Meghan looked at me.
“You know, for someone who’s trying to convince me that they’re not on drugs, you’re doing a really awful job.”
“Swear to God, I’m not on drugs.”
“You’re talking gibberish. I found you on the floor, wrapped in an overcoat and wearing a hat. Your right arm is numb. Tell me which of these things does not say, I’m having a lost weekend in the middle of the week. What’s going on?”
There were a million reasons not to tell Meghan what was going on. The spiral of insanity I mentioned.
But I told her anyway.
After I’d finished laying it out for her—and I must have done a fairly good job, because she didn’t interrupt once—Meghan asked me if I wanted some Vitamin Water. I told her sure. She removed a plastic bottle from a paper bag she’d placed on the cherrywood desk, unscrewed it, then handed it to me. I was clever enough not to reach for it with my right hand. But not clever enough to realize that my three-finger grip on the bottle wouldn’t be enough. It slipped straight down, bouncing slightly on a couch cushion, and gushing pale purple liquid all over my lap.
“Gah!”
I lifted the laptop out of the way. It was a Mac relic, but it was also my only link to the outside world. That is to say, anyplace that wasn’t Frankford.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Meghan said, picking up the bottle and then darting across the room in search of a clean towel. Which she wouldn’t find, since I hadn’t done laundry since I’d moved in. There were two paper towels left on a roll that my grandpop must have purchased. She brought them over, started patting my lap.
“Dear Penthouse Letters. I swear this never happened to me before, but one night…”
Meghan shot me a sardonic grin. It was the first joke we’d shared in days, and it felt nice. She finished soaking up what she could, then balled up the paper towels and executed a perfect hook into the sink. Then she grabbed my knees and looked me dead in the eye.
“Here’s how this is going to work.”
“How what is going to—”
“Don’t interrupt me. I’m going to try to shoot holes in everything you’ve just told me. If it all holds up when we’re finished, then I’ll stay and we can talk through this. But if I get the slightest hint you’re messing with my head, or inventing some bullshit story because you’re out of your mind on drugs, then I’m gone.”
“Okay.”
“Last chance. You swear that everything you’ve told me is true?”
“Yes. To the best of my knowledge. Want me to put my numb right hand on a Bible?”
Meghan was her father’s daughter. She wasn’t a lawyer. In fact, I had no idea what she did for a living—if she made a living for herself at all. Our friendship had revolved around life in the Spruce Street apartment building, as well as its nearby bars and restaurants. But some of her father’s prosecutorial skills must have rubbed off on her, because she grilled me like a pro.
First, she demanded to see these “pills.” I told her to check the Tylenol bottle in the medicine cabinet. She found them, tapped one out into her hand. Examined it. Looked for a brand name, but couldn’t find one. They were smooth white capsules with only the dosage (250 mg) carved along one side.
She placed the pill in a small Ziploc baggie like she was preserving the chain of evidence.
“What are you going to do with that?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Next Meghan took me through my alleged physical interactions in the past. So I could open doors and walk downstairs, but I had trouble picking up newspapers and comic books? Why? Light hurt my body, but only direct light—is that correct? What about ambient light? When your fingers fell off, did they disappear right away, or after a few seconds?
“Okay, and you say no one can see you?”
“Almost nobody. That kid I mentioned.”
“Whose name you don’t know.”
“Right. He can see me. And the little girl, Patty. I think she could see me.”
“Hmmmm.”
We went around and around this for a good half-hour until she finally circled back to Patty Glenhart. Meghan wouldn’t let go of it.
“Your only proof was this profile on a blog.”
“A true-crime website.”
“Whatever. And when you searched for the profile, just now, it was gone, right?”
“Right.”
“What if the site administrator just took it down?”
“You mean coincidentally, just a few hours after I first read it?”
“It’s a possibility. Or, you could have hallucinated the entry.”
I thought about this.
“Wait. There was that piece in the Bulletin, with the ‘Girl Missing’ headline.”
“Do you have a copy?”
“No. I can’t bring anything back, remember?”
“But this newspaper has to exist.”
She turned away from me, as if making a mental note to herself.
“You say you went back and got her out of that basement, but you didn’t prevent her abduction.”
“Right!”
“I’ll check the Bulletin morgue tomorrow. If you saw the headline, then it’ll be there.”
“You know about the Bulletin morgue?”
The morgue was part of Temple University’s Urban Archives center, and was basically the clips files of the long-defunct newspaper. Before the Internet, if you wanted to look up a piece of Philadelphia history, you had to go to the morgue and look through dozens of tiny manila envelopes, each stuffed with little yellowed clippings, which had been cut by hand and dated by some long-forgotten staffer. It was basically a steampunk version of Google, and it had been my secret reporting weapon for years.
But it was old news to Meghan.
“We went there freshman year. Our English professor took us on a field trip. Doesn’t every college send their freshmen down there?”
Finally, Meghan turned her attention back to my numb arm and fingers, asking if I could wiggle them, or feel anything when she poked my forearm with a fork. Which she did. Repeatedly. Up and down my skin. But nothing.
“Okay, this is kind of scary. Let me take you to the hospital.”
“No. I hate those places. Plus, I’m pretty sure I don’t have health insurance.”
“Even if I do believe your crazy ass story about the pills—and the jury’s still out, by the way—why wouldn’t you want to have your arm checked? You could have pinched a nerve. You could lose feeling in it forever.”
“I just need to sleep. And what do you mean the jury’s still out? Have you found a single hole in my story?”
“Not yet. But I haven’t found any proof either.”
I thought about it for a moment. Then it hit me.
“Okay then. I’ll give you proof.”
Meghan held the steak knife with both hands, fingers on the handle and the dull edge of the blade. She looked up at me, pointed down at the pill. “Good enough?”
“No. Cut it again. I don’t want to be out long.”
“So an eighth, then? And let me repeat that this is a stupendously bad idea.”
“Just cut the pill.”
“For all we know, these pills are causing the numbness. And the hallucinations.”
“They’re not hallucinations.”
Meghan handed me the tiny sliver of the pill anyway.
“You’re an idiot.”
“Right up there.”
I pointed to the chipped wooden molding around the bathroom door. The molding was the same in 1972 as it was today. It hadn’t even been painted, as far as I could tell.