by Jodi Thomas
Tres ignored him.
“How about tomorrow, I buy you your own?” He smiled. For some strange reason walking into Subway and ordering two sandwiches didn’t seem quite as lonely. “We’ll be sure to hit the two-for-one deal.”
He watched Tres pick around the cheese bread, licking the mayo and ketchup, ignoring the lettuce. “I don’t think I can say hold the bread, but I could probably remember extra mayo.”
An hour later, as he stretched on the couch realizing he’d been sleeping, Mark felt a heavy weight on his chest. In the first few moments of waking he thought he might be having a heart attack.
Then a paw pushed against his chin as if warning him not to move. The bothersome cat he didn’t even like was spread out on top of him as if he was her own personal cushion. She seemed to have decided that if he could live in a few square feet of the town house, she would also.
Mark closed his eyes and went back to sleep without further disturbing Tres.
When he awoke again, it was well after dark and the cat had deserted him. Mark pulled on a navy jacket and headed out without noticing the weather.
Parking his car on a side street near the capitol, he began his trail through downtown. The rain didn’t bother him. It kept most folks off the streets, making it easier to move from block to block. With each person he passed, Mark glanced up, sizing them up, hoping to see something, anything of the woman who’d fit Blaine’s description. He knew his chances were shrinking by the day. But she might still be on the streets. If the woman was at the clinic, she might still remember Blaine.
He tried not to dwell on the possibility that the woman who’d been seen might be Blaine. How does a man walk up to his wife if she has no memory of him? He knew the only way she’d be on the streets would be if she’d lost her memory and if that was lost, were they lost?
Mark used his new cell to call Detective Randell and check in. He wasn’t sure if they were becoming friends, or if Randell still considered him more a pest than a help, but it didn’t matter. Mark had no plans of giving up. He knew the cop would be somewhere on the streets. Randell didn’t seem to have much of a life other than his job. Mark could understand that.
After several questions, the officer admitted they had a new lead but wouldn’t talk about it on the phone. Mark knew better than to push. Right now Randell was the only ally he had.
Harry Winslow had even used his contacts at the police force and he’d told Mark that since Blaine hadn’t returned, there was a strong likelihood she’d left him. He suggested Mark begin the healing process of getting over her. File a missing persons report and make a public notice of a divorce action.
Mark refused. Blaine was alive, and somehow he’d find her.
Mark hung up from Randell agreeing to meet later for coffee. He cut the connection without bothering to say goodbye.
A few blocks later, when Mark turned the corner on Seventh, he spotted Randell climbing out of a beat-up Ford. He wore a tan raincoat that looked old and too small to button all the way down. Within seconds the detective was soaked, but like Mark, he didn’t seem to mind. Randell walked at a steady pace toward a bus stop half a block away.
Mark followed, trying to think like a cop. If Randell were looking for someone, say, a thin blond woman, tonight would be a good night to search. Everyone, including the homeless, would be huddled waiting out the rain. She might be in a stairwell, or alley somewhere, then again, she might be in a crowd. If they were looking for a woman who wanted to be invisible, the rain might change her patterns. It might draw her out in the open as easily as pull her into the shadows.
He watched Randell circle the people at the bus stop. The cop was smart, he stayed in the rain where no one more than a few feet away from him was likely to notice him.
Following Randell’s lead, Mark did the same, staying just close enough to Randell to make out the tan raincoat, just far enough away so that he could take a step backward if Randell turned his direction. Before the man could focus, Mark knew he could melt into the blackness of the downpour.
When Randell didn’t turn around, Mark moved closer to the shelter until he stood just outside the dry circle. Slowly, he began to make out the people. A few he’d seen before on the streets, a few looked familiar, like maybe he’d passed them ten times, or a hundred, and never really bothered to see them.
The two rounded piles of rags, who were always at the stop, were on the bench tonight. The bag ladies reminded him of a set of salt and pepper shakers. They didn’t really match, but he’d never seen one without the other.
He noticed the drunk who usually slept in the alley nearby huddled among the others. Mark couldn’t help but wonder if the man’s bed was floating in two inches of water, thanks to the rain. He also felt sorry for anyone standing within three feet of the old drunk. The damp smell of him had to be bad.
Mark searched the crowd that grew and shrank with the coming and going of buses.
None looked like Blaine or the woman the shelter lady had told Randell about. There was a woman, knotted into a ball beside one of the old bag ladies, who looked as if she might be almost thin enough, but even in the pale streetlight Mark could tell the hair sticking up from her hood was brown, not blond and black-framed glasses hid her eyes. She had none of Blaine’s posture, no straight back, no chin held high.
People talked, shuffled, waited. Then, unexpectedly, Mark heard Blaine’s laughter blend amid the noise. More the echo of her laugh, he thought. That light giggle she used to do when something was funny just to her. A private joke.
He took a step forward trying to figure out if he’d really heard it or simply thought he had. The possibility of madness crossed his thoughts. All his life, everything down to the last detail had been thought out, planned. But no longer. Lately, he seemed to be drifting without a compass.
A bus pulled up. People blocked his path as they hurried from the shelter of the stop to the door of the bus. Mark heard Randell’s voice over the noise, then others, but they didn’t matter. He only listened for the laughter.
The voices grew as he pushed his way through the crowd to beneath the stop’s covering. Slinging water from his face, he watched as Randell slammed a youth against a building. People jumped suddenly like popcorn dancing on one hot spot in a pan. They all seemed like shadows without faces no matter which direction he looked.
A kid of about fifteen ran into the street, drawing everyone’s attention as cars honked and skidded on the wet road. Randell ran after him, shouting.
Mark followed for several steps before he realized he would be walking away from where he’d heard her laughter. He turned back to the crowd, but they’d scattered…hurrying to the buses, giving up on staying dry, frightened…he had no idea why. They ran just like roaches scared by the light.
Only the two old bag ladies remained on the bus-stop bench.
Mark moved toward them, listening to their voices as they questioned what had happened. The laugh had not come from one of them.
“The woman who was just sitting here…” He had no idea how to finish the sentence. He pointed to the place beside one of the women. “The woman in a hooded jacket?”
The rounded bag lady with warm brown skin glanced up at him. “I didn’t see any woman,” she mumbled between bites of bread. “Or maybe I’ve seen a hundred tonight and you want me to remember one. It’s a waste of my time. Go away.”
“The woman who was just here sitting next to you.” Mark turned to the other bag lady, who didn’t seem to be listening as she rummaged through one of her huge plastic bags.
He moved closer and spoke louder. “Do you know who the woman…”
The black bag lady answered again, louder this time. “I done told you we didn’t see any woman sitting there. We ain’t the population police. You want a woman, you’ll have to go a few blocks over and just walk the street. If you’re interested, it’s like they can smell you. They’ll come out of nowhere and find you.”
“No. I’m not looking for
any woman.” Mark fought not to swear. “I’m just asking about the woman who was here only a minute ago. She had a hood pulled over her head. I couldn’t see her face.”
The other old lady pulled a Lego from her bag. “I found Mary’s toy,” she beamed as she showed it to Mark.
Her friend passed two slices of bread to her and said, “Keep it for her until later, would you, Momma.”
“All right.” She dropped the plastic block back into the cluttered bag and bit into her bread.
Mark knelt in front of her and asked in a low, slow tone, “Who was the woman sitting beside you?”
The pale gray-haired old lady stared at him blankly. “I didn’t see anyone. It don’t pay to see people.”
“But I heard a woman laugh,” Mark said more to himself than the two homeless women.
To his surprise, the pale old woman answered, “Yeah, I heard that too. She does have an angel’s laugh, don’t she.”
Mark looked up into aging eyes long out of touch with any reality. “So, someone was sitting beside you?”
“No.” The bag lady patted his hand as if he were a child. “I didn’t see anybody. I never see anyone, even when I say I do.”
Mark stood and walked into the rain, toward his car. He knew he’d be back tomorrow night and the night after that. Searching for the woman who someone thought looked like his wife. Listening for the sound of her laughter that he thought he’d heard.
By the time he reached his car he knew he wouldn’t be telling anyone about what he thought he’d heard. They’d think he was crazy. A man wishing for something he’d lost. A man who wouldn’t face facts. Now the people at the office would probably start whispering about how they could understand why his wife left him, after all, he wasn’t quite right.
Yet, even as he drove away, the memory of her laughter still echoed in his mind. He’d find that woman no matter how many nights it took. Unless he finally snapped and started sitting at the bus stop, digging for Legos in a trash bag.
Twenty-One
Blaine saw Shakespeare standing deep in the shadows of the abandoned café’s threshold, watching people run along the walk. Every few seconds, almost as though he thought he might get caught, he raised a bottle wrapped in a paper bag to his lips and gulped once, then lowered it.
Ignoring the rain blurring her vision, she tried to focus on Shakespeare as she stumbled toward him. She bumped into one man and he mumbled an apology. When she collided with the next stranger, he muttered an oath. Blaine tried to concentrate on reaching the old man in the doorway before the blackness creeping over her mind as thick as ink covered all thought.
Car lights and stoplights reflected off the water that dripped from the building’s roof like multicolored strands of beads blocking the entrance to the spot the old man called home.
She almost knocked Shakespeare over when she finally staggered in from the rain. She thought he’d seen her coming then realized too late that he hadn’t.
Frightened, bloodshot eyes glared at her.
Shakespeare’s bottle hit the concrete and shattered as he grabbed her, trying to steady her.
“Now hold on!” he yelled, then softened as recognition crossed his face. “What be this tragedy, my fair Mary?” His words slurred. “Come through the depths of hell this wicked night.”
“Help me,” she whispered. “Please, help me. I need to find Miller.”
He looked down at his broken bottle, then at her.
“I’m sorry.” She fought the urge to cry. Just when Blaine thought nothing in this world could make things worse, life proved her wrong. She’d broken the one thing Shakespeare cared about more than life and she did not even have the money to repay him. “I may have been followed. I need a place to hide. Help me.”
To her surprise Shakespeare looked as if he cared. “I’ve heard talk of your plight, my child. Gossip’s cloth doth blow lightly in the wind.” He pulled his hand away from her waist and stared at the blood that covered his dirty fingers.
“You’re hurt.” For once he forgot to color his words. “How badly?”
Blaine lifted the end of her sweatshirt. Just above the band of her jogging pants ran a crimson line. The flesh gaped open for several inches. A thin waterfall of blood dripped down her flesh to soak into the thick cotton of her waistband.
The clouds grew darker. The world circled around her. She was hot and cold at the same time. She wanted to be home and all this to be only a dream.
She fought to clear her head, but the clouds moved in fast. “Mark,” she whispered as Shakespeare lowered her to the ground. “Oh, Mark, I’m sorry, so sorry.”
She closed her eyes, feeling the broken pieces of the whiskey bottle cut into her back and the smell of cheap liquor pollute the air. But it didn’t matter. Blaine no longer cared about anything but hiding in the darkness that closed in around her. She was a little girl again hiding in the closet, closing out everything.
Vaguely she heard Miller’s angry voice yelling at the old drunk. Someone picked her up as if she were a child and carried her back out into the storm. Rain splashed over her. Powerful arms bound her in a tight grip. They plowed through the sheets of rain like a tiny boat in a storm, fighting to survive.
Blaine relaxed as her mind drifted back on feather pillows and unconsciousness dulled all feeling, all pain. The last thing she heard was a strong heart pounding, driving them faster and faster through the storm.
When she awoke, the rain was gone but Miller was still yelling. “You know why I didn’t take her to the hospital. They’d need too many forms filled in! I don’t know much about her, but I know she is in some kind of trouble and doesn’t want folks asking too many questions.”
Blaine opened her eyes a fraction. An elderly man with snow-white hair and long, thin hands leaned over her. Miller stood at her side, his silhouette twice that of the stranger’s.
“I gave up medicine twenty years ago, Luke.” The old man shook his head. “I’m not sure I remember enough to help her, and I’m not strong enough to do much good.”
“You knew more than most to start with. You can afford to forget a little.” Miller lowered his voice. “If it hadn’t been for you, a great many of us wouldn’t have come back from Nam and we both know it. So stop being modest and do what you were meant to do in this lifetime.”
Blaine drifted, thinking the two looked like a pelican and a walrus having a conversation. A children’s story threaded through her mind, a village where animals talked.
“That was a long time ago. My hands shake now,” the doctor said, and in her mind the walrus echoed.
“I know, but you can still help.”
“That was war,” the doctor added as he pulled supplies from drawers.
“And this isn’t?” Miller frowned. “If she had anywhere else to go, she wouldn’t be on the streets, Doc. And she’s not real bright as far as I can tell. Only friend she’s made is me.”
“Well, that’s reason enough to feel sorry for her,” the white-haired man mumbled more to himself than Miller. “Your friendship has been a cross I’ve had to bear for over thirty years. You won’t even leave me alone and let me die in peace.” He shooed Miller aside and pulled on a white apron, giving up the argument without another word.
The old doctor leaned closer and noticed Blaine watching him. “Hello there, young lady. I’m Dr. Early. Seth Early. Would you mind if I take a look at that side of yours? There appears to be a problem with blood dripping from it. I think we might be able to make that stop.” She thought he looked a bit younger when he stopped talking about himself and started worrying about her.
He asked so politely. No harsh orders. No, I’m-important-and-in-a-hurry attitude. He could have been asking her to dance at the symphony ball.
“All right,” Blaine answered and rolled to her unharmed side.
Dr. Early lifted her sweatshirt without any expression on his face, but Miller, standing just behind him, grimaced at what he saw. The old doctor motioned for the big ma
n to hold her off the table while he removed her sweatshirt. As Miller gently lowered her back to the table, the doctor spread a sheet atop her chest.
“How did this happen?” He reached for a white towel and pressed it over the wound.
Blaine forced words. “I was at the bus stop. A kid pulled a knife. I got in the way.” She noticed Miller’s eyebrow lifted in doubt. “The kid wasn’t trying to cut me, but someone pushed me forward,” she said, more for Miller than the doctor. “I was just in the wrong place.”
Dr. Early motioned with his head for Miller to press down on the bandage. When the big man followed his silent command, the doctor pulled another sheet across her and gently removed her shoes and pants. Then he hurried to the sink and began scrubbing his hands. “I can give you something for the pain and to fight infection but I need to ask you a few questions.”
She nodded.
“Are you on any drugs, my dear?”
“No.”
“Any medications, any health conditions I should know about?”
Blaine fought back tears. “Something is wrong inside me. I’ve been feeling sick in my stomach. But it has nothing to do with the wound. Something is just wrong with me deep inside and has been for weeks now.”
The kind doctor replaced his hand where Miller’s had been and asked the big man to leave.
Miller hesitated, weaving back and forth like a bull before finally heading toward the door.
The doctor waited.
Miller stopped, his hand on the knob as he turned back to them. “I’ll go wash up,” he mumbled as if it were his decision to leave. “But I’ll be within shouting distance if you need me.”
“If you’ll give the lady’s clothes to Mrs. Bailey, she’ll have them washed by the time our guest needs them again.” The doctor said the words calmly, as though she had come in for a visit.
Blaine looked around the room for the first time. It was decorated like an old-time doctor’s office from a hundred years ago, with strange smoke-colored bottles lining the walls and even stranger instruments displayed across the tops of the shelves. One wall was covered with old black-and-white pictures of a small western town.
