Out of Control

by Sarah Alderson

  Up here the world looks different. The blazing heat still scorches down but, thanks to the breeze off the nearby Hudson, it’s bearable. The ever-present honking, screeching and sirens that make up the background chatter of New York is distant and almost comforting at this volume. The city looks beautiful from up here. I watch Jay eyeing it all suspiciously.

  ‘I didn’t even know this was here,’ he says, looking with confusion at a Lilliputian-sized statue of a giraffe planted in the grass before dancing out of the way of a parade of children wearing fluorescent bibs who are following their teachers towards a patch of shaded grass.

  ‘My dad brought me the last time I came to New York,’ I say.

  Without a word we both head towards a row of wooden sun loungers, arranged beneath the shade of some trees, and drop down heavily on to them.

  ‘So you like heights then,’ Jay says lying back and putting his hands behind his head. He seems more relaxed now, less on high-alert, though I can tell by the pitch of his voice and the way he keeps rubbing between his eyes that the tension hasn’t gone anywhere.

  I shrug and drag myself into a position where I can start to stretch out my hamstrings and glutes before they seize up. All the running and climbing and the adrenaline spikes and crashes is going to create pain later unless we rub down. I know this from a decade of ballet classes and am already dreading how I’m going to feel when I stand up after resting.

  ‘You’d done that climb before, hadn’t you?’ Jay asks.

  I nod, bending forwards to increase the stretch. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Holy shit.’ He shakes his head at me baffled. ‘Why would you do that?’

  I shrug again.

  ‘No. Come on. You just pulled some crazy Spider-Man moves back there.’

  ‘So did you,’ I say, switching legs, feeling my whole body – bones, tissues and cells – screaming as though they’re being fed through a shredder. ‘And anyway, it’s not like it was that difficult. It wasn’t the Brooklyn Bridge or anything.’ I grin, despite the pain. ‘Now that would be a climb.’

  Jay just stares at me uncertainly, as if he can’t tell whether or not I’m joking. I’m not. ‘You would climb the Brooklyn Bridge,’ he asks, ‘just for kicks?’

  I shrug at him. The Brooklyn Bridge has been in my sights since the day I first saw it. That swirling mass of water below, the immense power and beauty of the structure. I can only imagine the exhilaration and freedom that would come from climbing something like that.

  I nod at his legs. He’s lazing back so languidly you’d think he was hanging out at a day spa. ‘You should stretch,’ I tell him.

  ‘Why?’ he asks.

  ‘Because otherwise you’re going to get stiff.’

  Straightaway I regret my choice of words but before I can revise them he sits up and says, ‘No. Why’d you decide one day to climb out the window of a twenty-storey apartment building and climb on to the roof? Why would you want to climb the Brooklyn Bridge? I need to understand, because that to me is insane or suicidal or possibly both, and you don’t seem like you’re either.’

  I release the stretch and sit up to face him, aware of the way his eyes are searching my face and feeling heat rising up my neck like mercury in a thermometer. ‘Why’d you like to drive so fast?’ I ask him.

  His face splits straightaway into a grin. ‘It feels good. It’s a rush.’ The grin grows even wider, revealing his dimple. ‘There’s only one other thing that feels better.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I say, breathlessly. He gets it! And then I realise what he’s just said and my cheeks catch fire because it’s clear that the one other thing he’s talking about is sex, and so I add quickly, in something of a mumble, ‘I mean, yeah, maybe.’

  Jay’s eyes narrow like a wolf’s scenting blood, his smile becoming curious, and I feel that if it was possible to die of embarrassment I would already be on the floor turning blue.

  I’ve had sex only once and let’s just say I would have traded the whole experience for a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s, or even a night in reading a book (a boring book too, like one of my dad’s tomes on Byzantine military campaigns). It came nowhere near close to the feeling I get from scaling a tall building.

  I can feel Jay’s eyes tracing laser pathways over my skin, and I stare down at my lap and keep on talking, hoping that the sheer volume of my words will distract him, as well as help erase the image that has just sprung into my mind of Jay naked, having sex. With me. Thank you, brain.

  ‘The first time I climbed out on to the roof it was because I was trying to get away from someone,’ I blurt.

  ‘Who?’ Jay immediately asks.

  ‘My bodyguard.’

  ‘You have a bodyguard?’ he asks.

  ‘I did. This was back in Oman,’ I explain. ‘Anyway, this guy was ex-Israeli Special Forces. His name was Liron.’

  ‘Lion?’

  ‘No, Liron. It’s Hebrew for I have joy, which was completely ironic because this guy never smiled. Not once. I used to tell him jokes to see if I could get him to laugh – but nothing. He could have been a cyborg. One with a faulty personality chip.’

  ‘So what’d he do to make you want to run away?’

  ‘Nothing, really. I was just sick to death of being followed everywhere. I’d go on a date and he’d be sitting at the next table drinking coffee and freaking out the other diners with his killer robot stare.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘I know. I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without him waiting outside the door.’

  ‘I mean wow, boys actually had the balls to ask you out?’

  ‘Not many. Well, just one.’ Not that I was complaining about that. In fact it was about the only benefit to having a bodyguard who carried more firepower than a character from Halo. Boys tended to give me a wide berth.

  ‘Is that what you were doing? Giving him the slip so you could meet up with your boyfriend?’

  It doesn’t pass me by that he is asking a lot of questions about boyfriends.

  ‘No,’ I say slowly. ‘I just wanted to escape. It was like living under house arrest all the time.’ I pause. ‘And the only escape was through the window. So I climbed up on to the roof and I spent the night up there. I didn’t sleep. I was so high.’ I smile at the memory, at what it felt like to heave myself over the ledge and then stand on shaking legs looking out over the compound below, the realisation that for the first time in my life I was completely alone, that no one knew where I was. It was like being reborn. For so long after Felix’s death I’d locked away my feelings, walked around wrapped in a blanket of numbness. But up there on that roof, I felt like I’d shaken off the blanket and was standing there naked. Alive. That’s how I felt. Like anything was possible. Like I could pluck the stars right out of the sky.

  I glance at Jay who’s still sitting up, his arms resting on top of his knees, watching me closely, and I take a breath. I want to explain it to him. I want to have him understand. There’s something in his expression, the light in his eyes, that makes me think he’ll get it. ‘When I’m climbing, when I’m balanced on the edge of a roof,’ I say, ‘I get this feeling,’ I press a hand to my navel, ‘in my stomach. It’s incredible, like my blood’s made of light particles. Like I weigh less than nothing.’ I let out the breath I’m holding. ‘That night was the first time in my entire life that I felt . . . completely free.’

  Jay starts nodding. ‘It’s the same reason I got into racing,’ he says.

  ‘You race?’ I ask, surprised.

  ‘Yeah. I started when I was fourteen. Moment I got behind the wheel and put my foot to the floor I felt like I could take off, go anywhere, be anything. There was nothing could stop me. Like you, I guess, it felt like an escape.’

  I want to ask him what he wanted to escape from, but before I can he shakes his head and says, ‘It’s funny, back at the cop shop I thought you were this uptight rich chick . . .’ He breaks off, seeing the look on my face, then shrugs his shoulders apologetically at me. ‘You wouldn’t e
ven turn around when I was trying to get your attention.’

  ‘What do you expect?’ I say. ‘We were in the homicide department. And you were wearing handcuffs. And anyway, what do you mean, uptight?’

  He grins at me, holding up his hands. ‘Hey, you thought I was a murderer, so cut me some slack. All I’m saying is that you were sitting there, all straight-backed, sounding like someone from a Bond movie.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It’s the British thing. You sound like that woman, you know, the secretary in the Bond movies.’

  ‘Moneypenny?’ I ask, my voice so shrill it scares a bird out of the branch overhead.

  ‘Yeah, or the Queen,’ Jay continues, oblivious to the depth of this insult. He’s just compared me to a frumpy secretary and to an octogenarian, both in the same breath. ‘And you wouldn’t even give me the time of day.’

  My mouth is opening and shutting like I’m a demented goldfish. ‘You were trying to get me to break the law. And I didn’t know you from Adam.’

  ‘I was just asking you for a little favour. It wasn’t breaking the law. It was just maybe bending it a little.’ He holds his fingers up to demonstrate how little. ‘For a moment I even thought you were going to leave me there, chained to the desk.’

  He looks at me as if to say, I know, crazy, right? My bad, and I shake my head at him, trying to look appalled that he could ever have thought such a thing, yet at the same time my gut squirms like live bait, because he’s right. I did contemplate for a moment whether I should let him go.

  ‘Goes to show you can’t judge a book by its cover or by the NYPD sweater it’s wearing,’ he says, winking at me.

  ‘Or the boy by the cuffs he’s wearing.’

  ‘Hey, that was the only time I’ve ever been arrested,’ he says, his smile fading, replaced instantly with a scowl.

  I look away and don’t say anything. The sudden reminder of who he is – a gang member and a felon – is a slap, bringing me sharply back to the present. I stare at the mud-brown water straight ahead of us.

  ‘What?’ I hear him say. ‘You never once broke the law before today? Never did anything stupid? At all? Other than climb on to a roof?’

  ‘Nope,’ I say, turning back to face him.

  He looks at me sceptically. ‘You never once had a beer? Or smoked weed?’

  I shake my head at him. I’ve had a few glasses of wine at birthday celebrations with my parents but I’ve never drunk beer. Even if beer contained zero calories, drinking just doesn’t appeal, nor does getting high, not when I have to be in a ballet studio by seven most mornings. And even if I had ever felt like getting drunk, just try sneaking alcohol past an Israeli Defence Force soldier. That ain’t happening.

  Jay shakes his head in wonder. ‘Yeah, well, different worlds I guess,’ he says and turns to look in New Jersey’s direction.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I ask him.

  A light shrug. ‘Just that we grew up different. You grew up in Nigeria. I grew up in Queens. You’ve lived all over the world. I’ve never even seen the West Coast of America. Hell, I’ve never even seen this part of Manhattan before. I had to learn how to throw a punch in kindergarten and you’ve grown up surrounded by bodyguards.’ He laughs under his breath and shakes his head. ‘Though where’s a killer robot Israeli bodyguard when you need one, huh?’ He turns again to stare out across the water. ‘We’re just different, you and I, is all.’

  Anger bubbles up but I keep the lid on it.

  ‘And anyway,’ Jay says, glancing over at me and smiling ruefully, ‘I guess it would be kind of hard to do anything with Lion – or Liron or whatever his name was – shadowing your every move. That’s gotta make stealing a car difficult.’

  I laugh under my breath, though inside I’m mulling on what he’s just said and starting to seethe. ‘We’re not so different,’ I say finally, thinking of how we both craved escape from our lives. He’s making all these judgements based on the little he knows of my life and I guess I’m doing the same of him too. It’s not surprising. That’s what people do. We judge people, calibrating and recalibrating our feelings and thoughts about them by what they say and do. But it frustrates me. I know after today I’m never going to see Jay again, but for some reason, maybe even because of the fact I’m never going to see him again, I want him to see more than that. I want him to see the real me. Though is that even possible? Can you ask another person to see you when you’re not even sure you can see yourself?

  I pause and take a deep breath. ‘It’s not because of the bodyguard.’

  Jay looks puzzled. ‘Huh?’

  ‘I don’t break rules because the last time I did someone died.’

  Jay’s head whips around. ‘Who?’ he asks.

  ‘His name was Felix. He was my bodyguard. Before Liron. We were living in Nigeria.’

  Why am I telling him this? I don’t know. I haven’t told anyone this before. Not even my therapists ever got all the details out of me. But for some reason I have a sudden urge to tell Jay about Felix and about what happened. Maybe it’s because I think Felix would have liked Jay, would have liked his sense of humour, as well as his sense of loyalty. He always did rate humour and loyalty above all else.

  ‘Is he the one who taught you everything you know?’ Jay asks, his expression softening.

  ‘Like what?’ I say, tying my hair up and out of the way. ‘Like what a doorstopper is for?’

  He smirks at me. ‘No. Like how to shoot bad guys.’

  ‘I’ve never shot anyone before,’ I say, then add quickly before we can get to thinking too much on that, ‘My dad gave me shooting lessons. But Felix taught me other things.’

  ‘Such as?’ Jay asks.

  I relax back into my sun lounger. ‘He taught me to play poker,’ I say, grinning suddenly at the memory. ‘And how to tie really complicated knots.’

  ‘All essential skills,’ Jay says smiling. Then the smile fades. ‘My dad didn’t teach me shit.’

  The loophold around my stomach tightens. I start to speak, to tell him that Felix wasn’t my dad, but then I realise that he knows that and it strikes me all of a sudden, like a knife blade slashing through nerves, that that’s exactly why it hurts so much still. Felix was like a father to me. That’s why I miss him so much. Why have I never realised that?

  I go quiet, remembering him pottering around the little kitchen of his apartment over the garage, trying to teach me sailing knots while simultaneously trying to cook his dinner over the tiny gas stove. He’d stop occasionally to lean over and check what I was doing. He had this habit of rubbing the top of my head with his knuckles when I got it right.

  ‘He was a really bad cook,’ I tell Jay as the memories start to flood in. ‘But he could make the best and weirdest popcorn on the planet. Flavours that should never ever, according to all scientific reason, actually work.’

  Jay grins, ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like bacon caramel. And pumpkin blue cheese jalapeno.’

  Jay muses on it. ‘That could work,’ he says. Then after a beat, ‘He sounds cool.’

  I stare out at the strip of Hudson glinting blue in the distance. ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘he was.’

  ‘How’d he die?’

  The pain rushes in like it always does, like a gust of wind threatening to knock me over the edge. I take a deep breath, focussing on Jay to keep me steady.

  ‘Some people tried to kidnap me.’

  Several expressions pass over Jay’s face at once; anguish, consternation, weariness, pain. I can almost guarantee he’s regretting his last question. Yet he pushes on. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You really want to know?’ I ask.

  Jay nods. ‘Yes.’

  I pull the water bottle out of the bag and take a sip. ‘I was in a car with him and our driver and they attacked us. These three guys – they pulled out across the road, blocking our way. I don’t really remember exactly what happened. It was all so fast. They shot the driver and shot out the tyres and then Fe
lix was suddenly hauling me out of the car. He tried holding them off.’

  Jay is staring at me wide-eyed. I can see that he’s right there, with me, back on that street in Lagos, hearing the bullets ricocheting off the car – spitting up dirt from the road. That he can hear my heart hammering in my chest, that he can taste the fear rising like bile in my mouth. He can see Felix, his face pressed to mine, his hand gripping my arm tight enough to leave a circle of bruises around it that would last a month.

  ‘He told me on the count of three I was to run. Run as fast as I could back towards the school. It was just a block. I could see the gates. He said he’d be right behind me.’

  ‘And?’ Jay asks quietly.

  I swallow. ‘And I didn’t run. I stayed. I didn’t want to leave him.’ I can picture Felix’s face. He was always so calm. Always. But in that moment I saw the absolute terror in his eyes. That’s what froze me to the spot. I couldn’t leave him because I was so scared for him. What I didn’t realise at the time was that he was scared for me.

  ‘He died,’ I say, the disbelief still evident in my voice. ‘He got shot in the chest right in front of me. Trying to shield me.’

  After a minute I raise my eyes, expecting to see what I saw on the faces of therapists even though they tried to hide it, that flash behind their eyes that signified blame. But there’s nothing like that on Jay’s face. Rather, his expression is a mixture of fury and sympathy. He reaches across and takes my hand, keeping his gaze locked on mine. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he says, as though he can force it to be true just by saying it. His fingers squeeze mine.

  This time I don’t squeeze back. ‘You weren’t there,’ I say weakly.

  His jaw tenses. ‘You were a kid,’ he says. ‘You weren’t the one firing a gun at a child. Felix died protecting you. That was his job.’ He squeezes my hand for a few more seconds but when I don’t respond he takes it away.

  ‘If I had listened to him he’d still be alive,’ I say quietly.

  Jay shakes his head once, firmly. ‘You don’t know that.’

  The silence settles between us, soft as a quilt. On one level I know Jay’s right. I just can’t bring myself to accept it. It’s been so long I doubt I ever will.