Vessel, Book I: The Advent

by Tominda Adkins

When Jesse finally seemed to be finished, he watched me. Carefully.

  I said nothing. I was too tired, too stupefied, to come up with a response. The mere fact that Jesse had produced something so complex was the only thing that had kept me awake and listening in the first place. Now that his story was over, I sat back and waited for more, for something else. For him to ask what kind of drugs he’d been given to explain this bizarre dream. Or for him to request more of them.

  But there was nothing else. Jesse just stared at me with an impatient and anxious hope in his eyes.

  A shrug was the only reply I could come up with. What the hell was I supposed to say?

  "Jordan," he started, already pleading.

  I sighed and adjusted myself in the chair for the billionth time. Was he kidding?

  "Jesse," I said softly. "You’re just tired." And delusional.

  "Jordan, please, I’m serious." He sat forward, trying to look me in the eye while I avoided the invitation. "Do you think I want to sound like an idiot?"

  I bit my tongue. Why? Why did this have to be the first time he'd asked me that? I cringed.

  "Jesse? Seriously?"

  "Seriously."

  I froze for a moment, just a moment. No. Nope. No way. I shook my head resolutely and started to stand up, getting defensive when he shot me one of his desperate looks.

  "Oh, come on!" I threw my hands up. "It sounds like you just—"

  "I know what it fucking sounds like!" Jesse shouted, loud enough for the morgue to hear, and wind rattled fiercely against the picture window. The last time he’d sounded even remotely that angry, he was blitzed on vodka and reading a negative red carpet outfit review. This was incomparably worse. I sat back down.

  "I know it sounds crazy. It was in my head, remember?" Jesse pointed at his ears and searched my face for any trace of agreement. "But it wasn’t a dream, Jordan. It wasn’t, I’m telling you. It was real. It was a signal or a message or something and it was real. It’s real and it’s going to happen. To me."

  He sank forward, and all that hair, still perfect even after a night on hospital linen, fell over his face. Jesse laced his long fingers through it and moaned. "What am I going to do?"

  What was he going to do? What the hell was I going to do? This was the kind of crap I got paid to prevent. The dream description had been disturbing enough, but now this? Now he’s taking it as some kind of divine appointment? Alright. Fine. Okay. I could handle it. I’d gotten him through that month when he was totally convinced that mirrors caused cancer. I could get him through this. And I wouldn’t even have to do his eyebrows.

  Three more days, I reminded myself. Just three more days, and you're done.

  I sucked in a deep breath and stood up.

  "You’re going to take it easy today, that’s what you're going to do," I commanded. "Margot already cancelled tonight's show, and the press release went out this morning. You don't have to do a thing. Just one happy photo of you hugging a nurse and we're out of here."

  Jesse remained slumped over, shaking his head limply from side to side, hardly listening.

  "And then I’ll book you a place to get a deep tissue massage, huh? Acupuncture, lemonade, whatever the hell you want."

  "No, no, no ...."

  "―and from here on out you’re going to start sleeping like a civilized human being, okay? And you’ll be fine. We’ll stay on the tour bus tonight and we'll still be on schedule for tomorrow."

  "No, no, no, no." Jesse flipped the hair out of his face and kneaded his forehead in obvious agony. And then his hand dropped. He sat straight up with his almond-shaped eyes opened wide as bottle caps, looking as if he'd just realized that he’d overslept on the day of an album drop performance.

  "I have to go to New York," he said, quick and matter-of-fact, looking around the room like he was just going to grab his shoes and be off. "I have to. Tomorrow morning. I have to be there."

  "What are you talking about?" I bent low and snapped my fingers between his eyes. I'd had about enough. "Don’t do this, Jesse. Don’t crack up on me now, right before―"

  I took a step back, aghast at my own words. "You son of a bitch," I said. "You’re trying to guilt me into staying ...."

  "What?" Jesse snapped out of his hurried stupor. "Jordan, for god's sake! No. This isn't about you at all."

  I shook my head and turned away.

  "Look! Forget about it then, okay?" he snapped. To my horror, he started throwing the sheets off, his angelic face sullen with anger and disappointment. "Just don’t tell anyone about what I said, then. But I’m going."

  "Whoa!" I put my foot down. Not on my watch he wasn’t. I wasn’t going to answer for him, not this time. I backed toward the door. "If you’re really serious about that, then I swear to god I’m getting a doctor right now. Because your head is obviously more fucked than they thought."

  Of course I said that; of course I was serious. And of course I wasn’t giving his whack dream any consideration whatsoever. I’d experienced too many of his nervous breakdowns and hair-brained notions for this to really faze me much. Granted none of them had ever been so downright weird, but I truly felt that I was saying the right thing. And maybe I was. Maybe everything would've been better off had he just listened to me and ignored it all.

  He couldn’t ignore it. I understand that now. But I still wish that he had.

  "No, no, don’t!" Jesse started to come after me, lunging halfway out of the bed and stopping only after he'd ripped an IV needle out of his arm. "Son of a bitch!"

  I had little pity, but I didn’t leave the room. I crossed my arms and watched him struggle.

  "What then? What am I supposed to do? Huh?" he hissed, pulling the mess of tape and cotton gauze off his arm. "Yeeegh ...."

  "Well, for starters, you’re supposed to be on Odette tomorrow, remember? So you better drop this Planeteer crap right now."

  That got the response I wanted. Jesse paused. You don’t flake out on Odette. It’s celebrity suicide, and he knew it. Still, he appeared to be deliberating. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  "Odette!" I screamed.

  "Alright, alright!" Jesse threw his arms up in defeat. We scowled at one another in a silent showdown.

  "I’ll go," he confirmed. "But you have to promise you won’t tell anybody about what I saw."

  "Dreamed."

  "Whatever. Nobody. No doctors. No Margot."

  "Fine."

  Jesse eyed me with suspicion. "Double pinky kiss-kiss?"

  I rolled my eyes and walked back over to him. "If I have to."

  We locked pinkies and kissed our respective thumbs while glaring at one another.

  "That's my girl."

  Jesse was all smiles after that, which I ignored. I literally could not process another concern about his dream of zombie Egyptians. I could barely afford the mental capital needed to determine how few calls I could make before getting some goddamn sleep. There was Margot again, at least twice, the insurance company, Jesse’s holistic specialist back in Los Angeles, Toby the driver, the party host ...

  I fell asleep on the chair.

  It wasn’t even for a whole hour. The pain in my neck woke me up, or else I would’ve slept there for the rest of the day. But I was curled up in that chair like a chicken embryo, and eventually the position got to me.

  Why are all the freaking hospital chairs like that? Can anyone tell me this? It doesn’t matter where you go, all of them, I swear ...

  Jesse was gone.

  I jumped up, which of course wasn’t the tender thing to do for my neck, or my back, and scurried toward the door in a doubled-over panic. Was it really four-thirty? How far could he have gotten? Why hadn't my phone woken me up?

  The door swung open and hit me in the face.

  "Ladies, please!" Jesse trilled, lingering just outside the door. "I’ll be right back to sign those scrubs, I promise. Keep your top on, Linda!"

  Raucous feminine laughter followed from the hallway, and Jesse sl
id in, closing the door behind him and grinning coyly. He was dressed and looking well, an extreme contrast to an hour ago. I staggered out of his way, clutching my nose to stem any possible bleeding.

  "Oh good, you’re awake." Jesse grabbed my arm and dragged me back to the accursed chair, somehow getting me to sit down.

  "Jordan, this is very important," he said, placing a sealed envelope in my lap. I left it there, stunned, still rubbing my face. "Everything will be just fine, but I need your help."

  I didn’t like where this was going.

  Jesse sank to his knees, which put us eye-to-eye, and took both of my hands in his.

  "I need you to do something for me, not as my assistant, but as my friend."

  His honey-browns were pleading. Oh brother, when he does that ... I forced myself to remain stoic.

  "I need you to go to New York," he said. "Like, right now."