CHAPTER ELEVEN
A moment later, we were standing in front of the window of Jenna’s tenement apartment again.
The evening was kind of chilly, the smell of winter hovering in the air. It was late at night. Not many kids were out. Flickering lights from TVs lit up the darkness from nearly every living room window on the block.
The living room of Jenna’s apartment was a horrible mess. Chairs and end-tables lay on their sides. Books, video tapes and magazines had been strewn everywhere. A wall clock lay on its back on the carpet, its face smashed. The floor was littered with beer cans, napkins, food wrappings and shattered knickknacks. A floor lamp, its dirty white shade half-crushed, lay across one of the tossed chairs. Oblivious to the horror that had swept through the room, the TV kept on playing, providing the only light source in the room.
The worst of this horror lay on the floor, near the archway leading to the hall.
Jenna’s stepfather sprawled face-down on top of her small, slender form. Neither moved.
As we watched, Jenna’s tiny hand gripped mine so tightly, a sharp pain jolted up my forearm. Her hand turned ice-cold; her body shivered. I looked down at her. Her face was stained with tears.
“Jenna…what happened?”
A sniff.
“Please…tell me.”
With her left hand, she pointed to the window.
Just a few seconds later, her stepfather’s bloated body moved as the other Jenna pushed him off of her. Once freed of the enormous weight, she rolled away. Then, pushing herself up, she struggled to her feet. Gradually regaining her balance, she gawked at the motionless body at her feet. She was no longer a little girl. This Jenna looked about eighteen. No longer scrawny, she’d developed into an attractive young woman, and when she pulled her hair out of her eyes, I could see that she’d become a natural beauty. Her eyes remained glued to the stationary form at her feet as she fastened her belt and buttoned her blouse. Discovering some of the buttons missing, she sighed and let her arms drop. She then contemplated the swollen body for nearly a minute before covering her face with her hands.
Stunned, I turned to Jenna. She was still shaking. “You…killed him?” I whispered.
She shook her head and continued gripping my hand.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
A nod.
I realized only then that I was asking the wrong questions. But I wasn’t sure how to ask the right ones. I just didn’t know how to ask a young girl if her stepfather had raped her. “Did he…force himself to—“
“He tried to…he wanted me to…he—“
“I understand.” There was no reason to ask for further details.
She looked up at me and sniffed. Her tear-stained eyes searched mine. “Do you?”
“He was a bad man, Jenna. A monster. This world is full of monsters. Monsters need to be dead, or in prison. Yes. I totally understand.”
Suddenly she broke down. I turned toward her. She pressed herself against me and sobbed hysterically.
About a minute later, when the sobbing subsided, she looked up at me. “He tried to…he almost—“
“It’s all right, Jenna. It’s all over now. It happened a long time ago. He’ll never bother you again.”
“He tried to…he grabbed my neck—“
“It’s all right.” I didn’t want to put her through this again. “You don’t have to tell me everything.”
“I’ve never…never told anyone…I—“
“I understand, Jenna. I really do.”
“His heart…it just…gave out…”
“That was a blessing.”
A nod. “I…I had to go…to leave…to get away…”
“I would have, too.”
“You don’t…think I’m terrible, do you?”
I stroked her hair. “No, Jenna. I could never think that.”
She smiled through her tears. Then, before I realized it, we were both enveloped in darkness.
***
In the very next moment, I discovered that Jenna and I were sitting beside the image of a much younger me in the back seat of a cab as the driver followed two solid lanes of fast-moving heavy traffic out of the city.
“Leavin’ town for the holidays?” the cabby asked.
“I just got a terrific job offer in Florida,” my younger image said, grinning proudly.
Although this had all happened twenty years earlier, I remembered the day well. It marked a major advancement in my life at a time when I really needed one. I’d graduated from Carnegie-Mellon six months earlier and had been working part-time at an investment firm on Fifth Avenue. The money hadn’t been very good, barely enough to support me and the Penn Avenue efficiency apartment I’d been living in the last three years. To make matters worse, they’d hired me primarily as a runner. As a result, I hadn’t been able to learn much at all about what I really needed to know in my new profession. I’d once calculated that I’d been spending 80% of my time out of the office, delivering personal errands and top priority parcels to other companies. I’d taken the job to get some experience while earning enough money to live on, but once I realized just what the job actually involved, I got right on the stick during my first week at the company, sending in my resume to more than a dozen other companies all over the country. Eight of the firms I’d applied to hadn’t bothered to respond. Five others called weeks later to inform me that the position I’d applied for had already been filled.
Then, in the midst of my discouragement, I heard from Crosley, Williams, & Associates.
They’d called just a few weeks before, asking if I could fly down to Orlando the week before Christmas for an interview. I’d told them that I didn’t think I could get the time off from my present job, but when they said the interview was merely a formality and that they’d liked what they’d seen in my resume and wanted to take me on, I told them I’d be down in a few days, after I’d given my employer my notice.
“Florida, eh?” The cabby shook his head. He was a small, skinny man in his late forties or early fifties, and barely able to see above the steering wheel. His cap was pushed down on his forehead. I could see only his bushy black brows and small, blinking chestnut eyes in his rearview. “Tough to take…”
“How’s that?”
He shrugged a bony shoulder. “Besides the sandy beaches, the sunshine, the eighty-five degrees eleven months of the year and the bikinis, how d’ya think you’re gonna take bein’ so far away from the Shangri-La we’ve got here? It’s thirty-seven friggin’ degrees out there right now, and it’s s’posed to hit damn near zero by midnight.”
“Florida isn’t perfect, you know.”
“Howzat?”
“They get hurricanes.”
He snorted. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Hurricanes. Every ten years they get a whopper. The air’s cleaned out, and if ya got insurance, ya get yourself a new roof and better awnings. Up here, we don’t have to worry about hurricanes. We got the cool weather to keep those bad boys away. We only get ice storms and blizzards, and when we ain’t freezin’ to death, we’re busy workin’ up a sweat—not to mention a good heart attack—shovelin’ snow. Thirty-seven friggin’ degrees, sometimes twenty below, sometimes ten…” He shook his head. “Hurricanes. Poor baby…”
“Actually, I would’ve taken this job if the company was in Alaska.”
“Ya don’t say?”
“I really would have.”
He thought that over for a little while. “Must be helluva job.”
“It is, from what they already told me.”
“Good pay?”
“Not right off, but once I’ve been there for six months, they promised me a fifteen-percent raise, along with bonus options.”
“Good benefits?”
“They’ve got great benefits.”
“Well, grab it, then. Terrific jobs don’t come easy, ya know. Got folks up here?”
“They’re divorced.”
He shook his head. “Makes it bad—especially for the
holidays.”
“It’s worse when your mom and dad are together but don’t want to be.”
He nodded. “There’s that, I guess…”
“I’ll survive.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled. “The beaches. The bikinis.”
“And don’t forget the eighty-five degrees eleven months of the year.”
“How could I forget somethin’ like that?”
Fighting the hectic stop-and-go traffic, the cabby pulled up to the curb at the terminal at Pittsburgh International and parked behind a PAT bus. My image got out and went to the back, where the cabby was pulling my two gray Samsonite suitcases from the trunk. I watched as I handed him his fare, then slapped a twenty-dollar-bill on top of it.
The cabby gawked at it. “What’s this?”
I shrugged. “A tip—what else?”
“Ya sure about this, buddy?”
“I’m sure.”
“Listen—“
“You’re a nice guy. We had a good time. It’s my way of saying thanks.”
He sighed. “I sure didn’t expect this much…”
“Have a nice holiday. Buy yourself something. Buy your wife something.”
The cabby shook my hand and patted me on the shoulder. “Good luck in Florida, kid. You’re gonna do just fine.”
“I hope so. And thanks again.”
Squaring my shoulders, my image picked up the suitcases and went inside the terminal.
Jenna and I followed.
As small crowds and nervous, sweating individuals rushed in front of and through us, Jenna said, “How much of that cabby ride do you remember?”
A tall, middle-aged guy in an oversized trench coat stopped between us and placed his shiny black attaché case on the floor at his feet. He reached into his coat and fished for his ticket. As he opened it and checked it closely with blinking eyes, I stepped to my right so I could see Jenna better.
“Most of it,” I told her. “It was the most important trip of my life. I’d just landed my dream job and was leaving all this behind me. My parents hadn’t exactly made things pleasant for me the last five years.”
Jenna nodded.
“I just don’t see why we’re here.” On my left and about twenty feet away, my image continued walking through the terminal, toward the signs that said TICKETS. “Don’t I get my luggage checked, then walk over to the seats and wait for my flight?”
Jenna smiled. “Something else happened that day. Something important.”
I could tell by her impish smile that she was holding something back. “What is it?” I asked.
Without a word, she pointed behind me.
I turned.
A fairly tall, slender blond woman wearing sunglasses and a red scarf rushed down the hall, keeping away from the passing crowds and people staring in confusion at the signs and flight schedules. She stopped briefly in front of the large digital sign showing the flight schedules and opened her bag to check her ticket.
“Why are we watching her?” I asked.
“Just wait.” Jenna’s eyes stayed fixed on the woman.
A moment later, the blonde slipped the ticket back in her bag, turned and approached the gate, where signs announcing the details of the connecting flight to Los Angeles were posted on metal stands as well as overhead. She hurried through the doorway and scanned the crowd, then walked over to a vacant seat facing the windows that looked out onto the runway.
As more people slipped through us, we kept watching the solitary blonde. She sat in the curved plastic seat, her bag on the floor next to her right foot. She seemed all alone in her own little world, totally oblivious of what was going on around her while staring at the planes taking off and landing on the other side of the huge window.
While we watched, a skinny young guy around nineteen in a wrinkled black windbreaker, jeans and athletic shoes emerged from the crowd, shuffled over to the window and stood about three feet from her. He seemed to be watching the activity outside as well. Just as the blonde reached up to adjust the scarf covering her hair, the boy snatched her bag, spun around and bolted toward the hall. Catching the activity only a second later, the blonde jumped up and ran after him.
I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Look behind you.”
I turned around. My other image was standing about fifty feet away, just a few feet from the sign announcing the flights. The strap of the blonde’s leather bag was gripped in my left hand. The kid lay squirming on the floor at my feet, clutching his stomach.
“Does any of this ring a bell?” Jenna asked.
“I vaguely remember.” I recalled the incident, but I still couldn’t shake the confusion. “What does any of this have to do with—“
“Sshhh!”
Witnessing the sight, the blonde stopped cold in her tracks. Then, realizing what just happened, she rushed over. When she was about five feet away from me, she stopped and watched the security guards scrambling to grab the punk and drag him away.
After a few tense moments, she recovered. Shaking herself, she gazed at my younger self as if in a trance.
I held out her bag. “I believe this is yours.”
She didn’t reply; she just stared at me.
“You okay? That jerk didn’t hurt you, did he?”
Still staring, she shook her head. Then she slowly reached out and cautiously took her bag.
My younger image showed obvious concern. “Are you in shock or something? I can probably find a doctor, but in this crowd, it might take a while, and by the time someone gets his butt over here, you’ll probably miss your flight…“
“No…” She shook her head again. “I’m all right. I’m just fine…thanks to you.”
After a moment, my image said, “Do I…know you?”
The blonde didn’t reply. After a long pause, she said, “How can I ever thank you…for this…for what you’ve done?”
“It’s not necessary. I just happened to see what he did and had to stop him. A hard fist to the gut usually works wonders.”
She continued staring.
My image stared back. Now that this was all unfolding before me again, I recalled that I was trying to evaluate the situation. I also recalled that this girl looked familiar, and it irritated me that I couldn’t remember how I knew her. “Are you sure we don’t know one another?”
“I’m sure. And thank you. I’ll never forget this…as long as I live.”
“It’s all right. I just happened to be there when he—“
“You’ve been so…so good to me. I can never thank you enough…”
My image didn’t reply. I could clearly see the total confusion on my face. Finally my younger self said, “It wasn’t anything, really. I just tripped him as he ran past, and when he tried getting back up, I—“
“Thank you so much…for everything…”
“You’re very welcome. And best of luck to you.”
She gazed at me a few more seconds, then turned and slowly walked back to the waiting area.
My image continued watching her, scratching the back of my neck as she disappeared in the crowd down the hall.
“You’re confused,” Jenna said.
“Extremely.”
“Was it because she was staring at you?”
“It was because she looked so familiar. And, of course, because she was so grateful...”
“You were there for her.”
“As I told her, I just—“
“It was much more than that.”
“All I did was stop some asshole from stealing her bag. Anyone else would’ve done the same thing.”
“Why do you think she looked so familiar?”
I didn’t reply. I still had no idea what was going on. Jenna obviously knew. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have brought me here. “Please tell me what that was all about, Jenna.”
“You still haven’t figured it out yet?”
“I guess I’m just a little dense about some thin
gs.”
“Do you really want to know why she seemed so familiar?”
“More than you could ever possibly know.”
“Take a look at her again.”
I turned back to the doorway. The crowd gathering at the window in front of the line of plastic chairs concealed the blonde from me. “I can’t see her now—“
“This was why,” came her reply in a different voice.
Startled, I turned.
Little Jenna had suddenly transformed into a beautiful young woman with a shapely figure, long blond hair and a captivating smile.
“J-Jenna?“ I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“It’s me.”
I tossed a thumb to my right, where the blonde had disappeared. “That was…that was you?”
A nod.
Once again I found myself at a total loss. Even though I now knew what happened, I still found that I couldn’t quite grasp what was actually going on. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were? Why didn’t you—“
“I tried to. I really did. I wanted you to know how much you…what you did…what you really meant to me…”
“But you didn’t. I would’ve loved knowing what happened. I would’ve loved knowing who you were. Why didn’t you give me at least a clue?”
“It’s a long story.”
I shrugged. “I’m here, and so are you. Don’t forget, you brought me here. And I’m listening.”
Still smiling, she stared at me.
The darkness came back once again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Once the darkness had burned away, we were walking down a deserted street that went up a hill. It seemed late in the morning. Jenna kept close beside me. As beautiful as she was, I missed the sweet little girl who’d showed me so much of her troubled past and I found that I couldn’t stop hoping she’d change back.
As we walked, I kept looking for familiar signs of where we were. The neighborhood seemed oddly familiar. The steep hills and slopes leading down to the valley behind the two- and three-story brick homes on the right side of the paved road told me we were still in the Pittsburgh area. But even though I had some idea of where this was, our reason for being here remained a mystery.
I strongly suspected that the main issue had nothing to do with our actual whereabouts, and that the reason for all this awaited us at the top of the hill, just beyond this development.
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