“I’m sorry,” Natasha says.
“I didn’t know him very well.” He shrugs. “Actually, I think he kind of hated me.”
“But you love your friend?”
Lowering his head, Adam nods, heat on his cheeks—troubled to admit this even to a complete stranger, to an unaccompanied minor.
“Does she know?”
And he wonders if Phoebe does know, know he thinks too much about her oddly chubby fingers and the way she can’t say “milk.” Know she’s the best friend he’s ever had, and that he can’t quite reconcile that with the times he’s fucked her so hard her inner thighs were bruised. Know the reason he’s never suggested they give things a shot for real has more to do with how much he does care than with any great desire to sleep his way through Los Angeles.
“I hope so,” he says.
Natasha doesn’t need to say Adam could tell Phoebe, just raises ginger eyebrows in a way that makes him forget she is only a child, makes him feel like the one who’s underage.
They fly the remaining hour in companionable silence, eating nuts and M&M’s out of her trail mix.
As they start their landing, the turbulence picks up; Adam grips the armrest.
“It’s like birth,” Natasha says. “My father says it’s the closest thing to being born that we ever experience.”
It’s a weird concept, but he likes it.
* * *
The Cincinnati airport (which is inexplicably in Kentucky) is massive, and par for the day’s course, he’s at a remote terminal galaxies from the rental-car kiosks.
After a shuttle bus, three stops on a light rail, and a gigantic escalator (plus a brief detour to meet Natasha’s equally pallid mother and ponytailed stepfather at passenger pickup), Adam finds himself checking his voice mail in the Avis line.
Marty’s messages, all five of them, simply say, “Call me now.” There’s one from Phoebe detailing specific directions to her father’s house. “Don’t worry about it being late. I’ll wait up for you.” Her voice is so defeated, it wrenches Adam’s chest.
Behind him a strung-out-seeming girl with enormous blue eyes and what looks like a bloodstain on her sleeve grumbles, and he realizes the clerk is ready for him.
Driver’s license shown, credit card charged. Yes, he knows dropping off in Chicago will cost more; yes, he will return with a full tank of gas; no, he doesn’t want supplemental insurance; fine, he’ll take the supplemental insurance.
“Do you maybe have a map?” he asks, and the clerk, whose ID badge reads Vayu, gives him a slightly nervous look but reaches under the desk. The strung-out bloodstained girl audibly sighs.
As soon as the map is unfolded, Adam realizes he has no fucking clue what the middle of the country looks like. What he thought was Illinois is actually Indiana, and Missouri is way farther south than he would have guessed.
With a yellow highlighter, Vayu draws a path from the airport up and left to the edge of Lake Michigan—which doesn’t look at all close. “From what I hear, they have pretty nasty weather up there,” the man says. “I’d wait until tomorrow; the winds won’t be against you then.”
Adam nods and heads out to find his indistinct American compact in the shadowy lot. It’s not yet snowing in Cincinnati (or Kentucky, wherever the hell he is), but he can feel it in the air.
* * *
For the first half hour navigating out of the airport and through a series of connecting highway ramps, Adam is perched and alert. Ten miles out of the city limits, he starts to drift as the first fat snowflakes fall. Flipping on the radio, he finds a Matchbox Twenty song he can’t stand but somehow knows all the words to. To stay focused, he sings along.
Everything the same—mile after mile of flat nothingness—uniform in the darkness.
His mother. Beautiful and always so sad. “You never called me,” she says. “I gave up my whole life for you and you never came home, couldn’t even return my calls.” Her look is not surprised, only disappointed. “I’m sorry, Ma.” Reaching for her hand but can’t grasp her, as if she’s no longer flesh and bone.
Screeching blast of a horn.
Adam jerks awake.
Instinctively firming his grip on the wheel, he steadies the car in the middle lane. Behind him the sound fades, but his heart continues to slam against his chest. Rigid and hyperfocused, he’s sweaty from the blowing heat but freezing as well. Checking the mirrors, he changes to the right lane, slows to twenty-five miles per hour, and follows the exit signs.
There’s a truck stop with a minimart, lights illuminating the gas pumps, so Adam pulls over. A pack of dopey stoned teenagers cluster around an ancient pickup truck. One of them starts toward Adam as he’s getting out of the car. The stench of marijuana hits three feet away.
“Hey, mister.” The kid extends his hand motioning Adam to stop. Maybe it’s because he’s still shaken from his almost accident, but Adam actually obeys. “We were thinking maybe you could help us out. I left my ID at home.” The kid—who really is a kid, maybe five years older than Natasha, and skinny under a heavy oilcloth coat and droopy corduroys—gestures to his group. “And I promised we’d bring a couple of six-packs to my girlfriend’s party—”
“I’m not buying you beer—” Adam stops, notices another smell under the weed: chemicals and cat piss. And God, he hates meth—gives him the shits and tremors and reminds him of Coral Cove—but it also keeps him awake for days. People high on crank don’t fall asleep on the highway.
“Dude, come on, don’t you remember—” whines the teen.
Adam cuts him off. “Maybe we can help each other out.”
Five minutes and several misdemeanors later, the kids have twenty-four cans of Natural Light stashed in their truck, Adam and the world’s largest coffee are back in the crappy rental car, and the lead teen is slipping him a baggie of highly questionable uppers through the window. “My girlfriend’s place is right down the road,” Lead Teen says. “You can come party with us if you want.”
Making a silent promise to donate his first E&E: Rising paycheck to some keep-kids-off-drugs charity, Adam thanks Lead Teen but explains he needs to get to Chicago.
“That’s cool.” Lead Teen nods. “I’ve never been, but I hear it’s righteous.”
* * *
Caffeine and chemicals gnaw a hole in his guts but manage to keep Adam awake-ish for two and a half hours of more flat nothing. The roads aren’t crowded, but the thickening snow and slick pavement limit the speed of traffic to thirty-five miles per hour.
After Indianapolis, when the map indicates he is to do nothing but remain on 65 North for another 120 miles, he feels himself teetering on the edge of unconsciousness again, chugs the rest of the lukewarm coffee. He tries calling Phoebe but gets the machine. Cracking the driver’s side window, he’s hit with a rush of air so glacial, it feels solid slicing through his light jacket and naked scalp.
Ten miles later the snow has picked up and traffic is at a crawl. He reaches into his pocket for the phone, the terror of returning his agent’s calls an instant pick-me-up.
“Where the fuck are you?” Martin Minerva demands without any of his usual pleasantries.
Adam is explaining he’s somewhere outside of Indianapolis before realizing Marty didn’t mean the question literally.
“What’re you doing, buddy?” Marty sighs. “This is what we’ve been trying to get you for years.” Since Adam says nothing, Marty keeps talking. “I’ve been on the horn for you all day, but I’m not a god. Rex Stern isn’t returning my calls, which, frankly, is a pretty bad sign.” Another sigh. “Maybe if the dead guy had been your own brother.”
“I really had to—” Adam doesn’t bother finishing the sentence. It’s not really true and he’s too worn out to lie. “I’m sorry; she’s important to me.”
“Your hot roommate? I didn’t even think you guys were together.”
“Look, I’ll just show up, tell her I’m sorry, and head back first thing in the morning.”
“
It is morning,” Marty says, and indeed the dashboard readout claims it’s 2:15 A.M. “You sound like shit. When’s the last time you slept?”
“I have no idea, time zones—”
“You gonna smash the car and kill yourself?”
“Not the plan.”
“Seriously, Z, if you’re falling asleep, pull over and nap for an hour.”
“I can’t.” If he stops, he will never start again, will be buried under the snow for some future generation to discover: early twenty-first-century man in shitty twentieth-century rental car. “I know it’s late, but can you … can you just talk to me for a few minutes?”
A sigh more defeated than Marty’s first two sighs. “Sure, buddy, what do you want to talk about?”
“I dunno, tell me about your kids,” Adam says.
“You wanna know about my kids?”
“Yeah.” Surprisingly, he does.
And tales of Elmo and Disneyland and hanging the children’s “crappy” paintings in the bathrooms carry Adam through most of the great state of Indiana, until he starts to see signs for Gary. Carry him until the connection begins breaking up. Taking the phone from his ear, Adam sees the battery outline in red—no power left.
“You gonna make it, buddy?” Marty asks.
Adam nods, because the screen is blank, the phone a lump of useless metal in his hand.
* * *
An hour later he slams on the brakes, feels the car skid, and narrowly misses becoming the seventh vehicle in a six-car pileup—twisted metal like a multiheaded monster.
It seems a good time for a piss, so he follows the exit ramp to a gas station with a smiling sun on the sign—utterly ridiculous in the current weather conditions.
Teeth literally chattering, Adam can hardly unzip his jeans in the icebox of a bathroom. It’s dirty, smells of dumps past, everything eerily lit from a bare bulb’s abrasive light. But he leans against the grimy, uneven drywall … a few seconds … maybe …
Shakes his head. Splashes cold water on his cold face.
Urine probably isn’t supposed to smell exactly like coffee.
Yet the first thing he does when he’s in the dingy store is head for the thermos of hours-old brew, pumps it into a Styrofoam cup, dilutes it with half-and-half and sugar. He should probably get food to counter the caffeine-eating-through-stomach phenomenon, but the flat, depressing cheeseburger on a warming rack is far from appetizing. Grabbing another bag of pretzels, he heads out into the tempest.
* * *
The service station attendant had said Chicago was forty minutes away, but going so slowly, it’s another two hours before the city’s majestic skyline appears, seemingly to grow out of crumbling high-rise housing projects. He’s never been, but Adam recognizes the buildings from movies and the stories Phoebe sometimes tells. By the time he makes the turn onto Lake Shore Drive, he’s crying. Part of it is simple fatigue, and maybe a side effect of the drugs (a similar, much more humiliating incident happened during an NYU psych exam freshman year after he’d pulled an all-nighter). But it’s something else as well. This is her city, and for better or worse, Phoebe Fisher is the closest thing he has to a home.
As he enters Evanston Township, the houses become squat stone minimansions, with sculptures and snow-covered trees. Phoebe’s address is written on the back of his first plane ticket, and he rolls the window down the rest of the way to better read the street numbers.
A startling slap of what can only be called dread when he finally finds it.
The driveway is circular, but he parks on the street, kills the engine, and releases a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Through the open window, the car rapidly loses heat.
Adam has sneezed and scratched through all the childhood illnesses, had impacted wisdom teeth removed. He’s sprained wrists, strained muscles, and woken up missing two days after three lines of very suspect cocaine. And yet he’s never felt like this—completely depleted, like someone scooped out everything inside of him, leaving only empty skin and greasy remnants.
It has taken more than twenty-five hours from the time he left the hotel in Vancouver to get here. Hours of motion, of inertia, of knowing the instant he stopped, everything in him would simply shut down like the dead cell phone in his pocket. But he’s here now. All he has to do is go inside, and he can be warm and still.
But he’s so profoundly afraid.
A significant chunk of him wants to drive back to Cincinnati, fly to Vancouver by way of Atlanta or Berlin or whatever arbitrary hub through which the airline sees fit to route him. Because going inside will be an acknowledgment of things he’s been fighting not to fully acknowledge for a very long time.
Leaning forward, he rests his head on the steering wheel.
In an indoor desert of fake sand, throwing punches that fell men twice his size. Roundhouse kicks, warriors in armor, and shields from no particular century or nation. Spinning and spinning, all the moves from the E&E fight scenes, only real. A giant with gnarled hands. A wooden horse twelve stories high. Flaming arrows launched from somewhere in the distance. Something tossing him, turning him about.
A hand shakes his shoulder through the open window.
“Adam.” Phoebe’s father in a wool coat, face pinked from the subzero temperatures.
It must have been at least an hour since Adam drifted off. Snow has blown in, dusting the wheel, the sleeves of his jacket, his hands—which are alarmingly red and aren’t responding quite right to commands from his brain.
“Dr. Fisher?” Adam blinks snowflakes from his lashes.
“Larry,” Phoebe’s father says, as though it’s a reflex—a retread of every other time he’s met Adam and tried to dismiss formalities. But this isn’t like every time he and his wife have swooped into Los Angeles and taken Phoebe and Adam to Nobu or Mr Chow. This is different.
“I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” Adam says.
Phoebe’s father doesn’t acknowledge the statement, instead opens the driver’s side door (not an easy task with the wind) and extends his hand. Adam can’t seem to get his fingers working, so Dr. Fisher tugs him to his feet by the forearm.
The change in position causes diamond flecks to flash in Adam’s peripheral vision, outshining the whirling white. Closing his eyes, he sags against the side of the car, takes a deep breath of ice.
“It’s okay, son. I gotcha.” Dr. Fisher slings Adam’s arm across his shoulders and steadies him at the waist, leads him to the house, even though Adam is stable after the first few steps.
Through the grand entrance, where a crystal chandelier dangles from a two-story ceiling, he sets Adam on a bench by the door and slides his arms from the sopping wet sheepskin coat. Momentarily disappearing into a hall closet, Dr. Fisher returns with a hooded sweatshirt he helps Adam pull over his head. Soft, worn fabric against his scalp feels brilliant, until Adam glances down and notices the University of Wisconsin crest on the chest. A flip in his already unsteady stomach; he’s wearing a dead guy’s clothes.
“Let me see your hands,” Phoebe’s father says.
Adam obediently presents his fingers—they seem back online now, still angry red but more steak knives and straight pins than numb. Dr. Fisher frowns and asks about the small blisters on the left ring finger and pinkie.
Adam is still exhausted, still shivering, still not functioning anywhere near optimal, but he’s becoming cognizant enough to realize how odd this situation is. Remembering he doesn’t know Phoebe’s dad well and the man never seemed to like him much. Remembering that he’s here to see Phoebe, even if he’s scared of what that means.
“Really, I’m fi—” he begins.
A tag on the sweatshirt tickles the back of his neck, and Adam understands. This is a man who lost a child, a doctor who couldn’t save his own son but can warm the hands of a cold friend of his daughter’s. A friend who fits into the dead kid’s clothes.
“Thank you,” Adam says and allows Phoebe’s father to wrap his hand in a warm towel, wiggles
his fingers on command.
It would be wrong to say Adam has never wondered about his own father. Of course he has, but not for years. Tonight, though, he wonders. Wonders about how different things could have been with someone like this in his corner.
Apparently satisfied Adam will live, Dr. Fisher nods. “She’s upstairs,” he says. “Second door on the right.”
And Adam feels as if he should do or say something big and meaningful, some bold gesture. But he’s got nothing. So he just returns the nod and starts up the dramatic stairs, feels Dr. Fisher’s eyes on him the whole climb.
* * *
Phoebe’s bedroom is probably bigger than their whole shitious apartment in California. Bookcases, a desk and vanity in a blond wood. Everywhere there are framed photographs of Phoebe, hair still long, posing with all the people in her life. Adam knows he could spend hours studying them, placing faces to the names, and that scares him the same way he was terrified in the car.
In the center of the room is a magnificent canopy bed, and in the middle of that bed is a heap of Phoebe Fisher. She’s on her side, and in the limited light, he can’t tell if she’s asleep or awake, can barely make out the back of her head with its glossy black bob.
This is probably the last moment he could leave, run back down the stairs and out the door. Take the same way out he always takes.
Toeing off his shoes, he doesn’t bother with anything else—not his belt or jeans or the gray sweater he’s been wearing for days. Not Chase Fisher’s sweatshirt. On hands and knees, he crawls into bed and molds his body against Phoebe’s spine, drapes an arm over her waist. Whether she’s awake or asleep, she doesn’t take his hand or respond to his touch at all. Whether she’s awake or asleep, she still smells of vanilla lotion and Anais Anais perfume. Whether she’s awake or asleep, he realizes what he’s known for years, what an unaccompanied minor on a plane had to clarify.
Eight hours later, several things will be different. The storm will have passed, sun bright and harsh over the frozen city dipped in snow. O’Hare Airport will be open, departures running nearly on time. There’ll be a first-class ticket in his name on one of those flights—a 4:00 P.M. direct to Vancouver—and several messages from Marty telling Adam that he needs to be on that plane. But the humor that wasn’t there when Marty was keeping Adam awake and alive all through Indiana will be back. “You must be doing something amazing out there, buddy,” Marty’s message will say, full of unabashed pride. “Fucking Rex Stern’s exact words were: ‘The kid’s worth holding up production a couple of days.’”
In Some Other World, Maybe: A Novel Page 14
