by Paul Cleave
“Thanks, Erin,” he says. “You’re the best. Is that what I think it is?” he asks, looking at her hand, and she smiles even though deep down she feels bad that she’s wearing an expensive ring while Henry can’t sleep with a roof over his head.
“It is,” she says.
“I’m happy for you,” he says, and she wonders where his wife is now, his children, and wonders what it is he put them through in order for them not to want to help him now.
She reaches out her window for the ticket. The barrier arm swoops upwards. There are, of course, no vacant spots on the bottom floor. Are there ever? And none on the next floor up. Because it’s Saturday, the parking lot is filled up by people coming into town to shop, and it isn’t until she gets right up to the roof that there are any free spaces, where there’s an entire row of them with a view out over the street. She hates working Saturdays, but the firm has been snowed under with work and the overtime is good, and, hey, now she has a honeymoon to start saving for so she can’t complain. She grabs the closest one to the lift, a car pulling in next to her while she’s unclipping her seat belt. She locks her car and reaches the lift and pushes the button and the guy who pulled in next to her is now standing beside her, a respectable distance away, the kind of distance guys will keep so you know they’re not going to make conversation.
The lift arrives. The door opens. She steps in and the guy steps in. He smiles at her and presses the button, then stands in one corner while she stands in the other. She wonders when everybody jumped on the unwritten rule that you couldn’t make conversation in a lift. People can chat in all sorts of situations, they’ll say hi as they pass by on the street, they’ll make chitchat buying groceries, or at a bar, or a sports game, or in a queue—but making small talk with a stranger in a lift is committing a cardinal sin, it’s as if—
“Hi,” the guy says.
At first she doesn’t know how to respond, or even want to, for that matter. Who the hell talks to people in elevators?
“Hi,” she says.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I think it’s crazy two people in a box no bigger than a bathroom can’t make conversation for the ten seconds they’re in it for. We’re all in this together, don’t you think?”
“That’s exactly what I think,” she says, and smiles at him. He smiles back. He’s a good-looking guy. Finger-length hair that’s carefree and swept back, like a surfer. A beard too tidy to be a hipster beard, and perhaps too short too, since it’s only an inch long. He has smile lines around his eyes and a deep tan and he smells of pine. He’s wearing a red-and-black checkered shirt, and for some reason she thinks this guy is good with his hands. There’s something about him that’s familiar, especially in his eyes, which are almost gray, and certainly intense. She’s seen those eyes before.
“Anyway, we’re almost at the ground floor,” he says, “so it’s not like we had to listen to each other for long.”
She laughs. “That’s true,” she says.
“Also, if I hadn’t started making conversation, I wouldn’t be able to tell you that you left your lights on.”
“I did?”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Are you sure? I didn’t even have them on,” she says, but maybe she did turn them on. She was pretty distracted. Could have been an automatic thing.
“Maybe I’m seeing things. But I’d hate to have said nothing and they were on, then you come back later and the battery is flat.” The doors open. He steps out. “Was nice talking to you,” he says.
She stays in the elevator. Even though she thinks he’s wrong, she’ll have to check. The doors have almost closed when he puts his hand between them. With his other hand he’s patting down his pockets. “Sorry,” he says, “I gotta go back up too. I’ve either left my wallet in the car or at home. This is why my little niece calls me Crazy Uncle Vinnie,” he says, and laughs.
“Well, I guess we get to make more lift small talk.”
“What shall we talk about? Religion? Politics? Or chat about the weather?”
“We’re already out of time,” she says. The doors open. There’s nobody else up here. “You’re a courier driver, right?”
They step out of the lift. “How’d you know that?” he asks.
“You deliver to my work,” she says.
He nods slowly, then smiles. “Ha—I thought I knew you from somewhere. It’s such a small world. You’re at that accounting firm. Goodwin, Devereux, and something, right?”
“Goodwin, Devereux, and Barclay,” she says, “and yes, that’s the one.”
“This makes you a real person.”
“Sorry?”
“It’s something my best friend Simon said to me once,” he says. “He said when you chat to a random person, you start bumping into them all the time. They go from being ghost people you never see to real people.”
“Kind of like when you buy a car nobody else has, only to find every third person has one once you buy it,” she says.
He snaps his fingers. “Exactly!”
He walks to his car and she walks to hers. “I think you’re wrong about the lights,” she says.
He turns back towards her. He smiles. “The one at the front,” he says. “See?” She moves around the front, between the car and the wall it’s facing. “The friend I was telling you about,” Crazy Uncle Vinnie says, coming towards her. “Simon. He died.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, looking at the lights from a different angle now. They’re definitely not on. When she looks back up the man is almost next to her.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says, and his tone is different now; he’s not the same guy she rode in the lift with. The smile lines look like frown lines. The hipster beard looks like a serial-killer beard, and whatever work he does with his hands involves dark and bloody things.
“My lights . . .” she says, “aren’t on.”
“I know.”
She doesn’t like the sound of that. Doesn’t like being alone with him. Ahead of her are parked cars and empty spaces. Behind her, a waist-high wall and the city five stories below. She’s getting a bad feeling about why his niece calls him crazy.
“I really should be getting . . .” she says, but then doesn’t get to say anything else. The man, this now-real person, completes the distance between them, and before she even understands what is happening, he’s lifting her up and pushing her over the wall. She fights with him while gravity pulls at her, and she’s pulling at him, clutching at his arms, at his shirt, and then she’s hanging on to the wall as she dangles. He puts one hand around her wrist and holds on tight, helping support her.
“Please,” she says. “I don’t want to die.”
“Nor did my friend, but your boyfriend killed him anyway.”
He pries her hands off the wall, and then she is falling.
SIXTEEN
Oh boy! Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Is this a thrill or what? Vincent is amping. He wonders what Detective Logan looked like when Simon pushed him out the window and wishes he could have been there for that too—the look on the detective’s face must have been similar to the look on this woman’s face right now. A look of shock, of disbelief, a look of acceptance and at the same time a look of hope, that somehow she is going to land safely.
She screams. She reaches for the walls as if she can catch on, but she can’t.
She collides with the large metal P of the PARKING sign. Her weight rips it from the wall, but it manages to hang there, her body sticking to the top of it, and he has time to think she isn’t going to go any farther but then she does, she slides off the giant letter and continues her journey to the pavement, and at the same time she hits it the P hinges towards her and blocks his view. He focuses on the P, sees that there must only be a bolt or two still keeping it from dropping. He wills it to drop. He tries to Jedi the fuck out of it, but it keeps hanging there. He wants her to have survived. He wants her able to see the giant letter break away and come for her.
It d
oesn’t fall.
People are making their way over to her. They’re probably already calling the police. He needs to get the hell out of here. He gets into his car. He does his best to stay calm as he takes the ramps down to the exit. His hands are shaking so badly he’s worried he’s going to hit the wall on the turns. He slows down. If there’s a car coming the other way and there’s an accident, he’ll be stuck here. But there is no other car, and there is no accident, and he makes it all the way to the exit. He puts the ticket into the machine and pays cash.
He has done well. Now all he has to do is drive away.
Except . . . he wants to go and take a look.
The exit is on the opposite side of the parking garage from where he entered. He takes it, then turns left, drives to the end of the block, then turns left again, bringing himself onto the street the woman landed on. He can’t see her, but he can see the growing crowd surrounding her. Some are using their cell phones to call for help, some using them to take photos. It was a mistake to come this way. If one of those cameras should capture him . . . But what? What would happen? Probably nothing, but if he’s not careful, one of those probablys will turn into an eventuality.
He drives past them all. He takes the next left and passes a music store and a bar and a lighting store with a display in the window so lit up it must be visible from space. He makes the orange light before it turns red. He heads for home. Soon he hears the sirens. He never sees the emergency vehicles, but he knows where they’re going. This is something real. Something he needs to repeat.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the ring. It’s an engagement ring. He wrenched it off her finger when he pried her hands off the wall. It looks brand new. He wonders if he gave it to her last night in the restaurant, and that’s why they hugged and everybody was looking at them. He hopes so. It will make what happened even more painful for Detective Ben Kirk.
Of course, there’s a small part of him that feels bad for the woman—she was always friendly to him at her work, she never complained when he was late, she always greeted him with a smile, saying things like I hope you had a nice weekend and Have a great day!
Well, he’s having a great day now. It started off badly, but she’s turned that right around. There are going to be more great days. Not for Detective Kirk, though.
No, for Detective Kirk and those close to him, there are nothing but dark days on the horizon.
SEVENTEEN
Behind the hospital, the gardens offer a range of colors Joshua can’t keep up with. There isn’t just red, but light red and dark red and bloodred and apple red, there is light blue and sky blue and then there’s just blue. How is he supposed to remember it all? Kids learn colors before they can even talk. Their little toddler brains absorb the information like a sponge. It will come to him—people have been saying that all morning—it will come to him, don’t stress out about it. So that’s what he’s trying to do now. Learn and not stress.
“I want to stand up,” he says.
“Are you sure?” his mom asks.
“I think so.”
He pushes himself out of the wheelchair and gets to his feet. He’s fine; at least he’s fine until he moves his feet, and then he immediately loses balance and falls back into the wheelchair. He closes his eyes and keeps them closed as he gets back to his feet. Everything feels fine. He takes a few steps—no problems. He stands still and opens his eyes and lets the garden come into view. He takes a step. The gardens tilt and the skyline shifts, but he doesn’t fall. He closes his eyes, takes another step—he’s all good. Eyes open, he manages a few paces, then his mom helps him back to his wheelchair.
“How about you sit for a while and I can—”
“I want to learn as much as I can today,” he says.
“There’ll be plenty of time for that,” she says.
“If I wake up tomorrow and I can’t see again, or if something goes wrong with my eyes in two days, or three, or whenever, all I’ll have left is my memory. I want to know what everything looks like, what colors are, how it felt to walk while I could see. I have to absorb enough information to get me through the rest of my life.”
“None of this is going to be taken from you,” she says, which suggests to him she doesn’t know about the curse, or perhaps she does but doesn’t believe in it. “I’m not saying we have to go inside and stop for the day, I’m just saying let’s not rush the walking, okay?”
He knows she’s right.
She continues to push the wheelchair. What are those people doing? They’re smoking. What’s that? That’s a parking meter. What color is that car? Yellow. And those things in the lawn? They’re mushrooms. He can hear a siren in the distance. It’s getting louder, which means it’s getting closer. It’s more than one siren, perhaps more than two. Ambulances coming to the hospital. He heard one leave earlier, rushing somewhere into the city to help the sick and injured, and he guesses that if it’s coming back with the sirens on, then somebody is fighting for their life. No siren would mean they fixed the person up already, or they’re beyond fixing.
Their route brings them from behind the hospital towards the emergency department entrance. “I can wheel it,” he says, and takes control of the wheelchair. When they round the corner there’s a man walking unsteadily towards them. Joshua can’t guess ages yet, but this guy must be between his age and his mom’s. The guy’s got black finger-length hair that looks messy, and stubble the same color. He’s using a cane to keep balanced. Perhaps he’s got a broken leg, or a prosthetic one. Joshua is unable to slow down in time and the man isn’t able to move out of the way, and he clips the guy’s cane and knocks it to the ground, and a moment later the guy falls down next to it.
“Oh geez, oh geez, I’m so sorry,” Joshua says.
“No problem, buddy,” the man says, and his mom is already crouching down to help him up.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” the guy says. “Ain’t no big deal.” He brushes himself down. Then he smiles. “I probably shouldn’t have been daydreaming,” he says, “or quicker on my feet.” He laughs. “Looks like you’re having fun in the chair, though.”
“I’m really sorry,” Joshua says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
“Seriously, buddy, don’t worry about it.” Then he pauses, then frowns slightly. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so,” Joshua says.
“Yeah, I do, I do.”
“My son has one of those faces,” his mom says.
“Well, that might be it, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you around.” Then he shrugs. “I’m sure I’ll figure it out later. Hope you get yourself a license for that thing,” he says, and taps the wheelchair with his cane, then tells them to have a great day before he walks in the direction they came from.
“Geez, I hope he’s okay,” Joshua says, then he notices that his mom looks different. He thinks she might be upset. “Are you okay?”
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she says. “That man, he did recognize you.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know who he is, but he, and a lot of other people, know who you are.” She crouches down to speak to him. “What happened to your dad, you know that made the news, right?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“And the eye surgeries, you remember how they made the news because of how groundbreaking they were?”
“I remember,” he says, and he knows where this is going. A police officer getting killed always makes the news. A cutting-edge surgery performed on a blind boy—that’s news too. Two big stories made even bigger by the way they’re connected. “I’m in the news,” he says. “Because my eyes came from dad.”
“It’s everywhere,” she says. “Not just the newspapers and TV, but all over the Internet. For the first few days following . . . following your father’s death, it was all anybody was talking about. I’ve been inundated with interview reques
ts for you from a bunch of countries. Magazines want to do feature articles on you.”
“I don’t want to do any of that.”
“And that’s what I’ve been telling them. The first few days the police put guards out in the corridor of your room to stop journalists from getting access to you.”
“I had no idea.”
“Because you weren’t meant to. It’s been your job to heal, and to mourn, not to answer questions. I’ve been getting police escorts to and from home because there is so much media camped outside there, and once they learn of your release, it’s only going to get worse.”
“They’re waiting outside our house now?”
Out on the street, the traffic is parting for the ambulance. It pulls into the ambulance bay, a police car following it. He’s never seen an ambulance or a police car before, but he’s read about them enough times to immediately know what he’s looking at.
“They will be,” his mom says, “which is why we’re going to stay with your grandparents for a while. We’re going to have to get used to more people recognizing you.”
“I don’t want to be a story,” he says.
“I know. And we’ll . . . Oh my god,” she says, and she stands up and stares at the police car.
“That’s Uncle Ben,” he says.
“He looks . . .” she says, but doesn’t finish. She doesn’t need to, because Joshua can see exactly how his uncle looks. He looks upset and concerned and panicked. A gurney is pulled out of the ambulance with a woman on it. There are pieces of medical equipment that look like they’re holding her together. There’s blood all over her. Sixty minutes into his new life and already Joshua is seeing something that makes him want to look away.
“That’s Erin,” his mother says, and puts her hand to her mouth. “Oh my god, that’s Erin.”
Uncle Ben is at Erin’s side, holding her hand. The gurney is rushed through the main doors, and a moment later all that remains is the ambulance with the flashing siren that has now been muted and the police car with the door open.
