“I don’t know who you’re talking to. I don’t have a credit card, except from Weibolt’s.”
“Then pay by check. I don’t care.”
“I don’t know how much money is in my account.”
With a lunge, I grabbed her behind the neck and squeezed her with my fingertips. She let out a scream and slammed her foot on the brake. We both swung forward but I kept my grip on her, only incidentally aware of what I was doing. “Then take me to the bus station,” I said.
“You’re hurting me,” she said, with a small cry. She reached behind and dug her fingernails into my hand.
I let go of her. I was shaking uncontrollably. I pulled my suitcase from the back of the car. Our car was stopped in the middle of Stony Island Boulevard and the cars behind us were sounding their horns. This is how I get caught, I thought to myself, but even fear seemed remote and distorted. Rose was rubbing her neck and staring at me—with fear, or hatred, I don’t know, it could even have been pity.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” I said. “Please, if you could just take me—”
A couple of cars managed to swing around us. The rest—I don’t know how many—were still sounding their horns.
“I’m not moving,” said Rose. She rotated her head, testing the soreness of her neck muscles.
I closed my eyes, covered my face, and saw myself grabbing her shoulders, shaking her back and forth, back and forth, smashing her…I threw the door open and set off down the street, my suitcase banging against me like a separate self.
The bus route from Chicago to Stoughton was a complex one, and the bus that would bring me there left the Randolph Street terminal at four that afternoon, a three-and-a-half-hour wait. It seemed unsafe. Rose would know I was there; it would not be beyond her to convince herself that I was in the pain of psychosis and to take me out of my misery by turning me in. I could not stand to look at the people who filed around the station. Even the derelicts looked menacing—if they did not look like disguised cops, they seemed like omens. The devastating green watery light of the place; the shrieking odors of cheap food, disinfectant, old newspaper. I had enough money for a ticket to New York City. I wasn’t sure what I would do from there but a bus was leaving in fifteen minutes.
I called Jade. She answered the phone herself and accepted the charges.
“I’m coming home right now,” I said.
“What’s wrong with you? Tell me what’s happened!”
“I’m all right. I’m just in a rush. The bus for New York leaves in a couple of minutes, and I want to make sure I’m on it.”
“Are you—” she stopped herself. She knew I was in trouble. “Well, get on it, then. I’m glad you’re coming back. One night without you is all I can take. I miss you.”
“I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“I called your job and said you wouldn’t be back for a week. All the puppies leave tonight. We’ll have nothing to do except lock ourselves in our room and force ourselves to eat from time to time.”
“I’m coming right away. I better hurry.”
“Then hurry.”
“Are you doing OK?”
“I miss you.”
“How was Bellows Falls?”
“Intense. Horrible. I’ll tell you all about it.”
“God.”
“I know. Also, Hugh’s old girl, Ingrid Ochester, called. She says she has to talk to me. She’s driving through in that van of hers. I’m having breakfast with her tomorrow.”
“What does she want?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. She sounded very determined, though. She’s been very messed up since Hugh. Therapy three times a week and all that. I think she’s worked something out and now she wants to share it with me. If she only knew how much I didn’t want to get into it. I really don’t.”
I held the phone, unable to speak.
“David?”
“I better go,” I said. “I don’t want to…” My voice evaporated.
“OK. Don’t miss your bus. I’m waiting for you. We’ll cry on each other’s shoulder. It’ll be wonderful.”
I said nothing.
“David?”
“I better go.”
“I’ll see if I can borrow Colleen’s car and maybe I can drive down to New York and pick you up. What time do you get in?”
“I don’t know. Don’t do that. I’ll just take another bus. I have to go.” I almost hung up but I held the phone very tightly and close to my mouth. “I love you,” I said. “I’ll always love you.”
“Don’t miss your bus, David.”
“I won’t.” I waited a moment and then, finally, I hung up.
Time after time, during the long rumbling ride east, I went rigid in my seat, certain that this was the moment when Ingrid was telling Jade that it was me Hugh chased after just before his death. I had a dollar seventy-five to my name and I somehow turned all my anxiety and grief into a hunger I was too poor to satisfy. I had nothing to read, I could not sleep, and it wasn’t until we were past Cleveland and it was long dark that I finally got a place next to a window.
I could have changed it all. I could have asked Jade to meet me in New York and then she would not have been able to meet Ingrid Ochester for breakfast. It would have only been a delay, but it would have been better. It would have engendered hope. Nothing is inevitable. Sometimes by stalling an event you contribute to its nonoccurrence. Ingrid could have left, gone somewhere far away, drifted back into the forgetfulness that had protected me for the past months, or perhaps dropped dead of a bee sting. It’s crazy not to throw yourself into the path of a coming event, crazy to convince yourself that if it doesn’t happen now it will happen quite soon, so what’s the use. We can sabotage the future, with a glance, a phonecall, a misplaced message.
I arrived in New York around ten in the morning. I felt foul, exhausted, and what thoughts I had seemed bunched up in one small corner of my mind, like a throw rug that a dog’s been pawing. I used the bathroom at Port Authority to change clothes and once I was naked in the middle of that vast tiled room I learned from the way people looked at me that changing your clothes like that isn’t acceptable behavior.
I realized I didn’t know where to begin hitchhiking to Stoughton. New York encircles you in a dense druidical mass and I couldn’t imagine how to get out of it. I asked a few people at random in the bus station, but the only person who seemed to know anything about it was in a hurry and he only called to me over his shoulder, something about “getting on Henry Hudson.” There were plenty of policemen around but I couldn’t ask them for anything. It was against the law to hitchhike and for all I knew they’d been informed by the Chicago cops to keep an eye out for me—I knew my self-important fears were absurd, but knowing was no cure. I went to a ticket window and asked how much a ride to Stoughton cost—it was five or six dollars more than I had but…I don’t know: perhaps I was expecting a clearance sale.
I had nothing worth selling and lacked the courage to beg, and so I did the only thing I could to get the money for a bus ticket: I called Ann.
“I’m broke,” I said, as soon as she said hello. “I need to borrow six dollars to get on a bus.”
“Where’s six dollars going to take you?” she said.
“To Stoughton.”
“Did she kick you out?”
“No. Why? Why do you ask that?”
“I’m wondering, that’s all. You sound like you’re close by.”
“I’m at Port Authority.”
“I’m wondering what you’re doing here without any money. But I recognize there are many things beneath heaven that are none of my damn business. Come by. I’ll give you some money. But you can’t stay. I’ve got a date for lunch and I’m nervous as a cat.”
Taking two wrong subways and a long walk, I made my way to Ann’s. She met me at the door and put a ten-dollar bill in my hand.