“You’re looking for your ex-wife and daughter?”
“Yes,” I say. “Do you know them?”
When he nods, it reminds me of an old dead tree branch that’s about to fall away from the tree trunk.
“I should know her,” he says, voice gravelly, tight, sad. “I was married to her for thirty years.”
So I’m not wrong at all … I haven’t made a mistake …
The solid wood floor beneath my feet feels as if it’s turning to putty. My head spins, my balance is thrown off. Raising my hand, I press it against the exterior wall as if to hold myself up.
“Brian,” I say, my voice hoarse from a sudden lack of moisture. “What the hell’s happened? The whole world is out of whack.”
He opens the door wider, steps out onto the porch so his face and my chest are only inches apart.
“Chase,” he says. “Chase Baker? Is that really you?”
“Yes, it is.”
He forms a smile. “We all thought you were dead.”
“Dead,” I say. “I’m most definitely not dead.”
He shakes his head. “Last we heard you were on the trail of a cave in the northern Italian forest, and you were never heard from or seen again.”
The dizziness gets worse. My world spinning out of control. My imagined world … my made up world. Or is it?
“I’ll say it again, Brian. I am most definitely not dead. Now, can I please speak to Leslie and Ava?”
Another shake of his head. “You okay, Chase? You wanna sit down?”
“Yah,” I say. “Maybe that’s a good idea.”
He invites me into his house. The curtains are drawn which explains the darkness. The only furniture consists of a couple of easy chairs that share a common table and a couch that faces a fireplace. There are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with books and novels. I’m drawn to one shelf that houses a series of paperbacks. I go to them, pull one down. It’s one of mine. The Shroud Key. It was published a couple of years ago based on my adventures in revolutionary Cairo. But the book I hold in my hand is old. Decades old, the spine broken, some of the pages unglued, others torn, the print faded.
“My God, Chase,” Brian says. “You remember bookstores? How much fun it was to browse around inside of them? I remember that sad day, in twenty twenty-two I believe it was, when New York City’s last remaining bookstore finally closed. The Mysterious Bookshop down there on Warren Street near the Battery … which is now under water due to the rising sea levels.” He puts on a pair of reading glasses. “The Shroud Key,” he says. “Leslie bought that in the Mysterious Bookshop, if I’m correct, during one of your signings.”
My hands are trembling, I turn to the opening pages of the novel. There it is, my signature.
“To my girls, all my love…
Chase”
The ink has faded somewhat, but I can still read it. I remember how strange it felt inscribing the novel to them because it was the first time we were all together in the same place at the same time. Me, my ex, Ava, and even Brian who stood on the opposite side of the shop. But the memory is fresh in my mind because it only happened two years ago.
Or did it?
I shelve the tattered book, turn back to Brian. He looks me up and down.
“I have to tell you Chase,” he says. “It’s good to see you. Good to see you’re not only not dead, but that you look remarkable for a man who must be, what, eighty?”
I shake my head. “I’m fifty-one.”
He laughs, but it causes his lungs to strain and the laughter turns into a coughing fit. He pulls a handkerchief from his back pocket, spits something into it, then returns it to the same pocket. He sits himself down in the far easy chair.
“Well, let’s see then,” he says. “If you’re only fifty-one, that makes me fifty-eight.” Another smile. A sad smile. “I was healthy back when I fifty-eight. No cancers, no heart problems. I was a healthy working stiff who loved his job, his wife, and his stepdaughter like she was his own.” His smile fades. “It’s amazing how all that can go bad so quickly. Forget the cancer. It’s the children that can age you.”
I cross the living room floor, take a seat beside him in the second easy chair.
“Brian,” I say, “what year is it?”
He tells me.
“Twenty forty-four,” I repeat. “I must be on some kind of new drug because I seemed to have skipped the past twenty-nine years. Or misplaced them anyway.”
“You’re talking to the king of forgetfulness,” he says. “The brain isn’t what it used to be.”
My eyes drift to the walls. Photos of my ex and Brian on their wedding day, Leslie looking beautiful and happy in her long, white gown with her long, brown hair. Photos taken at the beach in Cape Cod, Ava playing in the sand. Then some pictures that don’t seem real to me. A young woman, who looks a lot like Ava, graduating from high school in a cap and gown, and then another of her graduating college in a different cap and gown. Yet another of her walking a church aisle arm in arm with Brian. He’s wearing a classic black tux and she’s wearing a white dress just like her mother wore, her hair also long and brown. That’s where the photos stop.
“Brian,” I say. “Ava is only ten. These photos on the wall …” I let the thought dangle, he gets the point.
“She’s not ten anymore, Chase,” he says. “If only it were possible for her to go back to ten years old.” He’s shaking his head again. “Things might be so different for her.”
My stomach is beginning to ache, along with my head. I stand.
“Brian,” I say, my voice raised, “where the hell is my ex?”
“Take it easy, Chase,” he says, holding out his hands like he’s signaling me to settle down. “She’s not here.”
“Well, where is she then? I’ll go find her.”
“No, you don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand, Brian?”
“You see, Chase, she’s passed on.”
The news hits me like a swift punch to the gut.
“She died,” I repeat, as if saying the word will help it sink in. “She … died. When? How?”
“She died, not long after …”
I take hold of his arm. It’s skin and bones, but that doesn’t stop me from squeezing it.
“Not long after what?”
“After Ava fell off the wagon.”
“The wagon. What’s that mean, for Christ’s sake? Tell me Brian, how did my ex-wife die?”
“She died of a broken heart.”
“Over what?”
“Over Ava. Over what’s happened to her after she lost her husband and only child.”
There’s a big brass band playing inside my head now. The noise is deafeningly loud. Painful. I need to get out of this place. This museum of horrors. I need to find my daughter.
I go to the front door, Brian trying his best to keep up with me. I grab hold of the opener, but before I turn it I look back at him. Look him in the eyes.
“Brian, where’s Ava?”
He bites down on his bottom lip, exhales a deep breath.
“Okay, Chase,” he says, “you’re her biological father so you have a right to know, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to like it.”
“Tell me, Brian,” I insist. “Tell. Me.”
“She’s at Bellevue,” he says. “The psyche ward.”
Brian lends me one thousand dollars’ worth of bitcoins. Tells me I can pay him back whenever I get the chance. Somehow, I feel like I’ll never get the chance. That one, or both, of us won’t have the chance to live long enough. I exit the house knowing in my gut, I’ll never see him again.
I don’t know how it’s possible I’m not falling down the steps to the sidewalk. That’s how off kilter I am. I get in and tell the computer to take me to Bellevue Hospital on 1st Avenue. Truth be told, I could walk there in less than fifteen minutes, but I want . . . need … to get there as soon as possible. Sooner than soon.
The cab pulls up out front.
I use the bitcoins to pay a fare that also includes the one I skipped out on. The computer must recognize my face, or voice, or both. My guess is, it’s programmed to recognize any language and respond in kind. Maybe it also recognizes criminals, or suspected criminals, and fugitives from justice. Maybe I should have walked.
When my balance is settled, the machine tells me to have a nice day. I tell it to go to hell, to which it doesn’t respond at all. I almost miss having to tip a real driver.
The hospital entrance is outfitted with more security than an international airport. I’m required to remove my belt, my shoes, my wallet, and just about anything else that isn’t biologically attached to my body. Then, when I’m finally through the scanners, a blue-uniformed cop runs a metal detector up and down my body.
“Overkill don’t you think?” I say.
“Tell it to somebody who cares, buddy,” he replies. “We didn’t fight and win the terrorist wars just to let our guard down now.”
The terrorist wars. I want to ask him how long it took to finally defeat radical Jihad, but he’s a cop and he’ll think I’m off my rocker. Which I am. But then, I’m in the home of ‘off your rocker.’ Break out the straitjackets.
I go to the information desk and, with heart in throat, ask for Ava Baker.
The woman at the desk checks her computer, comes back with the room, floor, and wing number. Then she asks me if I’m family, and if I am family, why hasn’t she seen me before?
“Identification,” the middle-aged, blonde-haired woman insists.
I reach into the interior pocket on my bush jacket, pull out my passport, hand it to her through the slot at the bottom of the glass. She takes it, looks it over, her eyes going from my passport photo to me in real-life, real-time, back to the photo again.
“This document is sorely out of date and totally obsolete,” she says with a shake of her head. “Everybody requires a chip since the terrorist wars. You should know that.”
I have to think quick here, or else the cops are going to escort me out.
“I’m on the list, believe me,” I say. “I’ve been working in Africa building homes and schools for over twenty-five years.” I smile. “The time flies when you’re doing some good for humanity.”
She cocks her head.
“I have to admit,” she says, “every now and again I come across an old passport someone’s trying to pass off as ID. People who live under a rock.” Her eyebrows perking up. “Heed the warning my friend, you didn’t hear it from me, but you get caught with one of these, it will mean instant jail time. Go get your chip.”
“Today,” I say. “For sure.”
“So, you’re Ava Baker’s father?” she says. “Tell me something. How do you stay so young?”
“Oh,” I say. “I’m not her dad. I’m her older brother. We were split up when we were kids. She went to live with her mom in Gramercy Park. I stayed upstate in Albany. Until I went off to school and then Europe and Africa.”
“Well, that explains why you’re off the grid, I guess. Chip mandate has only been in effect for a year. Still four months of the grace period left. But that will fly by.” Shoving a guest tag through the glass opening. “Put that on and you’re good to go.”
“Thanks for your help,” I say, grabbing the laminated ID.
“Keep the visit short,” she says. “The patients on that floor aren’t exactly the best conversationalists.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
On the wall, a sign says, Elevator A – D. “Psychosis Treatment.”
I head for it.
Arriving at the fifteenth floor, I go to the circular front desk, show my ID to one of the nurses working there.
“I’m here to see Ava Baker,” I say.
She’s a petite, red-haired woman. Young. Maybe in her late twenties. She stands.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you before,” she says.
“I’m Ava’s older brother. I’ve been away. Africa.”
“How exciting,” she says. “Terrible things happening there. The drought. The wars. The famine. The disease. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Hell of a world we live in, I know. I don’t recognize any of it.”
We start walking down a long, brightly lit corridor occupied with patients wearing pajamas and slippers. Some of them wear robes. Most of them look like they can barely keep their eyes open, much less work up the energy to form words.
“You are aware of Ava’s condition?” says the nurse after a time.
“I just know she lost somebody close and now she’s having some trouble.”
The nurse stops dead in her tracks. She looks into my eyes.
“It’s true she lost someone close. She lost her husband and her young son in an automobile accident up in the Catskills. She, alone, survived without a scratch. She never forgave herself for surviving, or so her doctors will tell you. Her world, as you can imagine, fell apart then, rather rapidly. She turned to alcohol and drugs. Enough to destroy her liver after a five-year constant diet. Now, with synthetic organs, we were able to save her life. But, trust me Mr. Baker, they still haven’t invented a synthetic brain that can replace the real thing. A brain erased of the terrible memories.”
She stops before the open door of a room.
“Listen, Mr. Baker,” she says, “I’m not sure of the last time you laid eyes on your sister, but I’ve seen plenty of pictures of what she looked like prior to the accident, and no amount of explanation will prepare you for what you’re about to see.”
Entering into a room, I follow close behind wishing to God I’d wake up from this nightmare.
How do you handle seeing your own daughter who has overnight gone from a beautiful little girl full of life and promise to a bloated, gray-haired, early middle-aged woman who resembles a corpse? A portion of your brain refuses to believe it’s the same person, but the nurse with you is proof that this is the flesh of your flesh, the blood or your blood. Your divine creation. And you have no choice but to beat the living hell out of yourself because if you’d only been there for her … if only you’d been her protector … maybe none of this would have happened.
My eyes fill with tears. I try to speak, but I can’t. The only thing I can manage is to take hold of her hand, squeeze it.
“Can she speak?” I ask, the words difficult if not impossible to put together.
“She hasn’t spoken a word in five years, Mr. Baker,” she says. “She’s catatonic and will be for the rest of her days.”
The oxygen seeps out of my body, along with any desire I have to live.
“How on God’s earth could she do this to herself?”
“Your sister should have never taken that first drink back when she was a youngster,” she says. “One of the benefits of advanced genetic technology is the ability to identify the specific genes in people that make them drink, or partake in illegal drug use, or get depressed, or even commit murder, or acts of terrorism. Your sister has the gene that makes alcohol a much more inviting escape than it is to those without the gene.” She exhales. “If only someone had told her when she was young to stay away from the first drink, perhaps she would have learned to cope without alcohol in her life. She would have been able to move on after the death of her husband and child without booze and drugs as a crutch.” She looks me in the eye. “If this were even ten or twenty years ago, she would not have survived.” She steps back from the bed. “I’ll give you some time alone with her, but I’m going to have to ask you to make it quick. Ava is in a state of perpetual coma, for lack of a better term, but she still reacts to overstimulation, and it’s not a good reaction.”
A tear runs down my cheek. “Does that mean she can hear me?”
“It’s quite possible,” she says. “Well, then, I’ll leave you two alone.”
When she’s gone, I hold my daughter’s hand to my heart, and I begin to weep. I place my face in the nape of her neck, and I beg for forgiveness.
“If you can hear me, hone
y. If you can hear my voice, can you ever forgive me for leaving you alone? Please, please forgive me.”
I squeeze her hand and I await the sound of her voice. It never comes. But, I swear to God, I feel her squeeze my hand in return. Maybe I’m just wishing it to be true, but I feel something there. A slight tightening of the fingers that tells me she forgives me. That she still loves me.
I stand there with my face in her neck until there’s a knock at the door, and the nurse tells me it’s time. Standing up straight, I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, then kiss her on the forehead.
Leaning down so my lips are close to her ear, I whisper, “I love you. I will always love you, my little girl.”
Turning, I give the nurse a nod, and I leave the room a defeated, shattered shell of the man I once was.
Outside, the day only seems to be getting hotter, quieter, more hostile, more lonely … closer to death.
I look up at the sun and it seems to be concentrating the entirety of its heat upon me. As if God is punishing me. And perhaps he is. I’ve gone from dizzy to near faint. I can’t feel my extremities. Maybe if I had something to drink. Something cold, something hard. Something to make me forget this nightmare.
Across the street, a gin mill with an old neon sign mounted to the exterior brick wall spells out BAR in vertically positioned capital letters. Without giving it a second thought, I turn, step out into the road. I hear a horn, the clash of brakes locking up, the squeal of rubber burning the pavement, and then the nightmare goes black.
32
When I open my eyes, I’m seated on the stone floor only feet away from the pool of water. Da Vinci is seated before me, lotus style, lit candles set out on the floor, the dancing flame creating shadows inside the dim stone chamber. Directly to his right is the circular pool. Mounted to a perch above the master’s head is the hawk that lead me here, his black eyes reflecting the candle’s flame.
My eyes are still wet with tears, my body still trembling. But, I know for certain I am back. Back to the real world, however strange it appears to be inside this cave.
My God, Ava, could it possibly be true that you are still okay? That you, and your mother, are still alive? That you are still just an innocent little girl? That there’s still time to save you? …
Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 6) Page 13