I Need You

by Jane Lark

  Her hands moved, catching hold of the wire like she was going to climb it, then her foot lifted, seeking a grip on the railing.

  Her arms bracing her weight; her other foot lifted. What the hell was she doing? Trying to go over the wire? Did she want to jump?

  “Hey! Wait!”

  I ran harder.

  Fuck. She looked serious and she carried on climbing, searching out hand and foot holds.

  “Are you crazy? Stop it!”

  As I ran the last few yards her gaze finally turned to me. I covered the distance in moments, watching her clinging on the wire, Spiderman style.

  God knows what she saw in my eyes. I could see nothing in hers except maybe fear. They were huge, and dark, staring at me like I was the weird one.

  I wasn’t the weird one.

  My music continued playing muted sounds and air rasped into my lungs as I stopped. I lifted a hand, palm up, offering to help her down. “Come on…” My breath fogged the air around us. “Nothing’s that bad…”

  She held still. Her eyes had no depth. It was like looking into mirrors, reflecting back the electric light. She looked a little mad.

  “Let me help you.”

  She was panting as hard as I was. She didn’t come down.

  She was only a couple of feet off the floor, I could pull her down, but I didn’t want to scare her.

  My fingers instinctively lifted and touched her lower back. I could feel the breath pulling into her lungs. “Look, seriously, you don’t want to do anything foolish.”

  She didn’t move.

  “What’s your name?” Shit. My heart was still racing like I was running. I looked along the bridge path, but there was no one else here to help.

  “Honey, come on down. I can’t let you do it.”

  She was just staring at me.

  What the hell did cops say to persuade a person…? “You must be cold, you can have my hoodie. I’m not going to leave you here.”

  This was like some TV drama.

  My hands were trembling from the blood burning in my muscles. I’d gone from running hard to standing still. A weight of responsibility fell on me suddenly. This girl’s life was in my hands. I’d been running wrapped up in my own world and now… Shit. “Really. Please… Come down.”

  Pleading obviously touched some nerve in her, as one foot came back down onto the concrete, her cotton t-shirt catching on my glove and crumpling up, revealing the pale skin of her lower back. My gaze dropped to her plain white sneakers, as the next foot touched the ground.

  Relief washed through me on a wave as I lifted my hand so her t-shirt slid back down. I looked up and met her gaze. It was still blank though, and her fingers gripped the wire.

  I touched her shoulder. It lifted as air pulled into her lungs, before slipping back out. I didn’t know why I was touching her, but I just… I needed to know she was okay. She didn’t seem to know where she was, or what she’d been doing.

  A dark smear marked her face, and whatever it was, it stained her hair too.

  Every sermon I’d endured as a kid raced through my head. Help the needy; put others first; don’t walk past that mugged guy in the street. I hadn’t gone to church for years, not since I’d hit my teens, but religion was stitched into my DNA. No way could I walk past a person in need.

  My shock dissipating, I stripped off my hoodie. The smell of my sweat permeated the cold air. She probably wouldn’t want it but she needed it. “How long have you been up here? It’s freezing.” She could have been up here half an hour. She hadn’t been here when I’d run over the bridge into Manhattan.

  For a minute I didn’t think she’d take it, but then her hand reached out. “I don’t know?”

  “You know it’s twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit, right? You’ll get hyperthermia.” She looked at me, her eyes still dead. “I’m Jason… Were you trying to do what I thought?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I held out my hand. “Hi.”

  She didn’t shake my hand, just looked at it.

  “Look, nothing can be that bad. You’ll get over it, and be glad you didn’t jump.”

  “Will I?” Her pitch was mocking, although maybe she was mocking her own thoughts, not my words, nothing in her eyes or her face told me though.

  What now? I could hardly just run on and leave her here. Dammit. “I…” I could take her to emergency… What would they do? Check her over and spit her out. “Have you got any family locally?”

  “No.”

  “Friends?”

  “No.”

  Her large eyes confirmed what she’d said. She had nowhere to go. Her full lips pouted a little. Shit. What did I do?

  “Where do you live then? Is there somewhere I can take you?”

  She was pretty. Her face glowed in the electric light, showing a clear complexion and perfectly even features, though her skin was yellowish in this light.

  “No. Nowhere.”

  Why was she here? What had made her life too hard to carry on?

  She shivered, and pain etched its expression on her face, then tears suddenly glittered in her eyes, and the coldness in them became a lake of desolation. “I need to get away.”

  “From what?”

  She didn’t answer, but her teeth started chattering. I lifted the hood of my sweatshirt over her blonde hair.

  “Look, obviously things aren’t okay for you. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I took a breath, looking at her and hoping some magical solution would suddenly hit me. It didn’t, and I was getting cold now.

  She shivered again and her arms crossed, her hands gripping the opposite elbows. She’d stopped looking at me. She was looking at the sky, like she was searching for answers too.

  I sighed, my fingers running over my hair. She was nearly as tall as me, and I was six foot one. She must be at least five eight. But she was slender, like a model. My sweatshirt swamped her figure. She looked fragile.

  Shit. There was nothing I could do. “What are you going to do, if I go?”

  Her shoulders lifted in a shrug, but she didn’t look down.

  My heart was thumping to the same rhythm as the bass beat now pounding out of the earphones dangling ‘round my neck

  I couldn’t leave her out here…

  “Have you really got nowhere to go?”

  She shook her head, making her blonde ponytail sweep over her back.

  Shit. What option did I have? What option did she have?

  “Have you got any money?”

  Her head shook again. But her stillness, apart from her shaking head, made me feel like she didn’t even care. I felt stupid then, of course she didn’t care. She’d just tried to end her life by throwing herself off a bridge. She obviously didn’t care about anything right now.

  What to do with her? I could give her money… But I’d have to go back to my apartment to get my card and take her to a cash dispenser. And what would she do with it? Maybe she’d already taken something. Drugs or drink. Maybe that was why she was so dead looking. I’d be stupid to give her money.

  I sighed again. I could call the cops and take her to a station. But what would they care? I found this girl and she’s got nowhere to stay. They’d say, yeah, right, join the line of a couple of hundred other homeless people in New York.

  There wasn’t any choice. “I could take you home with me, if you’ve got nowhere to go. Just for tonight. It would give you chance to get your head straight, and get warm. If you want?”

  “I…” She looked at me again then, her eyes losing their depth once more and setting up shutters, locking me out.

  “What do you think?” I got another shrug, but her eyes suddenly filled with depth, letting me see into the thoughts behind her gaze. They were asking me questions.

  “What are you going to do if you don’t come back with me?” Another shrug. “Have you got any other options?” She shook her head, her ponytail swaying, but her gaze was clinging to mine now,
like was she was considering me. Maybe she was trying to judge if she’d be safe.

  This was surreal, like I’d been lifted out of real life, and placed in the middle of a fucking film. Question was; how was it going to play out? Taking her home was a risk, but sometimes risks had to be taken. Like coming to New York.

  I sighed again. Sometimes taking risks didn’t pay off. But I still hoped they would.

  She shivered and her hands gripped her arms harder.

  I lifted my hands palm outward. “I swear. I’m the nice guy. And if you’ve got nowhere else to go…” Lindy would go mad, but this was devil or deep-blue-sea territory. How could I leave this woman here? She’d nowhere to sleep and it was twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit.

  Her shoulders shook as she shivered again.

  “It’s not far. I live in DUMBO.”

  “Down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass…” she whispered. “It’s such a cool name for a neighborhood.”

  I laughed. She didn’t.

  “Have you got any other choice?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then on my life, if you come, I’ll not hurt you.”

  She said nothing just looked at me.

  “My apartment’s warm. You can’t stay out here…” Shit, I was probably just as crazy as her, offering to take a stranger back with me.

  “I…”

  “I swear, you’re safe with me.”

  She looked back at the wire, then down at the water.

  “You don’t want to do that. Just give it a night, you’ll feel different in the morning.”

  She shook her head, still looking at the water.

  If zombies were real, they’d look like her. My sweatshirt swamping her, she stood like a sorrowful statue, her complexion as pale as marble.

  I couldn’t just leave her. I rubbed her arms, gently, answering an instinct to put my arm around her, but I denied that. I didn’t even know her name.

  “Look, you can trust me. Honest. When we get back to my apartment you can call my Mom, or my friends, and they’ll all tell you I’m the nice guy. Seriously, if you need references…” I smiled as she looked back at me, trying to convince her. “What do you say? Are you a gambler? Are you going to try trusting me?” Silence and stillness. This girl was messed up. But then I’d known that from the moment I’d seen her. She’d been standing in the freezing cold, in a tee, trying to jump off a bridge.

  I held her gaze, trying to look inside her, as she looked back, trying to see inside me.

  Once more there was a sudden pool of desolation and a glitter in her eyes, and she simply nodded, making the choice to put herself into the hands of a stranger––my hands.

  Shit. I was taking her home. She could be a drug addict. I’d been so busy trying to persuade her, I’d forgotten about my own concerns. But I couldn’t leave her here alone; fragility and loneliness rang from her, like she was crying out for help. And the damned Good Samaritan story I’d been brought up on wouldn’t let me leave her in the street.

  But what the hell was I getting myself into?

  “This way.” My fingers carefully closed about her upper arm, and I guided her to turn and start walking off the bridge with me, like this was a normal thing to do––like every night of the week, I took a stranger home. My guts churned. This was crazy. But my fingers wrapped right about her skinny arm, and my instincts yelled at me that she needed protecting, and she needed safety. I could let her have a haven for a few days.

  She was probably a size zero, she was so skinny.

  Lindy would kill to be size zero. She would hate me taking this woman home. She wasn’t flooded with human kindness. She wouldn’t have felt any instinct to help this woman.

  “You haven’t told me your name yet?” I prodded as we descended the steps onto the street.

  She was moving robotically. I was a stranger to her, too, and she hadn’t questioned me verbally at all. She was going home with a guy she didn’t know.

  Maybe she did this all the time.

  Maybe her lack of concern should warn me off.

  As if sensing my thoughts, she stopped and looked at me, hard, really looking into me, like she’d done on the bridge just now, maybe at last deciding she ought to check me out a little more. “It’s Rachel.”

  “Rachel––pleased to meet you. My apartment’s in a block near here, it’s not far. You’re sure about this, yeah? I could still take you somewhere else, if you like?”

  “I’ve got nowhere else to go. So I haven’t got any choice. You don’t mind?”

  I do, really, but I’m not mean enough to dump you here. “No, I don’t mind.”

  I pressed my code in when we reached the building, feeling guilty for covering it up, showing I didn’t trust her, but I didn’t know her.

  “My furniture’s a bit sparse at the moment. I only just moved in a couple of months back. Don’t expect anything fancy…” We entered the elevator and I pressed the button. “I’m on the fifth floor.” That was obvious, the red light behind button five glowed, announcing it.

  I turned and looked at her. What I’d thought was dirt on her face and in her hair, was dried blood. “Did you hit your head?”

  Her gaze struck mine, questioning and cold, and in the white light of the elevator, I faced green eyes. They were a misty green, an unusual sort of green. I’d never seen that eye color before. She didn’t answer me though. She hadn’t spoken since she’d given me her name, and her fingers were curled up, hidden in the sleeves of my sweatshirt, as her arms gripped across her chest.

  She looked down at my Adam’s apple.

  “You don’t have to be worried.”

  Those green eyes looked up again. “I’m not scared of you. You gave me your hoodie. People who are generally mean, don’t give you stuff they need themselves.”

  It was an odd, but reasonable, logic. “Yeah, well….” I didn’t know what to say, yet all my friends in Oregon would say I was never lost for words. “Okay.”

  The elevator bell rang, announcing that we’d reached the fifth floor, and then the doors opened.

  I looked away from her. She was a little too beautiful for comfort. She had untouchable celeb-magazine beauty, the sort you knew you’d never have, so you never wanted. Lindy was pretty, but there was a quality of perfection in this Rachel. Yet she wasn’t perfect was she, or her life wasn’t, she’d been trying to jump off Manhattan Bridge.

  I wanted to know what led her there, but I wasn’t going to make her feel like I was prying, I didn’t ask.

  I pulled the key from the pocket of my joggers, unlocked the door and stepped back to let her go first, flicking the lights on.

  “Chivalrous to a fault…” she whispered. “Do you stand up for pregnant and elderly women on subway trains?”

  Actually I did. Lindy always said I was a dying breed. Mom always took credit. “And sometimes I even carry their shopping back.”

  She looked at me again. “You don’t come from New York do you? Are you some hillbilly?”

  “I’m from Oregon, from a small town there.”

  “Out of college and flying the nest…”

  She sounded like she was laughing at me, but there was no humor in her face or her eyes. What I saw was grief.

  “Do you want some coffee, I can make a pot? It’ll warm you up.” I took her fingers. I could feel how cold they were even through my gloves. They were like blocks of ice. I rubbed them for a moment.

  Her hands fell when I let them go.

  I felt awkward, but the only thing to do now I’d brought her back here, was to act like I was completely comfortable with it.

  I took off my gloves. They were damp. How’d they get damp?

  There was no life in her eyes, once more, when her gaze met mine.

  She turned and looked about the room. It was empty bar my TV, my Xbox and a beanbag.

  I left her and went to make coffee. The kitchen was to one side of the living space.

  “The bathroom’s through there, if yo
u need it?” I pointed to the door leading into my bedroom. “There’s only one bed, or rather one mattress, I don’t own a bed. But you can have it tonight. I’ll manage on the floor in here.”

  Those pale green eyes turned to me again. “You’re too nice, Jason…?” Her pitch asked for my surname.

  “Macinlay.”

  “You’ve Irish blood?”

  “Two generations ago. Dad’s been back there once, kissed the Blarney Stone, driven the Ring of Kerry and stepped on the Giant’s Causeway.”

  She smiled, but it was shallow. Yet I guessed she was doing her best to push aside the awkwardness of this too. “I have no reason to trust you, Jason Macinlay,” she breathed, “but I do.”

  Again, I didn’t know what to say. I just shrugged.

  I’d left the bedroom door ajar; she pushed it wider and went through, her hand slipping off it, leaving a blood mark.

  Fuck. “What did you do to your hand?” I was moving before I knew and she stopped and turned, but took a step away from me into the bedroom when I neared. “Don’t tell me you had a go at your wrists, too…” I gripped her forearm.

  She had nowhere to run to in my bedroom. You could barely swing a cat in it. There was about a foot of space all around the double mattress which lay on the floor.

  I pulled up the sleeve of the sweatshirt I’d given her.

  Her wrists were narrow. They looked so fucking breakable. But they weren’t slashed. The blood had come from a jagged cut across her palm. It didn’t look like it had been done by a knife, and the blood had begun congealing.

  I glanced at her fingers. I’d heard people injected heroin beneath their fingernails to hide the marks. There were no marks on her arms, and there seemed to be none under her nails. It was probably safe to guess her problem wasn’t heroin.

  “How did you do it?” I’d been avoiding questions, I figured she wouldn’t speak, but I couldn’t help myself now. “What happened?”

  She shrugged, letting my question slide away, as she’d been doing on the bridge. Her gaze, which had been looking at her hand too, lifted to me, but she said nothing.

  I let her hand go. “Why don’t you run a bath? You can talk when you want.”