Passenger(50)

Somehow, I manage to escape. I climb atop the riser and, gripping Nicole about the wrist, drag her through the hidden door at the back of the stage.

We cross into a death-dark corridor, claustrophobic as a ribcage, and run. The corridor communicates with a small back alley which we burst into, panting and sweating, and nearly spill over a heap of trashcans.

“Jesus,” I gasp, and plant one hand against the wall while I catch my breath.

“Smooth,” says Maxwell Devine. He is perched on a dumpster having a cigarette. Beside him, glassy-eyed and terminally bored, Dougie picks his nose. “Smooth, cat. Got the holiday spirit tonight, eh?”

I hear Nicole sob. I turn and run a hand along her back. Say, “Nicole…”

But she isn’t sobbing.

She’s laughing.

“That was great,” she tells me. “Whoever you are.”

In a matter of minutes, the street is colored by red and blue lights and Timmy Donlon, armed with a baseball bat, is on the front stoop arguing with the police. The Neighborhood is cleared out and a few of the instigators are ushered into the backs of the police cruisers. Like ravens perched on high, the Devine brothers watch all this from the concealment of the darkened alleyway, both of them crouching atop a trash receptacle. As the last of the police cars slide away down the street, their lights twirling in reflection on the wet cobblestones and across the street in the black bay water. We all climb back inside, Nicole gripping tight my hand. The brothers go immediately upstairs to their room while I attempt to calm Timmy Donlon down. But Timmy won’t hear of it; he’s pacing like a tiger behind the bar. Tate watches from one darkened corner, a twist of Kleenex corkscrewing from one nostril.

“Hell happened to you?” I ask.

Tate smiles and I can see it causes him pain to do so. “Took an elbow to the face.”

“Timmy,” I say, placing both my palms down on the bar top. “Hey, Timmy. Let’s have a drink, yeah?”

“Shit, Wurl…”

“Come on, man. Let’s have a couple beers.”

Timmy Donlon pauses, rubbing at his creased forehead with his great, knobby fingers. He sets the bat down behind the bar and I can almost see steam rising in waves off his scalp.

“Hey, Wurl,” one of the Devine brothers calls down to me from the second floor landing. “Yo!”

“What?”

“Yo, Wurl, you better come up here right quick, hammer.”

I bound up the stairs. Nicole is quick at my heels. Behind her, Tate staggers up the stairwell, that twist of Kleenex still protruding from his nose.

Both Devine brothers stand just outside their loft, like sentries on either side of the open door. Maxwell raises a hand and instructs me to go through the room, straight to the back. The room, their private f*ck-room, is empty and dark and smells of weed. Like a mosquito attracted to bright light, I go straight to the back of the room where a small door has been opened in the wall: a tiny bathroom, bland in white-yellow candle wax light. There is a figure draped there, one arm wound in black ribbons draped over the lid of the toilet, the head cocked at an off angle, the nylon-stocking legs askew like half-open scissors. I don’t make out the face at first—only that it is a woman, some woman—and I don’t realize until the scene settles firmly into my brain that those are not black ribbons winding like the stripes of a barbershop pole up the woman’s arm. It is blood. The wrist, I see, has been slit open.

“Jesus Christ.” I breathe these words, exhale them, more than speak them. I find myself slumping against the wall, unable to look away from the mess. Nicole stops directly behind me; I feel her thump against my ass. If she says anything, it is so quiet I do not hear it.

Only Tate Jennings seems capable of movement. And only Tate, ridiculous with his tissue twisting out of his nostril, quickly recognizes the girl in the bathroom.

“Olivia!” he shouts, and slams past me into the bathroom. A moment later, he is turning her over on the bathroom floor, Olivia’s head lolling to one side in an unanchored, puppety way. Moving her, it seems there is much more blood where her head had been just a moment before.

“Tate, man,” I say, “maybe we shouldn’t move her—”

“She’s alive!” Tate shrieks. “Call an ambulance! Hurry! Go!”

I turn and bolt from the room. I take the stairs three at a time and all but jump straight off the landing to the lower level. Timmy Donlon is watching me from behind the bar like someone about to be gored by a charging bull.

“Call an ambulance!” I yell. “Call a f*cking ambulance!”

But he is stupefied and cannot move. I tackle the phone off the bar top and wrestle the receiver to my ear. For one horrible second, I cannot hear a dial tone. Then there it is, there it is…

Tate rides with Olivia in the back of the ambulance. Nicole, Timmy Donlon, and I watch from the street as the ambulance speeds away. Before the lights of the ambulance fade, Timmy Donlon says, “Gah,” and sulks back inside. Where the Devine brothers have disappeared to, I do not know.

“Oh,” says Nicole, and rests her head against my chest.

It starts to rain.





TWENTY





Christmas Eve, and the boats are draped in sparkling lights in the harbor. Lovers walk hand-in-hand around the bank of shops, waiting in calm reverie for their dinner reservations. Wreaths hang from doors and lampposts have been garlanded seemingly overnight. Seemingly by elves. It is a different city in the winter—different enough to make one forget the hot, melting tar in the summer, the congestive traffic along Pratt Street, the tourists and baseball fans crowded about the stadium. In winter, the city closes one eye. Its breathing slows. There is a hibernating effect in place. And from every darkened alley—from every nook and crevice and dark, hiding place throughout the city—I think I hear people whisper, You could be anyone in the world.