I exhaled and watched them go. Well, that was a bust. I decided to start walking to Manhattan, give it a few moments, then try someone else for a phone. Perry had to pick up at some point, I left her more than enough voicemails.
Not if she’s not okay, the thought shot across my head like a bullet. Maybe that’s why you can’t get a hold of her.
Fuck. I clenched and unclenched my fists. What if something had happened to her?
I refused to entertain the thought. I needed to hold it together, not fall apart. As long as I found out she was okay, just to hear her voice, more than anything, then I’d deal with the rest.
But refusing to think about it, didn’t mean I didn’t feel it, that sickness, black and sticky like tar, clinging to the inside of my lungs.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was sprinting down the bridge, urgency pressing through my legs. I was bumping into people, knocking commuters off balance, their cries of anger and annoyance the soundtrack to my pumping limbs but I couldn’t give any f**ks. There were no f**ks to give. It was like the faster I went, the more I was aware that something horrible was about to go down and all the speed in the world wouldn’t help me.
Or her.
Or anyone.
I was nearly at the place where the bridge promenade swooped into City Hall Park, thinking about one of the last times I was in the area, paying a parking ticket with Maximus back in the way back days, when I felt like my non-existent drug trip just intensified.
There was Maximus, stepping out from the grandiose pillars of the Manhattan Municipal Building, his floppy ginger coif standing out like a red beacon on the end of a flannel stick. He wasn’t even wearing flannel, but that wasn’t the point.
I came to a halt, making sure I was seeing this right. Did I run right into the past? Déjà vu swept over me, momentarily washing that feeling of doom side. How could I just think about him and make him appear? Was I Gandalf?
But it wasn’t just him. It was also Ada. Fucking Little Fifteen Ada Palomino throwing change at a hotdog vendor and trying to catch up with Maximus, all long limbs and bad eye makeup.
What the actual f**k?
Before I could even contemplate just what sort of wizardry was at work here I heard my name being catapulted in my direction.
“Dex!”
It was more of a panicked shriek, but to say it didn’t immediately fill my heart with gold would be lying.
I turned my head to the park and saw Perry, beautiful, crazy Perry, running toward me, about to head straight into traffic.
I let out a yelp, my body frozen from the impending disaster but she managed to skirt in front of the cars which were slowing down as they turned onto the bridge and soon she was on my side of the road, unscathed except for a few people laying on their horns in her wake.
There’s a moment in the movie “10” when Dudley Moore sees Bo Derek running down the beach in slow motion. Most people don’t know what I’m talking about because most people don’t educate themselves with the classics, particularly Blake Edwards, but anyway, this moment rivaled that one.
And that doesn’t trivialize it, believe me, because seeing Perry run toward me, her face scrunched in the sheer desire to reach me, did something to my soul. It grabbed at me, clawed at me, made me realize just how damn empty I’d been without her by my side, even if for a short while. It made me realize I needed to do everything I could to ensure that would never happen again.
“Dex,” she cried out again and in an instant she was in my arms and she was safe and I was safe and the rest of the world could go to hell for all I cared.
I held her close to me as she sobbed into my chest. I wanted to calm her down but at the same time I wasn’t doing so well either. The more she shook in my arms, the more worried I became.
“Hey, baby,” I whispered into the top of her head. “You’re here, I’m here.”
Right?
She half mumbled, half cried something into my chest and I had to pull back to give her some room to talk. I smoothed the hair behind her ears, imploring her to look at me. She eventually did even though the tears wouldn’t stop running down her face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her softly. I hated seeing her cry more than anything.
She grimaced and wiped the tears off her cheeks. “You don’t know?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much, kiddo. Last thing I remember was being in Portland, upstairs, editing. Next thing I know I’m on the Brooklyn Bridge, talking to a hipster. Apparently, I’ve missed some shit between points A and B.”
She frowned, studying my face, and squeezed my hand hard. “That’s really all you remember? You don’t remember your brother?”
Michael. Again, his face flashed through my mind, as clear as day. Why it struck the fear of god in me, I don’t know.
I paused. “I don’t think so?”
“Lord, Dex, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Maximus said as he walked over to us.
“Good, cuz the sight of you makes my eyes sore,” I said right back but I couldn’t help but grin at him. I looked at Ada who had somehow already devoured the hot dog and was staring at me with questioning eyes. “Little Fifteen. Fancy meeting you in the Big Apple. Can one of you jokers please inform me of what the f**k is going on here?”
“He says he doesn’t remember anything,” Perry said to them.
I wrapped my arm protectively around her waist and pulled her closer to me. “I’m assuming some major shit went down or somehow the teleporter was invented without me knowing it.”
I don’t know why I thought they’d find that amusing but all three of them stared at me gravely. My shackles went up. “Okay, seriously. I don’t know what happened. Can one of you please indulge me?”
Surprisingly it was Ada who spoke up. “You were upstairs. I was working out. Do you remember that?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, the sound of that scary athletic chick’s voice pounding into my head. “A workout video with the hot but crazy one with the big jaw.”
“Yes,” she said with a raise of her brow. I just then noticed how tired Ada looked. She’d always bordered on that because of her fascination with a metric ton of eyeliner but there was something different about her. The exhaustion made her seems eons older than she was, like she’d seen a lot recently.
She continued. “Then there was a knock at the front door. Do you remember that?”