Amelia pushed Jodi’s hand so that the camera viewed its owner. “Broadway’s rising star, Jodi DeMarco!”
The vendors laughed and declared that Jodi and Amelia both had star quality. “Put those faces on da bus, everybody will ride and make da MTA rich!”
“Those guys ought to be selling time-shares for Antigua or someplace,” Jodi said as they left the stand, she and Amelia each now possessing three vividly colored scarves bought for four dollars apiece. “I dated a guy from there. Brilliant, great sense of humor. Amazing dancer. I should call him again.” She checked the camera’s battery. “Hm, I guess that’s a wrap.” She tucked it into her pocket and said, “Hey, so how about we get out of this cold and go for Japanese at Kodama—it’s not far. Fab sushi. You guys do sushi?”
“Sounds great,” Anthony said. He looked at Amelia expectantly.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I’m still not very hungry, though, so whatever you guys want is fine.”
Jodi smiled sympathetically. “No more lox for you, got it?”
“I’m fine. Distracted by all the wonderfulness is all.”
“Yeah,” Jodi said, pretending to primp her hat-covered hair, “people tell me that all the time.”
For two fairy-tale days, this—the city, the camaraderie—was Amelia’s reality. They saw the sights, they goofed around, they went to cafés and restaurants where the food was cheap and the company was inspiring. They met actors and dancers and poets, people who intended to design the next great fashion trend or write the next great novel or build the next great skyscraper or cook the most perfect omelets the world had yet seen. They went to Radio City for the Rockettes’ holiday show. Late each night, she and Anthony climbed under the covers together, and Wednesday he serenaded her with the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” before making love to her, with her, so tenderly that afterward she cried, happy, grateful tears. It would be nice. It would be.
Amelia avoided eating more lox, and ate little else, and the pains troubled her only once more during their stay—on Thursday afternoon, Thanksgiving, before they were to leave Jodi’s and move on with the plan she and Anthony had begun to develop while sitting, bundled, in the sun at Washington Square Park the day before.
The plan they’d come up with was to leave not only New York the city but New York the state, and find an unpatrolled crossing into Canada. Anthony had lived in upstate New York for half of his life, and was pretty sure there were still back roads—not to mention fields—where they could get over the border without being seen, let alone asked to produce passports and IDs. The irony of their making this plan at that park—the center of NYU’s campus—wasn’t lost on either of them.
“It’ll be here, waiting,” Anthony had said, gazing at the buildings around the park.
Amelia nodded, saying nothing. For the first time since they’d arrived, she felt the weight of their situation bearing down on her. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten there were people looking for them, or that if they were found they’d be arrested and jailed—no bail this time—until their cases were resolved. She knew, as Anthony did, that “resolved” would be no resolution, really, because there was no way they were getting out of this unscathed. As he’d said, “Fact is, we did everything they charged us with, if you look at it dispassionately—which is what the judge supposedly does. Since Liles won’t let up, we have to face trial to even have a chance at avoiding prison time. Maybe a jury, if there were enough intelligent people on it, would let us off easy, but they can’t exactly disregard the law.”
The other part, which didn’t need to be discussed, was her father, and his relentless insistence on demonizing Anthony. By the time Anthony had his trial, he’d be more likely than ever—and far more likely than she—to be convicted. Thirty years’ sex-offender registration required for the felony counts. Prison time might be unlikely, but even Mariana Davis hadn’t been able to say it wouldn’t happen. Going back now offered no hope for either of them. They would have to take their chances in Canada.
He said, “We’ll get fake IDs—even if it’s not a hundred percent foolproof, it’ll be close enough for us to make a new start. I’m thinking Montreal. It isn’t New York, but it’s a great city, you’ll like it—they have a big theatre scene. We get jobs there, work our way up, and eventually come back to New York under our new identities.”
“Without being recognized?”
“By who? Besides, you’ll be that amazing Canadian actress who, if anyone ever put a picture of that older you alongside one of your current ones, would have a striking resemblance to the girl who’d disappeared into Mexico, and wouldn’t that be interesting? But by then we’ll have rock-solid creds. It can be done.”
“Solid creds, but the same fingerprints.”
“Then we better avoid run-ins with the law.”
“Somebody would make the connection. Our parents would.”
“By then, the whole thing will be ancient history. They wouldn’t rat us out.”
She’d been about to answer You don’t know my father, but instead she decided that this time Anthony might be right. Her father would, by then, surely have learned his lesson and wouldn’t make trouble anymore.
They knew the plan wasn’t perfect. There were holes, possibly deep enough for them to disappear into with no hope of rescue. What the plan gave them, though, was a chance. It gave them hope. And most important, they would be together and not rotting in jail, alone, for the most part out of contact with each other, while the lawyers siphoned more and more money away, looking for strategies to win an unwinnable war. They would be together and not going off to prison, where the closest they’d be to each other or to the theatre world was in their memories and imaginations.
The stomach pain came when they were lounging in the apartment in the afternoon while Jodi got ready to leave for dinner with her father in Stamford. It came on quickly, as it had before, and this time hung around awhile. Anthony, who was online checking the status of “the manhunt” and researching all the things they’d need to know for their trip, didn’t see her wince as the pain began. She waited for it to ebb, then went to stand behind him.
Oddly, he had Jodi’s Facebook page displayed—and then she saw that he was having an instant-message conversation with Cameron. He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Jodi friended her for us—I asked her to this morning. I wanted an untrackable way to get a message to my mom.”
Homesickness jolted Amelia, or rather Cameron-sickness did. “Tell Cam I miss her.”
He typed her message. Cameron replied with a grimace emoticon and, Same here. I love you, A!!!! So glad u guys r ok, and I will def get ur message to ur mom. What about A’s parents?
Anthony said, “Do you want her to pass a message to them?”
“I … I do, but I don’t. If they find out she was in touch with us, they’ll never leave her alone.” She wasn’t worried about his mother revealing anything to the police, but her parents, her father, had proven they couldn’t count on him. “Tell her no. I want to wait until we’re out of the country.”
“I agree,” he said, and typed her answer.
He finished the conversation and logged off the computer, then turned and pulled her onto his lap.
She said, “So what’s the travel plan looking like?”
“Interstate 87 is the direct route—meaning most traveled. Let’s go 95 and then up 91 until we’re near the border, then we’ll branch off to the rural areas using county roads. Eighty-one might be even less traveled, but it’s only bridges into Canada that way, so that’s out—I’m thinking out loud, aren’t I?”
“Yes, but you’re cute, doing it.”
“The weather is looking pretty iffy—they’re saying freezing rain turning to snow starting after midnight. How do you feel about leaving pretty soon?”
She didn’t want to leave at all. The frustration that she’d been able to suppress these past few days surged again, and she took a deep breath to help push it down. Wishes were
filmy, insubstantial things that had no value and no purpose. Action was the only way to make something happen. She said, “Fine by me. No one will be driving at dinnertime.”
“All right, then. Let’s get in gear.”
29
NTHONY HUGGED JODI AND THANKED HER AGAIN FOR HER hospitality. “We’re eternally grateful.”
“You’re eternally welcome,” Jodi said. “I mean that. If you make it back here—that is, when you make it back here, I expect you to stay here for as long as you need to. And if I happen to have hooked up with my own exceptionally fabulous someone by then, he will welcome you, too.”
Amelia’s eyes looked forlorn behind her smile. “We hate to leave. But thank you so much. It’s been the best. You’re so wonderful for risking your neck for us.”
Jodi waved off the gratitude. “Please. What risk? It’s New York. There are way more important criminals here than you two.”
Anthony reached for the doorknob. “We’ll let you know when we get there.”
“I’ll look for the Facebook friend requests from—who will you be? Marie and Luc?”
“Beau and Belle,” Anthony joked.
Amelia said, “I like her suggestions better.”
“Go on, lovebirds. You can debate it in the car.” Jodi kissed them both, then Anthony led Amelia outside, where they walked in silence down the block to the parking garage. The weight of what they were doing made him feel sluggish, made every step feel like he was walking in mud-caked boots. His stomach was queasy and he walked slowly, as if anticipating that a precipice lay ahead of them after darkness fell, and he might not see it in time.
In the car, he hooked up Cameron’s iPod and chose a playlist. “I uploaded a bunch of Jodi’s stuff. It isn’t all what I’d choose, but it’s better than Cam’s limited assortment. Did you know she still listens to the Backstreet Boys?”
“I guess I better not admit that I kind of do, too.”
“No,” he said, “you’d better not.” He reached over and tickled her neck and she swatted him, smiling almost as if everything was normal.
The drive out of the city and over to where he could pick up 495 was going to be dicey. He couldn’t afford to be too aggressive and risk getting in a fender bender, but he couldn’t be passive either, or he’d never get the lanes he needed when he needed to. While he concentrated on driving them where they needed to go, Amelia stayed occupied watching the cityscape, until they went into the tunnel to Queens. “Goodbye, New York.” She sighed.
From there, the music gave them something to focus on other than what they were leaving behind and what lay ahead. He’d mixed Pink and Beyoncé and classic Zeppelin with Green Day and the Black Eyed Peas, and some Dylan to round things out. They hadn’t driven far—forty minutes, maybe, when Amelia said, “Do you think we could stop someplace?”
“You should’ve gone before we left,” he teased, mimicking a parent’s tone.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“I was kidding.” He glanced over and saw her lips were pressed in a tight frown. “Is it your stomach again?”
“You know, I’m sure it’s nerves. It didn’t start until after all the trouble started.”
“Do you …” He paused, then began again, “Do you want to turn around? We don’t have to go through with this.”
“No—I mean, do you want to?”
“No, I don’t. This is it, this is what we need to do. Have to do.” He glanced at her and she nodded. “I’ll find a store and we’ll get you something.”
“Everything will be closed.”
“Maybe not.”
At the next exit, they found an open gas station and convenience store and went inside. Amelia held her hand against her stomach as they checked the offerings. “I don’t think it’s, you know, a digestion thing. It just hurts. It’s worse when I’m moving.”
He picked up a large bottle of ibuprofen. “We’d be smart to have this anyway. And this,” he said, getting a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, “and this,” he added, reaching for a bag of cheese curls from the aisle’s endcap. “Sorry. I’m hungry.”
She stood close to him and linked her arms around his neck. “Sorry I’m not. I love those.”
They kissed, gentle, sweet kisses that made this pause in their travel plan feel like a haven. Her skin smelled of something light and floral. Honeysuckle, he thought. And something herbal, too. Her lips were warm and soft. Warmer than usual. He drew back to take a close look at her and noticed rosy spots at the top of her cheeks. “I think you might have a fever.”
He scanned the aisle for a thermometer but didn’t find one. She said, “I feel fine. I mean, not fine, but not sick. Come on, let’s get going.”
They chose drinks and checked out, then set off again. The sun was low, dropping behind trees already bereft of leaves. Amelia took a painkiller, then changed the music and sang along to “Aquarius,” then “Blackbird,” then “If I Fell,” and then, turning off the stereo, she sang Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel,” filling the space around them with the mournful, beautiful sound, raising the hair on his arms.
“You’re really amazing,” he said when she finished. She shrugged off the compliment, but he felt as if he’d been given something rare and precious. “I’m telling you, one day everyone’s going to know your name.”
“Which name?” she said, a smile playing on her tired face. “Belle or Marie?”
She fell asleep as they got outside Springfield and into the winding eastern foothills of the Berkshires. He glanced at her from time to time, his worry counterbalanced by his admiration of her fine bone structure and the curve of her cheek. In the dim light of the dashboard, he couldn’t see whether her cheeks were still flushed, but her lips looked darker than they should have.
When she woke again he told her, “We just hit Vermont. We’re almost to Brattleboro. Do you want to stop?”
She stretched and as she did, she made a small sound of discomfort. “Yeah, let’s stop. Maybe if I walk around some I can work out this cramp.”
“You don’t think you have an ulcer, do you?”
“I guess I wouldn’t be surprised. It’ll be fine. Quit worrying, okay?”
He took the exit for the next rest stop. After he finished using the bathroom, he waited for Amelia, and waited. Several women entered and left and still she didn’t come out. Finally, just as he was going to go in to check on her, she pushed the door open and walked out.
“Sorry,” she said. “And before you ask, I’m fine. Let’s get some drinks and go—a woman in there was saying it was raining up at St. Johnsbury, which I guess is on our way?”
“It is, yeah.” He wanted to press her for details on how she felt, but she obviously didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe it was embarrassing; he got that, so he let it go.
In the car again, Amelia occupied herself with finding music, and they talked about how they’d decide which of the back roads they should try. They talked about everything except the slight breathy strain in her voice that told him she was still in pain and trying to hide it. The rain Amelia had heard about was, in fact, coming down hard as they passed St. Johnsbury and continued north.
“This is pretty miserable,” she said after a while. “I wish it would just snow instead.”
“Driving in snow is worse. At night especially.”
“It doesn’t seem as cold, though, you know?” Her voice sounded odd to him, rising extra high on “know,” and then she doubled over. “I feel sick to my stomach. Pull over?”
He signaled and moved off to the shoulder as quickly as he could. As soon as they were stopped, Amelia opened her door and leaned out and retched. He kept a hand on her back while he reached for napkins in the glove box.
She sat up again and closed the door, then took the proffered napkins and wiped her mouth. “I’m so sorry. It just came over me. I don’t know what that’s about.”
“You haven’t eaten anything.…”
“We bought Pepto earlier, didn’t we?” She started to tw
ist to get the bag from the backseat but stopped and pressed her hands to her belly.
“Amelia, something isn’t right. We need to get you to a doctor.”
“It’s just food poisoning,” she insisted. “It’s going to pass.”
“Food poisoning that lasts four days? Come on.”
“It’s nine o’clock on Thanksgiving night and we’re in the middle of Vermont somewhere. Even if I wanted to go, a doctor isn’t an option right now.”
Anthony put his hand up to her forehead the way his mother had always done when she thought he might be sick. “You still feel hot. It’s not food poisoning.”
“Then it’s a virus. Let’s just go. We can’t be that far from the border now.”
He considered their options. She was right, the border was only about forty miles away by interstate, but there was no telling how long it was going to take them to find a place to cross, and in finding one, they’d be far from anything like the kind of doc-in-a-box places he and his mother used on occasion. Suppose she got worse and they were miles and miles from help?
“We have to stop in the next good-sized town.”
“Anthony, we can’t. I’ll have to give them my name—”
“Use a fake name. Be Marie Wilkes … and you lost your wallet this morning so you don’t have ID. We’ll pay in cash and it’ll be fine.”
Even in the darkness he could read the fear and doubt in her eyes as she said, “Do you think?”
“Yes. Buckle up now and let’s go.”
They got under way, both of them silent, the wipers slashing the rain from the windshield aggressively, as if they, too, were frustrated with this turn of events. Anthony understood them to be snapping, Why? Why? Why? Why? and wished he had an answer.
“Suppose it’s expensive,” Amelia said. “What if it ends up costing us all our money?”
“Let’s just get there and have you checked out. If you’re right and it’s a virus, maybe they can give you some medicine and that’ll be that.”
The wipers again, and then he felt Amelia’s hand taking his right one from the steering wheel. She clasped it in her too-warm hand and said, “You’re really good to me and I appreciate it. Sorry I’m messing things up.”
Exposure Page 30