On Borrowed Time

by David Rosenfelt

  Dinner was soon served, and though I’m sure I must have had food as good as that sometime in my life, I was at a loss to remember when. Janice made a meat loaf fit for the gods, should the gods happen to eat meat loaf. When surrounded by the mashed potatoes and gravy, it was so delicious that I simply could not stop eating it. If she could liquefy it, I would have taken it intravenously while I slept.

  “Would you like some more, Richard?” asked Janice, for the fifteenth time. I had responded to the first fourteen either with yes or, if my mouth was too full to speak, an eager, drooling nod.

  “I can’t,” I said, “unless you have a crane to carry me away from the table.”

  Janice thought for a moment. “I don’t think we do, but Ben has a wheelbarrow in the garage.”

  I nodded and handed her my plate. “That’ll work.”

  When it was time to go to sleep, I was amazed to discover that Jen and I were sharing a bedroom. I hadn’t wanted to bring it up, and just assumed that her parents wouldn’t be comfortable with it. Jen, bless her heart, had cleared it with her mother ahead of time. We didn’t have sex, but the fact that I was able to hold her through the night was a substantial consolation.

  And a wonderful memory.

  If I had any reservations about going there, I couldn’t remember why, as the next few days were totally pleasant. Nothing extraordinary, just eating and talking and looking at the four million pictures they had of Jen at various phases of her life. Unfortunately, it seemed like half of those pictures included one Jack Winston, Jen’s high school sweetheart, who Ben informed me was by then a cop in town. As a teenager, Jack was muscular and good-looking, if you happen to like that type. I don’t, but since I was the one sleeping with Jen, I could deal with a few pictures of Jack, who hopefully by that time was bald and fat.

  The point was, I was quite comfortable with Janice and Ben, and Jen reported that they liked me as well. Mission accomplished. Victory was mine.

  On Christmas Eve, after Janice and Ben had gone to sleep, Jen took me outside and gave me my favorite present. She led me out to a gazebo at the rear of the property, and we made love. Afterward, she started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “When I was a girl, maybe ten or eleven years old, my friends and I used to come back here and talk about the type of man we were going to marry. We used to describe our Mr. Wonderful down to the last detail.”

  “And you described me?”

  “No.” She smiled. “That’s why I’m laughing.”

  “You do realize you’ll never get me with that attitude?”

  She looked at me and smiled her knowing smile. “Are you kidding? I’ve got you neatly wrapped with a bow.”

  I was going to hold off until New Year’s, but that seemed like the perfect time. I reached into my pocket and took out the little box that had been burning a hole in it for two weeks. “Then you might as well have this.”

  She looked at the box and then at me, disbelieving. She opened the box, saw the ring, and started to cry. Then she hugged me, so hard that I thought I was going to break.

  “I love you, Richard.”

  “So you’re saying yes?”

  She shrugged. “Might as well. I don’t see Mr. Wonderful coming along anytime soon.”

  She dragged me back to the house, then woke up Janice and Ben to tell them the news. Much to my relief they seemed pleased, and things were all warm and cuddly, except for the part where Ben threatened to dismember me if I ever hurt his little girl.

  Christmas morning dawned with the sun shining and temperatures expected to reach into the mid-fifties, unheard-of for December. Jen wanted me to take a ride with her, so after polishing off seven or eight of Janice’s waffles, I rolled my fat, overstuffed self out to the car.

  I was feeling so good that I agreed to Jen’s request to open the convertible top. Our first stop was to see a high school friend of hers, Nancy Brunell, who had just gotten back into town to spend the holidays with her parents. They spent a half hour gushing over the ring and our engagement, then an equal amount of time rehashing what sounded like boring high school times, though they laughed hysterically at each recollection. Nancy even took out their yearbook, and they discussed the fate of virtually every one of their classmates since high school. Jen sensed that I was about to doze off, so she announced that we were off to see Kendrick Falls.

  “Uh-oh,” Nancy said to me. “You’d better watch yourself.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Whenever Jen took a boy to Kendrick Falls, they didn’t come back the same.”

  Jen laughed and, once we were back in the car, explained that Kendrick was a waterfall that served as the local make-out place in high school.

  “Did you go there with Jack Winston?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I believe that I did. Pretty much every night.”

  “He’s probably bald and fat by now.”

  “Could be.”

  “You repelled his advances, right?”

  She nodded again. “Almost every one.” Then she sniffed the air. “I love the smell of jealousy in the morning,” she said. “It smells like victory.”

  Before long we were out on a country road, heading for the falls. In a few minutes, what had been a beautiful day seemed to be turning somewhat cloudy, and the wind started to pick up. Somebody obviously reminded Mother Nature that it was December.

  “You want me to stop and put the top up?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” she said. “It feels good. And the falls is just another couple of miles up the road.”

  Within a few moments, even Jen seemed to be regretting her decision. The wind picked up in intensity, and with ominous black clouds seemingly everywhere, I had to turn on my lights.

  Jen’s look was one of surprise and a little concern. “It looks like just before a summer thunderstorm,” she shouted, so as to be heard above the wind.

  I was yelling by then as well. “I’m going to pull over!”

  “Be careful!”

  With amazing speed, it had gotten totally dark out, pitch-black, and it seemed as if the lights were not working. I quickly pulled the switch in and out, then I was gripped by panic when I realized that they were working, but that somehow this was a darkness they could not pierce.

  I quickly looked toward Jen, but I couldn’t make her out in the blackness. “I can’t see!” I screamed.

  “Richard!” she yelled, the fear in her voice reflecting my own. We had driven into a nightmare.

  I tried to slow down and pull over, but I really had no idea where the sides of the road were. The one thing I did know was that I had to stop that car. Suddenly the wheels on the right side started to give out, and I realized that I had moved too far over and that we were careening off the road.

  “Richard! No!” Jen yelled again, but in the wind it sounded more muted, almost as if she were calling me from a distance.

  We started to pitch to the right, and the ground seemed to disappear under us. The car was out of my control, but I would not have known where to take it anyway, as the darkness was complete.

  It was as if an unseen hand had picked us up and rolled us over. I reached out to grab Jen, to protect her, but I came up with air. The car started to roll; it was probably just once or twice but it felt like a hundred times, as if it would never stop. Jen was no longer screaming; I couldn’t tell if I was or not.

  The car finally stopped moving, and had fortunately landed right side up. “Jen? Are you okay?”

  She didn’t answer, which sent a new shock of panic through me like a needle. “Jen? Answer me, please!”

  Suddenly, as if someone were drawing a curtain, the clouds started to disperse. I have never seen anything like it, before or since, but within no more than five seconds the wind had abated, light had been restored, and the sun started to come through.

  Jen was not in the car.

  There was not a trace of her, and I instantly cursed my decision to leav
e the top open. Jen was no doubt thrown from the car, and might be somewhere out on the road, possibly in danger from oncoming traffic.

  I scrambled out of the car and headed back toward the road. I felt fuzzy, light-headed, but I don’t remember my head hitting anything. In any event, I figured I was okay, since I was running, but I didn’t stop to check. I had to find Jen; she simply had to be all right.

  It was only ten or so yards to the road, and drivers who saw my car slowed down and stopped to inquire about my condition. I didn’t see Jen anywhere, which I took as semi-good news, since she must have landed in the softer shrubbery along the side of the road.

  A man stopped his car and rushed over to me. “Are you okay?”

  “My girlfriend … she was thrown from the car. Help me find her. Please.”

  “But are you okay?”

  He was looking at my forehead, and when I put my hand to it, I realized that I was bleeding from a wound just above my left temple. It didn’t hurt, and I had other things to worry about at the moment.

  “I’m fine. We need to find her.”

  He nodded and yelled the message to others who were coming over, and we all started combing through the brush. I was in a total panic, screaming her name and desperately rushing around, but knowing in my gut that if she were all right, she would be answering me.

  Three police cars arrived and I told one of the officers what had happened.

  “How far back did you start to lose control of the car?” he asked.

  “I don’t know … it couldn’t have been too far,” I said. “The storm came up so fast…”

  “What storm?”

  I did not have time to discuss the weather with this man; I needed to focus on finding Jen. “There was a storm. It got completely dark, and windy … I couldn’t see, even with the lights on.”

  “We need to get a bandage on that wound,” he said, referring to the blood coming from my head. It had mostly stopped, and was not something I was worried about. I told him to disregard it, and reluctantly he did.

  The police helped to organize the search, going well back down the road in case Jen had been thrown out early in the incident. It didn’t seem possible, since I had heard her scream just before we rolled over. But I didn’t want to rule anything out, and they weren’t listening to me anyway, so I continued looking.

  Time passed; it seemed like hours but it was probably only minutes. It wasn’t possible, but Jen just wasn’t there. I was starting to face that fact when one of the officers came back to me and confirmed it.

  “Your girlfriend is not here,” he said.

  I nodded, but none of it was making any sense.

  “Have you had any alcoholic beverages, sir?”

  “You think I’m drunk?” Was this guy kidding me?

  “I didn’t say that, sir. Please answer my question.”

  “It’s eleven o’clock in the morning.… We went for a ride.… No, for God’s sakes, I haven’t had anything to drink.”

  He asked me to perform a few physical maneuvers … walking a straight line, touching my nose with my eyes closed … things like that. I was frustrated, but I did it so we could move on.

  He was finally satisfied, and the talk turned back to the accident and Jen’s disappearance.

  “Maybe she was dazed,” I said, though not really believing it. “Maybe she walked away.”

  He obviously didn’t believe it either. “Where would she go?”

  “Well, she was from around here, so…,” I said, and then I saw it. On his uniform shirt, the name WINSTON.

  “Are you Jack Winston?”

  He was surprised that I knew that. “Yes. How is it you know me?”

  “The woman I was with is Jennifer Ryan.”

  There was no sign of recognition in his face, so I pressed on. “She was your girlfriend in high school. Jennifer Ryan.”

  Still no reaction. “I don’t believe I know the name, sir.”

  How stupid was this man? “Her family lives up the road. Can we go there? Maybe somebody picked her up and drove her home.”

  “Without you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know … but she’s got to be somewhere.”

  He agreed to take me to the house, and I led him there. When we pulled up, he said, with apparent skepticism, “Your girlfriend grew up here?”

  “Yes.”

  As soon as the car stopped, I jumped out and ran to the front door. Somewhere in the back of my mind it registered that the house looked slightly different, perhaps more tattered and less well-cared-for. Effects of the storm?

  Officer Winston came up behind me as I rang the bell and Janice answered. “Yes?” she asked in greeting.

  I started to babble about the accident, but my attention was drawn to the interior of the house. It appeared different; it’s hard to explain, but it looked as if somebody had gone over the place with a warmth remover.

  Janice was confused and looked at Winston. “Jack? What’s going on?”

  I didn’t hear his answer, as I was already moving past Janice and into the house. The differences were even more stark than I had first realized; the furniture was not the same, family pictures were gone from the walls.… I moved quickly toward the room that Jen and I had slept in.

  I vaguely heard Winston yelling after me as I opened the door and received what felt like an electric jolt. It was no longer a bedroom; it was more like a den or office.

  My mind couldn’t seem to process what might be going on. I headed back to the living room and ran into Janice and Winston, who had been following me.

  “What is going on here?” I demanded. “Why have you changed everything?”

  “What are you talking about?” Janice asked.

  “Where is Ben?”

  Janice almost recoiled from my question. “My husband Ben?”

  “Yes.”

  “He died almost twenty years ago.”

  I was starting to lose it, and I grabbed her arm. “Why the hell are you saying this? Why are you doing this?”

  Officer Winston roughly pulled me away. “That’s enough. We’re out of here. Sorry, Mrs. Ryan.”

  I pulled back. “Wait. Janice … Mrs. Ryan … I stayed here the last four nights. With your daughter. Jen and I are going to be married, but we were in an accident.”

  Her reaction was immediate; she slapped me in the face and would probably have killed me if Winston would have let her. “Get out of my house,” she said through clenched teeth. “Get out and never come back.”

  Winston led me outside, but I again pulled away and ran toward the rear of the house. I headed toward the gazebo where Jen and I had made love the night before, where we had committed to a life together, but it no longer existed. In its stead was an old pickup truck, out of service and up on blocks.

  And that’s when I went crazy.

  The next thing I can remember, a shrink was asking me questions. If he told me his name, I don’t recall it. He seemed to be assigned to this small-town medical clinic emergency room, so it probably wasn’t Freud.

  I was a little fuzzy-headed; they checked me out and bandaged my head, and I assume they gave me a sedative. I can’t blame them; I had gone berserk to the point where I can’t remember exactly what I had done. I regretted my actions, since they were counterproductive, and they left me lying in the hospital instead of out looking for Jen.

  “This young woman who is missing … you can visualize her clearly?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Of course. We are engaged. This is not somebody I met once on the street.”

  “Have you had many serious relationships with women?”

  This guy had to be kidding me. “Look, am I being held here?” I asked. “Did I commit a crime?”

  He smiled. “You committed no crime, so you are not under arrest. But I think you will admit that you are troubled, and—”

  I stood up, adjusting myself so as not to lose my balance. “Troubled? You have no idea.”

  The doctor tried to
persuade me to stay and talk to him some more, but that was obviously out of the question. I was already trying to formulate a plan in my mind. There was some kind of conspiracy going on, some effort being made to keep Jen away from me, maybe even to deny her very existence. But too many people knew the truth; not everyone could be in on this, and I planned to retrace our steps until I found people I could count on.

  Once I left the hospital, I got my bearings, at least location-wise, and realized that I wasn’t far from Nancy Brunell’s house. I headed over there, understanding that she might well be a part of whatever was going on, but hoping that she wasn’t.

  I rang the doorbell and a young man answered it. For a brief moment I feared that there was no Nancy Brunell, that maybe she had disappeared as well. “Is Nancy home?” I asked.

  “Sure,” was his cheerful response, before calling out, “Hey, Nance! Somebody here to see you!”

  Moments later Nancy appeared, and my relief was tangible. I was not crazy; I had met this woman the day before, I was in this very house, and my knowing that she lived here was proof of it. At least to me.

  “Nancy,” I said, “something really weird is going on. Jen and I were in an accident, and now she’s gone.”

  Nancy’s face reflected confusion and then a little fear, and I saw her tug on the young man’s shirt as he started to leave, in effect asking him to stay. No doubt to protect her from the stranger saying these strange things. To protect her from me.

  “Do I know you?” she asked.

  I could hear my heart hit the floor. “I was here yesterday. With Jen.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ve ever met you before, and I don’t know any Jen.”

  “Not you too…,” was all I could say. “Not you too…”

  The young man said, “Sorry, pal. You must have the wrong house,” and closed the door in my face. As I walked away from the door, almost staggering to the street, I saw Officer Winston sitting in his squad car, obviously keeping an eye on me. He was clearly waiting for some provocation to arrest me, to get me off the streets of his happy, cozy, stinking town.