The dark music was pounding inside my skull as I scrambled from my seat amid the dulled blare of horns. Angry motorists were pulling around our stalled vehicle and speeding off, narrowly missing me in the process. The commotion began to die down only after I could be seen pulling my wife’s still-seizing body from the driver’s seat.
It was official. I was no longer in a good mood.
CHAPTER 8:
“Lemme get this straight…” Ben’s voice came at me over the cell phone. “Firehair went all Twilight Zone this time instead of you?”
Firehair was just one of the nicknames he had for my wife, but it was by far his favorite.
“Yeah, kind of,” I answered. “Or maybe in addition to.”
Felicity and I were parked diagonally across from one another in a booth at Seamus O’Donnell’s. She had pressed herself as far into the shadows of the corner as she could get, and I was keeping a close eye on her.
The pub wasn’t my first choice of places to be given the situation, but it was the closest for what she needed. Fortunately, the evening rush had not yet started, so I was able to carry on the phone conversation without yelling over the noise of a crowd or stepping outside.
“What?” he chirped, a note of concern leaping into his tone. “You were both all zoned out in a moving vehicle?”
“No, not exactly,” I explained, still trying to get a handle on what had happened myself. “I had some ethereal background noise in my head, but I never stepped over the line. I did that this morning before you came by.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Do what?” he barked again. “So you did the la-la land thing this mornin’, and you’re just now tellin’ me?”
“I didn’t have anything to connect it with at the time, Ben,” I replied. “Then the whole thing with the kidnapping happened… I mean, give me a break.”
“So you think it all has something to do with the Brittany Larson abduction?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Don’t be so goddamned overconfident, Rowan,” he chided.
“Cut me some slack, Ben,” I replied stiffly. “I’m still a bit rattled. This kind of thing has never happened to Felicity before. I’m not real happy about it, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Yeah… Sorry. You’re right,” he apologized. “So listen, where are you two right now? Home?”
“No.” I shook my head out of reflex as I spoke. “We’re in a bar down on Oakland called Seamus O’Donnell’s.”
“What’d ya’ go to a bar for?” he asked, a note of confusion in his voice.
“It was the closest place where I could get her out of the heat and let her rest up,” I told him. “Besides, it’s actually where we were headed for dinner anyway.”
“She doin’ okay?”
“Seems to be.” I looked across at Felicity. She was still at the far end of the booth but had leaned forward now, elbows on the table, eyes closed, and fingers slowly massaging her temples. “But judging from the looks of her and speaking from experience, she’s got a killer headache at the moment.”
“What about you?” he pressed. “You gonna go all loopy or anything?”
“Like I actually know when that’s going to happen, Ben?”
“Yeah, forget I asked.” He huffed out a heavy sigh then muttered, “Jeezus fuck, white man. What am I gonna do with you two?”
“Wish I could help you there, Chief,” I told him. “I’m wondering the same thing myself.”
“Not what I wanted to hear,” he replied. “So listen, stay right where you are. I’m pretty much done here, so I’m gonna shake loose and come down there.”
“We’ll be waiting.”
I thumbed off the phone and clipped it back onto my belt then turned my full attention back to my wife. Her eyes were still closed, and she was carefully working her fingers from temples to forehead and back again. Her lips were parted slightly, and I watched the rise and fall of her chest as she struggled to regulate her breathing. I knew exactly how she felt, and it was killing me to see her like this.
Of course, I suppose now I knew exactly how she felt when the roles had been reversed.
“I’d like to tell you it gets better,” I said softly. “But, it’s more like you just get used to it.”
“Fek,” she muttered the colloquial Irish profanity.
“Yeah, I know,” I agreed.
“How do you do it?” she asked then moaned, still not opening her eyes.
“I wish I could answer that,” I replied. “I just do. If it’s any consolation, I’d rather not.”
“Aspirin,” she murmured.
“Let me see if I can get you some,” I told her as I started up from my seat.
“Purse. Side. Tin,” she told me, exaggerated economy in her selection of verbiage.
I pulled her purse across the table and rummaged about in the side pocket. Under any other circumstances I wouldn’t have dreamed of sticking my hand into the carryall. As I had told my wife countless times before, a woman’s handbag seemed to me to be a kind of tame black hole: a place where an impossible number of items disappeared and could only be found by the woman who owned the receptacle in the first place. At the moment, hers was definitely living up to that assessment.
“Left. Bottom. Yellow tin.” She offered another set of terse instructions.
I pushed my hand deeper into the pocket and finally managed to withdraw the sought after container of aspirin. I sat it on the table and pushed it over to her then started sliding out of the booth as she slitted her eyes and reached for the tin.
“I’ll go get you some water,” I told her.
“Black Bush,” she asserted.
“No whisky with aspirin,” I replied. “Water.”
“Black Bush,” she repeated.
“Water.”
She tossed the tin in front of her and it bounced across the table, tablets noisily rattling around inside. Then it slid off the edge and clattered to the floor.
“Black Bush.” This time it was a demand.
I knew exactly where she was coming from, and I didn’t fault her a bit. The truth was that the aspirin really wouldn’t do much good for the kind of headache she had anyway. Not that booze was any better remedy, but it would help take the edge off.
“Shot or rocks,” I conceded with a soft sigh.
“Bottle,” she replied.
“Slow down,” I said to my wife as she drained the tumbler and clacked it back onto the wooden table with a heavy thunk. “That’s your second double.”
Her hand was still wrapped around the glass, and her head was tilted back, face pointing upward to the ceiling. She drew in a deep breath and then exhaled heavily, puffing out her cheeks as she did so.
“Aye, but I said bottle, not double,” she stated as she lowered her gaze down to meet mine.
“Give those a chance to work,” I told her. “They aren’t even in your bloodstream yet.”
She frowned back at me but didn’t argue. She slouched down in her seat, and a moment later I felt her sneaker-clad feet slide up onto the bench next to me. She reached up and pressed her palms against either side of her head as if she were trying to squeeze it back into shape.
“This sucks,” she moaned.
“I know,” I replied.
I was fully aware that the words were of little consolation, but they were the best I had to offer at the moment. I wanted desperately to ask her about the experience. But, she needed some time to come to terms with what had happened, so I didn’t broach the subject.
Usually such an ethereal event came with some manner of built-in, albeit obscure, reference to something in the here and now-although, admittedly, mine from earlier this day had held no such prize. Neither had the similar ones I’d suffered through at the beginning of the year.
Patrons were starting to fill the establishment as round one of the dinner rush came upon us. It hadn’t reached the point of obnoxious as yet, but the noise level was rapidly approaching that of annoying static. It didn’t seem to be bothering Felicity, though.