“Well, yes. That’s what we were thinking,” I said.
There was a low whistle on the other end. “Oh, girl . . . you’re asking for a lot.”
I felt my stomach drop. “You can’t do it?” We were back to square one, with no way of getting out of the country.
“I didn’t say that, did I now?”
“S-so you can?”
“It’ll cost you an arm and a leg, but sure, my guy can do it.”
I bit my lip. We had some money now, but still not an enormous amount. “How much will it cost?”
“Not on here,” Carl said. “We’ll talk.”
“I need this as quickly as possible.”
“Then you want to talk now, girl? I’m in the neighborhood. If you promise to make this worth my while, I can be there in ten,” he said.
Before I could respond, the line went dead.
I steadied my hand, putting the phone receiver down.
Henley was pacing in front of me already. It was clear he had heard all that had been said.
“Let’s go outside,” I said, hoping it would stop Henley’s pacing.
Unfortunately, he continued.
“You really think he can do this?” Henley asked.
“He’s the best shot we have,” I said. “And they did a great job on the IDs.”
“This better work . . . It’ll probably cost a fortune.”
I didn’t tell him I was worried we wouldn’t have enough.
Ten minutes later, practically on the dot, Carl walked over to us. This time he was wearing a navy sweatshirt—also with a stain down the front. I was beginning to think his entire wardrobe consisted of dirty sweatshirts he never washed.
“My favorite twosome,” he said.
I was getting used to him leering at us.
He tilted his head toward the back alleyway we always had our conversations in.
Carl walked toward the alley, and we gave it a full minute before we followed.
“Not bad,” he said when he saw us. “You’re becoming more natural at this. Pretty soon you’ll be just like me.”
That was exactly what I didn’t want to hear.
“So let’s talk business, eh?” Carl looked at me instead of Henley.
“How much is it going to cost?” Henley said.
“First, let me clarify . . . we’re talking American passports, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” I said.
Carl shook his head. “Sorry, sweetheart. That’s only going to drive the cost up for you.”
“Just because they’re American?” Henley didn’t understand.
“We live in a post-nine/eleven world, kid,” Carl said, not that that meant anything to Henley.
“It’s okay,” I said quietly to Henley. “So how much are we talking?”
“In American dollars? Seven thousand five hundred and up.”
My jaw dropped.
Seeing my reaction, Carl said, “We’re talking complicated stuff. Working MRZs, authentic microchipping. Even the passport numbers work when you type them in online. We basically get stolen passports, strip them, and rebuild them—”
I had to think we were going to spend around four hundred and fifty pounds on the hostel room. And then there were plane tickets . . . What would that cost? Eight hundred and fifty pounds? “We can’t afford that,” I said.
“Not my problem.”
We were going to be stuck here, on this continent, with no way out. I could travel back to a time period where I could take a boat across the Atlantic with limited documentation, but how long was that going to take? Months at least? Months of potentially being stuck on a boat with a killer after me. If he could find our hostel and our exact room in a specific time, there was no stopping him from finding me on an enclosed boat. And what of Henley? I’d have to leave him here.
Tears pricked at my eyes.
“Whoa, whoa, girl. Don’t you go crying on me.”
I sniffed. “I can’t help it.”
“Yeah, you can!” Carl said. “Tears don’t do anything for me.”
By now, they were streaming down my face. Henley put an arm around me.
“Stop it,” Carl hissed. “Goddamn, woman, stop it.”
But I was blubbering. “I just want to go home . . .”
“Well then find some other way.”
That only made me cry harder. “There’s no other way. We tried.”
“Get someone to send you money, then. You got relatives, right?”
“I don’t have anyone.” I sobbed. “We don’t have anyone.”
“An orphan already? Hate it when relatives leave without giving money,” Carl said. “For God’s sake, stop the crying already.”
“I’m trying!”
“I’ll . . . I’ll cut the cost if you stop your crying.”
I sniffed. “To how much?”
“Well, how much can you afford?”
Henley spoke quietly. “We only have a little over four thousand pounds.” We had more, but I knew Henley had done some math too, taking the hostel room into account, and leaving us with extra money for plane tickets and whatnot.
“Whoa, whoa. That’s a big cut. You’re practically asking me to get my guy to do this for free. Are you insane? Absolutely not.”
My tears started again.
Finally, Carl spoke directly to Henley. “Can’t you get your woman to stop crying?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I honestly can’t help it. I just want to get back to the States.”
Carl sighed. “All right.”
“W-what?” I wasn’t sure if I heard correctly.
“I said all right, woman! Geez, don’t make me repeat myself . . .”
Henley hesitated. “So you’ll do it for four thousand pounds?”
Carl crossed his arms. “But you’re paying in full now. None of that half up front and half later stuff. Seven thousand five hundred dollars is four thousand eight hundred pounds, more or less. That’s the price for two and my guy gets a percentage of the profits, see . . . So I have to give up my percentage for him to keep his.”
“A-and you’d do that? For us?” My eyes were so wide the tears made a film over them.
“Whoa there, don’t get all glossy-eyed on me, girl. That’s almost worse than crying. Call it my yearly pro bono work. Can’t be doing this all the time, but gotta get the big guy in the sky to get me into heaven somehow, right?”
I didn’t know if someone who forged passports and IDs would be getting into heaven, if there even was one, but who was I to make that decision? I could have hugged Carl in that moment, sweatshirt stain and all.
Carl took out his phone and made us stand still for a photo.
“This is going to be your passport photo, okay?”
“How quickly can we get them?” I asked.
“Making demands already, I see?” Carl said. “We’ll get them to you as quickly as possible, but you know, it’ll take two weeks, maybe?”
Two weeks. That was a long while for staying in one place. But what could we do?
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
Carl blushed, and he rubbed his cheeks as if to rub the embarrassment away. “Don’t go telling your friends that Carl here went soft for a crying woman. Can’t stand the waterworks . . .”
I smiled. Tough guy Carl had a heart.
“We really need these passports as soon as possible.”
Carl sighed. “What room are you staying in?” He tilted his head in the direction of the hostel.
“It’s the Blue Flax room,” I said.
I saw Henley stiffen up next to me. I knew he wouldn’t like Carl knowing where we stayed, but if it somehow helped, I was willing to do anything.
I wondered if Carl would deliver the passports directly to us, even though he was usually cautious about conducting his business in public.
“If it’s just a drop-off, I can do that at the room,” he said, answering my question. He gave me a nod. “Now, scat and get my mo
ney. I gotta get on with my work, and also tell my guy he’ll be working overtime this week.”
Henley and I grabbed the green backpack from our room and gave Carl his share.
He counted the cash and only nodded before leaving.
We turned the corner, planning on going straight back to the hostel, but Henley got sidetracked when he saw a pharmacy across the street advertising that they developed photos.
He dragged me into the store without even asking.
“These stores have everything,” he said, half to himself.
“We don’t have room in our budget to go around getting photos developed. Not today, anyway.”
“Just once,” he said, already walking up to the photo counter. “It can’t be that much. Besides, we don’t have any photographs of us together.”
It wouldn’t be of us together, I wanted to say. It would be of me with Richard.
Part of me agreed with Henley. I wanted something tangible of us together, but I also didn’t want to see Richard in that photo instead of Henley.
Henley had already paid and handed the attendant the camera. We could hear the faint thrum of the machines in the back processing the film.
Twenty minutes later, we were handed an envelope.
Henley couldn’t wait and dumped out all the contents on the counter.
There were many of me looking off into a different direction—Henley must have taken photos without me realizing. There were also the ones of us hip to hip, grinning into the camera.
I watched him finger each photo. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at my face in the photos, or if he was looking at his—or rather, Richard’s.
“Rebecca . . .”
There was one photo—it was probably my favorite—in which I was staring up at Henley while he smiled at the camera. I appeared so at peace, looking into his face. It was a photo that described how I felt when I was with Henley.
“Rebecca, look.” Henley pointed to the same photo I was looking at.
“What about that photo?” I squinted at it.
Henley pointed directly to a black blur on the left-hand side of the photo.
“That’s just someone’s shoulder,” I said. “It looks like they were trying to get out of the way of the photo.”
Henley pointed to the left side of another photo. It was the same left shoulder.
“I don’t . . .”
Henley pointed to yet another one of our photos. The shoulder.
Henley spread out the photos along the counter. The same shoulder wearing black was in every single shot.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “We took these photos at different places.”
“Exactly . . . Were we being followed?”
There wasn’t much to go on. The shoulder was blurry in many of the photos. Even in the ones where it was clearer, it was hard to tell if it was male or female. All we knew was that the person was wearing black and he or she stood to our left—which was incidentally the same side I was usually on in these photos. But that had to be a coincidence . . . right?
“It’s as if whoever this is ducked out of the frame at the last second,” Henley said.
I looked behind us now. I thought I saw something dark slip into one of the drugstore aisles.
I felt paranoid, but I walked along the aisles. Peering down each of them, I couldn’t see a single person.
“Let’s go,” Henley said.
As we walked out the door, Henley threw the photos in the trash can. I had thought that maybe Henley would want to keep them for evidence of some sort, but I supposed he didn’t want to hang on to something so ominous. Any sentimental feelings he’d had toward our first photos together were probably gone thanks to this mysterious stranger.
“Yeah, let’s get out of here.”
ELEVEN
“GRAB YOUR THINGS,” I said later that day.
Henley looked surprised that I sounded so urgent. “So now you’re ordering me about?” he smirked.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about . . . I’ve always ordered you around.”
“Now that’s true.” Nevertheless, Henley grabbed the backpack and stood. “This is the only stuff we have.”
“Come on,” I said, as I led him out the door and through the lobby.
“Where are we going?” he asked, when I walked him out of the hostel.
“Anywhere normal.” I continued walking.
He looked confused, but he walked quickly to catch up to me.
“I figured we needed a do-over date,” I said. “I mean . . . our last one ended on a sour note.”
“With you so mad that you were turning red?”
“Excuse me, but I think you’re confusing me with yourself.” I stuck my tongue out at him.
“So, a do-over date?” Henley looked at me intently. “What does one do on a do-over date?”
“What any normal person does on a normal date.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’m not quite sure yet, as I’ve never been on a normal date. Where nothing went wrong . . .”
Henley grinned and held out his hand. I took it, and it was nice to feel his warmth.
“I figured we needed a normal date,” I said. “And by normal I mean that we’re not allowed to talk about any of that immortal or time-traveling stuff.”
“Not allowed? Like a strict rule?”
“A strict ban on anything not normal,” I said.
“So what do normal people do?”
“Well, I was thinking . . . Normal people take people they like to go see a movie.”
Henley looked taken aback. “A film? You’re taking me to see a film?”
It had never occurred to me that he might not like movies. “D-do you not like movies?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just . . . Don’t films cost money?”
I grinned. “I thought that would come up. It’s a free screening. Some sort of independent movie. I saw a poster for it yesterday.”
“So you’ve been planning this since yesterday?”
“I had time, since I wasn’t speaking to you,” I said. “Now take that map out from the backpack and let’s try to find it.”
Henley did as I asked and held it so I could orient myself.
“I know we’re walking in the right direction since the district the screening is in is north of here . . .” I pointed out a specific intersection on the map. “That’s where it is.”
“Looks easy enough to get to,” Henley said.
We continued walking north as the sun warmed our backs.
Once we were close and in the neighborhood, we started to ask passersby the way, since without street signs on the smaller roads, our map was useless.
“I can’t believe they’re not all labeled. Even New York streets are neatly organized and labeled,” I said.
“Oh, stop your muttering. We’re close—” Henley ran off across the street in the middle of his sentence. “Excuse me, could you please tell me . . . ,” I could hear him saying.
A girl in a long dress and combat boots pointed behind her.
“Thank you!” Henley called back as he crossed the street toward me. “We’re so close,” he said to me. “It’s only one block that way. She even said we’ll probably start to see some people heading to the same place as us.”
The girl was right. As we got closer, we saw people milling around. They were all a very specific type.
They were a younger crowd in their twenties—maybe early thirties at the oldest. The men wore their jet-black hair spiked up in the front. They wore plain white shirts or discolored shirts with slogans on them under their army-inspired jackets. The women were dressed similarly, in black jeans so ripped the top half above the knee looked completely separated from the bottom half of the pants, which were either artfully rolled to show their ankles or tucked into heavy construction worker boots. The majority were stubbing out their cigarettes by the stone wall to go inside before the movie started.
�
�Shame we didn’t get the dress code memo,” Henley said.
I giggled. I couldn’t imagine him wearing distressed black denim.
The people were all going in through one green metal door.
“I guess that’s where we’re headed,” I said.
I thought we would get looks as we entered the building since we looked nothing like the others, but surprisingly, no one seemed to care.
Upon entering the building, my senses were assaulted. There was an overpowering smell in the air. I couldn’t tell what it was—it smelled a little like a mixture of skunk and smoke.
Inside, the building was so dark that I couldn’t see Henley standing shoulder to shoulder right next to me. There were no light sources, as far as I could see. I had to grab onto Henley as we moved farther in, while my eyes adjusted.
“What is this place?” Henley muttered by my ear.
I could tell his eyes had adjusted to the dark, because he was already looking around.
We were in what seemed like a large multipurpose room of some sort, but for such a large space that could hold so many people, it had a low ceiling that Henley could almost touch if he put his arm up. I didn’t know what the room was used for normally, but there was a permanent-looking wooden bar on the left. It seemed like a popular spot right now, as people were jockeying for the one bartender’s attention. I guess they were getting their drinks before they settled down for the movie.
Aside from the bar, there wasn’t any other permanent furniture. Apart from the area by the bar, the people were either standing in the back or sprawled out on blankets and large pillows on the floor. The whole room was probably a fire code violation. People had to step over each other to get to their spaces or the bar. Couples rushed to claim one of the beanbags, arbitrarily thrown around the room, for themselves.
“Where should we sit?” Henley said. The only reason I could hear him above the roar of everyone else’s conversations was that he had leaned over to speak by my ear.
We scanned the room for an empty patch of floor.
Finally, I pointed to an unclaimed blanket by the wall. It was so dark that I couldn’t even tell what color it was.
We had to climb over people already seated to dart over to our spot before someone else took it.
The Day Before Forever Page 17