No Less Days

by Amanda G. Stevens

  “Hey,” he said.

  She swiped tears. “Sorry.”

  “You thought he was dead.”

  “I really did.” She held out her hand for her phone, and he set it into her palm. “But that’s what happens to dumb celebrities, right? They die on camera. Nothing to cry over.”

  “You really think I’d say that?”

  “I didn’t say you would say it.”

  “That was my voice.”

  “I don’t …” She shoved her phone into her pocket. “Do I?”

  A smile pulled his mouth. “You make the attempt.”

  “Not gruff enough? Or not Canadian enough?”

  “I’m no more Canadian than you are.”

  “You sound like it, every once in a while.”

  “Interesting.” He never expected his accent still to exist, but people occasionally commented on it. And of course, up here, everyone assumed they were hearing Canadian.

  “Anyway,” she said, “there’s something else we need to discuss.”

  “Oh?”

  “You used the term fangirl. Accurately.”

  He held in a smile. “I do live here.”

  “Harbor Vale? Michigan?”

  “America. Planet Earth.”

  “Those lazy curls and those eyes of his, just piercing, you know? And he’s actually witty in addition to …” He must have made a face, because she laughed.

  The woman and her pigtailed girls surfaced from the sea of books, each hefting armfuls. David tipped his chin in their direction.

  “I’ll go up,” he said.

  “Nah, I’m good. Zac’s alive: I’m great.” She swiped her cheeks dry and brushed past him.

  Alone with his books, he couldn’t shut out those videos or the question of what had happened after. The things he’d imagined last night. Wilson’s body, his own body. Different outcomes. But what if their outcome was the same?

  It was the most outlandish thought he’d had … perhaps in his lifetime. Another like him wouldn’t be walking tightropes on live television.

  But the clothes. There’d be no explaining that kind of blood loss, of total tissue and bone destruction. Not without a corpse.

  He knew nothing. Even he might be dead after a physical devastation like that. The impact would be worse than full thickness burns—it would have to be. He shut his eyes. Pressed his thumbs into them. No, Zachary Wilson couldn’t be like him. God wouldn’t do this to anyone else.

  But he had to go to that canyon and see for himself.

  THREE

  The only flight to Phoenix within the next twenty-four hours departed at eight in the morning. David called Tiana from his gate at seven.

  “Hello?” Her voice dragged over the word.

  “It’s David.”

  “I know that. Why?”

  He held in a chuckle. “Feel like running the store yourself for two days?”

  A cupboard door shut. “About time you gave me the chance.”

  “Don’t worry about restocking. Just ring up the sales. If Jayde comes in, put her to work.”

  “Is this day one of your spontaneous October vacation? I’d just like to point out that it’s still September.”

  “I’m unavailable, that’s all. Nothing to do with vacation.”

  Another cupboard door. “I’ll sell so many books you’ll promote me.”

  “To what? Owner?”

  “Yeah, good point. See you Thursday.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  He hung up before the boarding announcement could betray him. No one would ever know he’d gone to Arizona in search of … something.

  The flight from Detroit to Phoenix was almost five hours and gave him plenty of time to think. To second-guess his impulsivity. To debate his first step. He could drive a rental car three hours to Grand Canyon National Park, trek to the bottom some way that didn’t involve breaking his bones, and search for the clothes Zachary Wilson had disposed of. It seemed like madness. He wasn’t a detective. Then again, it wouldn’t take a detective to identify blood and other bodily materials. Even if Wilson had cleaned up the scene, even if he’d buried the clothes, something would be left behind.

  His other option was to find Wilson and question the man.

  Too risky. And he doubted Wilson was still in Arizona. News reports said he lived in Colorado when he wasn’t traveling for stunt events—or for pleasure, which he seemed to do often.

  By the time the plane touched down, David had resigned himself to three hours in a rental car. He’d figure out the rest when he got to the canyon. His return flight left close to midnight the next day. Should be plenty of time.

  He drove two miles to the Hilton Phoenix Airport hotel, booked a room, but left his carry-on in the vehicle. Then he started driving. Desert highway. Windows down, soaking in the heat and the sun after so many rainy days. Northern Michigan was beautiful in the fall, but it could be cold. And wet.

  He drove the first hour without music, letting the wind and the whir of passing traffic serenade him. Then he turned on the radio and found a crackling folk station. His fingers tapped the beat on the steering wheel, trying to anticipate the percussionist and grinning when he failed. At the first strains of “The Skye Boat Song,” his hand hovered over the dial. He couldn’t listen to anyone butcher this song, but the young duo made a fair attempt at it. David’s hand resumed its rest on the wheel.

  By the time he reached the canyon, it was almost four, and he needed food. He stopped at a tourist restaurant for a burger and then drove into the Grand Canyon Park.

  More traffic than he expected on a weekday. In fact … no, surely not … He drove at the 25 mph limit, a winding blacktop road with signs. One of them directed him toward Marble Canyon and was decorated. With streamers. Hardly park ranger approved. He headed that way. Six hundred thousand fans—likely a few of them had shown up to commemorate the spot.

  A mile later, traffic stood still. David braked, didn’t move for six minutes, crept forward, stopped. He found a place to park as soon as he could. He’d walk faster than this, and he’d enjoy the time more anyway. He locked the car, pocketed the keys and his phone, and set out.

  As he neared the canyon, the crowd around him grew, everyone surging in the same direction. Most of them were no older than thirty. And most of them were female. Conversations flitted around him.

  “… if it happened to me, I’d never walk a tightrope again.”

  “Me either, but that’s what makes him Zac.”

  “… don’t think we’re like actually going to see him …”

  “… right now if we can get close enough …”

  “I made white chocolate chip!”

  “Ohmygosh, that’s his favorite!”

  Two teenagers pushed past David, one carrying a lidded plastic container. Girls rushed around him like a herd of sheep dodging a rut in the ground. Several of them carried similar containers. Baskets. Gift bags, red and blue and green and purple, rustling tissue paper peeking out the top of each, swinging at their sides or held close to their bodies against the jostling crowd.

  He followed them. Listened to them blather on about Zachary Wilson—his bravery, his hotness. His generosity in staying here to sign autographs when the sight of the canyon had to be “beyond traumatic.”

  It made sense now, Wilson’s motivation. By the time David reached the end of the autograph line, his jaw felt as hard as the canyon walls.

  How dare an adult man deceive not only the general public but also thousands of worshipping girls? What was wrong with this guy?

  Forget finding the clothes. If he had to wait until the sun set and the autograph seekers departed, he would get a word with Wilson. And he’d ask his question. Whether he investigated the canyon itself would depend on Wilson’s response and what David could read in the man. Liars always betrayed something.

  First order of business: bypass the fangirls. David prowled over the rocks and sand to approach Wilson’s location from the right flank.
Of course Wilson or his publicity team had positioned the canyon at his back.

  As David neared the end of the line, the publicity team’s existence became indisputable. Wilson had a trailer. He’d slept here, or he wanted to give the appearance he had. Communing with the angel that had caught him up. Reevaluating his life. David huffed and skirted a scorpion. He was safe in professional hiking boots, but there was no sense in crushing a living thing if he didn’t have to.

  Black-garbed security guards formed a perimeter around the trailer, which proved Wilson wasn’t a delusional self-worshipper. Or an idiot. For the moment, the crowd was respecting the rope boundaries; but one of those cookie-baking fangirls was sure to rush him sooner or later, and the passion in the voices that had drifted around David suggested they weren’t incapable of becoming a mob. If one of them got close enough to touch the idol, they’d all want to get that close.

  The guards had been watching David’s approach for the last five minutes. While he stayed a hundred yards away, they didn’t call him off.

  He gave up on the oblique approach as visibly as he could, lifted his hands to the nearest guard, lifted his eyebrows too. The guard nodded him closer. Yeah, they were armed. And David wasn’t. That fact tasted like chalk, but he kept walking.

  “Stop right there, sir,” the guard said from about thirty feet away.

  David halted. “I’d like to talk to Wilson.”

  “Get in line.”

  He smiled and let it twist with cynicism. Waited for the guard’s measure of him.

  “People have waited today for an average of six hours just to shake his hand or have him sign theirs. I let you line jump and we could have a riot.”

  “I’m not here for him to sign my hand,” David said.

  “For what then?”

  “To ask a question.”

  “We’ve gotten a lot of those today too. Most commonly asked is how it feels to get caught by an angel.”

  “Caught up, you mean.”

  The guard’s eyes never stopped roving the area, but his mouth twisted, and a gleam entered his eyes. Not a believer. Only an employee.

  “I don’t need much time.”

  “Really, man, you’ll have to wait in line. That’s just how it is.”

  Fine. It was irksome, but they had a job to do. He nodded. His eyes left the armed man nearest him and found Wilson himself a hundred feet away, lounging in a chair in front of the trailer, accepting a blanket-covered basket that could have come from the set of Little Red Riding Hood. Wilson grinned at the girl, signed a glossy photo, and glanced to the side. He’d been keeping track of his guard’s movements.

  The grin froze on his face. Then flattened into disbelief. His attention wasn’t fixed on the guard who’d allowed David to get too close. It was fixed on David.

  Wilson stood and crossed the sand toward David, ignoring whatever the nearest guard said to him. The line of fans leaned in his direction, straining eyes and ears and pressing against the ropes. Someone screamed—who did they think this guy was, John Lennon?—and Wilson turned to hold up a single finger. His smile was primed for every cell phone within a line of sight, and he held it for two whole seconds.

  He didn’t look away from David as he walked up to the guard David had been talking to.

  “What’s this guy want?”

  “To ask you a question.”

  Wilson stepped past him.

  “Sir, please don’t—”

  “Relax, Tommy.”

  They stood face-to-face now, David and the celebrity. Something skittered up David’s spine. Wilson was staring. At him.

  “Give us a minute,” he said.

  “Really, Mr. Wilson—”

  “I said step off.”

  Tommy retreated several yards.

  “I know the question.” Wilson smirked. “But go ahead.”

  This man wasn’t threatened. Wasn’t offended. Wasn’t even cautious. As if he knew not only David’s question but David himself.

  “Well?” Wilson said.

  “I want to know if you hit the ground.”

  “Might as well cut to the chase.” His smirk flattened, and a mask seemed to drop from his face and shatter between them. “Yes, John, I hit the ground.”

  Cold filled David from the inside out, an instant freeze, a sensation like cracking in his limbs.

  “More than worth it, though, if it brought you here.”

  “John?” The only word David could manage.

  “John Russell. It’s about time. Well, about a hundred years past time, but there’s no too late for us, is there?”

  David kept his breathing level as the name pierced him. The name he never expected to hear again, the name he’d discarded in 1973.

  FOUR

  He should have denied it. Walked away too fast for Zachary Wilson, with his entourage of security and fangirls and white chocolate chip cookies, to follow. Reached the rental car long before anyone could track him. Driven away.

  But hearing his name again—the name Ma and Da called him, the name Sarah called him—it paralyzed all caution and sense. He shook his head at Wilson, who stood there with something on his face David didn’t want to see. Smug satisfaction he could have resisted, perhaps even walked away from. But this, the first genuine expression he’d glimpsed on Wilson’s schooled face, was a blending of disbelief and veneration. Whoever Wilson thought he was, whatever Wilson thought David had done to deserve that fixed stare while a thousand-plus people stared at Wilson with the same expression …

  David had to know what he knew.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Wilson said, as if he could see the danger he posed to David, the itch in David’s spine to bolt and vanish in the distance.

  If he knew who David was, then he knew the rest too. And if he was another like David, he should be taking the same precautions; yet he walked tightropes without nets. He survived the impossible and did it in a spotlight.

  He measured David, and Tiana was right. The man’s gaze was intense when he wasn’t veiling it behind a smirk. He extended a hand, palm out, asking for a minute.

  “Surely you don’t expect to slip away unnoticed.” David nodded to the fans that strained the ropes to get a better look …

  At him. The man who had enticed their idol to abandon them. In one glance he counted seven cell phones tilting and clicking and capturing his picture. He stepped a foot closer to Tommy, cutting off their angles. The groans of frustration carried across the sand.

  Wilson was watching him.

  “I’m not interested in becoming a hashtag,” David said.

  “No?” His mouth tilted. “My old high school buddy. My secret lover. Take your pick.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Let’s see, distinguished height, dark hair, dark clothes. Vampire pallor. We could give you an angst-ridden backstory, something like … my brother who was lost at sea, lived on coconut milk and crabs, rescued in time to run to my side while I undergo this difficult emotional recovery.”

  David snorted. “Difficult, aye. Just look at you, sacrificing so much to the queue of autograph seekers.”

  “Did you just say aye?”

  So many words, phrases, songs, meals—a whole life locked behind inner doors—and that name, John Russell, the key to all of them. “Strut on back to the teenagers, Wilson. You don’t want to cause a stampede at the edge of a canyon.”

  He glanced back at the multitude, and then his eyes met David’s without a hint of levity. “It’s Zac.”

  “Your birth name?”

  “Not even close.”

  He had no reason to believe this man other than the obvious one: it was the simplest explanation to everything that had happened in the last three days. The most impossible? Yes. And the simplest. Zac Wilson was unable to die. And Zac Wilson knew him. The only person left alive who knew John Russell.

  How?

  He would endure the man’s company long enough to sort through what this meant.

  He held ou
t his hand. “David Galloway.”

  Zac shook it. “If you would, give me … oh, about an hour.”

  “Thirty autographs per second ought to manage that.”

  “My team is about to earn some bonus pay.” He motioned Tommy over. “Get this guy back to his vehicle without being accosted. Prevent any pictures if possible.”

  Tommy cocked his head.

  “I said if possible.” Zac clapped one hand on David’s shoulder. “Please don’t disappear on me.”

  His face held hope. For answers? The tightness around his mouth, the lift of his eyebrows—what did he expect David to know?

  “I’m at the Hilton,” David said. “At the airport.” And not going to wait for this man to dispense with his groupies.

  “Of course.”

  “I fly out tomorrow.”

  Zac nodded, acknowledging the lack of information—no time, no destination. “I’ll be there tonight, then. We’ll get late dinner, drinks, whatever.”

  “Fine.”

  The smirk surfaced as he reached into a jacket pocket and withdrew his phone. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but can I have your number?”

  They exchanged contacts, and then David set out. Tommy could follow or not. After a few strides, the man kept pace just behind his right shoulder, and then another guard joined at David’s left.

  David shot a glance at Tommy. “Is this really necessary?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He sighed, but … yes, all right, they were there to box him in. They couldn’t prevent every picture, but they could prevent good ones. Maybe even usable ones.

  He pointed out the rental car and thanked them for their escort. The youngest-looking one, a thick-chested guy with red hair, hesitated when his colleagues turned back.

  “Where did you serve?” the guard said.

  Ach, this lie. The one he hated most. “Iraq, three years.”

  The kid smiled. “Same. Army?”

  “That’s right.”

  And now the pause, the expectation of detail. Rank, a shared experience, solidarity, something. He couldn’t do it, had nothing to offer. He held the man’s gaze a moment, tried to convey his respect, then turned away and got into the car. The guard turned on his heel and walked away without looking back.