by Damien Boyes
I use some of my remaining money to buy a sandwich and a Coke and I eat while I walk. I don’t pay much attention to where I’m going, but the buildings get taller again and the bustle of SoHo turns a shade seedier.
People are sleeping—or passed out maybe—shoeless on the sidewalk. I get catcalled and offered drugs by more than one guy. Women in wigs and short skirts tiptoe in high heels, and the guys who give them hungry looks appraise me the same way, like I’m a piece of meat in the supermarket.
Suddenly the romance of the big city sours to unease. This place is dangerous. I shouldn’t be here. This is why Mom didn’t want me coming into the city—eighteen or not, I don’t belong here.
Or I didn’t then. Now I don’t belong anywhere.
I keep walking, forcing myself to return the gaze of the staring men, and most of them have the shame to look away when I meet their eyes. Some of them don’t though. Some of them see it as an invitation and try to talk to me, and I push right past them. I know they should scare me, but they don’t. After everything that’s happened to me, I don’t think I’ll ever be scared again.
Once Spring Street hits Bowery I know I’m in the heart of the decay. Men are drunk, or worse, stumbling shirtless down the sidewalk. The street is a parade of yellow cabs, but none of them stop. This isn’t a place for a girl to be out alone—this isn’t a place for anyone to be out alone.
I don’t care—I jog across the street, daring someone to mess with me. And then someone does.
I’m walking past an alley when a guy steps out, blocking my path, and shows me a knife.
“What are you doing out at this time of night, chica?” he says. He’s my age, maybe a little older. Dominican I think. He’s wearing a leather biker jacket and got a red headband wrapped around his curly dark hair. I’d say he was cute, in a scuzzy kind of way—if he wasn’t threatening me with a switchblade.
“None of your business, creep,” I say, and move to keep walking but he holds the knife out.
“Let’s not be rude,” he sneers, and then I notice the rest of his gang piling out of the alley, four more guys circling around to my right, blocking my escape, leaving the path back into the alley the only way clear. The other guys look to be in their early twenties too. One of them has a pipe, another a long piece of wood he’s slapping against his palm like a club.
I remember how the boundless took out that squad of Thrane’s soldiers, cannon included. How hard can a bunch of punks be?
“Let’s go then,” I say and stride into the alley, glance over my shoulder, and watch them try to figure out what they’re supposed to do next. I imagine their usual victims don’t come so willingly.
Switchblade laughs and acts tough, as though he’s somehow done something right.
“That’s what I thought,” he says as he approaches. “I knew you all wanted it. Let’s have some fun.”
He steps up to me and grabs me by the back of the head and tries to kiss me and I pull away, thinking I’ll get away from him easily, but he’s too strong for me.
Oh, no. What have I done?
The shock turns immediately into panic and I shove him as hard as I can and feel his ribs collapse under my palms. He flies backward and slams against the brick wall and drops into a pile of garbage bags.
His friends are stunned silent, amazement in their eyes, then they rush me. The guy with the club takes a swing at my head and I raise my left hand to block it and it snaps off against my forearm. It hurts, but not a lot.
He steps back, unsure what to do next, and I catch his friend’s swinging pipe in my left hand, pull it from his grasp, and swat him back with it. It hits his jaw with a crunch and he falls, moaning and spitting teeth onto the pavement.
I let the pipe slip from my fingers and it clangs on the concrete as I smile at the two remaining punks. “Who’s next?” I ask, and they’re running before the words get out of my mouth.
Pipe guy isn’t dead, but he won’t be eating solid food anytime soon. I’m not sure about switchblade though, I hit him pretty hard. I didn’t mean to kill anyone, but they started it.
I go over and check on him, and he cries out when I touch him but he seems alive enough. He puts his hands out to protect himself, but instead of the terrified boy cowering in the garbage I can only see the thoughtless punk who wanted to hurt me. Who knows how many other people he’s done this to, how many other girls he’s forced into alleys.
“Give me your jacket,” I say. And he seems like he wants to object but I take a half step toward him and he can’t get it off fast enough. “Don’t you ever do something like this again, got it?”
He nods violently, blubbering something I can’t understand, but I get the gist.
I take the jacket from his trembling hand and slide it over my shoulders. It’s a little too big but I like how it feels. He has four one-dollar bills in his pocket and I toss them at him. He’ll need it to get to the hospital.
Standing over him, his life in my hands, a rush of power rages through me. These punks, they don’t know anything. They’re small people living small lives. But I’m boundless. The whole world is open to me. I can go anywhere I want.
And then I know exactly where I want to go. I missed the New Order show tonight, but I have a whole lifetime of concerts to see, and where better than where it all started: Manchester, June 4, 1976.
It’s all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, probably won’t be easy to get there, but I’ll figure it out.
After all, I’ve got nothing but time.
22
She’s Lost Control
On June 4, 1976, the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester is nearly empty. It’s easy to get a ticket, and I have a whole row of chairs to myself. At this point, no one’s heard of the opening band. Half their songs sound like crap, and I’ve never even liked them all that much, but it doesn’t matter—I’m having the time of my life. It’s my first real concert, and I’m watching the Sex Pistols play live for their first time.
Despite everything that’s happened, at this moment, I couldn’t be happier.
I don’t know how long it took to finally get to England, but it was a while. I didn’t have a picture in my head I could focus on, so I just winged it. I landed in the ocean a couple of times at first, and had to dry my clothes off on a warm beach I stumbled across that couldn’t have been anywhere close to Manchester. The leather jacket I took from that punk in NY has shrunk, but it fits a little better now and I got to lie out on a secluded beach in the middle of nowhere, so I didn’t mind.
I seem to be getting better at predicting my jumps, but I’m by no means an expert yet. Even still, I’ve had a lot of time to think, and the pain has lessened slightly. Everything’s a little easier to accept.
The Mom and Dad I knew are gone, but it helps a little knowing they’re not dead. As much as their loss is like a knife in the guts, in a way, I’ve come to see it as a good thing—without me around they got to be who they were meant to be, so why let myself feel bad for them?
They’re not hurting, they don’t even know I ever existed. The only one suffering here is me, so why torture myself?
My stomach rumbles. On top of losing everything, I’m officially broke now, too. I had to stop to eat a bunch of times before I finally got here, and even though the ticket price was only fifty pence, I didn’t have any British money and the guy at the door wasn’t going to let me in, so I shoved my last three dollars at him and he just shrugged and waved me past.
It doesn’t matter. How can I worry about being hungry at a time like this? I’m surrounded by rock and roll royalty—even though none of them know it yet.
There’s a bunch of people here who will become famous one day, but honestly I can’t tell who they are just by looking at them. They’re all just dog-eared locals—no one you’d look at twice—and that’s what made the show so special. It’s why I wanted to be here. It made people see that music wasn’t something only big studios with fancy equipment could produce—anyone coul
d make music. It changed the world. My world, anyway.
There’s one guy I recognize immediately though, dancing like he’s caught in a seizure. He looks so slight, sweating through his tight-fitting button-up shirt and slim pants. How could such a deep voice come out of a skinny thing like that? I hear the words from “She’s Lost Control” in my head, sad and longing and desperate, like he was talking about me—talking to me. He hasn’t written them yet, but he will.
Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division.
He has epilepsy too. And he doesn’t know it, but five years from now he’ll kill himself. I know how he’ll feel. How the thought of ending everything will seem like the only way to take control back from the seizures consuming his life. I’m sure he’ll think about it a lot.
I know I did.
I managed to fight through it, but he never did. I don’t blame him for it though. I know how hard it was for me.
It gets too hot under the leather jacket and I take it off and drape it over the chair in front of me and keep dancing. I don’t know most of the songs but I don’t mind, I just love being here. The energy is incredible.
The Pistols finish their show and we call them back for an encore and they play one of the songs they already played, because I guess they don’t know any others.
There’s an electric moment when the band finally leaves and the lights come on and everyone is hot and out of breath and we have the chance to look around and see each other’s expressions. We can all feel it—this was something special.
That’s when I catch Ian Curtis watching me. We’ve been trading glances all night and he quickly averts his eyes in the most adorable way and I decide I’m going to talk to him.
I walk across the aisle to the back of the hall where Ian’s blinking in the lights, as if in a trance, and I sidle right up to him. That’s one thing about me—I’ve never been ashamed to full-force impose myself on strangers.
He barely seems to notice me, but I think he’s doing it on purpose, because he’s looking everywhere but where I’m standing.
“Wasn’t that incredible?” I say, and the dazed look on his face gets even more pronounced, and I realize he’s twigged out by my accent. What must he be thinking? There aren’t even a handful of girls in here tonight, and I’d bet I’m the only American. Why, he must be wondering, am I talking to him?
“Incredible,” he repeats, and his voice is soft, almost breathless. Nothing like I’d imagined. “You’re American?”
“From New York,” I say, trying to sound all mysterious. “I was in town, so I thought I’d catch the show.”
“You’re a long way from home,” he says.
“Traveling,” I say. “Decided I wanted to see the world.”
His big, brown, wide-set eyes swing back down to the floor. “I’ve never been anywhere,” he says.
“You will,” I say, and can’t help but laugh. Tonight is literally the first night of the rest of his life. “I can tell just by looking at you.”
He doesn’t know what to make of this but I seem to have broken through to something in him because he doesn’t look away.
“What are you doing now?” he asks. “I’m going to meet my wife and some friends for a pint. Want to join? I know Debbie would love to meet an American.”
I feel a twinge of jealousy when he mentions his wife. I’d forgotten he married so young, but it fades almost immediately. It’s not like I expected anything to happen. I only wanted to meet him and now he’s asked me to hang out with him and his friends?
“Absolutely I do,” I answer, and he gives me another weird look and brushes the hair out of his eyes. We head outside into a gloomy Manchester night where the cool air is a shock to our sweaty skin.
“I think I want to start a band,” Ian says as we walk past the hall’s arched columns.
“That’s a great idea,” I say. “You definitely should.”
“What makes you say that?” he asks, his quiet voice hesitant. “You don’t even know me.”
“There’s just something about you,” I say, and chuck him on the shoulder.
I suppress a squee. I can’t believe I just chucked Ian Curtis on the shoulder.
“You’re an odd bird,” he says, and then I remember—I left my jacket inside.
“I have to go back,” I say. “I forgot my jacket.”
“The doors will be locked,” he says. “You can probably get it in the morning.”
Except I don’t expect I’ll still be here in the morning.
“Wait here?” I ask. “I’ll go grab it.”
“Want me to come with you?”
I shake my head, like it’s no big deal the second I’m out of his sight I’m going to teleport back to the venue, grab my jacket, and blink back here again. “Two minutes. Wait right here, promise?”
He smiles. A smile that makes my heart melt. “Promise.”
I run around the corner and make a mental note of the place so I can jump back, then picture the interior of the hall and I’m there, but my jacket isn’t. Someone must have taken it.
For a second I want to go find the guy who stole it and make him say “sorry,” but Ian Curtis is waiting for me, and it’s just a jacket, I can get another one. I take one last look around and fill my lungs with the musty air and jump out. I’ll only have been gone for thirty seconds. He’ll think I’m some kind of sprinter or something.
I come back out around the corner and the sidewalk is empty. Ian’s gone.
People from the show are still loitering around, so I know I’m still in the right place, at the right time. Did he ditch me?
I jog up the street but he’s nowhere—unless he started madly running the second I left him, he’d still be nearby. And then I realize. He didn’t ditch me—I ditched him. Probably my jacket too.
I still don’t know how my powers work yet, but I think when I jump I’m creating new worlds around me. When I went back to get my jacket I ended up in a sideways world, one where I hadn’t left my jacket and never met Ian. I have no idea how any of this works. Does everything just disappear the second I do? Is Ian Curtis, somewhere in time, standing on this very spot wondering what happened to that American girl, or did he cease to exist the second I left him?
Only one way to find out. There’s a poster next to me on a lamppost, and I rip it off, let it fall to the ground, then close my eyes, and skip a few seconds into the future. When I open them the poster’s back where it was.
That settles that. If I’m making new worlds that disappear again with each jump, does anything I do even matter? I can do anything I want, go anywhere I want, but I can’t change anything.
I guess this is what I wanted: I’m free. Even from the consequences of my actions. I could blow this building up right now and the second I jumped away the timeline would cease to exist.
Well, if nothing I do matters, I guess I might as well have some fun.
23
Senses Working Overtime
I’m standing at the top of the Statue of Liberty’s torch, arms resting on the guardrail, watching the sunrise splash Manhattan in red and bronze light, trying to decide where to go next.
I’ve been to a lot of great shows and some even better parties. I hung out with Debbie Harry at Studio 54 and Bowie before he became Ziggy Stardust. And once I got used to the idea that everywhere I went only existed because I was there, I didn’t feel so bad about taking what I needed to keep myself fed.
After swiping a few dollars here and there, I said screw it and jumped into a bank vault and loaded up an entire backpack with twenties. I’ve returned a few times for a refill and don’t even think of it as stealing anymore. Is it still stealing if the world ceases to exist the second I leave it? As far as I’m concerned, you can’t steal something that doesn’t exist.
I’m a lot better at jumping now, especially over short times or distances. It’s only when I try to cross multiple years or around the world that my landings get a little imprecise, but within five or so yea
rs—I’m golden.
The weird thing is, I’ve lost track of how much time has passed since I lost Mom and Dad. The grief has receded to a hard pearl of anguish in my gut. I don’t know if I’ve been jumping through time for days, or weeks, or even years. I figure I must be eighteen by now, but what does that even mean at this point? Do I even age?
I missed graduation, I know that for sure—but also, where I’m standing right now, it’s only 1980. If I existed in this world, I’d be in grade nine. Right now, graduation is still years away. It happened, and it hasn’t. Everything has happened and hasn’t, all at once. My future is someone else’s forgotten history.
So, who cares about graduation. Or who danced with who.
All I know is I’ve been doing this a long time, skipping from place to place like a stone across the surface of time. I stopped in the late seventies somewhere and picked up a fake Florida driver’s license because I got tired of people telling me I was too young to see the Velvet Underground or whoever and hated having to figure out a way to jump inside a venue when I was standing right outside. The way I look, I could be fourteen or thirty, they don’t know. So now I go where I please.
As much as I’ve been jumping around, I’ve been reluctant to stray too far from the familiarity of New York. I went to Miami to see Pink Floyd, to Berlin to see Bowie and Iggy Pop, and back to Manchester a couple times to see Kate Bush and Roxy Music. I even tried to meet up with Ian Curtis again, but every time I returned he didn’t remember who I was and I’d have to start all over. That was frustrating, but also made everything strangely easier. No attachments, no disappointments. I can be whoever I want to be and it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks.
