How to Disappear(53)

Not suited to running.

But I can’t be anywhere within a thousand miles of police looking for a girl with an ice pick. I can’t.

Wait while he ditches the car. Check.

Wait while he goes to a freaking wedding in South Dakota. Check.

Wait for him to go, I’m back, now let’s get out of here. Nothing.

And I’m not about to twist his arm. Or wait.

Come with me to Argentina, babe.

Yeah, right.

I wish, I wish, I wish. But seriously? Yeah, right.

I’m keeping my socks on, and I’m gone.

Plus, I can look him up later. Years from today. When I’ve bought a new face and a passport that says I come from Paraguay.

I can go, Hola, Jeremiah.

How many Jeremiah Jenkins can there be?





54


Jack


I’m on the floor where they dropped me, ears ringing, head pounding, mouth full of sewage that belongs in my stomach. Something stinks. They emptied the kitchen garbage on me—nice touch. The place is trashed. It’s dark, and I can’t raise my head to take in the full extent of it, but I can tell it’s time to go.

How many words do Eskimos have for stupid? Not as many as I deserve, or they’d all have been eaten by polar bears.

I pull myself off the floor, not sure if I’m supposed to be alive. It’s not easy to breathe with a neck that’s been pressed closed, or to deal with the humiliation. The little one got me? Jack Manx, arrogant pissant: words to live by.

I dial her number. Very quietly, I ask her, “Are you alone?”

“I’m with my other boyfriend. What do you think?”

I say, “I can’t sleep. Let’s go somewhere.”

There’s a long silence. “It’s three in the morning. You know that, right?”

“Let’s get out of town and see some stars.”

“Like stars over Crothers or stars in Argentina?”

“God, you’re picky. You say you like romantic, and I give you stars.”

She says, “I’ve created a monster.”

“I was already a monster.” She has no idea. “Are you coming or not?”

I know she’s coming.

“Dress warm—I’ll be there in thirty. Make sandwiches, okay?” My throat feels like someone buffed it with sandpaper, but I’m hungry.

I spend five minutes throwing everything into my duffel, shovel the trash back into a black plastic bag, put the drawers back in the dresser and the cushions back on the couch. Cleaning up isn’t on my top ten list for the night, but neither is having the girl who rented me the place show up to what looks like a crime scene.

I go out the kitchen window for the second time in two days. That cop car that scared me into avoiding the front door and instead climbing over my sink and out the back window to get to Nicolette’s place is what kept these two guys from following me straight to her yesterday. Hats off to community policing. It’s the first cop car that ever did me any good.

I look around the side of the apartment. I’m pretty sure which car the two guys who threatened me are in, meaning they didn’t intend to kill me, just to leave the taste of death in my mouth so I’d know what I was up against: people who are better at this than I am.

I drop down behind the bushes that surround the building, then sprint to the side of the house next door. I don’t hear a car start or see one following when I shoot around the corner.

I cut through alleys and behind buildings to get to my junker. It’s parked far enough from my apartment that they can’t see it from where they’re sitting—but only just barely. Starting it up, it feels as if I’m pushing the button on a detonator. I drive without headlights, park between a couple of bigger cars in a lot a few blocks from her place. The only person who could have followed me would be an invisible guy with night-vision goggles and a jetpack. I close the car door so quietly, it’s hard to differentiate the sound from the ambient night noises—crickets, branches, muted traffic.

I approach carefully, making sure there’s nothing strange, no one watching the street or watching me. She’s good to go in sweats, toting a grocery bag full of food and the ubiquitous daypack. She leans up to kiss me.

“We could just stay here and have a picnic, say, on the table,” she says.

I look around the garage she lives in. I can come back sometime after and wash it down, but what’s the point? You can’t get rid of all traces. If anyone figures out what happened, I’ll be too busy exporting whatever you export from Madagascar, holed up in a tropical paradise fighting off poisonous insects, to care.

I tap her on the butt. “Let’s go.”

She finds this extremely annoying. She says, “Could you please not go all master-of-the-universe on me?” She does half an eye roll. “That’s what my friend says you are, too.”

“It was an accident. Sorry.” And then, damn, “You just talked to your friend about me?”

“Oh no!” This is her at her most tender. “Not about what happened to you. I would never tell anyone. Please trust me.”

Frankly, how bad it was with her running her fingertip along the scars, how naked I was, how much I wanted her to shut up, how important it seemed, how sorry she was—now it’s like it was nothing.