by Max Barry
“No,” she said. I’m on the train tracks, you see.
He bent at the platform edge and extended his hand. “Can you reach?”
She remembered her things: her phone and bag. But they were gone, blown away by the train. She stared at the empty tracks in dismay. She still had the egg, though. She had preserved that.
“I got you,” said the man with the arms. “Right here.”
“I can’t find my things.”
“Let’s just get you off the tracks, darling.”
More people had gathered at the edge of the platform. It was becoming a community. A woman said, “Are there steps?”
There was indeed a ladder. “Yes,” she said. The handholds disappeared at the top, which made the last part difficult, but the man helped her. Then she was on the platform, with no phone or bag, and no sign of Hugo Garrelly or Clayton Hors, and an egg. “I lost my phone.”
“Well, that’s not too bad,” said the woman. “You’re okay, that’s the thing.”
“Hey,” said the man with the arms to two approaching men in bright orange MTA vests. “Over here. She fell on the tracks.”
“I was pushed,” Felicity said.
The first MTA man to reach her was turbaned and had a thick black beard. He unzipped a red bag and began to pull things out. “Ma’am, my name is Ravneet. I’m going to help you. Are you hurt?”
“I need to use a phone.”
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. There had been pizza cutters near her head, but they hadn’t touched her.
“I want you to sit down a moment.” He began to illuminate parts of her with a penlight. “May I touch your face?”
She nodded. He probed her forehead. Her legs were bloody and scraped around the knees. She looked at her hands and they were cut and dirty, too.
Light shone into her eyes. “You fell on the tracks?”
“Someone pushed me.”
“Who?”
“He’s gone now.”
He lowered the penlight. “Ma’am, you don’t appear to have any serious injuries, so I’m not going to call an ambulance. But if you think you need an ambulance, you can dial nine-one-one yourself.”
She was thinking more clearly now. “The NYPD is on the way. The man who pushed me is wanted by the police. I’m a reporter for the Daily News.” None of this left any visible impression on Ravneet. “I don’t have my phone. Can I use your phone?”
“Ma’am, you cannot use my phone, but I want to make sure you’re okay. Will you come and sit with me until the NYPD arrive?”
“Sure,” she said.
She was taken to a small, dingy office with a single fluorescent overhead light and the lingering scent of man-sweat. Ravneet began to flick through grainy video footage of platforms while peppering her with polite questions that were, Felicity figured out, mostly about establishing her cognitive state. Eventually there was a knock and Ravneet opened the door to two uniformed cops, a man and a woman. “Hi, there,” said the man. “How you doing?”
She explained what had happened, emphasizing the parts where she’d been pushed onto the tracks by a wanted fugitive. The cops remained impassive, their eyes occasionally flicking to Ravneet.
“Where do you live, Felicity?” the woman asked. “Can we drive you home?”
“What about Hugo Garrelly?”
“That I don’t know. We’re just here for you.”
This was pretty unsatisfying. But her options were limited without a phone, so she allowed the cops to escort her from the station. In the back of a cruiser, as the city passed by, she turned the egg over in her hands. She wasn’t sure what it was: metal or mineral. It might have been machined in the past, but if so, it was a long time ago, and any corners had worn away. The ends were pockmarked, exposing a gray, layered core, which appeared kind of brittle, as if she might be able to do serious damage with a screwdriver and some motivation. It was too cold to hold for long. She set it in her lap. “Do you want this thing?”
The female cop turned in her seat. “What thing?”
“The thing Hugo Garrelly gave me. The egg.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. He might have just wanted to distract me.” The cop was silent. “Do you want it?”
“You keep it for now. We’ll let you know.”
“O-kay,” Felicity said. She was not super-impressed with this, either. “And you can’t tell me whether you arrested him yet?”
The cop just looked at her. The man said, “St. Paul’s Place. This is you?”
She thought they might let her out at the curb, but this wasn’t an Uber, and they accompanied her all the way up the steps to her building. It was late and she had no keys, so she buzzed for Gavin. “I’m here with two NYPD officers,” she said, which felt like a coded message, Hide the weed, but really wasn’t. The cops followed her to the apartment and loitered nearby while she explained to a startled Gavin what had happened.
“You’re all right, though?”
“I’m fine.” She thanked the cops and, finally, they nodded, releasing her. She went inside and found Percival on the sofa. She sat and tickled his ears. “What a day,” she said.
Gavin took a minute, hanging out in the hallway to talk to the cops. “They said you seemed disoriented,” he said, closing the door.
“I’m fine. Just tired.” She’d put the egg on the table, and Gavin stopped and bent to peer at it. “Do you know what that is?”
He shook his head.
“Can you bag it up? It might be important.”
He fetched a clear Tupperware container and sealed it inside. “How’s that?”
“And I need your phone. I have to call Levi.”
“Felicity,” he said. “You need to relax. I’ll call Levi. You stay there.” He took the egg tub to the kitchen. “What’s the number?”
She didn’t know. Everything was on her phone. “Call the general number. 210-2100.”
“We need to report your cards missing, too.” He leaned his butt against the counter. “210-2100? Wrong number.”
She felt confused. She knew the general number.
“I’ll just look it up,” he said, and poked at his phone. She waited on the sofa. It was the kind of moment when she might have pulled out her phone and done something. But she had to just sit there, in a kind of forced mindfulness. She stroked Percival, who purred. She looked for Joey, because this felt like a two-cat scenario, but he was nowhere. “Hello, this is Gavin Erlich. I’m the partner of one of your reporters, Felicity Staples.” He walked to the bedroom, came out with a white blanket, which had been Felicity’s since she was a teenager, and spread it across her legs, like a good boyfriend. “Yes. Thank you.” He hung up. “Levi will call me back.”
She nodded. She wanted to find out what had happened with Hugo Garrelly and Clayton Hors. But it was feeling decreasingly urgent. She kept thinking about falling. About trains with pizza-cutter wheels.
“Let me take care of you now,” Gavin said, and she nodded.
* * *
—
Levi did not call back before Felicity went to bed, where she fell asleep instantly. When she woke, it was in a panic of murder and cats, feeling as if it had been only moments, but the bedroom was awash in morning light. Gavin was at the breakfast table, pecking at his laptop. “You slept well.”
“Yes,” she said, although she didn’t feel it. Her heart was pounding. “Did you feed the cats last night?”
He nodded. “Why?”
She wasn’t sure. She had woken with generalized anxiety about cats. “Did Levi call?” Gavin shook his head. “Can I check the news on your phone?”
He slid a tablet toward her. “Use this until you get your phone back.”
She sat. Then she looked at him. “Why aren’t you at work?
”
“I’m looking after you,” he said.
She smiled. She didn’t feel super-grateful, though. She felt off-balance. There was something wrong and she couldn’t figure out what. “You don’t have to hang around. I’m fine.”
“It’s no problem.”
“I mean it,” she said.
“Are you sure? Because it would be easier. I can be home early.”
She nodded. There was a little more negotiation, then he kissed her on the head and the apartment door closed and it was just her at the table, feeling weirdly relieved that he was gone.
Stress, she thought. Post-trauma what-have-you. It’s normal to experience strange emotions after a near-death experience.
She scrolled the Daily News app, looking for the Madison May story. That was odd: Maddie wouldn’t have left the front page unless the click-throughs had been truly awful. She navigated to contact us and launched an audio call on the tablet. This was what she would be doing for a while, she guessed: making calls with a giant slab of glass. While it rang, she twisted in her chair, looking for Joey, her clandestine cat. She stood and wandered the apartment, holding the tablet like an offering.
“New York Daily News, this is Annette, how may I help you?”
Annette had appeared in the News more than anyone on the planet. When they needed a generic picture in a hurry and weren’t too particular about it, they would say, See if Annette has a minute. She asked for Levi and entered the kitchen while waiting on hold. Percival was in the corner, eating from his bowl. But Joey’s bowl was missing.
She was peering under the bed when Annette returned. “Hello, Felicity?”
“Yes.”
“I have Levi for you. Please hold.”
“Thank you.” She had exhausted Joey’s usual hiding places and was beginning to feel touches of genuine alarm, not just foggy vestiges of cat/train/murder panic, but specific concern that Joey had gotten out. He’d done it a few times before they’d wised up to his talent for dashing between their legs when they opened the front door.
“Felicity,” Levi said in her ear. “What happened to you? I heard you had an accident on the subway.”
“Not an accident. Hugo Garrelly pushed me.” She opened the apartment door and peered out in both directions. No cat. “And he gave me something. I’ve still got it. Some kind of metal egg.”
“This guy gave you something and pushed you onto the tracks?”
“Yes.”
“What a psycho. Have you spoken to the police?”
“They didn’t seem very interested. Maybe you can have more luck.” She turned the corner. Once, she had found Joey cowering near the stairwell door. But not today.
“Do they know who it was?”
“Hmm?” she said, distracted.
“The guy who pushed you.”
“It was Garrelly. I followed him off the train. And I saw Clayton Hors there, too. I think Hugo and Clay know each other.”
“Wait a minute. Who pushed you?”
“Hugo.” She called: “Joey.”
“Hugo Joey?”
“No,” she said. “Sorry, I’ve lost my cat.”
“Look, you sound a little fried. Get some rest. We can handle things here.”
“I’ll be in later. I need to organize a new phone. I lost everything on the tracks.”
“Well, if you think so. See you then.”
“Wait.” Could she have missed Joey in her sweep of the apartment? Could he have been kidnapped? Catnapped? People did do that. After six and a half years with the News, she knew they did anything. “What happened with Hugo?”
“Who?”
“Hugo Garrelly. The guy in the subway.”
“The guy who pushed you?”
“Yes.”
“I have no idea. What do you mean?”
There was an awkward pause. “What?” she said.
“You’re asking about this man who pushed you onto the train tracks?”
“Hugo Garrelly. The man from the crime scene. The dude in the Soft Horizon hat with the murder logo.”
“Felicity,” Levi said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She tried to figure this out. “Which part?”
“All of it. Why don’t you stay home and rest up? It sounds like you’ve had a hell of a time.”
She stepped into her apartment and closed the door. Percival sat beside his empty food bowl, looking at her. He meowed.
“Where’s my fucking cat,” she said.
“Is your boyfriend with you, Felicity? What’s his name? Gavin?”
She went into the kitchen and began to pull open cupboards. She put the tablet on the counter and crouched to peer around pots and bowls. “He’s at work.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be alone right now.”
She stood and peered down at the tablet. “Two days ago, Madison May was murdered. It was on the front page. Yes?”
“Okay.”
“Not ‘okay.’ Yes or no?”
“I don’t remember seeing the article, but it’s possible.”
“Levi, you wrote the article,” she said. “We worked on it together.”
There was a long pause. “Felicity, I really think someone should be with you. Can you give me your boyfriend’s number?”
“Do you remember working with me on the Maddie May case or not?”
“You don’t do crime, Felicity,” Levi said. “You do politics.”
She felt a burst of irritation. She was trying to find Joey, who could be lost or stolen, and Levi was making no sense. She tugged the sofa away from the wall. Cat hair. A masticated feather that had once been part of a cat toy. “I know I don’t do crime. But you were out, so I went to the scene. 177th Street, Jamaica. A real estate agent was killed. Her name was Madison May.” Silence from the phone. “Hello?”
“I hear you, Felicity, but I don’t know anything about that. I need to ask you something. Did you hit your head?”
“What?”
“When you fell on the tracks, did you hit your head?”
“No,” she said, although she wasn’t completely sure. She had hit her knees and elbows. She might have.
“You sound disoriented. I think you should get yourself to an ER. I’ve found Gavin’s number. He left a message earlier. I’m going to tell him to come get you.”
“Levi, go to my desk. There are handwritten notes there.”
“I really think—”
“Please, just do it.” She stared around the apartment. She was going to find the little fluffball here somewhere. It would be a hilarious story for Gavin. You won’t believe where Joey was.
“I’m looking at your desk. I see no notes about a dead Realtor.”
“What’s your number?”
“What?”
“I lost my phone,” she said. “Let me call you back with video.”
There was some messing around. Her tablet flickered. She was seeing Levi from an unflattering angle. The picture swiveled. There was her desk. She bent over the tablet, trying to discern detail. She couldn’t see her notes. Levi’s face loomed again. “See? It’s a clean desk. Go sit down. I’m serious.”
He was holding his phone so low that she could see up his nostrils. Behind him was the ceiling. She stared.
“Where’s the clock?”
“Which clock is that, Felicity?”
“The clock,” she said, and her voice sounded strangled and panicked. “The loudest fucking clock in the world, which has hung from the ceiling since 1803.”
He didn’t even turn to look. Just gazed at her, his eyes full of concern.
She was holding some items from the sink. Without warning, a glass slipped from her grip and bounced off the floor near Percival. He streaked from the room and disappeare
d behind the sofa.
Joey’s food bowl was not in the sink, she could see now. Like Joey, it was nowhere. It did not exist.
“Felicity,” Levi squawked from the tablet. “Felicity.”
“Something’s wrong with me,” she said.
5
Maddie’s audition ran late. It was a commercial for a hair-loss spray, shot documentary-style. Her role was “Girlfriend.” Her purpose was to express amazement at the physical transformation of her costar, “James.” She had four lines, which she had practiced a variety of ways over the preceding week until landing upon a take that felt solid and interesting and (dare she say) true, but which had turned out to be, as the saying went, not what they were looking for.
“Maddie, is it?” said the director, who was English, and, incidentally, bald as a cantaloupe. “Can you give me some more childlike wonder?”
“More what, sorry?”
He clasped his hands, as if in prayer. “You’re giving me ‘I have a newfound respect for my boyfriend since he got hair.’ But what I want to see is: ‘I am tits-out drooling since he got hair.’ ”
James coughed into his hand. He did have great hair. Maddie doubted it was from a spray. She said: “Sure, okay, I see.”
“Also, when you speak, you keep turning to camera.” Was this bad? From his expression, it was bad. “James has become a god to you. You can barely believe your luck to be in his presence. So where will your eyes be?”
“On James.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t want to look away,” she said, “in case that’s the moment I lose him.”
“Brilliant,” said the director. “Let’s go again.”
They ran the scene three more times. She invented a thing where just before one of James’s (fourteen) lines, she opened her mouth like she had a thought, then just let her lips dangle, as if his words had blown it away. She breathed only when he glanced at her. When he looked away, she untethered a sliver of panic and let it slide across her face.
“Amazing, thank you,” said the director. “We’ll be in touch.”
But they always said, Amazing, we’ll be in touch. She was yet to be cast in something that paid.