While I Was Away(12)

“Beer?” Jones asked as he sat her at a table.

“Uh, yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

She expected some large, thick, glass steins, or maybe even cups whittled out of wood, so she was shocked when he returned with two bottles of Stella. He put one down in front of her, then took his seat.

“I needed this,” he groaned after he took a long pull from his beer. She stared at him for a second, then chugged half her drink.

“Tell me the truth,” she panted when she finally put her bottle down. “Am I dead? I'm dead, aren't I.”

Jones laughed before shaking his head and reassuring her.

“No, Adele. You're not dead, I promise you. You are very much alive.”

“Are you sure?”

“You're just visiting here. Think of it as a vacation.”

“Some vacation, if I can't ever leave.”

“Look, honestly, it will do your head in if you analyze it too much. Trust me. I can't explain it, not in anyway you can comprehend. So maybe try some easy questions,” he suggested.

That's not what she wanted to do, but they'd been talking in circles for what felt like forever. For ... shit, how long had she even been there? She glanced at her watch only to find she wasn't wearing one.

Time feels so strange now. Did it always feel like this? Like it's going by so fast, and yet we're standing still.

“Okay, can you tell me how long I've been here?” she tried.

“How long does it feel?”

“Well, the diner, the train, and the tunnel ... and here ... I don't know, like an hour or so?” she guesstimated. His smile was back in place, but once again, it didn't quite reach his eyes.

“Then that's how long you've been here.”

He's not gonna tell me anything.

“What about you,” she changed her angle. She took another drink of her beer before continuing. “Do you know me?”

“Of course I do, Adele.”

“I mean, before today. You said you were supposed to pick me up – what does that mean?” she pressed. He rubbed at his jaw and sipped on his own beer.

“It means ... I'm here to help you. You're alone, and frightened. Sometimes that makes it hard to find your way home. My job is to help calm you down enough so you can find it,” he explained in a roundabout way.

“So it's your job? Helping me is your job?”

“Helping people is my job. You're a person who needs help. So I'm here.”

“And here is now.”

“No, now is here. Or was. Now it's now.”

Her brain was about to explode and she contemplated throwing her bottle at him, but then she noticed the glint in his eyes. He was teasing her. She finally coughed out a laughed.

“You're trying to drive me crazy.”

“Ah! But what if you're already crazy?” he asked. She froze in her spot.

“Oh my god. Is that it? I've gone crazy? I'm having some sort of delusional mental breakdown, and I'm actually in some sort of insane asylum, and my brother is pushing me around in a wheelchair while I drool on myself, and I -” she started talking at sonic speeds, but Jones leaned forward and grabbed one of her hands.

“I'm sorry, sorry, bad joke. You're not crazy, okay? You're perfectly sane. Think about it – what's your name? Where do you live?” he threw out some questions of his own. Adele tried to calm down, tried to clear her mind.

“Uh, uh, I'm Adele Reins. I live in Philadelphia – no! Los Angeles. I live in Los Angeles,” she said quickly, her fingers picking at the label on her beer.

“That's right. What do you do there?” he kept pressing. She chomped on her bottom lip for a moment.

“I ... I went to school. I graduated. I was working. Working for a ... uh, design. I do design work,” she couldn't figure out why she was having trouble recalling anything. It was like the fog from outside had crawled into her brain and wrapped around it.

“Yes, you seem very creative,” Jones commented while he glanced around the room. “And what else? What do you do for fun?”

“Oh, I ... I like to be outside,” if anything, the words were getting harder and harder for her to find. “I like ... my friends. I have friends, I think. Z ... Zoey! I was in school with her! God, how could I forget her?”

“Hey, would you like to dance?”

Adele was pretty sure she was almost beyond being surprised anymore, so his question didn't strike her as too terribly odd. She looked at him, at his polo shirt and jeans. Then down at herself, in her sweater and Chucks.

“I'm not really dressed for dancing,” she pointed out. He shrugged and stood up.

“Who cares? Come dance with me.”

He held out his hand, and much like when he'd told her to open the door at her parents' house, she didn't even question it. It was like if he issued a command, she had to heed. So she put her hand into his and allowed him to pull her to her feet.

“Where are we gonna dance? Here?” she asked, glancing around the room.

It was mostly empty, with a couple people sitting at the bar, and one other table occupied. There was no music at all, just the crackling sound of fire from the torches. When she looked at him, the bartender nodded his head in greeting. She turned away quickly, disturbed by the fact that where his face should've been, there was just a blur.