The Danger of Being Me (32 page)

I laughed again.  I couldn't help it.  Because I had done just that, and this heartless bastard would never know the infinite will it had taken to accomplish such impossible work.  So I laughed.  I had stepped out of the crashing blue under the dying reflection of a bleak moon, and I had wandered through a valley of shadows to get to him.

I had called him from a phone on the sidewalk outside Pete's Pour House in an unfamiliar town, convinced him that I was someone else.  Someone he knew.  And of all the ridiculous possibilities, it had been the word
dude
that had convinced him.  It really had been just that easy.

So I laughed.  I couldn't help it.  "You want me to drop by instead?" I asked, glancing to the tavern's door.  At a reading
Breakfast served 6am – 8am.  Bar opens at 3
.

Hank sucked in a hard breath.  "You ever show up at my place," he said, his own voice low and tight, "your own mother won't recognize what's left of you."

"Dude," I laughed again, just once.  "My mom wouldn't recognize what's left of me if I offered her a pack of smokes for a blowjob," I told him.  Then I went silent.  I stared at my warped reflection in the dented sheet of metal behind the payphone, shocked at my own words.  They sounded a little too genuine in my own head.  Hank snorted, and I didn't like the sound of it.  But mostly I wondered if Hank was the only one who thought I was someone else.

More rustling crossed the line from his end, and liquids splashed in the background. Hank grunted into the phone, then said, "I got the rest of your stuff, man."

"Good," I said.  A topless Miata convertible pulled up Cortland to the intersection and stopped at the light.  Three teenage girls rode in the car, wearing oversized sunglasses.  I wondered what their story might be.  Where they were going; where they had been.  What long and curving path they were following through the world.  One girl spotted me, laughed, waved.  She thought I was cute, or she was making fun of me.  It didn't really matter.  I waved back.  She laughed again, delighted.  Blew me a kiss.  The traffic light flicked from red to green.  The Miata cut left.

"—to wait `til tomorrow, man," Hank was saying.

I shook my head.  The mouthpiece slipped away from the side of my throat.  I answered, and I couldn't stop the word.  "Can't."  I froze, the receiver pressed to my ear, and listened.  I breathed through my nose, angled the phone slowly back to the side of my neck.  I waited for Hank to figure out that I wasn't the person he thought I was.

"Well why the fuck not?" he demanded instead.

I grinned.  I couldn't help it.  "If that was any of your fuckin business, you'd already know."

"So you can't wait one fuckin day for—" he started.

"Hank," I cut him off, sighing, making it clear just how tiresome I found this whole conversation.  "I'm down here at Pete's Pour House.  You remember where that is?"

It was another risky gamble.  But this one felt right as well, and I took the chance.  "Yeah?" he said.

I almost laughed.  "Then get the fuck down here."

"I gotta be at work in a fucking hour, man."

"Good," I said.  "I got somewhere to be at eight."  That almost certainly wasn't true.  Hank almost certainly didn't know that.  I told him, "You got ten minutes, dude."

And I hung up the phone.

I stood at the payphone for a long moment, watching my own dented reflection.

My hand held onto the receiver, as if letting go would finalize this lunatic transaction.  It occurred to me that I could drop four more quarters into the phone and punch in Hank's number and tell him this had all been a huge misunderstanding, a fabulous joke.  I could tell him he didn't need to come down to Pete's Pour House.  He could meet the guy he knew tomorrow like he planned.

I could do that. As long as I didn't let go of the receiver.  Because once I let go, the deal was done.  If I let go and then changed my mind and tried to call Hank again, an automated voice would tell me that the number was no longer in service.  Or it would go on ringing forever and never be answered.  Or it would click once, perhaps twice, and then drop off into infinite silence.

Or maybe it would connect.  Maybe I would hear that thought from inside my head that sounded too much like my own.  It might tell me that I had reached the fractured psyche of Michael J. Everett.  He wouldn't be available at the moment, but if I left my name and number and a brief message, he would get back to me as soon as possible.

I shuddered.  A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature shot up my spine, and my skin broke out in electrified gooseflesh.  This was insane, and it was going to get me killed.  I cracked a mad grin at the grisly thought of my shattered body lying in a dumpster behind the Schanne Sweet Shoppe.  My dented reflection grinned back at me.

I let go of the phone.  Because Hank was on the hook now.  And I was going to reel him all the way in.

I looked away, down toward St. Ursula.  I could see the mouth of the driveway that I had turned down to park the Wagoneer.  I would have a clear line of sight.

I hiked my backpack higher up onto my shoulder, checked the traffic, and crossed Hucknall toward the bus stop.  A man already sat at one end of the bench, chattering into a cellphone.  "Because she wants to sit center-ice," he told the person on the other end.  "And we both know damn well that whatever Lily wants, Lily gets."

I grinned at that and settled onto the opposite end of the bench, opening my newspaper, scanning the headlines.  Nothing caught my attention.  Each article described some variation on the themes of love, pride, hate, lust, justice, greed, charity, wrath, courage, grief, and hope.  That litany of vice and virtue, playing itself out against upon the stage of human history.  Nothing new happened in the world.  Not even in Hobbes Landing.  Such as it were.  Not even if this dubious endeavor wound up getting me killed.

I settled on the Life Section when I saw a photograph of Woodrow Sykes.  It was a recent picture, and the man still didn't look a day over seventy.  He wore the same plaid flat cap that he'd worn when I interviewed him in January for the
Creek Reader
's retrospective Student Spotlight.

He had told me that his wife had bought that hat in July of 1929, a few months before the stock-market crash.  If he had told the same story to the writer from
USA Today
, that reporter hadn't found it worth mentioning.  I had.

A woman approached the bus stop carrying an attaché case.  She might have been five years older than me.  She wore a Rutgers class ring and no wedding band, with her auburn hair cut short and flipped out at the ends.  I read the story in the Life Section of my newspaper.  Roosevelt Park in Edison Township was hosting a public poetry festival on April 4th.  Sykes would be performing.

More than two dozen poets would be in attendance.  Cyrus Cassells and Julianna Baggott were coming in from Delaware.  Amiri Baraka was scheduled to read.  Ron Silliman would be there, and so would the only known writer of Wenrohronon descent, Aquila Pomarina.

I finished the story, and glanced across the street to the payphone next to the front door of Pete's Pour House.  I decided that if I did not die today, I was going to attend that public poetry festival.  I would take Amber.

7.

I decided to give Hank fourteen minutes to show up.

That was when the next bus would arrive heading west.  I read the Roosevelt Park poetry festival article a second time, and realized that I had no idea what the man named Hank or his car looked like.  The man sitting at the opposite end of the bench from me might be Hank, and I had just asked him when the bus would arrive.

That would be just my luck.  But I put that problem aside, because it was only a problem, and because there was nothing to do about it now.  Hank would show up, or he would not.  If he did, I would recognize him.  I didn't know how, but I believed it.  I would recognize him.

And if no one showed up at The Pour House, and the bus came and went and took the man with the cellphone and the woman with the attaché case with it, I would walk back up to St. Ursula, climb back into the Wagoneer, and decide what to do then.  Maybe I would end up at 30th Street Station after all.  Maybe Hobbes Landing would be the last waystation before I rode off into my own personal undiscovered country in an Amtrak railcar.

But I didn't think too precisely on the event.  Whatever would be would be, as the Oscar-winning song went.  And I still had the rest of my newspaper to read.  So I read it.

Twelve minutes after that, I glanced up from the Sports Section and checked the front of the tavern.  No one had approached the bar since I had hung up the phone.  Traffic passed on Hucknall, headed west to Collingswood, headed east to Springdale.  And a moment later, I caught sight of a Dodge Shelby Dakota pickup rolling up Cortland toward the intersection.  I watched the truck pull to a stop at the light, and a shard of sunlight kicked off something through the windshield.  Something dangling from the rearview mirror on a thin chain.  Something that looked blue.

I looked down at the Sports Section again.  The light changed, and the Dakota turned left onto Hucknall.  The driver crossed all four lanes of traffic and eased toward the parking lane in front of the bus stop.  The truck passed so close that I confirmed what I had initially only suspected.  I saw what was dangling from the rearview mirror.

A
cornicello
made of blue jasper on a thin steel chain.

Rage exploded like heat-lightning across the surface of my brain.  That sweltering scarlet veil crashed down on me like a murderous tornado reaching out of a bloody thunderhead.  I sucked in a hot breath, tasted brimstone and cordite burningthe back of my throat.  I blew out the breath, replaced it, watched the black pickup pull forward into a space at the curb in front of a hobby shop.

The newspaper rattled in my hands, and I dredged up every ounce of my own infinite will.  I burned it all forcing myself not to react, not to move, not to stand from this bench and charge down the sidewalk and smash in the Dakota's passenger window with my bare fist.

I blinked hard, and took another long breath.  That scarlet veil receded to the brokedown outlands of my fractured psyche, just enough to let me think.  The Dakota idled for a second, then the engine cut out.  Another long moment passed. I glanced back down at my Sports Section, to yesterday's boxscores.  The Devil Rays had beaten the Tigers, eleven to eight.  Rich Butler had hit his first career home run.  I heard a door open, and looked up.

The driver's side door of the Dakota swung out toward the street.  Hank climbed out of the truck.  He looked one way up Hucknall, then down the other, waited for a gap to open up in the traffic, and jogged across the highway.  He looked perfectly ordinary in a black jacket with the collar flipped up, a pair of blue jeans, and engineer boots.

He wore rimless eyeglasses and an untidy nest of hair that fell across his forehead and a shaggy soul patch under his lower lip.  For one ridiculous instant, he reminded me of Professor Chambers who was just Matt to his students.  He crossed the street, and I tried to exert my infinite will to force him to turn around and catch my eye.  I wanted him to see me, just once, just so that he would know.

He didn't turn around. Didn't look back. He crested the curb, crossed the sidewalk, and stalked into the bar.

Twenty seconds later, a long white bus pulled between me and Pete's Pour House.

The man with the cellphone and the woman with the attaché case and three other people who had joined us filed up the narrow stairs onto the NJTransit vehicle.  As they did, I stuffed my newspaper into my bookbag, switched it to my other shoulder, and hiked as quickly as I dared. I crossed Cortland before the bus started down Hucknall again, and chanced one brief glance back in its direction.  The Dakota sat at the curb.  Hank was still inside.

I stuffed my hands into my pockets, heading for St. Ursula with my head down.  I walked leisurely, forcing myself not to hurry.  I had time.  Hank would spend a few minutes scanning the interior before figuring out that the person he was looking for wasn't there.  He would assume that the Dude had waited ten minutes, maybe less, and then left.  He might track down whoever was working the breakfast shift and ask if the Dude had left him a message.  He might even leave a message of his own.

All of this would take him a few minutes.  Plenty of time to get back to the Jeep.  So I convinced myself that there was no reason to hurry.  No reason at all.  I reached the mouth of the driveway and angled down the stretch of asphalt that ran along the side of the church.

When I came to the corner of the building, I looked back toward the intersection.  The wooden front door of the tavern swung open, and Hank stomped out of the bar.  Even from this distance, I could see his fresh anger.

Another step took me out of his line of sight, and I broke into a run.  I made it to the Wagoneer in half-a-dozen paces and yanked the driver's door open.  I hurled my bookbag across the cab, hauled myself into the vehicle, slammed the door.  I dug the keys out of my pocket and jammed the car key into the ignition, twisting it.

I pulled out of the space and made for the highway.  At the end of the driveway, I looked through the passenger's window to see the Dakota pulling away from the curb.  Hank pulled a wide U-turn from the parking lane of the east-bound side to the outside lane of the west-bound side.  I checked for traffic, waited for a Mercedes to pass.

Then I pulled onto Hucknall and eased into the inside lane.  Hank beat me to the intersection by half-a-block and jerked a right turn onto Cortland without braking.  I laid on the gas.  The Mercedes passed through the intersection as the light flicked from green to yellow.  I pushed the Jeep up to forty, reached the light as yellow gave way to red.

I could only hope that my luck would hold.  A Buick Riviera rolled toward me for one terrifying moment, then put on its brakes and stopped at the red light.  I yanked the wheel to the left and blew the light, jumping out onto Cortland ahead of a Pontiac Grand Am at the front of the line.  I checked my mirrors, looking for the sudden telltale splash of red-and-blue and red-and-blue that would mark the end of this dubious endeavor.  Or, perhaps, signal the beginning of an altogether more idiotic adventure.  But I saw only ordinary traffic, and that was good.