Emma grimaced as she took the first stair.
The problem was Troy hadn’t said she’d be back after her ride.
Chapter Twelve
Wind tore the kerchief from her head two blocks back and was now whistling in her ears so ferociously that she couldn’t hear the whisper of Dite’s tires on the asphalt. Why did she have to sneak around behind my back? If she had questions about Patricia, why didn’t she just ask me? She did try to ask you, and you blew her off.
Bullshit! Her pedaling slowed. It wasn’t bullshit, and the moment Troy acknowledged that fact, her anger ebbed and she recognized her emotions for what they were. She couldn’t ever remember feeling this hurt and she couldn’t quite place why. Emma had said she only wanted Troy to know that Patricia had been abusing drugs when she died. It was as if she believed she had to besmirch Troy’s memory of Patricia in order for them to have a chance. She didn’t want to believe that Patricia had purposely overmedicated herself, but she knew that Patricia wasn’t perfect.
Or had she? It had taken her weeks to even tell Emma Patricia’s name. Had that been some form of denial? Did Emma sense how important Patricia was to me, even in death? Of course she’s important to me. I loved her with all my heart.
Then what does that leave for Emma?
The thought seemed to come from nowhere, and it shocked her enough that if her feet hadn’t been clipped in, she may have stopped pedaling.
What kind of question was that? Emma wasn’t thinking about her heart! For God’s sake, they had known each other for what, a few weeks? Troy caught a glimmer of what turned out to be broken glass and came to a stop. She brought Dite to a stop in front of a store she could never afford to shop at when things were normal. She leaned her forearms on Dite’s handlebars to rest. What the hell was she doing here? She turned her head and heard a Benson Bubbler. She closed her eyes. The sound of running water was soothing; she forced herself to relax her shoulders. She thought about the look on Emma’s face right before she had walked out. Why did I say those things to her?
Because she hurt me, that’s why.
Yeah, but how did she hurt you? She was repeating what the newspaper said. What you already suspected. Troy crossed her arms in front of herself and refused to let the sob take hold. What she had already suspected. Patricia was always emotional. Her ups were so high that Troy had a hard time catching her breath. Hadn’t she asked her about it? Hadn’t she wondered why, every time Patricia begged Troy to go bungee jumping, she had a hard time getting out of bed two days later?
Emma had exposed the part of their relationship that she had allowed herself to forget. Yes, she had been happy. Yes, she loved Patricia, and she believed Patricia loved her, too. Had it ever been perfect?
A sob clawed its way up her esophagus. Emma had hurt her because she forced her to admit that she had been saving herself for a woman who had, in all probability, been responsible for her own death. Emma had every right to want Troy to acknowledge the fact that Patricia wasn’t perfect. But it didn’t mean Troy had to like it, and it didn’t mean that Troy had to accept it until she was ready. And she wasn’t ready. Not yet. She might not ever be.
Those thoughts aside, Emma had been wrong when she accused her of thinking of Patricia when they made love.
How would she know that, though? You told her you had room for only one woman. You have nightmares about her; call out for her in your sleep. Even now, you refuse to talk about Patricia, and you leave Emma alone to come to her own conclusions after making love to her.
Had she really left to get breakfast? Was that all it was? She could have picked up breakfast and returned before Emma had even awakened. Instead, she had ridden the city aimlessly thinking. Thinking of what?
Of Emma, and yes, thoughts of Patricia were there, too. But Emma was wrong on one account. She hadn’t gone to see her.
Why didn’t I go to Patricia’s grave? You know why. Stop blaming Emma for realizing the truth before you did.
You felt guilty for being with Emma, so you stayed away from Patricia’s gravesite. Troy felt sick when she started to realize the truth. She had accused Emma of hiding out in the condo, but wasn’t she doing the same thing? Only, instead of hiding behind walls and bars, she was using the pain of Patricia’s death to avoid living life again.
What if she was wrong about Emma, too? What if she and Emma were just trying to distract each other from what was happening to them? What if two, three years from now, they grew bored with each other? What if Emma finds out I cheat at spades? The latter thought made her smile, and for the first time when she pointed Dite toward the cemetery, it wasn’t with a heavy heart.
How many times had she ridden down this path? More than a hundred, she was sure. In all the times, she never even considered riding past its ivy-covered sign. She had never noticed how green the grass was, or how the flowers smelled like perfume, and the wind through the trees sounded like clothes rustling on a clothesline. But she noticed those things now. Troy left Dite on her side in the grass and walked up the hill. Last night’s rain had made the soil thick and clinging. She followed rain-filled footprints, leftover from her last visit, no doubt, to Patricia’s marker. The ground was too muddy for her to sit, so she stood, awkward and nervous.
“I’ve been living in a dream world, Patricia.” Troy felt tears in her eyes. “Damn, I haven’t cried this much since you died.” She took a deep breath. “I wonder if it will ever get easier to say that. Ahh, to hell with it,” she said as her knees sank into the cool soil.
She ran her hand over Patricia’s grave marker, clearing away small particles of dust and grass that had blown over it since her last visit. “I used to pray that one day you would open your eyes and see me standing there and feel like you could never belong anywhere without me. That’s the way I felt about you. But it didn’t work out like that. I was the one who woke up in the hospital, and they were telling me that you were dead, and there would be no more chances for me to make you happy. I wanted to believe you when you said the meds were for your back because I didn’t want to believe that I could never be good enough for you. I could never make you happy.” Troy swallowed. “I met someone, Patricia. I don’t think you can fight this kind of thing. Just like, no matter what, I couldn’t make you stay here with me. I loved you, and I’m so sorry you had to die so young. I would have spent the rest of my life trying, and maybe failing, to make you happy. But I would have tried. Oh God, Patricia, I didn’t even know that I needed and deserved more than that. Maybe you knew, though.” Troy’s hand went to the marker. She traced the word “beloved” with her finger and stood up.
“It’s been hard for me to accept that you were never happy in this world. I think you had to know that you were driving too fast over that bridge. Part of me has always felt like I should have been with you even when you died. I don’t know why or how I got out, but I’m glad I did. I didn’t want to die.”
Troy picked a dandelion, clasped it between her hands, and rubbed them together until the seeds went spinning off into the air.
She didn’t have the energy to sustain her anger with Emma, but the hurt was there and would be for some time. She would sleep in her own place for the first time since meeting Emma. Over the last four weeks, she had found it easy to avoid going home. The horror of finding the world asleep had made the pain of Patricia’s death seem as fresh as if she had driven off the bridge the day before.
She tipped Dite to the side and was about to hop on when she heard a low droning noise. In another lifetime, she would have dismissed the sound. Her ears strained to hear a repeat of the sound, afraid that she had imagined the sound or that the wind had been playing tricks on her, when the sound repeated she let out a small, unintelligible cry.
This was not a sound caused by the wind or anything else in nature. It was a car engine and it was getting closer.
*
Troy clipped into Dite’s pedals, took a moment to pinpoint the direction of the vehicle, and took off.
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The sound was coming from a mile or so down the path. Toward the hospital. Of course. Why hadn’t she thought to go back there? If she had awakened there, maybe someone else had, too. Maybe her reason for being there was more complicated than a header off Dite.
When the hospital came into view, she slowed and then stopped. She hadn’t paid much attention to the parking lot when she had left three weeks ago, but none of the cars sitting there looked out of place.
The engine had been shut off before Troy reached the hospital. She stopped in front of the entrance and looked up at the darkened windows. When she had first ridden away from this place, she had felt like something evil was watching her. And now, she was going to just troop her ass right through the front door?
“No, I don’t think so.” She took a step back. The grass was too clumpy for her to just ride across, so she lay Dite down at the end of the wheelchair ramp and walked toward the side of the building. She peered in several windows before she found one into a room that was occupied. An old woman lay in her hospital bed, her head lolled to the side and her mouth open. How long can a person lay with their mouth open without their tongue getting all dry? Troy shuddered and peered into the next room. Empty. If the place wasn’t so creepy, she might have gone in and closed the old lady’s mouth. Troy shuddered again. Or maybe not.
The second-to-the-last room was occupied as well. A woman sat slumped in a wheelchair. Her feet were sticking out in front of her as if she had been lifted from the bed and dropped into the chair like a rag doll. Troy was about to move on to the last window when something about the scene caused her to take another look. She cupped her hands around her forehead and squinted. The woman’s hospital gown and what little she could see of the floor were stained dark black. A faint but putrid odor drifted past Troy’s nose, and she told herself she had imagined it. Troy’s eyes were drawn to the woman’s face and then reluctantly to the gaping wound in her neck. A slash of red crossed the woman’s neck, creating a jagged, lopsided smile. The wound looked vicious; it did not look accidental. In fact, Troy thought it looked like someone had caught the woman unawares and had slit her throat from behind. Troy was having a hard time understanding what that meant. Had this happened before the sleep took place? She was in the hospital, after all.
At some point, she had become desensitized to seeing bodies strewn about the city like so much offal. But this—this was different. Even through the window, even from a distance, Troy could tell that this woman was not like the others. She wasn’t breathing. Troy wasn’t sure how long she’d stood there before a movement near the floor broke her concentration and caused her to look away from the woman.
A man was hunched on his knees scrubbing at some dark stains on the floor. His white shirt pulled tight across his back. She could see his profile now. He appeared to be wearing an apron and white gloves. He also had something tied round his face.
He’s wearing a mask. Maybe I didn’t imagine that rotting smell. She had no sooner finished the thought when he sat up, his hand going to his forehead as if to wipe away sweat. Their eyes met.
He reacted first. His hand came up, gloved and bloody, and snatched the surgical mask from his face. A small band of crimson appeared on his cheek, and his mouth formed a word so clearly that Troy didn’t have to hear the order to “Wait” to know that’s what he wanted.
She ran. Her heart was in her throat, and her eyes were focused on Dite lying at the foot of the wheelchair ramp. She envisioned the bloody apron dripping down the hall as he tried to catch her. She picked up Dite, ran three steps, and launched herself up and onto the saddle. She clipped her left foot in, but it took her three rotations to do the same with her right. The hospital doors slammed back and she swung her head around, terrified that she would see a gun pointed toward her.
He was running, and for one terrifying moment, Troy felt like he might be running fast enough to catch her.
Adrenaline pumped through her legs until she imagined them firing like pistons on Dite’s pedals. Her forearms ached from gripping Dite’s handlebars, and she could hear little over the sound of her own heartbeat, but she thought she heard him yell something that sounded like “Wait, I need to talk to you!”
In that case, I’ll stop for a chat, you sick fuck. She glanced back one more time as she cut through a small grove and came out on another road that ran parallel to the main one.
She had almost convinced herself that he wasn’t going to try to follow her when she heard the sound of a powerful engine being revved. She made a sharp turn, and realizing that she would be forced to cross the Burnside Bridge with him on her tail in a car if she continued on this route, made another quick turn instead.
Dite’s tires ticked across the asphalt like the second hand on a clock. How much time had passed since she had heard the engine revving? Five minutes at least. Maybe she had lost him. Maybe the last turn—
She coasted into another turn and found herself face to face with a candy-apple red mustang. The dealership stickers on the windshield kept Troy from seeing the driver. Troy locked her jaw and continued toward the car. The driver rolled his window down. At the last moment, she veered to the right and down a narrow one way street. The Mustang weaved around parked cars, clipped one, and barreled closer to her.
“Stop running, damn it. I need to talk to you,” the driver yelled.
Troy jammed on her brake so hard that her rear wheel slid out from under her. She put her foot down and rode it out, then forcefully dragged the bike back under her body. The Mustang had to continue down the narrow street before it could turn around in the intersection. She heard tires squealing as it made a U-turn, and then heard the roar of the engine as he sped up to catch her. He was behind her so fast that Troy felt herself start to worry that she might have a hard time losing him.
She wished she had picked up a bike helmet along with all the other things she had lifted over the last few weeks. A helmet might protect her, at least a little, if this psycho decided to take a shot at her. Troy kept her head down and hunched her shoulders
If he had a gun, he would have used it by now, right?
She risked a look back to make sure a gun wasn’t aimed at her. She jumped the curb and rode through the entry way of an office building. The Mustang was picking up speed; the engine grew louder. Troy careened across Burnside, grateful that the busy street was as motionless as the rest of the city. One car moving in the whole city and it’s intent on mowing your ass down.
The Mustang disregarded the red light, as Troy had, and roared across Burnside. She didn’t look back again, but Troy imagined she could feel puffs of heat on her bare calf as the car eased closer and closer. She wouldn’t be able to outrun a car on Dite. She had to get him out of that car somehow. She had begun to feel the first signs of fatigue brought on by fear when she spotted the ornate gateway leading into Chinatown.
She hadn’t been on this side of town since the eleventh grade. She and an old boyfriend had found a condemned parking structure that was perfect for ditching math class, smoking cigarettes, and making out. She had found the parking structure, but the making out and the smoking cigarettes hadn’t been her idea. She was praying fervently that the city hadn’t torn the parking structure down when it came into view.
“Oh, thank God.” The structure looked dark and dingy and no different than it had eleven years ago. Troy felt like she wanted to stop and kiss its pavement if she hadn’t taken a quick look back to see the Mustang turning the corner behind her.
“Come on, come on.” She forced more speed out of her legs, and she could hear the Mustang speeding up behind her. She swerved down what had been the exit ramp to the parking structure and, although her heart was pounding, it sounded like the grill of the Mustang was seconds from plowing into her back. She braked hard, and despite her speed, it slowed her down enough that she was able to avoid the wooden arm and the large metal teeth sticking out of the pavement.
The lights and anything else valuable had alre
ady been removed from the structure all those years ago. If she hadn’t known about the teeth, it would have been hard to see them in the dark. Troy had Dite back up to speed in seconds. She heard the Mustang hit the arm and then two loud explosions and a long loud sequel as the driver hit the brakes. Troy had a brief vision of a large, angry, wounded animal.
Troy was halfway up one of the ramps when she heard his car door open. She was tempted to stop to see what he was doing, but she didn’t. She knew he would get over the surprise and come after her again. She had reached the second ramp when she heard the car door slam again and the sound of the engine being put into gear and then the thump thump thump of the car being driven on at least two flat tires up the ramp. What the hell is he doing? Gooseflesh raised on Troy’s arms. She had expected him to give up. Or at the very least, follow her on foot.
You idiot. All you did was corner yourself and make him mad. He can still catch you even on two flat tires. He wouldn’t care about ruining his rims. He didn’t pay for them.
She didn’t realize what she was going to do until she had reached the empty upper level and saw the short wall that she used to sit on tossing cigarette butts into the creek below. She slammed on her brake, torqued her hips as hard as she could, and once again, let the back tire slide out from under her. Only this time, it came to rest with a gentle bump against the five-foot-high stone wall. As scared as she was, she couldn’t help but think she couldn’t repeat that move in a million fucking years. She threw herself off Dite and over the wall before she could talk herself out of it.
She dropped for what seemed like ages until she landed in some blackberry bushes. Her first impulse was to get up and start running but she was afraid he might follow her. Even with flat tires, he could abandon the car and catch her on foot. She rolled beneath the lip of the parking structure using the wall and the bushes to block her from view. Her shoulder and hip smarted, and she could feel the sharp sting of scratches on her arms and legs. She had to lie on her side to fit into the small space, and her face was pressed into the dirt and gravel. She heard him open the car door. He must not have shut it, because a few minutes later she still hadn’t heard it slamming. She thought she heard him say something, but whatever it was was so low that she couldn’t make it out. She wished that she could see him. Several yellowing cigarette butts lay on the ground, and she wondered how many other kids used this place to cut school.
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