by Cubed, Magen
“Right. Well, you kids have fun now.”
Kyle gave Bridger a little wave and turned to leave with Norah, heading to the street outside. Out on the dance floor, Clara and Adam didn’t see them go.
II.
When Bridger slept he dreamt of fire, bullets, and blood in the gutter. He walked the city streets under permanent midnight as troops rushed past in black combat gear. Somewhere above him, a person screamed over the roar of gunfire and helicopter blades. An echo thundered along the crowded block to hound his every step. There was a war raging on 32nd and Commerce, fought in the crumbling frontlines between shopfronts and restaurants. The sudden rush of water all around woke him in a flinch and he found himself staring at Adam’s ceiling once more. He blinked twice. His lungs burned on the end of a wet cough.
Hauling himself upright, the entire world lurched. The taste in his mouth was foul. After a moment, he realized the thrumming in his head was most certainly from the hangover that had settled behind his eyes rather than helicopter blades.
“Oh, fuck my life.”
Staggering, Bridger made it to his feet and trudged past Adam’s bedroom. Beyond the cracked door, Adam slept like a baby in a polite, fetal curl under his comforter. He’d changed out of last night’s clothes and into a clean T-shirt and sleep pants. Bridger scowled at him and traveled on to the bathroom to brush his teeth and contemplate this cosmic injustice. He was forty-five; he didn’t get hangovers anymore, especially not when he was drinking with twelve-year-olds and an Adam. This Adam in particular was far too good-mannered for such late nights out.
Rinsing his mouth out at the sink, he heard a rustling in the bathtub. From the mirror, he looked over his shoulder as Clara pushed back the shower curtain, revealing her cot made of borrowed sheets and pillows.
Lulling her head forward, she was met with the burn of fluorescent light. “Oh, god—oh, god, no. Why did I do that?”
“Which part?” Bridger asked.
Her face puckered. “How many parts are there?”
“Well, what do you want to hear about first: the part where you got hammered and threw up in the back of Adam’s car, or the part where you and Adam were dirty-dancing to hits of the ‘90s?”
Clara pulled the curtain closed, buried her head in the pillow, and moaned.
III.
Amanda had been up for the last twenty-four hours by the time she looked down at her phone. She sat in the coffee shop three blocks from her apartment where she stopped for food and caffeine. The blueberry muffin and large cappuccino was the closest approximation to a meal she had since the previous afternoon’s chicken sandwich and fries for lunch. Since then, there had been one failed bombing, two press conferences, and two hundred calls to the tip line reporting suspicious neighbors and teenagers in black hoodies. Tim was asleep somewhere across town, warm and safe in his bed before a long day at the office. She didn’t feel like talking to him yet.
In a rational world with sleep and considerate people, she would have expected a response to any one of the texts she had sent to Kyle. After all, he was the one who randomly called her the day before to tell her that he and a group of idiot civilians decided to chase a mad bomber through the hospital. A rational person would consider that worth a follow-up. But this was Kyle, and she knew Kyle. She knew what he was like, and how he could get, and how easy it was for him to lie and keep secrets.
Instead of the message she wanted, she was met with an empty inbox. She let out a sigh and thumbed across the touch screen. Soon, she would return to her apartment for sleep, but not yet.
“You better be alive, you idiot.”
IV.
The first thing Norah realized when she woke was that she wasn’t at her mother’s house in Somerset. The second was that she didn’t know where she was. This realization brought her upright to look around the strange, queen-sized bed she was spread across. The beige wallpaper was unfamiliar. The tired carpet and forgettable green drapes indicated nothing. A sudden, visceral urge to find her child landed in her gut like a punch. She turned, and there she found Kyle. He sat at the work desk he made for himself across the room. The glow from his laptop warmed his face.
“Morning,” he said, swiveling his chair around.
“Morning.” Social convention dictated her response despite the alarms ringing in her head. “What time is it?”
“Five o’clock.”
“Oh, shit. My mother’s going to kill me.”
The panic settled, replaced by the embarrassment of having never made it back to her mother’s house. She slipped out of bed to find her shoes. From his desk, he took the coffee pot from its stand and poured her a cup in a big, ceramic mug. He slid it in her general direction.
“Okay.” She found her shoes at the foot of the bed, toed them on, and smoothed her hair back from its tousle. “Two questions: where am I, and please tell me we didn’t have sex.”
“My place,” he answered, “and that was a statement, not a question.”
Contemplating the loaded symbolism of the offered coffee, she still crossed the room to take it. “It’s early and I’m fragile. Just shut up and answer the question.”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry. You got to the subway station with me, but you were a little more far gone than you thought. I decided to take you back here to let you sleep it off.”
“Oh, thank god. I was going to say you’re a nice person and all, but, well. Actually, you’re not even that nice of a person, so I don’t even have to feel bad.”
He chuckled, turning back to his own coffee mug on the edge of the desk. “Thanks. You’re a gem, too.”
“I try.”
Licking her lips, she looked over Kyle’s board: his map, suspect photos, and sticky notes. “So, is this... the investigation?”
He glanced to the map, then back to his laptop for the morning’s headlines. “Yeah. My command center, I guess.”
“You’re going to catch this guy, huh? Hell or high water?”
“That’s the plan.”
She nodded. “You know, whatever you think of Clara, she’s right. Maybe we’re not fit to take this head-on. Hell, I mean, we’re all just barely scraping by here. But, even for all that shit, we still did something good yesterday. And maybe what happened to us doesn’t give us any moral authority to do something about this guy, but if we do nothing, I don’t think I can live with myself.”
Closing his laptop, he leveled her with a hard look. “Do you honestly believe that?”
“Believe what?”
“That we can stop him?”
“I don’t know. But I think we’re stronger together than we are apart, even if we just do this for our own sakes. Because she’s right about us: we died, and we came back. We have to make that mean something, and there’s no point in pushing each other away anymore.”
“I’m not pushing anyone away.”
“You haven’t exactly been warm and forthcoming.”
He sighed. “Do you trust them?”
She looked back to her cup. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. You can say it’s naïve or whatever, but who else are we going to turn to with this? Who else is going to get what we’ve been through?”
He sighed. “Look, I get it. You think I’m a dick, and that’s fine. But I’m not in a real position to go running into this headfirst.”
“I know. You were in prison.”
“You know why?”
She shook her head.
“All I ever wanted to do was be a cop, make my way up to the federal level. After two years on vice, I thought I could get off the streets and make the leap, but then I was laid off due to budget cuts. In six months, the last of my severance dried up and I was completely broke, and my prospects weren’t looking good. My cousin made me an offer to help him rip off some copper from a construction site and split the profits—make some quick cash—so I went with it. Then, a security guard got shot for my mistake.”
“Did he die?”
“No.”
&nbs
p; “Did you shoot him?”
“Does it matter?”
“You were in a tough spot and you made a mistake. You did your time. Look, shit happens to all of us. I’m not going to judge you for that.”
“But you can see why I’m not tripping over myself to hold your hands and jump off this cliff together.”
“Because you’ll get caught?”
“Because somebody could get killed.”
“It’s a good thing we’re all looking pretty death-proof these days.” She smiled and handed his cup back. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to skulk home and explain to my mother why I’ve been out all night.”
“Have fun with that.” Kyle followed her to the door to lock it behind her.
“I won’t.”
On the C Line to Somerset, Norah let the bumps in the tracks lull her to sleep again. At her mother’s front door, she used the spare key in her wallet to get in. She was careful to mind her steps as she crept through the silent house to her old bedroom. Hannah was asleep when Norah slid in, taking the empty side of the bed. Her mother would still grill her on her whereabouts in the morning, and she wasn’t looking forward to lying. As far as Hannah would know, Norah had been asleep at her side all night. As she drifted off again, that was all that mattered.
V.
The drive to the diner was silent with Bridger and Clara slumped in their respective seats and hiding behind dark sunglasses. Adam woke up long after they first rose to stagger desperately around the apartment. His eyes were bright as he made coffee and got dressed. Clara groaned for food, unhappy with the fruit juice and yogurt in Adam’s fridge, so he offered to drive them into the city for breakfast. There, they found an empty table amid the morning rush, dusted the leftover crumbs from the booth seat, and piled in.
Over his second cup of black coffee, Bridger eyed Adam from behind his sunglasses. “Why are you so sober? This is disgusting.”
Adam shrugged and cupped his cooling mug. “I was in the army for six years. Drinking was the only thing we had to do in our off time.”
Sobering up after three cups of coffee and a plate of French toast, Clara scrolled through the news on her phone. “We need names.”
“Names?” Adam repeated. He craned his neck to read her screen. “For what?”
“Yeah, for when we fight crime.”
Bridger scoffed. “Yeah, no. Yesterday was a fluke. That’s not an invitation to put on spandex and fight crime.”
“Oh, yeah. Costumes. That’s a good idea.”
“No, absolutely not. You’re not stuffing my ass into tights.”
“Why? Because you’re old?”
“No, you dumbass, because I don’t want to get shot at.”
“Ugh,” she groaned. “You sound like Kyle.”
“Well, he’s not entirely wrong.”
“Dude, we need to become superheroes. Just accept it into your little, black heart and move on.”
“I don’t know about all that.” Adam chuckled softly.
“Why not?” asked Clara. “You’re super strong, I’m super fast, and he sees the future. It’d be a huge waste not to become superheroes.”
“Yeah,” Bridger said. “I’m also middle-aged, tumorous, and going into seizures at the first sign of trouble. Not exactly fit to put on a cape and leap tall buildings.”
“Oh, c’mon. I can be Kinetica! Norah can be Miss Universe!”
“You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you?” asked Adam.
“I may have written down a list the other day. Oh, and you can be the Strong Man! Or Captain Might, or maybe Lion Heart.”
“What about me?” Bridger asked.
“Short Sight?” Adam smirked.
“The Big C?” offered Clara. “The Incredible Dying Man?”
“Oh, go fuck yourselves.”
Adam laughed. “What about Kyle?”
“Man, fuck Kyle,” Clara said. “Nobody died and made him team leader. You’re just as good a leader as he could be, anyway.”
“I don’t know,” Adam said. His chest tightened at the thought. “I want to help, I do, but I’m not sure if I’m the kind of guy you’re looking for.”
“I saw you run into a hospital to find a bomb yesterday,” Clara said. “You’re it.”
“It’s not really my place to say.”
From the other side of the table, Bridger watched Adam hunch his shoulders. He took up as little space as his long, broad body would allow. Bridger smiled at that.
“I don’t know, Strong Man,” he said. “I tend to agree with her. And I would never admit to that under normal circumstances.”
“See? Finally, a consensus.”
Adam smiled and shook his head. He busied his hands under the table. Bridger sat back in his seat and took a drink from his cup. Clara thumbed a note into her phone to remind her to look into patterns for costumes.
Chapter Fifteen
I.
It was well into the afternoon by the time Kyle ventured out into the world. He was armed with five hours of sleep behind drawn curtains and a pair of dark sunglasses. He needed food, more coffee, and a pack of cigarettes to replace the empty one in his jacket pocket. The air in the EBC felt just a little lighter as he wandered down the littered avenue to the ramshackle Korean restaurant around the corner. His news feeds were reporting cautious optimism in the wake of the failed bombing. Op-eds spouted the virtues of community vigilance and strength in the face of terrorism. The evening news wasn’t concerned with the shootings or the college students pulled from the dorm rooms and thrown into the backs of squad cars.
Amanda suddenly dropped into the seat across from Kyle. He didn’t see her enter or pull up the empty chair. Immediately, he straightened to meet her gaze.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
He looked at her bleary eyes. Yesterday’s makeup smudged their corners. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks.” She stole his Coke and took a sip. “You look hungover.”
“Been worse. How’d you find me?”
“I was heading to your place. You weren’t answering your phone, so I thought I’d stop by. When I saw you through the window, I figured I’d pop in.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t even checked his phone since Adam called him the day before. “Sorry. What’s up?”
“I could ask the same thing.”
He shrugged. “I had a tip and I phoned it in. Nothing crazy.”
“And how’d you get this tip?”
Sighing, he leaned back in his seat. She leaned forward to fill the space between them.
“What’s this about?” he asked. “If this is about the last few nights...”
“No,” she said. She would have laughed at that, but the idea was so obnoxious it was insulting. “It’s not about that. That was exactly what it was—just sex. Just our old shit. I’m talking about the phone call.”
“I already told you.”
“I texted you all day and you didn’t think it was worth talking about.”
“And I still don’t.”
“Is there something I need to know, Kyle?” When he didn’t respond, she licked her lips and shook her head. “Look, I’m just concerned, okay? When you said you wanted to look into the case, I did what I could. If something like this happened to me, I’d want answers, too. I get that. But you’re running around crime scenes and calling in threats, and I just want to know what’s going on with you.”
“I’m working the case on my own,” he said firmly, trying to head off the inevitable fight. “My own intel, my own assets. That’s all.”
“Are you sure?”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I don’t want to see you do something reckless.”
“I’m not.”
“What about your friends? You trust them?”
His jaw ticked. “It’s complicated.”
“Then tell me, Kyle, because I’m trying to understand this. You survived the attacks together, fine, okay, but what’s r
eally going on?”
“These people—they’re just trying to survive this. They lost everything to this guy. We’re just trying to make this work.”
She leveled him a dangerous look. “But how? Because if you’re interfering with a federal investigation, I can’t help you anymore, and I can’t protect you if something happens. You’re on your own and looking at serious charges.”
“It won’t come to that.”
“How do you know?”
“Look.” He leaned forward and took her by the wrists. “I’m not going to get hurt, and I’m not going to let you get pulled into this, either. I just have to do this, whatever comes of it, all right? There’s no letting it go, not after what he’s done to us.”
“If you go back to prison, Kyle, I can’t—” She caught herself, took a deep breath, and shook her head. “I won’t watch you throw your life away again. I didn’t agree to that.”
“I know. And I don’t expect you to.” He sat back and held her hands in the middle of the table. “Go home. Get some sleep. Take care of yourself. Let me take care of this.”
After a moment, she smiled. “You’re just going to do something stupid, aren’t you?”
“It’s a safe bet.”
She sighed and squeezed his fingers before letting go. “You better answer me the next time I text, or I’m going to have you arrested.”
“I know.”
If she wanted to kiss him, she didn’t say anything of it. Instead, she got up and left without another word. In his back pocket, his phone vibrated as he watched her leave the restaurant. He opened his inbox, seeing Amanda’s five unread messages above a text from Adam.
“Meet us here: 233 Chelsea Street, East Essex,” it read. “Bridger thinks it’s important.”
Finishing his meal, Kyle paid his tab, grabbed his coat, and jogged for the nearest subway station.
II.
Driving home, Bridger nudged Adam into taking a detour through East Essex. The crooked streets of the quiet borough were nearly empty at this time of day; it was far less of a hassle than trying to navigate the city in the middle of rush hour. They drove down long, skinny blocks of decaying row houses, each of them silent as Bridger watched his old neighborhood drift by in a strange flood of warm recollection. The block hadn’t changed much in twenty-five years. It was still peppered by the same storefronts and restaurants that had been there when he was a kid: delis, secondhand shops, shoe stores owned by families that had been there for three generations or more.
