by Ben English
Mrs. Nutt blushed and kissed her husband, and said, “Great news, Bart! The luggage is coming tomorrow.”
“That means we have room for the squirt.” It took Jack a second to realize they were referring to him. “And you just happen to want to go to my sister’s tonight, in this rain? On the bike?”
He fixed Jack with a look meant to be gruff, but which was betrayed by his twinkling eyes. “Those the only clothes you’ve got, squirt? You’re going to get soaked to the bone out there. Hasn’t been a storm like this in years.”
Jack followed them outside. Rain sprayed off the concrete and wind blew. He’d never believed there could be this much moisture in the air. “Thanks for the offer of a ride, but I’m trying to get to Palo Alto tonight.”
“And we’re going to Woodside,” returned Bart Nutt. “Palo Alto is on our way, and there’s plenty of room if Katie rides behind me on the hog.”
Bart and Katie Nutt didn’t seem like axe murderers, and after a moment’s hesitation (and a good, hard listen to the inner voice) Jack decided to trust them.
The “hog” turned out to be a motorcycle with a sidecar, which looked like it was designed for a member of the lower primate family. Bart lifted up the seat and pulled out a battered leather jacket for Jack, which he immediately put on.
“You just hold on tight,” Mrs. Nutt said. “There’s no seatbelt, and we’re crossing a bridge so there’s going to be a bit of wind.” She put on the single helmet.
A bit of wind? He wondered what they were currently experiencing.
Bart Nutt asked him for the address, grunted in thanks, and gunned the engine. The man buttoned his jacket, but drove without safety goggles, squinting against the night and rain, wild hair playing out behind him in the wind. Jack doubted Alonzo or anyone in Forge would believe any of this. He squeezed down into himself as far as he could in the sidecar. The carriage lacked shocks, and Jack felt every texture of the road through that thinly padded seat. His knees extended above the lip of the tiny dashboard.
Jack wondered if he was supposed to pray.
The jacket kept out a bit of the wind but none of the rain. Before they even made the freeway a trickle of almost-ice found the back of his neck, then his shoulders, then the grooves of his spine. There was nothing he could do but feel it progress downward, inch by inch.
And yet he felt strangely light, oddly good. He was alone, completely out of what should have been his comfort zone, quite possibly in mortal danger due to road debris striking his head at eighty miles an hour (he closed his mouth), but he was alive, and he felt wonderful.
Probably because he was headed, at last, toward the girl.
Time passed, but not really. Jack stopped trying to read the freeway signs and figure out where they were. He’d simply never taken in this much sensory information. Back home in Forge, Idaho, most man-made sounds echoed against stone and trees, against the walls of the valley he’d grown up in. Here, in the tiny world of the sidecar, sound bounced differently, playing out against valley walls of ferroconcrete and moving steel. Time seemed to pass, but Jack couldn’t be sure. He didn’t wear a watch.
They crossed over a bridge that lifted them higher and higher above the black, oily waves. At the apex of the bridge, right before they started down toward what he thought of (hoped was) the Mercedes Side of the Bay, the wind caught the motorcycle and lifted the sidecar like a sail. Jack felt the ground fall away. Saw the orange lights tilt toward the wrong horizon.
Bart gave a twist to the handlebars and downshifted, throwing his weight toward Jack, and the bike righted. Sparks scattered under the sidecar as it crashed back against the road.
“Let’s try and stay grounded,” Bart said. The old man either chuckled or swore under his breath, and Jack didn’t dare look away from the road to see if he was smiling.
They merged onto 101 south, and the exit signs passed in a kind of bemused terror. Ralston, Whipple, Willow.
University Avenue in Palo Alto proved to be lined with ivy-heavy trees and gorgeous whitewashed homes with pillars out front, set like plantation homes far back from the street. There was no gate separating Mercedes’ house from the street, and no cars in the driveway. Solar walkway lights marked the path with a thin glow. The house itself was dark.
Jack found his hands reluctant to release the edge of the sidecar. He started to return the jacket, and Mrs. Nutt chortled again.
“No, that’s yours. Can’t have you freezing to death,” said Bart. “Besides, if you have to go into any bad neighborhoods while you’re visiting, it’ll keep you safe.” He pointed to the designs and patterns embroidered across the sleeves and back. “The last guy who owned it, he rode with one of the hard crews here. Pretty high up.” He mentioned a gang’s name, which meant nothing to Jack.
Mrs. Nutt pecked his cheek, and the two roared away back down the street they’d come. Jack watched them go with a thankful heart. It wasn’t his style to rely overmuch on the kindness of strangers, but he couldn’t imagine where he’d be without them. He also wondered if everyone in the Bay Area was eccentric.
Four tries on the doorbell convinced him no one was home, and Jack started to shiver as he wondered about his next move. The deep porch ran the entire front of the house, and one end held a set of overstuffed, weatherized love seats. At least he’d be out of the wind and rain. He found a dusty wool blanket coiled in one of the chairs, and wrapped its scratchy texture around his legs as he sank down. It was as abrasive as the inside of his eyes, which definitely felt better closed.
Autopilot.
As his body settled into the cushions, Jack’s brain seemed to rally a bit, and he considered his situation. Mercedes had no way to know he was near. She hadn’t replaced her cell phone, and all his calls to her house went straight to voice mail. He didn’t even know her email.
They hadn’t spoken since the morning of the swim meet, when he’d covered her bed in field blossoms and then surprised her with the rose. Be nice if he had something to give her. The only other thing in his pockets beside money, ID, and plane ticket was a medal from the swim meet. He had no other place for it other than his pocket. Sure, he’d give it to her. He’d won it thinking of her, anyway.
No part of Jack’s body was warm there in the green shadows on her front porch, but this was good enough for now. Someone would come, she’d come, and he’d be sitting right there when she arrived. For now, this was good enough.
A clatter woke him, and Jack slowly swam up through the blanket. There it was again, and his brain associated the squeak-bark with door hinges. Someone was coming out of the house. Jack wiped at his eyes. Not Mercedes.
Not much taller, though, and maybe a man. He pulled the door firmly shut behind him and took a few steps in Jack’s direction, shielding himself from the street behind a pillar. Cold points of light glimmered from a cell phone, and as he raised it to his face Jack saw his features were Asian, mostly.
Jack pretended to be a pile of blankets.
The intruder (what else could he be, really?) was a bit shorter than Mercedes, built like a keg but with a lean face, and small patches of light-colored hair that didn’t look intentional. His attention divided between the phone and the street; he never gave Jack and the tangled blankets a second look.
“It’s me. No, I didn’t find them. Look, this isn’t like lifting exams when we were undergrads. Adams isn’t stupid. You do this kind of work for the government, you get decent security. The guy’s got a great safe, a Strine. No, they weren’t inside.”
He started to pace, then remembered the street. “I looked everywhere. Do you think he sent backups somewhere, maybe even printouts? Where would he send something to make sure it was safe?
“No. No, I still say our best bet is his little girl. She’s been taking care of the place since the wife died, she probably knows.”
He listened, his expression souring. “I’ll take care of it.” He slapped the phone shut, muttering, “I always take care of it.”
A
bird moved restlessly through the trees near the porch, and the intruder froze in the act of turning up his collar against the cold. Jack caught his expression as he stared out at the gloom.
He’s superstitious.
Jack began slowly tensing and relaxing the muscles in his legs, arms, and torso. Still unsure what to do next. The intruder leaned into a position from where he could watch the street and driveway. Jack’s blanket fortress was right at the edge of his vision.
This is not a good guy, Jack.
With a deep shout, Jack leaped from the chair, snapping the blanket with both hands towards the other man’s face. He made the air roar through his chest and throat, almost a physical thing. Maximum volume.
The intruder’s legs were already jerking away even as his head and upper body whipped toward the sound; his body spiraled in the air, then fell hard. The eyes were easily the biggest, roundest things on his face, and he wheezed out a scream as he bounced off the porch and tore across the lawn.
Jack stayed near the door, out of the rain, fighting the urge to laugh as the man sprinted away. He wondered what the intruder thought he saw. The leather jacket was zipped up completely to his neck; he must have looked like a disembodied, floating head.
Feeling a bit absurd but still smiling, Jack returned to the chair. Again, exhaustion tugged him down despite the cold, and in a few moments he was dreaming of the girl.
Mercedes stood there, gorgeous and sad in the morning light, saying something he couldn’t quite understand. She was upset, and kicked his chair. In real awake-life, he’d never seen her angry like this, at least not directed at him. Maybe this was the Italian side she was always bragging about. She looked mad enough to hit him. And she wasn’t impressed with the jacket.
The walls sort of melted away, and when they came back Jack found himself in a bathroom. Dream Mercedes was at least as strong as Real Mercedes, and before he knew what was happening she’d removed most of his clothes. “I like this dream,” he said. “Dream Mercedes is mean, but she’s a genius.” This earned him a fleeting, businesslike smile.
She guided him into a large marble – phone booth? . . . and turned on the water. First he only felt wet, then hot, then cold, all the way down to the bone, and finally, warm.
Jack woke up sitting on his heels in a shower, retching toward a drain. His stomach being empty, the only thing he produced was a vast quantity of mucus, saliva, and tears. When he could stand, he did so, fumbling with the shower knobs until the water was hot enough to scald away jet lag, fatigue, and any skin which might still be connected to his bones.
It was a nice shower stall, as such things go, stocked with all sorts of designer soaps, shampoos, and other girly unguents he couldn’t identify. Big, nearly big enough to play volleyball in, though at the moment he seemed to lack a partner. Or competition. Jack decided to clean up. He located a bottle containing soap on his third try.
Clothes waited for him outside. Jeans, socks, a sealed pack of new underwear, and a t-shirt with a high-tech Silicon Valley-type logo on it. No shoes.
She was in the kitchen. Unlike the rest of the house, its beauty lay in perfect, boldfaced functionality. He watched as Mercedes ladled a swath of beaten eggs onto a square griddle and quickly diced a handful of frozen peppers. There were tall onions growing in a tiny glass garden between the sink and the kitchen window. She ripped one out and minced it without elegance.
“There’s nothing fresh in the house,” she said. “Not even any cheese.” She dropped the peppers and onions in a neat pile next to the eggs and started to work on a foil brick of processed cheese. “Do you morally object to Velveeta?”
Her tone told him she didn’t expect a response, so instead he said, “What can I help you with?”
“No. You’d better stay out of range right now.” She gathered the vegetables with the blade of her knife and deposited them in the middle of the eggs. Added the cheese. Still using just the knife, she wrapped the whole thing together and flipped it over.
Only then did she look at him. “You were hypothermic. Can you touch your thumb and your pointy finger together?” He showed her that he could, and her expression of irritation was tempered with a touch of relief. Still, “Can’t you take better care of yourself? What if somebody found you dead? What would you do then?”
Her tone rattled the fillings in his teeth. He supposed he deserved that. “I tried to call—”
“Why? Irene talked to me last night, at my aunt’s house. Late. When I found out you were coming I stayed up all night worried, Jack. What were you thinking? Why did you come here?”
He hadn’t seen this Mercedes before. Despite her handiwork with the knife, she was all nervous energy, unspooled and impatient. Flushed. It was hard to believe she was ill. Her eyes were shining, as if with tears. Watching her flex and spin through the kitchen, Jack was sharply aware of the ripe state of her health.
But looking past her body, he didn’t recognize the sneer. Tension hardened the flat planes of her face and gathered at her eyes and mouth, and by the look of her clothes and hair she’d slept in a tree. Her complexion was waxy, and a fresh scattering of tiny pimples rose across her cheekbones.
She’s medicated, the dry voice said, without real interest.
Mercedes shrugged at his scrutiny and returned to the griddle. When he looked at her again, she was smiling at him, almost shy. “You do the frozen orange juice.”
“What’s that smell?”
“Your shoes. They were soaked, so I stuck them on the refrigerator coils.”
It was like there were two of her, dual women standing in the same skin. He could still see her, feel Mercedes through the air between them, but there was something else now. Sheets of glass, walls between them, distorting their view of each other.
Jack shook his head. His brain still felt full of wool soup.
A teakettle squeaked, and she wrung ingredients into a cup of hot chocolate. “You’re lucky I had to come back home at all. My dad’s work (she delivered this word with a tight verbal skewer he felt sure would have drawn blood had he been standing closer) asked me to come get some of his research. I’m supposed to meet one of his assistants here this morning.”
“An Asian guy? Peroxide hair?”
She was instantly suspicious. Jack had never seen so many layers of irk.
“I thought he was a burglar. I might have, sort of, scared him away.”
She made a hopeless sound, scooped a plate under the omelet, and dropped it next to the steaming mug. There was only one fork. “Yours.”
“What about you?”
“I’m not hungry.”
Right. No food or fluids for eight to twelve hours prior to the procedure. It was only a small lie.
Mercedes looked at him, almost expectantly, as if waiting for him to say something. Words didn’t come, so he picked up the fork and started in on the omelet, and she busied herself in another part of the house.
It was a nice place. He knew enough about heavy pieces of wood to recognize handmade furniture, and enough about Mercedes to recognize her parents’ taste. Everything in the house looked like it had been chosen for comfort first, but all the pieces fit. It was the kind of collection grandchildren would feud over after a funeral.
The other touches—the dried flowers in a waterless vase, a bowl of foil-wrapped chocolates, the little pieces of colored crystal—had been chosen with the same care as the furniture, but each sat at an odd angle, like they were set down askew from their original position. It was the house of a man who missed his wife, who was merely keeping up appearances. It gave Jack the creepiest sort of déjà vu.
Post-omelet, he found her in a den with bookshelves instead of regular walls. She grumbled at not finding her father’s research files and papers. “I’ll just have to let them find me,” she said.
Sensing her mood might be shifting again, Jack told her how he’d ignorantly chosen to fly to the first Bay Area airport he saw. She brightened immediately.
“
That works. I’ve got to take some stuff into San Francisco, you should come along.” Jack inhaled hope. “I’ll drop you off in Oakland and you can fly back tonight. Here, I’ll call your airline.” Jack exhaled all the hope there ever was.
Her stomach growled on the way out the door.
The family car was a BMW convertible. Sure.
Oblivious to the cold, Mercedes had the top down. She apparently compensated for this by turning the radio up, and by the time they hit freeway speed on 101 North, conversation took more lung pressure than it was worth. He zipped the battered leather jacket right up over his mouth.
He took it on faith that they were moving north. The clouds came nearly right down to the ground. Occasionally he could see the bay, but nothing of the other side. The gray water vanished right up into an indistinct blur of bright billows. The sun was on the other side of the fog, but he didn’t think it was going to win.
Mercedes good humor increased behind the wheel. She drove the car with something approaching glee, slapping her hand against the wheel in time with the music, singing along with a band he’d never heard of, Pie or Cake or some kind of pastry. She was in the moment, pure Mercedes. Jack started to smile until the thought occurred that she focused so completely on everything else so as not to be reminded he was also in the car.
She even took it in stride when everything on the freeway in front of them stopped in a sea of brake lights. They’d just passed an airport (Jack was afraid to ask which one) and the blur of traffic suddenly transformed into the world’s largest used-car lot. Jack had never seen so many cars in his life, let alone in one place, and the standing wall of chrome in front of them made his heart leap into his throat.
Mercedes whipped her head over her shoulder, checked her blind spot, and cut right across three lanes of breaking traffic to an off ramp. Cars all around them honked, and Jack waived hello without thinking. Mercedes shot him a look.
