Not Even Past

by Dave White

  “Who are you?” he said, finally. He wondered how long it was since he last spoke. It felt like only seconds, but it may have been longer. Time felt fluid.

  “No matter. I’m your doctor, for now. We almost lost you two days ago.”

  “The beeping.”

  The doctor didn’t say anything.

  “I remember the beeping, and then everything went away.”

  “You didn’t take to surgery well.”

  Donne sipped more water. The doctor’s face came into focus. He was older, with salt-and-pepper hair and wrinkles on his face. He wasn’t smiling, and his face was sallow.

  “I’m not in a hospital,” Donne said. “I’m in a church.”

  “You still have your powers of observation.” It wasn’t the doctor speaking this time.

  No, it was the familiar voice he’d heard at the warehouse. Just after he’d been shot. Whoever it was stood on the other side of the bed. Donne turned his head, and more pain from his shoulder shot down his arm. It felt like an iron spike digging through his vein into his fingertips.

  The man was younger than the doctor. He had brown hair pushed to the left. He wore a suit with an American flag on his lapel. He was smiling, and his teeth reflected ambient light.

  Senator Henry Stern.

  “Nice to see you again, Mr. Donne. I’m glad you’re not dead.”

  He reached out his hand as if to shake Donne’s. It seemed to be a reflex. When he realized Donne could reach back, he pulled his hand away.

  Donne sipped more water. The basketball started dribbling again. Donne craned his neck and saw two men in tank tops shooting hoops.

  “He needs more rest, senator.”

  Stern smiled again, the kind of smile that wins votes. “We’ll talk soon.”

  Donne leaned back in the bed and took the doctor’s advice. He needed more rest. He closed his eyes.

  As he started to doze off, he heard the someone say, “Why did you let the girl go?”

  The senator’s voice came back hazy. “Someone would miss her.”

  Then, fading, like the end of the song: “Would that be a bad thing?”

  THE WAVES woke him up this time.

  There wasn’t a basketball bouncing, no cars passing, nothing but waves. The noise was constant, and almost sounded like wind through heavy brush. Donne guessed that’s what the sound could have actually been, but something deep within him told him it was waves.

  Opening his eyes, Donne tried to assess the situation. Wires were attached to him, and the fact that he noticed them for the first time just now was probably a sign he was getting better. He could also feel an IV in his arm. Probably trying to keep him hydrated. He wondered if it was there before, when he was drinking from the water bottle.

  Next, he assessed the pain. It wasn’t as sharp as earlier; the nail was no longer digging through his veins. His chest still felt like it was in a vise, but the pressure had been lessened.

  Donne shifted his weight and his vision blurred. The vise tightened again, and the air went out of him. He heard someone walking toward him.

  “Senator?” he asked, through gritted teeth.

  “You should be so lucky.” The voice was pure Jersey Shore.

  Donne craned his neck and saw one of the guys who was playing basketball earlier. A chain rattled around his neck as he walked. Occasionally, it caught a glint of light, which illuminated the crucifix at the end of it.

  “They want you to rest.” He placed a hairy hand on Donne’s arm.

  It was then Donne realized he only had pants on. He wasn’t sure why it surprised him, but it did.

  “I need to walk around,” Donne said.

  “You’re not allowed. Not yet.”

  Donne said, “Tomorrow morning, then.”

  “When the doctor says you can.”

  Donne bit his lip. It took more effort than he expected. “I hope my insurance covers this.”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  Donne looked over. The basketball hoop was still there. “When this is over, we’ll play one-on-one.”

  The guy nodded at Donne’s injuries.

  “You’re babysitting me for the senator?”

  The guy shook his head, and then licked his lips. “I ain’t a babysitter.”

  A wave of exhaustion washed over Donne. He was pretty sure this guy wanted to talk, about anything, but Donne’s mind wasn’t working right. He couldn’t find the right questions to ask. Trying to search his memory was like trying to dig through a child’s toy box to find a dropped Tic Tac. Too much work, too scatterbrained.

  Donne’s head lolled back on to the pillow.

  “That’s right,” Jersey Shore said.

  “Jeanne,” Donne said. The name was like cream rising to the top.

  Before the room went black again, he watched the guy pull out his cell phone and unlock it.

  “I WANT to walk,” Donne said.

  It was morning. He could still hear the waves, but cars passing and the dribbling of the basketball dulled the sound. He didn’t feel pain as much as stiffness this morning.

  As Jersey Shore walked toward Donne, he pulled out his phone again. He tapped it a few times. Donne didn’t try to get out of bed. He wasn’t that stupid. He knew he’d need help. Jersey Shore would have to get the IV in the right place so Donne could push it with him.

  “The doctor said you’ve been shot before,” Jersey Shore said.

  “Once,” Donne said.

  “Ain’t that enough?”

  Donne shrugged and then nearly screamed. He bit it back, then said, “I probably should have thought of that earlier, yeah.”

  Jersey Shore’s phone went off. He checked it and then shrugged. “You can give walking a try.”

  Donne nodded. His neck was covered in sweat.

  Jersey Shore came around and grabbed the IV and wheeled it to the opposite side of the bed. When Donne got up, he could grab it. Jersey Shore stepped back and crossed his arms.

  Donne said, “You’re going to have to help me off the bed.”

  Jersey Shore sighed and then stepped forward. He crouched near the bed and Donne put his arm across Shore’s shoulders. He dropped his feet off the bed and tried to put weight on them. His calves shuddered.

  “Ready?” Jersey Shore said. “One, two, three.”

  Donne tensed his thighs and pushed. He felt Jersey Shore lifting as well. Donne was on his feet. And out of breath. His chest heaved hard. With each exhale, the vise compressed. His chest and brow were soaked now. Donne wrapped his left hand around the IV carrier.

  Every nerve, every muscle, every fiber in Donne’s body screamed for him to go back to bed. He squinted against the drops of sweat in his eyes.

  One step.

  “You want me to put you back?” Jersey Shore asked.

  Donne grunted.

  Just. Take. One. Step.

  “I didn’t quite catch that,” Jersey Shore said.

  Donne wanted to lift his foot. One in front of the other. That’s all it takes. Air was hard to come by. The knife was digging in his left vein. His triceps were twitching.

  One step.

  “Put me back,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  “Put me back!”

  Donne slumped into Jersey Shore’s arms and then back into the bed. Donne leaned back into the pillow. He brought his right hand to his mouth and bit into his fist, trying to will the pain away.

  “Do you need the doctor?” Jersey Shore’s tan seemed to have faded.

  Donne shook his head.

  “Okay.”

  “Tomorrow,” Donne said.

  “I’ll call him in an hour if you want.”

  Donne shook his head once more. “Tomorrow we try again.”

  KATE COULDN’T get in touch with the senator. Days later, and there was no luck at his office number—his secretary said he was busy and would call back, which he didn’t—and the number he’d called her from was now disconnected. She’d heard nothing about
Jackson.

  Her stomach sank thinking about him. Stern promised her Jackson would be okay and that he would call when it was over.

  Meanwhile, the picture of the man who drove the van waited on her phone. Social media wasn’t an option. If she posted the picture on Facebook or Twitter, the senator would undoubtedly find out. They had too many common friends.

  And she couldn’t call or text those friends either. Keeping a lid on things made it difficult to get answers.

  Kate sat in her own apartment now. Staying in Jackson’s only brought tears and anxiety. She’d bought a case of wine earlier that afternoon. That was probably overdoing it, but she didn’t care. While lugging it back to her apartment, she passed a beat cop eating lunch in his car. She never thought her knees would go to jelly at the thought of the phrase beer goggles.

  Now, with a glass of chardonnay at her side, she sat with her iPad in her hands. After googling “State Senator Henry Stern,” Kate loaded the images tab. Six pages of images opened, and she exhaled. That would be doable. It wasn’t like she ran a search for Chris Christie.

  The first images were photos taken by the Star-Ledger. They were from Stern’s first day in office. He sat at his desk, smiling. The American flag stood over his shoulder, and a medal he’d received during his time in service hung on the wall. The caption referred to Ocean County electing a decorated military hero.

  Kate remembered the election. Stern basically ran unopposed. A Democrat named Michael Miragliotta ran a cursory campaign, but Stern had the governor’s approval, which mean Miragliotta was poll poison. Stern won by thirty points. She went with her father to the victory party but only stayed an hour. There were too many balloons, too much confetti, and several drunk Wall Street guys home from work and wanting to get laid.

  Not Kate’s scene. She was still in law school.

  After flipping through a page of photos of Stern in his office, Stern shaking Christie’s hand, and Stern holding a baby or two, she found a few more promising photos. These pictures were of Stern out in public. In one, he held a microphone, mouth slightly open, speaking to an audience. He was at one of his town halls, undoubtedly talking about following Christie’s lead with Rutgers and work their own merger in Ocean County.

  A year ago, Rutgers had merged with UMDNJ, the state’s medical school. It was a megapolitical and educational move that pushed Rutgers into the upper echelon of research universities. It also saved the state from covering the debt UMDNJ had dug itself into.

  Now Stern wanted to do the same on a much smaller scale. The University of New Jersey and Benjamin Franklin College would merge. UNJ would gain a law school and a ton of debt as well. It wasn’t the same move, but it was going to be a feather in Stern’s reelection cap. Except most of the faculty and administration of BFC was against the move. They were fighting it big time. Protests, letter writing, even a billboard taken out on the Turnpike.

  Kate looked at the people sitting behind Stern. Two senior citizens, and one familiar face. The guy from the picture. Electricity buzzed across her skin. Kate scanned the caption, but there weren’t any other names beyond Stern’s. She clicked to another picture.

  It took her another ten to find the guy in the van again. This time Stern was standing on the Jersey boardwalk, just after Superstorm Sandy. He was listening to a woman who had lost her house speak. Stern’s face was politician-serious, as if he knew the camera was there. The woman, however, didn’t. Tears and makeup streaked her face. Behind Stern, much clearer this time, was the man from the picture. He stood, hands clutched in front of him, wearing a dark suit, looking just as serious as Stern. Kate snapped a picture of the photo with her phone and texted it to her dad with the message Who is the bodyguard?

  Seconds passed, then her dad wrote back Luca Carmine. Stern likes him a lot. Good worker. Why?

  Kate’s heart picked up the pace. She ignored her dad’s query.

  She’d forgotten the bodyguard story. Most politicians in the state had a state trooper assigned to them as protection. Stern made a show of “smaller government” and hired his own bodyguards. Three of them.

  Kate opened Google again and typed in “Luca Carmine.”

  There wasn’t much. A Facebook page, which she opened, but it was ultra-privatized. Gave her no help. There was a news article about a 5K run where a Luca and a Carmine were finishers.

  And then a blog post which made her eyes light up. She swallowed some chardonnay and clicked on it.

  The post was written by a former Ledger writer who’d taken a buyout and now ran a blog that no one read. He’d also published a few mystery novels. Kate had read one and liked it. The article was about Tony Verderese’s funeral.

  The former head of the New Jersey mob.

  Man, Mike Miragliotta must have stood no chance in that election so many years ago. No one in the press looked into this?

  It was a brief mention. One sentence. Luca Carmine was a nephew of Verderese’s. He was a pallbearer.

  “HOW LONG have you known she was alive?” Senator Stern asked.

  Donne wasn’t sure how long he’d been there. He was starting to wonder, however, if it was actually something to hydrate him in the IV. The way he was fading in and out, it could have been a sedative.

  Fighting through the clouds, Donne said, “Not as long as you have.”

  “You must be so angry.”

  Donne thought about it. Things had moved too fast to decide that. In the morning, he got an email. By the evening, he was bleeding on the floor of a warehouse, and Jeanne was gone again. He took a deep breath. His chest didn’t fight him on that too much.

  Progress.

  “I think I’m more pissed off I’ve been shot,” he said.

  The smell of salt hung in the air. He remembered frankincense, vaguely, but that seemed to have filtered out of the former church. The sea salt, however, was still strong. Where ever he was, they hadn’t moved him too far. He may have been in a different town, but he was still at the beach. Maybe he was even just a town over, Asbury Park, Bradley Beach.

  Donne tried to think of abandoned churches and abandoned towns. A year ago, it would be impossible to find one. After Sandy, he could be anywhere.

  “That’s good. Go with that.” Stern was sitting in a wheeled office chair.

  “You’re a psychologist?”

  Stern smiled. “I’m a man of many talents.”

  A heavy door opened and closed. Donne looked to see the doctor. He shook Jersey Shore’s hand, and gave them a wave. He seemed way too cheerful to being doing examinations in an abandoned church.

  A wave of pain rolled off him. Donne gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut. When it passed, he asked, “How long has it been, Henry?”

  “About—I don’t know—seven years ago?”

  The doctor put on his white coat and took out a stethoscope. He pressed it to Donne’s chest. It was cold. His back stiffened, and that made everything hurt again. The doctor peeled at Donne’s bandages. Hair pulled with the gauze. Compared to every other pain, that twinge was almost pleasurable.

  The doctor nodded. “You’re getting better. No infection. The wound is healing.”

  “He’s a lucky man,” Stern said.

  Donne looked around. “And it’s only been a few days.”

  The doctor shined a light in Donne’s eyes. “How do you feel? Groggy? Nauseous? Or fine?”

  “Less groggy than last night.”

  The doctor nodded. “I understand you wanted to walk this morning. How far did you get?”

  Donne wanted to tell him he walked across the church, picked up the basketball, and swished a three-pointer. The net was a tease. Donne had played in high school, started at shooting guard his senior year, even though he smoked weed every night. He wanted the ball in his hands right now.

  “I couldn’t even lift my foot.”

  Again the doctor nodded. “It’ll come.”

  “No. I think the last time I saw you was the night I met Kate. The fundraise
r at Olde Towne,” Donne said to Stern.

  Stern shrugged. “That’s where you met her? Life’s small coincidences.”

  Trying to pull those memories from the recesses of his brain made Donne feel like a spider was crawling around his gut.

  Stern said, “I was poli sci. She was—”

  “Education and English.”

  Stern smiled. “She was always so busy working. When did you ever see her?”

  Donne thought about Martin and Jeanne being “pretty close,” and the spider grew to tarantula size.

  “She came back and left you.” Stern snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

  The doctor was attaching new bandages to Donne. He turned to Stern and said, “Tell Luca to keep cleaning the wounds. Try some solid foods tonight.”

  Donne closed his eyes. “I wish I couldn’t feel that.”

  “Do you remember what Jeanne was working on when she ‘died’?” Stern used air quotes.

  “I was busy with my own small business,” Donne said.

  Donne kept searching his memory. As was often the case when he looked at the past, Donne wondered how stoned he was back then. It really was as bad as they said. He had memories of Jeanne’s wake, but Martin said there hadn’t been one.

  And what else was trapped in his brain and needed to come out? Maybe he always knew about Martin and Jeanne, but couldn’t bring the information to the forefront. The tarantula started to grow again. Donne felt bile burn the back of his throat.

  “Tell me,” Donne said. “I was pretty fucked up back then.”

  Stern shook his head. “No.”

  “You beat the crap out of her,” Donne said.

  Stern leaned forward. “Two of my best men are dead because of you.”

  “Why did Jeanne fake her death?”

  Stern said, “The man she did go with shot you.”

  Donne’s felt the tarantula climb up the inside of his chest into his throat.

  Stern shook his head. “Don’t play games with me.”

  It felt like there were pieces of a puzzle scattered about in front of Donne, but he couldn’t find the edges. But it appeared he was going to have a lot of time to sort through them. Despite the urge to get up, lying here would at least give him some time to sort things out. It felt like Stern was leading him somewhere, but Donne would have to get there himself.