, standing over him in my jogging outfit, a mighty slayer of slow, paunchy interlopers.

  “Motherfucker!” he said, hooked my ankle with his right hand and yanked me off my feet. I landed on my coccyx, otherwise known as the tailbone. Which is a painful thing. The man swarmed over me, slapped the stove wood out of my hand, knocked me flat on my back, and pinned me there with his forearm across my throat. He moved fast, and forget qualifiers such as: For his age. Physically I was probably twenty years younger and in ten times the condition. Yet here I was rendered helpless.

  “My name’s Ron Stone,” he said, “to answer your question.” His breath smelled like onions.

  I made a strangled sound and he let up the pressure on my throat.

  “Good to meet you, Ron. Would you mind getting off of me, please?”

  He hesitated, forearm set to crush my windpipe. He searched my eyes, came to a decision and rolled off me and stood up, favoring his right leg. He offered me his hand. I looked at it a moment then took it and he pulled me up. He staggered a little, taking my weight.

  “You coulda busted my knee, you know,” he said.

  “Hey, you’re the burglar.”

  “I’m not a burglar.”

  “You came out of my house, and I don’t recall inviting you over. Plus you broke my slider. That’s B&E, right?”

  “Yeah, well, I had to be sure you were who I thought you were.”

  “So am I? And why should I care what you think?”

  “You’re Ellis Herrick, the regeneration guy, and you should care because I’m representing somebody you’ll be very interested in hearing from.”

  “You represent someone? What are you, a lawyer?”

  “Private detective.”

  “Who’s your client?”

  “Not so fast. Confirm your identity.”

  “I’m Jack Ellis, just like it says on my driver’s license.”

  He made a sour face. “There was nothing in your house to prove otherwise. But you’re Herrick. You should have done plastic surgery, you were so concerned about being recognized. Hell, your face was on the cover of Time and Newsweek. It’s easy to find those old magazines, not to mention the pictures on the internet, especially on that cockeyed Evolution website. A beard ain’t going to cut it, not with all that stuff available. Besides . . .”

  He was studying me closely again, and had that look.

  “Besides,” I finished for him, “I haven’t aged.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who’s your client?”

  “I can’t reveal that without her permission, which I don’t have.”

  “Her?”

  “Nuts.”

  I’d thought it might be Ulin or his people. Twenty years ago, when I’d hurled feces into the fan, Langley had made no public statements, neither confirming not denying the veracity of my account. Of course reporters had invaded Blue Heron, Oregon. But the residents there had merely confirmed that I once lived among them, nothing more. Ulin himself had already withdrawn from public view even before I began my association with him, so there wasn’t anything greatly unusual in his silence. Twenty years. Could Ulin even be alive? That would put him somewhere in his nineties. He had long been deprived of my genetic contribution to his rejuvenation efforts. Still. Who could say what the residual effects of the original protocol might have been? Anyway, it made no sense that Ulin would have hired a low-rent P.I. like Stone to hunt me up. Ulin Industries had diversified into cutting edge computer chip development. If anything, Langely Ulin would be even richer than he had been when I knew him. If he wanted to flush me out of my half-assed retirement, he could probably have done it with one phone call.

  “Listen,” I said to Stone, “whoever your client is, tell her to locate herself a very deep lake and then go take a leap. I’m not interested. I’m retired from the regeneration business. I have nothing to donate, not even my time.”

  “She doesn’t want a donation.”

  “Whatever she wants, I’m not interested. I’m out of the messiah business, too.”

  Stone was grinning. “Man, I don’t see it.”

  “See what?”

  “What she sees in you. You’re just a whiny bastard with good genes.”

  I laughed. “You’ve got my number, Stone.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell her not to bother with your sorry ass,” he said.

  He started walking away. I put my hand on his chest to stop him. He was a big son of a bitch. I could feel his beating heart.

  “Hold up,” I said. “You’re forgetting the B&E.”

  “So what, you’re going to press charges? Sue me? Things could get very public in a hurry, Herrick. That what you want?”

  Without waiting for my reply, which I didn’t have anyway, he pushed my hand off his chest and walked off. Whistling.

  *

  Two days later Nichole knocked on my door. I opened it and gaped at her.

  “Close your mouth,” she said. “Your tonsils are showing.”

  “They’re the original pair, too,” I said.

  “They’re cute. May I come in?”

  Twenty years. And at least once a day for every one of those years my heart had ached open. Knowing she was out there someplace, living with her husband, growing older, retreating from me. Every day. Robert Bloch got it right: Time wounds all heels.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “I’m kind of busy watching TV. Could you come back later?”

  “I should slap you for that one.”

  “You really should,” I said. “Come in. Please.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I wanted to pull her into my arms. She was beautiful. Nichole. “Positive,” I said and stood aside to let her pass then closed the door and turned. She was staring at me. Her eyes were too wet.

  “Hey—”

  I put my hand out awkwardly and patted her shoulder. This simple contact propelled us both through some invisible margin, and we fell into each other and held on tight for a long time. We cried. Eventually I said, “Come to bed.”

  It was mid-afternoon. My bedroom got plenty of western exposure. I closed the shades for privacy but it remained bright in the room. I stripped my shirt off. We kissed. I started pulling at Nich
ole’s blouse. I noticed she had resumed crying, so I stopped what I was doing.

  “What’s wrong?” I gently touched her cheek, where a tear was slowly tracking down.

  “I’m forty-eight years old, Ellis.”

  “Me, too.”

  She touched my face, my chest, with her fingertips. She shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “And you never will be.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does,” she said. “But make me forget it for now, okay? You can do that.”

  I pulled her blouse loose and unbuttoned it. Her bra was sky blue, her nipples pink under the sheer fabric. She was wearing a short tartan skirt. My hand caressed sweetly up her thigh, my face in her breasts. Maybe she forgot it mattered, maybe not. I did. For a while.

  Later, lying under the sheets, she said, “You didn’t even ask me about Dan.”

  “I’m the type who asks questions later,” I said. “Who’s Dan?”

  “My husband.”

  “Oh.”

  “Ex-husband.”

  “Oh. Good. I mean, I’m sorry. I think. Shit, what happened?”

  “He left me three years ago for a younger woman.”

  “The idiot.”

  “She was very pretty.”

  “You’re prettier, and smarter too, no doubt.”

  “Of course I am.”

  I kissed her mouth for a while.

  “So you’re Stone’s mysterious client,” I said.

  “Yes, Ron’s mine.”

  “Strange way to put it.”

  “I hired him right after Dan left me. It had been bad for years. I was loyal, even if he wasn’t. What I’m saying is when he left he didn’t break my heart, because he’d already done that and I was more or less over it. It was lonely in that marriage. Terrible. So I hired Ron to try to find you. I wanted to see you again. I can’t really explain it. You hid yourself pretty well, didn’t you.”

  “You’ve had Stone on the payroll for three years?”

  “Not exactly. I couldn’t afford that. But after a while he was sort of doing me a favor. I think just so he could stay in touch, you know. I’ll be honest, we had a brief affair, early on, when things were at their worst for me. I knew it was a mistake and told him so right away. He was sweet about it.”

  “Right.”

  “He wanted to be my friend.”

  “It explains something,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Just a vibe I got off him. I think he’s in love with you, all right.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t, but he does. If I had to parse it out I’d say he wanted to find me so he could show you what a worthless bastard I am. Like I’m the illusion that stands between you and him.”

  She laughed. “Jesus, where do you get all that?”

  “I read too much.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “In theory.”

  *

  Life resumed. I was so clueless that I hadn’t even realized it had ceased in the first place. Now I shuddered inwardly when I recalled the desert years without Nichole.

  Fast forward a few weeks: We were walking on the beach at Golden Gardens, holding hands. It was one of those sunsets where the sky is layered in pastels and sketched across with rafts of minted clouds. I chuckled.

  “What?” Nichole asked.

  “It’s a Kodak and a Hallmark moment.”

  She smiled.

  I had intended my usual variety of sarcasm but suddenly didn’t feel that way. We stopped and kissed and became lost. I may have been immortal, but only Nichole could obliterate Time.

  We turned around and walked back to the fish and chips stand. Sitting shoulder to shoulder at a picnic table I dipped a French fry into a blob of ketchup and said, “Without deep fat fryers western civilization couldn’t exist.”

  “It could exist,” Nichole said. “But it wouldn’t be as fat.”

  “That’s what I meant by not existing.”

  “Would you still love me if I were fat?”

  “Sure.”

  “Would you still make love to me?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Liar.”

  “I almost never lie.”

  “Are you going to eat all those fries?”

  “Yes!”

  She made a grab but I slid my cardboard tray out of her reach. So she went for the ribs, but in a tickle fight I would murder her, and she knew it and backed off, laughing. One of those seagulls that has learned the trick of hovering arrived above our table. I flipped a yellow fry with a red tip into the air. The bird caught it and immediately broadcast a telepathic message of feast to the rest of the local bird population. We left them the remains of our dinner and went home.

  In bed our love-making was a blender, turning us into something like Nicholellis. At such moments we required only one soul between us. That was the meaning of the original Oz bubble dreams, I think. Afterwards we held each other like children.

  I awoke alone in the dark. Hearing whispery voices and music, I got out of bed and pulled on a pair of boxers and a sweatshirt. Nichole had rolled my old television set out of the closet and plugged it in. She was curled up on the sofa with a glass of white wine, watching an old movie. Judy Garland in soft focus, the volume almost inaudible. The phone was on the cushion next to Nichole’s foot.

  “Oh, hi,” she said. Her voice sounded a little choked.

  “Sad movie?”

  “Sappy.”

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Please.”

  I got a glass, moved the phone, and sat beside her.

  “I was going to call my mother,” she said, “but it seemed too late.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yeah.” Nichole shrugged. “I had a bad dream. Probably I’m as kooky as she is.”

  “You’re not that kooky.”

  She looked at me seriously. “Ellis, I love you.”

  “And I love you.”

  “I don’t want to leave you again.”

  “I didn’t know you were planning to.”

  “It’s not up to me, is it?”

  I caressed her cheek, but she just looked at me. After a moment she turned back to the movie and sipped her wine. It was very quiet in the house, and Judy Garland sounded a long way off, and Time was not obliterated.

  *

  One day Ron Stone paid us a visit. Nichole had moved right in. It was a natural inevitability. I quickly grew accustomed to finding her installed in my favorite chair with a book whenever I returned home from my espresso gig. She loved my chaotic library, otherwise known as the house. Books occupied every available space. I believed in the salubrious proximity of books. And even though I was a slow reader, I was one guy who would probably get to read everything.

  I’d kept working at Starbucks because I enjoyed it and also because Nichole came to our soul-blender without many funds.

  “No alimony?” I’d stupidly said.

  “I never wanted his money.” Curtly. And I apologized for asking and she forgave me.

  Anyway I arrived home after working the morning shift and heard shouting while I was still on the sidewalk. I got through the front door fast, and the shouting ceased, like a switch thrown.

  Ron Stone loomed over Nichole, his head turned in my direction. He was big and a pretty good loomer. He didn’t look angry, though. It was more like anguish pulling his face down. I immediately recognized his torment, being well familiar with its source. He was in love with Nichole, and she was telling him to forget it.

  Seeing me, his face underwent a rapid transformation. The slack went out of his jaw (it looked like he hadn’t shaved in two days), his eyes narrowed, and he squared his shoulders and pointed at me.

  “This is who you want? He’s a freak, Nichole. What’s he going to be to you in ten years? Twenty years?”

  “Hey lighten up with that freak stuff,” I said.

  He ignored me.

 
“I’m sorry, Ron,” Nichole said. “I really am.”

  “I’m saying think about what you’re doing, that’s all. Think about it.”

  “I have thought about it. You better go now.”

  The starch went out of him and he sagged again. A big man in his late forties with too many cheeseburgers haunting his gut and a ridiculous, wispy brush of stranded hair above his forehead. I felt for him but also experienced a zap of male dominance at his defeat. When he shouldered past me on his way out, shoving me a little, I said, unkindly:

  “Better luck next time.”

  His head came around like a lion’s, ferocious, closely followed by his fist. It was a fist in proportion to the rest of him: Big. It connected with my jaw, snapping me around and off my feet. Stars clouded up in my vision as I fell. A great many stars. And a rushing wind.

  I opened my eyes, flat on my back on the faux Persian rug. My jaw hurt. My head throbbed dully. Some punch. The room was dim. Weird sunset light gilded the half-tilted Levelor blinds on the big living room window. Which was wrong, somehow. Where had the rest of the afternoon gone? Stone had clobbered me, and Nichole—

  Nichole.

  I sat up suddenly — which was a mistake. My head throbbed dreadfully. I groaned, cradled my forehead. Nichole was sitting on the sofa, shadowy, in the kind of light cooling embers produce.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’m wonderful.”

  “Where’s Stone?”

  “Wherever Stones go, I suppose.”

  “I feel wonky.”

  “That’s a funny word,” she said.

  “I just made it up, I think.”

  “What’s it mean?” Nichole’s voice sounded different, pitched too low. Everything felt off-pitch.

  “It means the woozy feeling you get after a private detective conks you on the head. Wonky.”

  She laughed. “That’s so good, Ellis!”

  “Thanks.”

  I started to get up then had a better idea and remained on the rug. For the moment I was far too wonked to stand.

  “Your boyfriend packs a hell of a wallop,” I said.

  “He wasn’t my boyfriend.”

  “Sorry, I mean your detective.”

  “Not my detective, either. Ellis, I’m not Nichole. I’m Adriel.”