Never Wake

by Gabrielle Goldsby

  She heard leaves rustling and the sound of small debris being pushed along the streets and sidewalk by a gentle breeze, and she could hear the sound of her own raspy breathing. But what she didn’t hear was the one thing that a pending parade would not curtail.

  “The birds. Where the hell are all the birds?”

  Chapter Three

  Portland was dark, cold, and too goddamned still. The latter bothered Troy the most. The last time the streets had felt this lifeless was when most of Portland had been glued to their TVs watching replay after replay of airplanes hitting the World Trade Center. Troy had watched it once before she hopped on Dite and rode until her legs burned as much as her chest and her tears had dried like spilled eggs at her temples.

  She felt the familiar dueling emotions of joy and sorrow when she rode her bike through Southeast Main Street. She had regained her bearings as soon as she’d turned off the unpaved path leading from the hospital. In less than five minutes she could be at Mountain View Cemetery. What the hell was she doing so far past the cemetery?

  Maybe I was making a delivery and I got into an accident over there.

  No. Traffic was too light for it to be a weekday. Besides, Raife would never ask her to cross a bridge for a delivery when he could send one of the others. Mountain View’s gate, overgrown with ivy and tiny pink flowers, called to her over the buzz in her head. She would love to go in there and lie on the grass for a few minutes, but the niggling feeling in the back of her head made her hook a left on Southeast Twentieth Street toward the Burnside Bridge.

  She wasn’t surprised when her legs began to feel rubbery and her fingertips started tingling. “Breathe, damn it,” she told herself. She squeezed the handlebars every time her right foot neared the ground and she counted under her breath. “One, two, three, four…” Her voice sounded like she had been riding for several miles instead of just a few. “Twenty…” She blew out a deep breath and continued her count. Sweat dripped down the center of her back until the elastic waistband of the scrubs stopped it. She shivered and gripped the bars tighter. Come on, just thirty more counts. Breathe. She interrupted her count with the command and blinked several times to keep the sweat from her eyes.

  At thirty, she felt the relief that always came at the end of the bridge flood through her, and by fifty her legs had regained their strength and the prickling at her fingertips had dissipated.

  For the umpteenth time, she cursed complete strangers for forcing her to do this, and for the umpteenth time, she said, “See? It’s getting easier.”

  It wasn’t getting easier. Every time she crossed this bridge, any bridge, she felt the same knife-sharp surety that the concrete would disappear from beneath her tires and the water would reach up and pull her into its darkness.

  With the exception of Raife, no one knew about the panic attacks. She had admitted it to him so that he would stop asking her to deliver on the east side. “Things will get better. You just need time to heal,” he had said.

  Time. She had too much time. Time to think, time to remember, time to hurt. And things still hadn’t gotten any better. She hadn’t begun to heal. She wasn’t sure she wanted to if it meant she had to forget.

  By the time she realized where she was going, the U.S. Bancorp Tower was already in sight. “Big Pink,” as some people called it, had the friendliest security staff in the city. It wasn’t unusual for Troy to find herself in the building at least three times on any given weekday. They would let her use their phone to call Raife. After he bit her head off for losing her cell, he would come pick her up.

  Pedaling was second nature, as was her glance to the right as she made the turn onto Northwest Fifth Street. How many times had she made that same turn, only to have to throw on her brakes in order to keep from being hit by a car speeding through the yellow light?

  But there was no Subaru to dodge. In fact, no cars waited at the light. She felt uncomfortable and exposed sitting in the middle of the empty street. She imagined an audible click as the light changed.

  When she reached the front door of Big Pink, she lifted Dite on her shoulder. She had expected to get curious stares from people heading up to the numerous offices and financial firms that populated the building. A girl carrying a bike wasn’t unusual, but one wearing scrubs and no shoes might be. But no one was hurrying through the doors. In fact, when Troy pulled on them they didn’t budge. Whether it was a weekend, holiday, or a presidential visit, those doors were always open between six a.m. and seven p.m. Even outside of those hours, a security guard was posted at the desk.

  Troy cupped her hands against the glass and peered into the darkened building. Something bad had to have happened for that many people to stay home from work. Troy tried not to notice the eerie quiet of the area, the lack of outside noise from the city. But her clenching stomach acknowledged it before she did. There was an explanation for all this. She just had to find it. She set Dite on the sidewalk and looked down at her bare feet.

  Pioneer Courthouse Square. Benny and Toni F should be there right now, leaning against the wall, sipping coffee and eating something crappy.

  They’ll know what happened, she thought as she hopped on Dite and pedaled toward the square.

  Troy coasted down Broadway and almost begged for a car to whip around the corner and come barreling at her. None did. The first people she came across were three young men crouched in the doorway of a stationery store. All three were leaned back, their eyes closed, and knees up as if they had been playing a game of jacks and had stopped for a nap. Troy stopped but didn’t get off Dite.

  People slept in doorways a lot in Portland. Doorways meant survival—from the cold, the rain, and from steel-toed boots looking for a soft place to land. With your back against a doorway you only had to worry about danger from one side. Three teenagers huddling in a doorway hadn’t been an unusual sight in Portland in years.

  But Troy knew in an instant that this was different. The store wasn’t abandoned, for one thing. At least it hadn’t been the last time she had passed it, no more than two days ago. If a homeless person were desperate enough to sleep in an occupied business’s doorway, they would be sure to leave long before start of business to avoid being hassled by police. These boys’ clothes looked too expensive for them to be homeless, though. And she could see from where she stood that all three were Asian. Most of the homeless youth that roved the city were white. Troy’s eyes were drawn to three spots of red on the ground between one of the young men’s feet. Two items she had mistaken for leaves stirred in the wind and Troy recognized that they were dollar bills. They hadn’t been playing jacks.

  “Hey, ya’ll all right?” Troy called out, but no one stirred, and her voice sounded sharper and louder than it should have been. “Whatever.” She rode hard toward Pioneer Square and blew through a red light as if it were green and right past a patrol car. She slowed and turned on Dite’s seat. The balding head pressed against the car window glistened, but did not move as she rode past. She could no longer ignore her terror. She kept telling herself that there was an explanation, but she refused to think about what that explanation could be. Nor did she allow herself to wonder why she no longer felt the need to push her legs to the limit.

  The Square had no fewer than ten occupants, not to mention several people waiting for the MAX train, all asleep and all very still.

  Across the street, a red warning light blinked from the wall of the Fox Tower, although Troy could hear no car coming out of its parking lot. Troy rode up to a woman lying on the ground with a department store bag sitting upright next to her, as if she had just set it down before she herself ended up, inert, on the sidewalk.

  Troy laid Dite down and squatted next to the bag and then moved closer to the woman. She hesitated, her fingers hovering just above the woman’s neck as she pictured the woman waking up and screaming at her for touching her. Cold air cut through the thin cotton pants as if she were wearing nothing. She shivered and placed two fingers on the side of the woman�
��s neck. “Oh, thank God,” she said as she found a pulse.

  She stood up and knocked over the woman’s shopping bag, spilling out what looked like exercise clothing.

  “Not dead. They’re not dead.” The words made her feel better, but not by much. She checked the pulses of the people lying closest to her next. A high-school-aged boy had a strong pulse, as did the older man next to him. She tried shaking the older man, but she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t wake up. Troy ran to the short wall that separated the MX shelter from the square.

  “Hey, can anyone hear me?” she yelled, feeling stupid, scared, and cold. It was as if they had all decided to just lie down and take a nap. Another chill hit the back of her neck and she looked back at the people on the ground behind her.

  Just as when she’d left the hospital, she half expected to see one of the lounging bodies move, unable to hold its pose, but not one did. She couldn’t remember seeing one person moving since she had awakened.

  *

  “Please continue to hold. Your call will be answered shortly.”

  Troy pressed what had to be decades of ear grime onto her own ear, and she welcomed the contact. She even welcomed the sight of the brown paper bag that had been stuffed into a hole in the corner of the phone booth. For the last ten minutes, she had kept her eyes focused on a grayish wad of gum that had been placed so precisely on the top of the phone that she was sure its owner had intended to pop it back into his mouth after his call was finished.

  “Hurry, please hurry,” she whispered into the phone. There was a small click, followed by a buzz of static. “Hello?”

  The frantic quality of her own voice scared her.

  Troy rested her forehead on her free hand and let a sob escape. She had thought the day couldn’t get any worse than waking up in a hospital.

  “Please continue to hold…”

  “Answer the call, goddamn it!” she yelled into the receiver. She was answered seconds later by the same monotone female voice repeating her promise that an operator would be with her shortly.

  Dizziness swept over her and the familiar prickling began at her fingertips. She squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on calming her breathing. It would do no good if she passed out. Just think of something else. The operators had to be dealing with thousands of calls from panicked people trying to figure out why their friends and neighbors were asleep.

  “Please continue to hold. Your call will be answered shortly.”

  The emergency operator would be able to tell her what to do. She just had to do as they said and continue to hold. That’s all she could do, right?

  She would give anything for that bottle of vodka she had seen at the hospital. She had assumed more alcohol had been there at some point because, well, there just had to be. The punch bowl was still full, the present unopened. It looked like they had just gotten started. As wasted as those people seemed to have been, there should have been empty bottles all over the place, but there weren’t. Just the one.

  “Please continue to hold…”

  “The one, almost-full bottle,” she said out loud, and the recording paused as if being polite.

  “Your call will be answered…”

  Troy stared at the wad of gum.

  Five people didn’t just pass out from drinking a half a bottle of vodka, did they? Maybe there were more bottles. Maybe they were in a trash can somewhere? It’s not like you bothered to look. It made sense that they would hide the bottles. If someone saw them drinking on the job, they could be fired. Then why leave the one bottle sitting on the table if they were worried someone could come in and see them? Why not pour it in the punch and hide the bottle?

  They must already know what’s happened down here. Troy’s mind went back to the sleeping cop in the patrol car.

  “Please continue to hold…”

  If they already know, where are they? Where are the sirens?

  “Your call will be answered…”

  They were being cautious. It made sense that they would want to know what they were up against before they sent in the guys in white suits. Stop analyzing everything, damn it.

  “Please continue…”

  The hospital staff, the cop, those boys in the doorway of that stationery store. Why had she ridden on by? Because that’s what she did when something made her uncomfortable. Drunks, cops, and people huddled in doorways—whether they were homeless bums or thugs playing dice—were all to be avoided.

  What if this was a bigger problem than she thought? Troy opened the door to the stuffy phone booth and stood, phone pressed hard to her ear, staring out into the city. She heard no far-off sirens, no birds chirping, no planes overhead. The phone clicked, and a buzz tickled her eardrum.

  “Please…”

  The receiver tumbled from Troy’s hand and crashed into the shatterproof glass.

  Standard, Oregon, August, Years Ago

  Ever since The Boy could remember, he had to have his birthday dinner at Bernie Ann’s Corner Side Café. Pam, that was his mother, told him that she could remember going there on her birthday when she was a little girl, so he figured it had to be the oldest restaurant on earth. The oldest in Standard, Oregon, that’s for sure.

  He hated his birthday because of Bernie’s. He wished it was in winter instead of the summer. He wouldn’t even care if it was the same day as Christmas, like one of the girls in his class. He’d never forget to wear long pants if it was cold outside. Then his legs wouldn’t feel so sticky or get scratched by the holes that were all over the seats from people dropping their lit cigarettes. Pam had fallen asleep on the couch with a cigarette once and he had watched the flame grow so high that he knew it would have reached the ceiling if she hadn’t woken up and put it out. These seats must be better quality than their old couch.

  Pam cooked when Hoyt made her. She would bang around in the kitchen for hours, and then he would always smell burning food. Hoyt would then go out for cigarettes and come back smelling like BurgerCity onions. Pam made him eat what she had cooked—as if it were his fault she had to cook. Pam’s food didn’t taste so good, but the food at Bernie Ann’s made his stomach hurt.

  He pushed his creamed corn under his mashed potatoes and wished it was BurgerCity French fries instead of the mess on his plate. He had learned on his fifth birthday that pushing the corn under the potatoes made it look like he had at least eaten something, and it also made the mashed potatoes look less runny.

  He pretended to eat some of his chicken, but he spit it into his napkin when no one was looking. Last year he’d swallowed the mashed potatoes because they didn’t taste all that bad. He’d ended up in the bathroom for so long afterward that his ass had felt raw for three days straight.

  He could hear the slippery smacking noises that meant that Pam and Hoyt were being gross. He didn’t have to look up to know that Hoyt had his fingers sunk deep in Pam’s long blond hair, and Pam’s hand would be on Hoyt’s crotch. He had overheard someone call Pam beautiful. She was tall, had blue eyes, and blond hair, and long, red nails. She was kind of skinny because she sometimes didn’t eat very much and smoked a lot of cigarettes. The waitress—she’d said her name was Amy—had to wait until they came up for air before she could give Hoyt the bill.

  Pam snatched the receipt so fast that Amy had to jerk her hand back to keep from being scratched. Amy must have hurried away because The Boy heard her asking another customer if they “needed more syrups.” He liked the way she put an “s” at the end of syrup. He poked at his chicken leg until a pool of grease grew on his plate.

  “You going to eat that chicken, boy, or just play with it?” Hoyt sounded amused.

  “Uh…excuse me?” Pam sounded annoyed.

  He stopped pushing at his chicken and looked up. He knew that tone. She was getting ready for a fight. She was always ready for a fight with anyone except Hoyt. With Hoyt, she always backed down, but never with anyone else.

  “You hear what I asked you? You gonna eat that chicken or just play wi
th it all night?” The Boy tore his eyes from Pam long enough to look at Hoyt and then down at the chicken leg.

  Hoyt was in a good mood today, which made him feel sad. He was the one that should be in a good mood. It was his birthday. Why wasn’t he allowed to pick where he wanted to go? He would have been happy with a kid’s meal and a box of cookies from BurgerCity.

  He smelled Amy’s perfume when she returned to their table.

  “If you’d’ve asked, you would know it’s my son’s birthday, so we don’t have to pay for his food.”

  The Boy glanced up in time to see Amy look to Hoyt for help, but Hoyt was busy picking his teeth with a toothpick and staring at the chicken leg on The Boy’s plate.

  “The special’s for kids five and under, ma’am,” she said, just like she had last year and the year before that.

  Pam leaned forward in her seat and jabbed her red nails in his direction. “He ain’t but five, so he eats for free.”

  The Boy felt real bad for Amy. Pam was always mean when they came in and Amy still gave him a free scoop of vanilla ice cream for being the “birthday boy,” even though the deal didn’t include dessert.

  Nobody said anything and The Boy prayed that Amy would not argue with Pam.

  Hoyt reached across the table and snagged the chicken leg off his plate. A moment later, he heard a crunch and the heavy, appreciative breathing that meant that Hoyt was enjoying his food.

  Amy still hadn’t said anything. He stopped forking his mashed potatoes over his corn and waited. He closed his eyes tight and prayed for Amy. He could hear Hoyt’s breathing increase. He hated that sound. He had heard it enough. The walls of the trailer were thin. Hoyt’s excited breathing and other sounds made his tummy churn more than the thought of eating the stuff on his plate.

  “Ma’am, I thought your boy turned five last year.” The Boy dropped his head as if concentrating on his plate. He brought the fork beneath the table and jabbed it into the side of his leg. Please, God, please don’t let her hit Amy.