Kick (The Jenkins Cycle Book 1) (21 page)

Age had left its mark on him, but he was dutifully fighting it with every weapon in his arsenal. His goatee, too perfectly brown not to have dyed it, looked exactly the same as the last time I’d seen him. His hair had been thinning back then, but you’d never have called him bald. Now, I faced a super-smooth pate of glossy pink skin. Below that, along the sides, wrapped a darker zone of stubble like a displaced five o’clock shadow. He’d clearly taken matters into his own hands, shaving his whole head to give the impression that being bald was his idea. Pinned to the lapel of his tweed professor’s jacket hung a button with an uppercase “W” with a big red slash through it, proclaiming to the world his opposition to something important. This and the rest of him were all classic, Peter Collins. The guy who’d tried to take Sandra away at every opportunity back in college.

My sworn enemy.

I cast a guilty look at my Harry Potter book.

“Yeah, I know. Candy for the mind, but it helps me relax. My career’s pretty stressful.”

“Of course,” Peter said, phrasing it in a way that left you feeling small and unimportant without looking up from his book.

“I’m a psychic, you see. I’m pretty good, too, but the problem is I really don’t look like one.”

He was totally ignoring me at this point, hoping with everything in him I’d give up and leave him alone.

“I’m too young,” I said, sighing. “Too healthy looking. And my face isn’t weird enough.”

Peter kept reading as if his very life depended on it.

“Not to mention my name: Nate. How mysterious is that? Oh no, the Amazing Nate made another prediction, what are we going to do? They’re going to be out of medium roast tomorrow, we’ll have to drink Sumatra! The horror!”

Peter took a long, deep breath and then let it out loudly.

“That’s what people think when they hear my name,” I said. “And the game will be completely up when they look at my GQ mug. Whoever heard of a handsome psychic? What I wouldn’t give to look like Leonard Nimoy or Dionne Warwick—basically the same person, if you squint. You know, with the eyes, and—hey, you don’t believe me, do you? That I’m a psychic.”

Peter was struggling with his side of our one-sided conversation. And he wasn’t reading anymore—turning the pages, sure, but a little too fast, and his eyes had stopped moving.

“See, I can tell you don’t believe me.”

Unable to resist any longer, Peter said, “Wow, you are a psychic after all. How fortunate for you. Now, if you don’t mind …”

Laughing, I added, “And you’re a skeptic, I get it—it’s cool, really. Would you like a demonstration?”

Letting each word drip with scorn, he dragged his eyes from Tolstoy, looked at me square and said, “Look, I don’t mind you sitting there—even if you didn’t ask me—but I don’t feel like talking right now. I just want to read my book in peace, ok?”

I smiled my acceptance, shrugged, and said, “
Actually
, you mean you want to read your book,
War and Peace.
”

Peter nodded an exaggerated
precisely
and turned back to his book, oblivious to my little joke. He never did get jokes.

“Have it your way Peter—but Dan Jenkins says hello.”

Blink. Exhaling of breath. Blink-blink. Sudden inhalation, sharp look my way, eyes gone wide in fear, then narrowing in sudden suspicion. In photo-perfect replay, that’s exactly what he did. Boy, it felt great to get the drop on the prick.

“What are you talking about?” he said, clutching his book like a security blanket.

“Who knows?” I said. “I just repeat things from the other side. Was I right? Your name’s Peter? Peter… Rollins? Collins? Something like that?”

“Collins,” he said, licking his lips. “What is this… who are you? What’s this about?”

“Dan wants to know if you’ve spoken to Sandra lately. Who’s Sandra, anyway?”

Closing his book without putting in a bookmark, Peter pointed his bony professor finger at me and said, “I don’t know who you are or what this is about, but you better tell me right now. That was years ago for chrissakes. Are you a reporter or something? Doing a story? Some jackal from the Post?”

“Nope, I’m the real McCoy, and I can prove it. Let me see …”

I let my eyes roll back, feigning a dip into the astral plane from the comfort of my chair, and then ruining it by taking a sip from my coffee.

“Sandra was… Dan’s girlfriend… and you… you were always trying to steal her from him. But… but… hmmm… it’s getting fuzzy… but Dan is telling me that you’re such an insufferable twat—his word, not mine—that you never managed it. She just wanted to be friends, is that right?”

Peter’s mouth fell open, which wasn’t a normal look for him.

“Listen,” he said, shaking his head from side to side in slow-motion rejection of the situation, “I don’t know whom you’ve been talking to and I no longer care. Just stay the hell away from me or I’m going to call the police. Do you understand?”

“Anything you say… Pecker Colon.”

Pecker Colon wasn’t very witty when I’d invented it back in college. But it had gotten to him in a way that none of my other jibes had. He’d never had the good sense to ignore me so I’d plagued him with it mercilessly. Back then, this tired moniker usually inspired a snide comment in return, or a superior snort of disdain. But its effect this time was nothing short of devastating.

He scrambled to his feet, hands trembling, and made a brisk escape toward the door—with me right behind him, shouting, “You’re nothing but a loser, Dan! You don’t deserve her—I deserve her! I’m the one who’s there for her when she comes crying to me after one of your fights! I’m more boyfriend to her than you’ll ever be!”

Confronted with the echoes of his own words from college, Peter dropped his book with a thud reminiscent of a telephone book delivery. Then, in a move that was very un-Peter Collins, he ran out of there, banging the glass door open hard enough to rattle the pane in its wooden frame. Adding more speed, he shot into the parking lot.

I followed him, easily, shouting all the way, “She doesn’t want to see you anymore! We all know what you did to her tires and it’s completely unforgivable! What did you think was going to happen? I called the police myself!”

Peter owned one of those hybrid electrics that were all the rage. The hypocrite. He didn’t mind turning the rain forests into coffee farms, but he wouldn’t add slightly more CO2 to the atmosphere.

As he pulled the door open, he leveled a cautioning finger toward me and screamed, “Stay the fuck away from me!”

Oh, the look on his face was absolutely priceless, and I couldn’t stop smiling as I kept both of my eyeball-cameras rolling. I must have looked like a maniac. This day would easily help flesh out the endless nothingness of the Great Wherever and I didn’t want to miss a moment of it.

Peter jumped in the car and started it up.

Leaning down to the driver’s window for a parting salvo, I shouted, “Are you still an atheist Pecker Colon? After today? Does this give you some new hope or does it terrify you that you’ll keep on living forever in the company of your own miserable self? Dan Jenkins wants to know!”

I leapt away at the last second to keep my foot from getting squashed by his back tire.

That last expression I saw on Peter’s face managed to make me feel a wee bit guilty, and that was the break in the bizarre encounter that finally snapped me out of my mania. His face had been like watching someone sitting in an airplane seat at the exact moment the engines conked out and the nose began to dip. And the feeling inside me as Peter sped away felt worse, because I’d been responsible for the disaster in the first place.

Walking back to the coffee shop to retrieve my more reasonably sized book, I lamented that I hadn’t matured in the slightest. My years in the Great Wherever may have made me more informed about myself, but I was still acting like an emotionally damaged teenager. Poor Peter. He was a twat and all, but he didn’t deserve what I’d just done.

With a suspicious peek skyward, I wondered at the chances of running into Peter after all these years. Over time, I’ve learned nothing happens that doesn’t have a reason. I failed a test today. I usually failed these tests, and wondered how many more I’d get before flunking.

***

I spent the next few days following the latest adventures of Harry Potter and his magical friends. Having millions of dollars didn’t mean a whole lot if you couldn’t buy what you wanted and take it with you, so it made more sense to just enjoy the little things. Rather than renting a private jet and flying to Hong Kong to buy diamonds at an exclusive auction, perhaps in the company of celebrities like Dionne Warwick or Leonard Nimoy, I ate at the Sweetwater Tavern every night and McDonald’s every morning. I read my book, watched movies and took naps whenever I felt tired. This might seem mundane to some, but to me these ordinary experiences have an unlimited shelf life.

Erika called me every night, possibly to make sure I stayed at home since she always called the home phone number. Only once had I not picked up.

I’d caught a late movie with good reviews about a lonely man and a breathtakingly beautiful young woman. Because he was headstrong and she was independent and quirky, they hated each other when they first met, fell in love somewhere in the middle, nearly lost each other through a series of wild and improbable misunderstandings, but still wound up deliriously happy in the end.

When I got home, I had two messages on the home phone—Erika, wondering where I was—and three on the cell, which I’d turned off for the movie. Using the carrier’s automated method, I reset the password and played them back. The first one was sweet and filled with love, the second cautiously subdued, and the last exasperated and upset. Kind of like that movie I’d just watched, played in reverse.

Wondering what was wrong, I called her back.

Chapter 25

“I’ve been trying to call you all night,” Erika said as soon as she picked up.

“Why, what’s wrong?”

“Does something have to be wrong for me to call my fiancé?”

“I was at the movies—all the other fiancés get to go to movies, especially when their fiancées are gallivanting all over Chicago with strange men.”

No snorty laugh. Usually she fell for the ol’ Jenkins charm.

Finally, she said, “I’m pregnant and I’m about to get married, ok? I worry about things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Never mind.”

“Erika, if something’s wrong it’s ok to tell me.”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “You’re right, you should go to the movies if you want to, I’m being stupid.”

“Next time I go to the movies I promise to feel guilty about it, ok?”

That got me that strange laugh of hers. Again, it didn’t sound nearly as cute as the in-person experience.

When I asked how everything was back at her family’s house, she let slip how envious they were. She didn’t know why they couldn’t just be happy for her. I thought Erika might be indulging in a little pre-wedding melodrama but kept that to myself. Families and their intrigues exist at the edges of maps, beyond which read, “Here there be dragons.”

Erika’s problems, real or mythological, were Nate’s to deal with, and the sooner I got off the phone the better.

But she didn’t stop there. She continued on her family for the most informative hour I had ever spent with her. For my part, I made frequent sounds of reassurance, tut-tutted at the appropriate times, agreed her sisters were all hags, that her dad drank too much, gasped when she told me her mother was abusive and unfaithful and stood firmly with her as sympathetic witness to all the horrible things they’d done to her over the years. Secretly, I found it hard to believe her dad used to break her toys (and only hers). Or that her brother poisoned her parakeet, or her sister tried to push her off a cliff on a camping trip, or that her mother would purposely lose her at department stores when she was little. If any of it were true then, yeah, her family was a real piece of work. But it takes one to know one, and as a former master of self-deception it seemed like parts of her story were a little salted to taste.

“Well, I guess I better head to bed,” I said at one point.

“Oh gosh,” Erika said. “I’m sorry, it’s like one in the morning here and I’m just going on and on.”

“Hush—it’s not like I have lots to do tomorrow.”

In a small, lost voice, she said, “I love you, Hun Bun. You’re my hope.”

“You’re my hope too,” I said. “Love you, snookity pookins.”

We hung up. It was now official: we were each other’s hopes.

Erika’s boxes numbered about fifteen, including a medium-sized pink trunk with a padlock on it. I figured she kept her jewelry or other valuables there, so I left it alone for now and focused strictly on the cardboard boxes. Most of them had been taped over several times. I figured I could re-tape them in the morning without it looking too obvious.

Just as I set about digging into her private life, Nate’s phone went off.

“Hey! What’s up?” I said, trying to sound as if I weren’t doing anything wrong.

“Oh honey I’m so sorry,” Erika said. “I don’t know why I told you all those things. Now I feel foolish.”

“It’s ok honey, families can be rough.”

“Yeah, you’d know I guess,” she said, a bit mysteriously.

Before I could segue into a fishing expedition about Nate’s family, Erika started crying. There’s nothing you can do when someone’s crying, I swear. Everything you say just sounds fake, and “there there” makes no sense at all over the phone.

“Hey, don’t cry, it’s ok—I love you. You just do what you’re doing out there then come on back and marry me, ok?”

“Thanks, Hun Bun. I’m sorry,” she said, pulling herself together, and again I said there was nothing to be sorry about.

After hanging up, I raced back to the boxes and began cutting into them, determined to find out just what was going on inside my nutty little honey’s head. Nothing she’d said sounded right to me. To be honest, she sounded a little like me during the Sandra years.

Clothes, books, CD’s, candles and ornaments, some fairly new-looking hiking gear, a few small stuffed animals, a curler kit, a big metal makeup box, maybe ten pairs of shoes—everything you’d expect to find in a healthy woman’s moving boxes. Well, except for pictures. I couldn’t find any pictures of her or her family. No old boyfriends or work pictures, and no vacation pictures.