The Return

by Christopher Pike

  Jimmy did a double take. "Jean Rodrigues's mother," I explained. "She'll be worried about me."

  "You never used to ask if you could use my phone. Maybe you aren't really Shari. Maybe this is all just an elaborate hoax."

  I picked up the phone. "I asked you once out of politeness, but I'm not going to ask you again."

  "Oh, that sounds familiar. I guess you are Shari, after all."

  I smiled at him. "Behave yourself. There are other secrets I can put in my book that will ruin your reputation." I punched out the number quickly. My mother, Mrs. Rodrigues, answered. I felt as close to her as I had the day before. That was the great thing about having two sets of memories. Overnight I had doubled my family. The only drawback was that I could think of twice as many people who annoyed me.

  "Hello?"

  "Hi, Mama, it's me. I'm safe and sound. Haven't keeled over from any bad headaches. I'm with a friend in Orange County. I might be out late. Just wanted you to know. How are you doing?"

  "I'm fine but Carol is upset. She's called three times. She wants you to call her immediately."

  "Que pasa?"

  "I don't know. She wouldn't tell me. But whatever it is, I don't want you getting involved. You hear me?"

  "Yes. Is she at home?"

  "I think so. Who is this friend you're with?"

  "He's an old pal. I'll tell you about him later. I want to go. I want to call Carol."

  "Remember what I said," she warned.

  I hung up the receiver and quickly dialed Carol.

  Jimmy watched me. "Do you still get headaches as a result of your fall?" he asked.

  "Yes, and they're a real bitch. But don't worry, I'm not going to die on you again." Carol picked up. I turned my back on Jimmy and shielded the phone with my hand. "Hello, baby doll. What's the big emergency?"

  Carol sounded agitated. "I got bad news. Darlene's got herself a piece. Freddy told me she bought it from a crack dealer on Hawthorne."

  "That's no big surprise. We knew she was shopping."

  "Yeah. But here's the scary part. Lenny checked out of rehab and went straight to Darlene's house. Freddy told me that, too. Maybe Darlene got the piece for Lenny. I hear he can drive. You hear what I'm saying?"

  "That he might try a drive-by on Juan and take the heat?"

  "Yeah. You better talk to him. Better talk to him now."

  "I'm on my way. Gracias."

  "Take care of yourself, Jean. I have a bad feeling about this."

  "I'll call you as soon as I know something."

  Jimmy was studying me when I set the phone down. I forced a smile.

  "I have to go," I said. "A problem at home."

  "You don't want me to get Jo? You were so excited about seeing her a minute ago."

  "You can get her. I might be able to come over later." I edged toward the door.

  "I'll call you."

  He stepped in front of me. "What was that remark you made about someone doing a drive-by and taking the heat?"

  I laughed. "Oh, that's just tough girl talk. It's nothing."

  He crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm not stupid, Shari."

  I stopped laughing. "It's nothing to worry about, Jimmy, I promise. I'll be back in two hours. Go get Jo. Tell her what's happened. I bet you can convince her even without me there. I might be back here before you. Leave the door open for me."

  "Can't I go with you?"

  "No, and I can't explain why. The situation is complicated."

  He stepped aside reluctantly. "Why do I feel like I did the last time we said goodbye?"

  "Will you be out late?"

  "Not too late."

  "Good."

  'What's the matter?"

  "Nothing. I'm just tired. Have fun."

  "Sweet dreams, brother. "

  "Take care, sister."

  I went up on my tiptoes and kissed him on the forehead. "I will not be out late.

  I will come back. Trust me, I love you too much to leave you again."

  "Love can't protect you from everything, Shari."

  I opened his door. Outside, it was beginning to get dark.

  "There's nothing I need to be protected from," I said.

  Darlene Sanchez's house was a pile of old wood, plaster, and bad vibes. Her father had abused her when she was six. When she was ten he had taken two rounds in the chest from a double-barreled shotgun while trying to rob a liquor store. When she was sixteen her mother died from cirrhosis of the liver from having drunk half a liquor store. Darlene was tough, though, I knew from past life regressions. She could take a few setbacks and come out shooting. That was what worried me. Darlene answered the door when I knocked.

  "Jean," she said. "What are you doing here?"

  "Is that how you say hello?"

  "Hello already. What the hell are you doing here?"

  "I want to see Lenny."

  "He's not here."

  "I don't believe you." I pushed at the screen door.

  "Let me in."

  She pushed back; she was a strong devil. "No. I'm with a guy."

  "You're with my guy. Open the goddamn door or I'll come in through the window."

  Darlene was dark. "I wouldn't recommend that, Jean."

  I laughed in her face. "What are you going to do, shoot me? Do you feel empowered because you bought yourself a piece today? Yeah, I heard about your gold credit card purchase. Do you think owning a gun makes you bad?

  You make me sick. You prance around like you're so hot to avenge your boyfriend's death, and then when it comes crunch time you drag a crippled guy into your stupid plot and tell him to do all the dirty work."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "I'm sure you don't." I suddenly shoved hard on the door, catching her by surprise. I was inside before she could stop me. Lenny, in a wheelchair, sat beside the kitchen table. He glanced over as Darlene started to grab my hair.

  "Let me talk to her alone," he said flatly.

  Darlene stopped with her hand in the air. "Alone?" she asked, annoyed.

  "Yeah," Lenny said. "Go for a walk."

  "This is mi casa!"

  "Go for a long walk," Lenny said.

  Darlene went for a walk. I went over and sat at the table near Lenny.

  Physically, he looked better than when he had transferred from the hospital to the rehabilitation clinic, which was the last time I had seen him. He had some color and had put on weight. But his handsome face was still flat and cold. I felt as if I were about to talk to a perfect stranger. I'm sure the original Jean would have felt the same way. He offered me a cigarette, but I shook my head.

  The air was thick with smoke already. He took a puff on his own cigarette butt and ground it out in a filthy ashtray.

  "You look good," I lied.

  "For a cripple?"

  "I'm sorry, I didn't know you would hear that when I said it. I'm glad to see you're up and around. What is it like handling the chair? I bet it takes some getting used to."

  He snorted. "It's like riding a bicycle. The only difference is the ride never ends." He added softly,

  "Unless you decide to crash."

  "You don't want to crash. You've come too far. Lenny, look at me. Talk to me.

  You're doing good. Ten weeks ago you were lying in a hospital bed. Now you're able to go places and see people. This is a fresh start for you. It can be a fresh start for us. I care about you—a great deal." I stopped and asked sadly, "Don't you care about me?"

  He finally looked at me. "You look different."

  I forced a smile. "Is that good?"

  "I don't know." His eyes narrowed. "What have you been doing lately?"

  "Waiting for you to call. But other than that I've been busy. I start school in a couple of weeks. I'm going to the JC. I've been working at the Subway and at the hospital." I added, "I've written a few stories. You can read them if you'd like."

  He shrugged. "I never read. Why did you come here tonight?"

  "I just told you.
To see you. I'm worried about you."

  He smiled thinly, as he had when Jean told him she was pregnant. "You don't have to worry," he muttered, leaning back in his chair and stretching. It seemed as if he had a cramp in his back.

  "Are you all right?"

  "Yeah. I just broke my back is all."

  "Lenny!"

  He shook his head. "I don't know why you're here."

  I sat back, suddenly as tired as the whole sick house. "I heard Darlene bought a gun. I heard she wants you to kill Juan for what he did to Sporty. I'm here to talk you out of it."

  He chuckled. "You know nothing."

  I stood. The air in the house was too heavy. Reason could not prevail in such an atmosphere, I thought. I had to get him somewhere else, "Let's go for a ride,"

  I said.

  "To where?"

  "A friend's house."

  "Who is this friend?"

  "It's a guy I met. You'll like him. Let's go before the dragon lady gets back."

  He surprised me. I thought I would have to drag him out the door.

  "If you want," he said.

  Jimmy's third-story apartment had an elevator as well as a stairway. The former had proved most useful when I had helped him move in, although the elevator had not been wide enough to accommodate his bed and chest of drawers. Fortunately, Lenny and his wheelchair fit in the elevator nicely, and soon we were rolling into Jimmy's apartment. The place was empty.

  "Does he usually go out and leave his place unlocked?" Lenny asked.

  "This is Orange County, not South Central," I said.

  "They know what the word crime means over here. Do you have a key to this guy's place or what? How well do you know him?"

  "I know him very well. But he's not my boyfriend or anything like that."

  Lenny gave a bitter laugh. "Like I'm supposed to believe that. Like you're going to wait for me to get better when you know I won't. Drop the charade, Jean.

  You're screwing this guy. We both know it."

  My temper flared. Maybe it was about time. Maybe it was the worst time. Time, I knew, was different in Orange County than it was in South Central. As it was different on Earth than at the center of the galaxy. What had I seen there? That we were all part of one another? If that was so, then Lenny had just become an aching head that I just wanted to rub softly or else pound furiously. I just wanted the madness to stop. What I did not know was that he wanted the same thing.

  "You drop the charade, you bastard," I said. "I am not screwing anybody and you know it."

  I was very surprised when he pulled a black revolver, complete with silencer, from underneath his shirt and pointed it in my direction. His grin was the work of demons.

  "Oh, I know a thing or two about you," he said. "I know you were screwing Sporty when you were supposedly going out with me. I know it was his baby you got pregnant with. And I know that you're going to die in the next two minutes."

  I held out my hands defensively. I may have walked through the valley of the shadow of death and come back out again, but that didn't mean I was anxious to repeat the experience on a nice summer evening. His words had shocked me so much that I actually smiled instead of screamed. But it was an awkward smile, full of pain and fear. Yeah, it hurt me that he would even point a gun in my direction, my boyfriend. Of course, I knew it would hurt a lot more if he pulled the trigger.

  "Hold on just a second," I said. "I never slept with Sporty. What gave you that idea? I was certainly never pregnant with his baby. You got it all wrong. Who have you been talking to?"

  "I don't need to talk to no one. Last spring I drove by your house late one night and saw you kissing Sporty goodbye. It was kind of dark but what you gave him was no brotherly peck."

  Frantically, I tried to remember that night, searching memories that not only didn't belong to me, but in more cases than not had been recorded with a stoned nervous system. There was one time, in mid-May, when I did recall that Sporty had been over late. He and Jean had been smoking pot and goofing off.

  She might have kissed him good night—he was an old friend of hers—but I had no recollection that it had been a hard kiss. The problem was, Jean might have been so high she momentarily thought she was necking with Lenny and went at it a bit. What a paradox, I thought. How could I defend myself for things she might have done? But one thing for sure, I knew Jean had never slept with Sporty.

  "I might have kissed him, I can't remember," I said quickly. "We were high that night. But I didn't sleep with him. You have no proof of that."

  He sneered. "No proof? You told me you were pregnant. You were pregnant.

  You lost the baby in the fall. You told me that as well."

  "So? It was your baby."

  "It couldn't have been my baby! What kind of fool do you take me for? I wore a condom every time we had sex."

  I chuckled despite the situation. "You are a fool. The condom broke once. You didn't even notice, but I did. That's how I got pregnant with your kid."

  "You expect me to believe that?"

  "It's the truth. It happens all the time. Ask any doctor or pharmacist. They'll tell you the same thing."

  My words seemed to shake him. The gun in his hand moved off to one side. But I didn't think to try to rush him and wrestle it away. Lenny was six feet away, and even with his injury I knew he had excellent reflexes. If I jumped him, I'd die, it was that simple. And I would have lied to my brother a second time.

  "It can't be," he whispered, more to himself. His face went gray; his very soul seemed to tremble.

  "Sporty had to go."

  "What did you say?"

  He regained control of his aim. "You're a lying, cheating bitch. That's all there is to it. I'm going to kill you now. Move over onto that balcony."

  "No! I heard what you just said. You were the one who arranged Sporty's death.

  You took him into Juan's territory that night. What did you do, tell him that you had arranged a truce for him with Juan?"

  Lenny was enraged. "I didn't shoot him! I didn't pull the trigger!"

  "But you set him up. I see it all. I should have seen it a long time ago. You told Juan where you'd be walking by and at what time. No wonder you didn't get hit. No one was aiming for you. And you call me a cheat. You grew up with Sporty, for chrissakes!"

  "And he was screwing my woman! He deserved to die!" Tears sprung into his eyes as he glared at me with the dark hint of murderous guilt. It was then I understood, even before he said what he did next, that he felt he had to kill me to justify what he had done to his friend. To convince himself that he had not made a mistake. It was twisted logic, and unfortunately it was the kind practiced daily in the barrios every time some innocent person died.

  "No one deserves to die so young," I said.

  "I didn't want him to die! It was you who made him die! It was you and your goddamn slutty ways! Get out on that balcony. I tried to kill you once—

  knocking you off my balcony—and by God I'm going to do it this time. Get out there, you bitch!"

  He was serious, there was no arguing with him. I stepped out onto the balcony, not taking my eyes off him. He followed me only partway. The wooden balcony was cramped, the sliding glass door that led to it even more narrow. He might be able to wheel his chair out, I thought, but it was obvious he didn't want to.

  The night air closed around me like a hand of doom. I couldn't comprehend that my time back on Earth was to be so short. Was my karma so bad? It didn't seem fair. The Rishi hadn't warned me. Yet he had, I thought, in a way.

  "What happened that night, Lenny? Did you set the balcony to collapse beneath me? At the critical moment, did your handiwork fail? Did you climb down beneath me to fix it and then—big surprise—me and the balcony fell on you? You know, you always were lousy at fixing things."

  "Collate!"

  By his reaction I knew I had hit the bull's-eye. "Just tell me if Darlene was in on your little escapade."

  "She wasn't."

  "Great. Th
at's a relief. Now what? This balcony isn't going to collapse beneath me, and I'm not going to jump off it. I've had enough of that stunt."

  Lenny smiled grimly. "But you are going to jump. The pain is going to make you jump."

  "What pain?"

  Wrong question. Lenny took aim and fired. The bullet burst from the muzzle in a silent flare of orange light. It tore through the right side of my right thigh with an agonizing red rupture. Even when I had hit the concrete with my head after falling three stories, I hadn't felt such overwhelming pain. Crying, I sagged to the side and instinctively covered the wound with my right hand. The blood poured warm and sticky into my palm. It soaked my pants and dripped onto the boards of the balcony. Lenny shifted the gun and aimed it at my left thigh.

  Where were Jimmy's neighbors? Watching cable TV? I had to scream, I knew, to get their attention. But I also knew if I did, he would just put a bullet through my heart. Oh, God, I thought. I should never have come back.

  "You should jump now," he said. "I will take you apart piece by little piece. A few more bullets and the pain will become intolerable."

  "You'll never get away with it," I gasped. "The police will come. They'll catch you. You'll go to jail forever."

  My threat amused him. "Your new boyfriend will probably get here before the police. I'll do him like I'm doing you, slowly and painfully. I have plenty of ammunition. I'll save a bullet for myself. When the police get here, there will be no one to arrest." He put pressure on the trigger. "Would you like it in the crotch? You can cover the area with your hand if you like, but the bullet will go right through it and get you where it hurts most."

  "Please." I wept, holding out my trembling arm, horrified at the thought of what it would be like to be shot there. "Give me a second. I'll get up on the railing. I'll do what you ask. I'll jump."

  He was happy. He was sick. He was like some ancient beast dug up from a black tomb that the gods should have long ago covered with a sacred mountain. His eyes shone the color of blood, and I hardly recognized him.

  "That's a good little slut." He cackled. "But do it fast, my finger is itchy. Dive headfirst if you don't want me to shoot at you while you're lying splattered on the concrete."

  "I'm hurrying," I moaned, easing myself up onto the wooden railing. All I could think was that I couldn't let him put another bullet in me. From so many violent films and TV shows people have become anaesthetized to what it is like to be shot. It is a tragic thing. My lives were tragic. They kept bringing me to a precipice where there was no hope of escape. I eased my bloody leg over the railing. "Lenny," I pleaded, before I let go.