The Real Michael Swann

by Bryan Reardon

She acted out her best version of a swoon. “Oh, me, too.”

  He grabbed her hand. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  She glanced out her apartment window. It was already dark.

  “Now?”

  “Sure,” he said, pulling her gently out of the doorway.

  Julia locked the door and they headed down the stairs. Once outside, he led the way through the adjoining neighborhood as they talked about their day. She lived in a college town. Family homes sat beside two-story frat houses. Sheets painted with Greek letters hung across Ionic columns. A party raged at one. Michael slowed, motioning with his head. She smiled and shook hers. So they kept walking, holding hands and listening to the songs of the night.

  Without notice, he veered directly into someone’s side yard. Julia laughed nervously.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Come on,” he said.

  Julia was, and always would be, a rule follower. She felt on edge as she hurried through the damp grass. When they reached a tree line in the backyard and he pushed his way through the thinning underbrush, she let out a deep breath.

  “You’re crazy,” she said through a huge smile that belied her words.

  “Nope,” he answered, simply, as they wove between the stark, straight trunks of a copse of oak trees.

  The nearly full moon shined down through the bare branches overhead. Julia watched the faint speckles they cast on the forest floor. The sight of shadows at night, ones she had never noticed before, felt at once magical and disconcerting, almost dangerous. When she reached out and grabbed his hand, she snorted out a laugh. Julia considered herself a strong, independent woman, yet she let a shadow frighten her into holding a man’s hand. How gauche! Mind you, she didn’t let go.

  He continued to lead and she continued to follow. Her anticipation countered any desire to change that. She looked around, listening to the utter silence. Although it wasn’t too cool that night, maybe low fifties, the first freeze had hit less than a week before, and crickets had quieted since.

  “Where are we going?” she whispered.

  “Almost there,” he said.

  He was right. Not ten paces more and they stepped from the trees into a clearing. She glanced back through the trees and could still see the back of the homes behind them. When she looked forward again, she saw two dark lines running off into the distance.

  “Are those train tracks?”

  “Yup.”

  He led her just a little farther. To her surprise, they came across six perfectly cross-sectioned stumps, probably cut from some fallen oak. By the way the wood cracked and the bark had all peeled away, she assumed they had been there for some time. He offered her one as a seat.

  “It’s the best one,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  He smiled. “I used to come here all the time when I was in school.”

  She hit him in the arm. “With all your girls?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “Usually with beer.”

  The laughter burst from her. Then she motioned to the stump he offered her.

  “You take it,” she said. “You led us here.”

  He protested but was cut short when she put a hand on her hip. Shaking his head, he sat and she chose the stump next to his. They looked at each other for a moment in the moonlight. Their features appeared timeless in the pale light, and Julia had a fleeting wish that this exact moment might last forever.

  “How’d your call go?” he asked.

  It took her a second to come out of the moment and answer him.

  “Great,” Julia said. “I think it would be great working for Karen. She’s amazing, and so smart. They’re doing some great stuff down there with tax credit financing.”

  “Yeah, Karen’s got a great reputation. You know she sits on the governor’s cabinet?”

  “She told me. She said if I took the position, I would staff her for the meeting.”

  “Nice.”

  “I know.”

  He leaned forward. For the first time, his smile faded just a little. His eyes took on an earnestness that she’d never seen before.

  “So, do you think you’ll take it?”

  “I don’t know,” Julia said, glancing up at the stars. “It sounds great. I just . . . I thought I’d travel, you know.” She laughed softly. “Can I be honest?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “I . . . Since I was little, I always felt like I was supposed to do something. It probably sounds crazy. I just feel like it all has a reason, you know. That we have a place, but it’s not guaranteed that we’ll find it.” She paused. “But I need to. I mean, I think about it all the time. I feel like there’s something guiding me.”

  She looked at him, fearing he might see her in a new light. He might have, but it wasn’t the one that she expected.

  “I know,” he said, softly.

  “What do you mean, you know?”

  He laughed but didn’t answer.

  “Do you think about money?” she asked after a brief silence.

  “Sure,” he said. “All the time. But I also, sometimes, think it gets in the way. It’s like this insidious little distraction that keeps us from doing something meaningful with the time we have.”

  “Holy crap,” she said, smacking him again. “That’s exactly how I feel all the time. That’s crazy.”

  “No, it’s not,” he said. He looked her in the eyes. She could see the blue even through the dim light. “I sort of knew it. When I saw you that first day, it’s like I could see it. It might sound weird, but there were so many people working that day. They were everywhere, and they all kind of meshed into a single thing, like a ball pit filled with just one colored ball. But you, you stood out. Not in how you looked or how you were dressed. It was more like I could see the way you looked at things. There was something important. Not broody or anything. Just . . . I don’t know . . . it was like I could tell you had this great purpose. And I wanted in on it.”

  She stared at him, thinking, How could he know that? How could he see something like that? It made no sense. Yet she had sensed it that day, too. She felt whatever it was he described. Like him, her words would be nothing compared to what actually happened. But they had shared it, like their meeting had been preordained, some spark in the great movements of the universe.

  Just then, she heard a soft rumble in the distance.

  “It’s coming,” he said.

  “What? The train?” she asked.

  Out of the night, a single beam of light appeared. It panned along the line of trees until it shined directly at them. At the same time, a steady tremor shook the ground. The sound moved closer and closer, seeming to speed up. Julia flinched, feeling the need to flee, yet his hand on her leg gave her the courage to remain still. The air pushed against her face and she held her breath.

  “Oh, God,” she said.

  The train passed. Her world shook. As the cars roared by, she felt the force pulling her, sucking her toward the mass of crushing metal. It pulled her to the edge of the stump. She screamed.

  That’s when she heard him laugh. His hands shot up like he was riding on some breathtaking roller coaster. His eyes widened, full of wonder, feeding on the thrill and the danger. When she saw this, when she saw his face, the moment took on a new clarity. Her mouth opened, and a surge of excitement tingled from head to toe.

  As the last few cars passed, he rose. She sat and watched him as the vibration ran through her body, stimulating every nerve, making her feel beyond alive. It pulsed inside her, the rhythm syncing with her racing heartbeat. Her toes curled.

  She saw the force moving him closer and closer to the track, inch by inch. Then, as fast as it had appeared, the train passed. He went with the momentum, sprinting toward the track and jumping clear across. He hooted with excitement. And she ran to meet
him.

  He fell to the ground. She fell atop him.

  “You’re crazy,” she said, out of breath.

  His smile encompassed everything. “I know.”

  Her mouth met his. They had kissed, but not like that, not yet. As they pressed into each other, their hands moved in the darkness, peeling away the layers of clothing that separated them. Neither felt the dampness or the chill. Not until after. In the moment, they felt afire, burning up from within.

  Astride him, she guided them together. They moved faster than the train had, and her scream, so different this time, echoed down the tracks. A dog barked in the yards beyond the trees. She crumbled atop him, laughing, burning, and utterly breathless.

  “Wow,” she said.

  He closed his eyes. “Wow.”

  Through the years, Julia would think often about that night, and how she felt. Although they wouldn’t say it for some time, it was the moment they fell in love. But there was something else, too. Something that bound him to her even more deeply. As they came together as one, both before and after, she remembered this feeling. It was like the world around her shrunk. The night pushed away. She felt so safe, but it was something more. Years later, after their two kids were born, she put a word to it. She never quite knew if it was exactly right or not. But the word was trust.

  15

  I sat on a curb. It’s odd how, sometimes, the loneliest feelings occur when you are surrounded by people. So many, some wounded physically, all damaged emotionally, we all existed in some other world. Dust still hung on the air, filling my throat and diffusing the beams of light from the portable lamps above. It cast haunting shadows across the street. People moved in and out of the light, creating a cadence of the dead shuffling from their graves. The moans of pain, punctuated by cries of agony, only worsened the shroud of horror that surrounded me, surrounded us all.

  Half a block away, the lights from two ambulances flashed blue and red. I glanced up and saw a man in a window maybe three floors above. Although he was distorted by the haze and the lights, I think he wore a business suit and held a cell phone to his ear. He stared down at us, never blinking, as his lips moved quickly.

  “We need triage down here,” someone called out.

  I touched my head again. It hurt like hell. Then I looked down at the case. My knuckles around the handle glowed white, then red, then blue. For the first time, I thought to open it. I needed to, suddenly. I still didn’t fully understand why, but I needed to open it.

  “Sir?”

  I looked up. A young woman, maybe in her midtwenties, bent at the waist. She carried a leather medical bag that looked disturbingly out of place, like we had just survived a shootout in some dying western town.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’d like to take a look at your head, if that would be okay?”

  I paused, but nodded. She came closer, kneeling on the pavement. A blanket seemed to materialize in her hands, and she wrapped it around my shoulders and then probed the wound on my head. Her touch was gentle and surprisingly confident for her age and for the surroundings.

  “My name’s Fiona,” she said. “I’m a resident at Presbyterian. What’s your name?”

  I said nothing. She shined a light in my eyes, first the left and then the right. It felt oddly familiar yet totally foreign to me, so I simply remained still. At the same time, I tried desperately to break through the fog that surrounded me and seemed to fill my skull. Yet all I seemed to return to was the severed finger. And the headlight of the subway car.

  “The cell service in the city is down. They say it’s because too many people are trying to call. They don’t expect it to be working anytime soon, but landlines are working sometimes. Do you have anyone that you want contacted?” she asked as she continued to do her work.

  I still said nothing. I had no answer for either question. Nothing seemed to make sense. I knew I should be able to answer them. That it should be instantaneous. Yet there was just nothing but a gray emptiness when I tried.

  The resident’s eyes widened slightly. She looked not concerned, maybe attentive. She stood.

  “I’ll be right back with an orderly. I’m going to have them take you straight to the hospital. Okay?”

  I nodded. The pain was excruciating, but I tried not to show it. I watched her walk away; then I looked down at the case again.

  Calmly, I stood. On the sidewalk, people hovered about, survivors in haphazard jerks and emergency workers with practiced intention. I merged with them, trying to act natural. A few people looked at me. One man who appeared to be a paramedic saw the blood on my face and hair. He was working on another patient. By the time he gained the attention of someone else, I had reached the corner. I turned onto one of the avenues—I have no idea which—and I kept walking. When the case brushed up against my thigh, my steps lengthened.

  I can’t say I had a reason to walk away, at least not one I knew at the time. Yet one thing had suddenly become clear. And maybe that’s what caused me to get out of there. When the woman asked my name and I couldn’t answer, it started something. A little bit of the fog in my brain lifted. Just enough for me to truly understand. Confusion surrounded me, yet one fact became clear: I had no idea who I was. Or, for that matter, where I was. And unlike everyone else, I still didn’t know what had happened under the city that night. Yet something deep inside told me to get out, to find safety. So I left behind those who might care for me and fled.

  16

  The therapist walked her out to her car. She paused before handing over the keys, looking into Julia’s eyes.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  She nodded.

  “We can have someone drive you.”

  “No, I promise. I’m okay. I just want to get back to our kids.”

  The therapist’s eyes narrowed, but then she nodded. She handed Julia the keys.

  “Thanks for your help. You’ll call me right away if you hear anything, right?”

  “We will. I promise. And you promise you’re heading home, right?”

  “Yes,” Julia whispered.

  When she started the engine, the radio came on. The officer who had driven her car from the turnpike must have turned it on and found a news station on the satellite radio band. Julia backed out, thinking she’d turn it off, but got distracted as she followed the signs to the southbound exit. By the time she merged into one of the two middle lanes of the turnpike, she’d forgotten the radio altogether.

  “It’s a terrorist attack, plain and simple,” a woman with a strong but shrill voice said over the speakers. “What happened with banning Muslims from this country? See what the liberals got us. Innocent Americans dead. Children dead. Mothers and fathers dead.”

  A man’s voice rose in response. “Weren’t you the same person that suggested that African Americans were to blame for all these police shootings? Didn’t you suggest building a wall along the border to Mexico? Didn’t you support bank deregulation right before the collapse? Here’s what I think. It’s the people like you, warmongering, unethical fascists who support would-be dictators and line their pockets with money earned at the cost of those less fortunate. You’ve raped this country for over a century.”

  A calmer, more professional voice broke in at that point. “Frank, as the leader of a political party associated with socialistic leanings, what do you suggest we do?”

  “I suggest that we lock up every politician in Washington, career or otherwise. That’s what I suggest.”

  The woman broke in with a laugh. “So you can run things with your merry band of jobless millennials. Oh, that would be great. The economy would go right down the toilet.”

  “At least we wouldn’t be in the middle of a race war!”

  “Oh, did I offend you? Is that your trigger?”

  Julia heard none of this, the chatter becoming white noise. Every mi
le she drove back toward Pennsylvania seemed to take her farther from home. She couldn’t stop thinking about Michael. She tried to remember what he had said right before their last call went dead. Was it important? Had they argued? She had no idea.

  Her head spun around, seeing an access road between the two directions of the highway. She thought about slamming on the brakes, veering off the road and going back. The urge to find him felt impossible to ignore. She remembered what the officer had said. No one was getting into the city. She had to get home.

  Yet every mile she drove seemed to push her memories of Michael further and further away. Her hands tightened on the wheel as her vision grew blurry. In the past, every time she worried about some ethereal misfortune following a late call, she somehow never considered it a real possibility. Speeding along the turnpike toward exit 6, it hit her for the first time. Her husband could be dead.

  “No,” she said aloud. “No.”

  Can we afford the house?

  Stop!

  Will the kids ever be okay?

  Her palm slammed the wheel. Julia turned her head, left and right, looking for signs. She needed to turn around and go back. She had to find him. There was no other way.

  Her phone rang. She stared at the display on her dashboard. It was Evelyn. Her finger hovered over the button on the wheel that would accept the call. The air left her lungs.

  “Hello.”

  “Are you still at the police station?” Evelyn asked.

  Julia heard the tension in her friend’s voice. Her head cleared, just a little, and she thought about the kids. She couldn’t even get to the city. She had to get home to them. She had to make sure they were okay. After that, she could figure things out. There was nothing she could do in the unending traffic outside the tunnel. The thought suddenly seemed utterly absurd.

  “Are the kids okay?” she asked.

  “Evan is up,” Evelyn answered, guardedly.

  Julia’s stomach flipped. “Is he . . . ?”

  “How long until you’re home?”

  Julia glanced at the GPS display. “I’ll be home by eleven.”