“Me, too. But we can always come here whenever we’re in town. And we’ll only be a couple of hours away.”
“True. I just wonder how often we’ll be coming back, realistically. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be in Columbus than here in boring old Smithtown. We probably aren’t going to want to come back except to see our families on holidays.”
“You’re right about that. Hey, I just remembered—I got a call back from Mike Tanner this morning. He thinks he’s found us a decent apartment, not far from campus. Pretty cheap, too.”
“That’s great! So what are we going to do?”
“I told him we’d be up early next week to check it out. Is that okay with you?”
“Yeah, that’s fine. I want to quit having to worry about where we’re going to live up there. That’s really starting to eat at me.”
“Especially since I’ve got to start work in less than a month. We need time to get settled in and familiarize ourselves with the city.”
Daniel cradled Megan in his arm and gazed out at the landscape again. All he could think of was getting out of Smithtown and finally living with Megan in their very own place. When she had informed him halfway through their senior year of high school that she’d been accepted to Capital College, he had suddenly gotten nervous about their future together. He didn’t want to keep her from going to college just because he wasn’t going too, but he didn’t want to be without her, either. He had already decided to pass on college because there was simply no need for him to go. At least not now. He had earned a reputation for his skills in computer programming and had in fact already been approached by a few software companies to start working for them.
But none of those job offers had been from Columbus. So he checked out the job market there and interviewed at several places before eventually landing a gig at Barrington Industries. The starting salary was quite generous for a recent high school graduate and there was plenty of room for advancement.
Although Megan’s parents liked him enough, they were not thrilled at the prospect of their daughter settling down with somebody so early in life. The pair had been dating steadily for over three years and Megan’s folks didn’t feel that she’d had enough opportunities to meet other boys. Plus, they argued, she was barely out of high school and still had her whole life ahead of her.
But since Megan was eighteen and there was really nothing they could do to stop her, they finally gave in. Granted, they could have threatened not to pay her way through college but they knew better than to jeopardize their only child’s education because of her relationship with Daniel. She was very bright and had a promising future ahead of her in business administration, which was her career choice.
Daniel’s parents on the other hand were totally behind them. Besides loving Megan dearly and knowing how much she meant to their son, they were pleased with the way the girl had managed to tone down Daniel’s restless nature and get him on the right track. He had been diagnosed with ADHD in elementary school and the condition started seriously affecting his grades and behavior by middle school. They had begun fearing that he would become a delinquent if they couldn’t get his behavior under control. The doctor had even prescribed a number of different drugs but none of them had worked.
Then suddenly they received a gift from heaven: Megan Sands came into his life. Daniel’s grades improved dramatically; he no longer seemed as unfocused and inattentive around the house and in fact started spending more time studying and honing his computer skills. The girl had a huge positive influence on him.
Wisely, neither Daniel nor Megan ever mentioned marriage or engagement to their parents or their friends. They had agreed to hold off on making that commitment until after they had lived together for a while and had their respective careers firmly established. Both were quite mature for their ages and had learned early on that talking to each other and careful planning was the key to success in this world. They loved one another without doubt, but that didn’t mean they had to tie the knot in order to show or express that love. The key was to be realistic and wait for that moment when marriage seemed right to both of them.
Daniel glanced over at Megan. As she stared out at the vista, a light breeze blew wisps of her hair; her lips were sensuously parted. She was truly, without doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Unfortunately, nearly everyone else in the world felt the same way about her. Although he felt proud and privileged to have her to himself, he still felt apprehensive about her beauty and its effect on others. In fact, he almost wished she wasn’t quite so gorgeous. Dealing with all of those lustful stares she got whenever they were together never got any easier. And it wasn’t just the boys at school, it was grown men, too. Even men old enough to be her father.
He smiled to himself. Megan was his, all his. And he would see to it that nobody ever harmed her. She was his love, his life. Together, the world would be at their feet one day.
He took her in his arms and kissed her. It was another long lingering kiss that he wished would never end.
Chapter 10
-Now-
When Greshmere awoke, it was still dark. He felt absolutely wonderful! He looked over to the east but noticed that there wasn’t the faintest sign of light on the horizon. Since he knew that he’d been in heaven a total of two days, twenty-one hours and 10 minutes, he figured it to be 3:30 a.m.
He recalled that he had gone to sleep much earlier than usual the day before, which might explain why he had awoken this much before daybreak. Yesterday’s events played out in his mind while he stared out at the patterns of light emanating from the buildings and bridges of the city: his sudden urge to fly to Europe, the failed attempt, and his return to the city. His subsequent search for Fleitzer and meeting Kloob in the process.
His chat with Kloob had been engaging. He was fascinated at the tenacity of the bird and how he had spent all of those years in search of something he wasn’t even able to conceive—yet felt driven to pursue nonetheless. How he had suddenly had a vision of a certain view of Central Park that had evidently been significant during his human existence. And finally becoming aware of the dreams he had dreamt every night of the faceless woman who had been his partner in his former life.
How strange!
Yet as strange as it was, it did not seem as absurd or outrageous to Greshmere as it apparently seemed to the others. In fact, he found himself in a similar mindset. Like Kloob, he was restless. And he never felt as comfortable as the others seemed to be here. There always seemed to be something missing; something he was always questioning.
Like why he always felt so ecstatic immediately after awaking from sleep, as he did now. Why did it always seem like he had been dreaming wonderful dreams yet couldn’t recall a single thing about them? And why did he feel such an affinity to Kloob’s situation?
He needed to find some answers, but had no idea where to begin.
He closed his eyes. And then, like magic, a scene flashed in his mind. A bridge. A suspension bridge that looked similar to the Golden Gate Bridge. But much smaller and painted silver, not red. Stretching across a river valley far below in the distance. Trees in the foreground—
He had seen this view so many times before! But where was it?
Greshmere opened his eyes, in awe of this sudden revelation.
He'd just had a vision—like Kloob had described.
What had brought this on, he had no clue. All he knew for certain was that the bridge he had just envisioned was some sort of key to his former life—he knew it just as sure as he was sitting here on the Essex House sign.
He was thrilled. At last, he had a clear purpose. He must find out where that bridge was located. And once he found it, he would be on his way to rediscovering his former life as a human. He still couldn’t conceive why all of this had suddenly happened. Maybe because of his chat with Kloob. As a result of hearing his story, his own situation had begun to rise to the surface. Whatever the reason, he knew this was real. And he now h
ad no doubt that he wanted—no, needed—to discover who he had been before he died.
So where to begin? How could he find out where that bridge was? Was it even possible? He couldn’t just fly all over the country and expect to suddenly happen upon that particular bridge. He didn’t even know what part of the country it was in.
The internet! he thought. That would be a good place to start. But to search the web he would have to have a computer—
Martin’s apartment! Perhaps he could fly over there and use his computer.
But that would have to wait until later in the day and he didn’t want to wait that long. Plus, he didn’t want to involve any of Fleitzer’s friends in this. Not at this point, at least.
He had to find a computer he could use now, right this moment. His first thought was a library, but there wouldn’t be any libraries open at this early hour. And even if there was, how could he possibly expect to get inside and peck out keyboard commands like he was just another patron and not be noticed? That would never float.
He was just going to have to wing this, he decided. Surely somewhere in a city of eight million humans there was a computer he could borrow for a little while.
Without giving it another thought, he sprung off the sign and flew out over the park. He took his time as he headed east and began tracing the perimeter along Fifth Avenue, debating where to begin his search. He spotted an all-night coffee shop and that gave him an idea. If there were anybody up at this time of night working on a computer it would be a college student. He needed to go somewhere near a college campus and try his luck there. He knew of a few colleges in the city and the first one that came to mind was Columbia University. It was located on the upper west side of Manhattan, not very far from the northernmost corner of the park.
He headed northwest diagonally across the span of Central Park until he reached West 110th Street. Increasing his altitude, he continued flying until he spotted Columbia campus and swooped down toward Broadway and West 114th Street. He kept his eyes open for any buildings that looked like campus housing and spotted one on Broadway. He saw lights on in some of the windows and flew up to the first one with an open window. Landing on the windowsill, he peeked inside and saw a boy passed out in a chair in front of a television set. The rest of the apartment was shrouded in darkness. There wasn’t a computer in sight.
He flew up a couple more stories to the next open window and peered inside. His heart skipped a beat when he spotted a laptop on a coffee table in the dimly lit room. The computer was opened, facing away from him and there were several beer bottles and a crumpled bag of Fritos littering the table. Either the occupant had temporarily left the room to do something or had decided to pack it in for the night.
Greshmere flitted over to the nearest adjacent window, assuming it to be part of the same apartment. In the weak light of a clock radio he could see inside a bedroom. The blinds were parted just enough for him to make out two humans in a double bed—a young man and woman who were apparently fast asleep. The laptop had evidently suddenly been abandoned for something more important. In a single bound he returned to the other window, hopped inside and flew across the room to the coffee table.
Although the MacBook Pro was open, its screen was dark. He located the power button and pecked hard at it once, hoping that the screen was only asleep. If it wasn’t, it would be next to impossible for him exert enough pressure to hold down the power button long enough to boot the thing up. There was a brief pause before the screen suddenly came to life.
He was in.
A window in Microsoft Word was open and the owner had gotten as far as typing out his name and English 202 but gone no further. So much for his homework assignment for the night, Greshmere thought wryly. He noted the airport icon in the menu bar that indicated the computer was connected online via Wifi. He somehow needed to get to the internet browser and access Google in order to begin his search. He stood on the keyboard pad for a moment contemplating how to go to Safari from the Word program. Greshmere noticed the dock running along the bottom of the screen and spotted the Safari icon third from the left. Maneuvering the trackpad in order to position the cursor over the app icon and at the same time clicking it was going to be a real challenge—if not altogether impossible. He was a bird, not a human, with spindly feet and a beak instead of fingers.
Greshmere wondered if the trackpad would even respond to his body. If it wouldn’t, he may as well forget this from the get-go. He walked over to the trackpad and placed one of his feet over it. He then dragged it along the trackpad in a firm gliding motion and stared at the cursor on the Word document, hoping to see some movement. But the cursor held its position.
He then backed off and brought his beak down to the trackpad. Using the same technique, he promptly discovered that neither the trackpad nor the cursor was responding to the tip of his beak.
It was useless.
Feeling distraught, he readied himself to leave when something suddenly caught his eye. There on the coffee table under a Time magazine was a wireless mouse of all things. Unable to believe his good fortune, Greshmere managed to flip the magazine off of the mouse enough to allow it to move freely on the tabletop. He was able to move the cursor around on the screen by nudging the mouse along the tabletop with his beak. After several unsuccessful moves, he finally managed to position the cursor directly over the Safari icon. He then stood over the mouse and gave the top center a firm peck with his beak.
The icon bounced a couple of times, the app opened and the browser window materialized on the screen. He’d done it!
After positioning the cursor in the Google search box in Safari’s menu bar, he began the laborious process of pecking out “suspension bridges in the U.S.” It took a bit of getting used to making his way around the keyboard without stepping on the wrong characters while at the same time using his beak to depress the correct keys. After several errors however, he finally managed to get the phrase typed in and hit the return button.
After the page booted up, he read over the choices but found nothing that was going to help. The choices included links to pages listing the tallest suspension bridges, the longest and so on. After reading up on the history of suspension bridges and getting nowhere, he realized that this was not going to be as easy as he had hoped it would be. He needed to know more about the bridge beyond the fact that it was a suspension bridge over a river.
He recalled that the bridge had looked remarkably similar to the Golden Gate Bridge so he cleared the search field and typed in “bridges that look like the Golden Gate Bridge.” It only took him a moment to realize that this was a fruitless search and felt his frustration mounting. How could he expect to do this, given what little he had to go on?
Suddenly a thought came to mind. The images! Google gave the option of viewing all of the images related to a particular search topic. Maybe he could locate the bridge that way.
He positioned the cursor over the images option in the menu and pecked the mouse. Literally dozens of thumbnail images appeared on the screen, the vast majority of them different images of the actual Golden Gate Bridge. After examining several pages of images, he decided to backtrack to his less specific search of U.S. suspension bridges and scan through the images that appeared on the screen.
Occasionally, he would spot one that looked promising and zoom in on it only to be disappointed. He continued loading pages until he noticed one that was a dead ringer but didn’t look quite right. He zoomed in on it and realized that the image looked wrong because of the angle at which the photo was taken. The shot was a close-up at ground level and taken from the other side of the river it crossed. But there was no doubt in his mind: this was the exact same bridge he’d seen in his vision.
He read the brief textual description typed in on the image. The name of the bridge was the General Grant Bridge and it crossed the Ohio River near Smithtown, Ohio.
Greshmere chirped out loud in his excitement: he’d found it! And although nothing about the name
or location of the bridge elicited any sort of memories or feelings, he wasn’t disappointed. He now knew where he had to go.
Smithtown, Ohio.
His legs were literally quivering now from this revelation. He managed to start a new search field and pecked in Smithtown, Ohio. When the Google Maps page booted up, he saw that it was a small river town located in southern Ohio at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers. He zoomed out of the map until New York was included and estimated the distance to be around five or six hundred miles. It was a trip that wouldn’t take him more than a dozen or so hours to travel in good weather.
He was about to further his research on Smithtown when he heard a noise come from the other side of the room. He glanced over and saw the young woman enter from the bedroom, her face groggy from sleep. She suddenly glanced over and saw him. In an instant, Greshmere bounded off the laptop and flew out the window. He heard the girl scream her boyfriend’s name just as he reached the other side of the street.
His research would have to resume at another time. He had a song in his heart as he headed up to the clouds, banked west and immediately embarked on his journey to Ohio.
Chapter 11
-Now-
Greshmere had flown as far as Pittsburgh before he realized that he’d better land and take a look at a map before he went any further. Whatever it was he had done in his former life, he had apparently acquired a fairly decent knowledge of geography in the process. He was certain that flying due west from New York City would take him across the mountainous terrain of central Pennsylvania to the next state west of its border, which would be Ohio. What he wasn’t so sure about was at what point to begin heading in a more southerly direction to avoid taking longer than needed to get to Smithtown.
He had done plenty of thinking in the last seven hours. His initial thoughts were about reaching his destination and the anticipation of what might result from his arrival there. But not long after the dirty gray urban landscape surrounding Manhattan gave way to the breathtaking views of rolling foothills, lakes and rivers—sans huge populations of humans—his thoughts switched over to how wonderful and beautiful earth/heaven truly could be. He began reflecting on his brief existence in this new life and guessed that he must not have been much of a city dweller, for there was something particularly alluring and calming in the natural world below him. This gave him pause to wonder why he had entered heaven in such a populous area in the first place. What significance could there be to that, if any? What was the purpose?
Greshmere Page 8