The lid wouldn’t fall open. The driver jerked the levers, jerking the boom, shaking the Dumpster like a salt shaker, which made the crowd groan and gasp, feeling the pain for the poor soul inside.
chapter
36
Finally!
Just before the shaking, Mandy reached for the last place on earth she wanted to go: the hospital. It sprang into her reality and she let herself fall into it, slipping out of the bag and handcuffs, out of the Dumpster, and into a wavering, tilting, tea-stained reality she’d come to loathe, the same hallways, doctors, nurses, signs and labels, medicinal smells, beds, gurneys, wheelchairs, that same, ominous door with the red letters on it. Why did she have to keep coming back here?
Her feet touched down on the linoleum—it felt like a soft rubber mat under her feet—but she didn’t step into this world. She had to get back to the hotel, the garbage truck, the show. She reached, groped, thoughtfor another fold of reality, another curtain she could pull back.
She found an opening, slipped through it …
She was … where? It looked like the inside of a house under construction. It was empty, with no fixtures, just bare walls and the smell of fresh paint. It was almost solid; she could see the ghost of another world through the walls.
No, still wrong, still lost.
“Whoa! Who are you?”
The voice scared her. She almost lost hold of the in-between and fell into this place, but she recovered and held back. She couldn’t get stuck here.
Keep reaching … get back to the hotel …
It was a painter, a friendly sort of guy all in white coveralls with a painter’s cap on his head and a roller in his hand. He was circling her warily, keeping some distance, looking right at her, nearly solid.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“The name’s Ernie. Ernie Myers,” he said. He stared intensely, studying her from different angles. “Are you really there? You look like some kind of Tinkerbell or something.”
He reached with his finger to touch her but she shied back. “No, better not touch me!”
“But how do you do that?”
“I need to get back to the Orpheus Hotel!”
“The Orpheus Hotel! Little girl, you are lost!”
She tried to look beyond him, to see that world, the stage, and the garbage truck. She thought she could hear the truck rumbling … somewhere.
“You sure you’re really there?” he said, and this time he did manage to poke her.
As if he’d been electrocuted he jolted, screamed, twisted, his arms enfolding his pain.
She didn’t see what became of him. The moment he touched her she spun away as if caught in a whirlwind and fell out of there, through space, through blurring lights and sounds. She heard the truck and locked on it.
She was floating above the crowd, still watching the Dumpster hanging upside down above the truck as the driver jerked the levers and shook it.
She’d lost no time!
Somehow—she still didn’t know how; thinking it was the same as doing it—she zipped through the Dumpster, grabbed the coveralls into the in-between and got into them, then aligned herself with the ground so she could step out onto it. She yanked a billed cap from a pocket of the coveralls and put it on. Ready? There wasn’t a moment to spare.
The driver of the garbage truck gave the levers a wiggle, the Dumpster made one final lurch, and the lid dropped open. The bag, limp and empty, and the two pairs of handcuffs dropped into the truck’s container.
That was the moment of misdirection, when all eyes were on the Dumpster. Mandy stepped into the real, solid, present world just behind the driver and touched his shoulder; he ducked under the truck, out of sight. Mandy hopped up on the truck’s running board, let out a whoop to get the crowd’s attention, then took off her cap and waved it at everyone.
The effect worked. She’d vanished from the Dumpster and appeared in the place of the driver.
Great stunt. The crowd loved it.
She ran onto the stage, reached with an unseen hand, and brought the microphone to her. “Thank you!” she said to the crowd, and then toward the heavens. “Thank you!”
For that one fleeting moment onstage, the sorrow lay buried under the moment and the show business. She knew it would be back, but right here, right now, she relished her own little victory, the very pleasant fact that once she was captive, but now she was free. “I am Mandy Whitacre!”
The first time Ernie Myers fell off a ladder and his crewmen brought him into the emergency room with a cracked rib and broken clavicle, Dr. Margo Kessler and her secretive associates were able to send him home the next day with no broken bones and no memory of the accident.
The second time there would be no way to fix his injuries but the conventional way and he was sure to remember everything that happened to him. This inconvenient complication originated in the bowels of the off-limits basement, but it fell to Dr. Kessler, the benign face aboveground, to clear it up. She was steaming, feeling put upon and jeopardized, but she put on the best demeanor she could muster to wring information out of him.
“Silly ladder,” he said, the pain keeping him still as he lay in his hospital bed. “The legs are crooked, so the thing rocks. I should have learned from the first time, right?”
Me, too,she thought. “So no dizziness beforehand? No vision problems, anything like that?”
“No, ma’am.”
“No hallucinations?”
“Hallu——what are you talking about?”
“The guys who brought you in—”
“Jim and Don. My crewmen.”
“Yes. They said that right before the accident they heard you talking to somebody who looked like a … Tinkerbell?”
He winced and wagged his head. “That was my roller. I got names for everything. The roller was getting kinda flighty, leaving gaps, so I was talking to the roller.”
“Talking to your roller.”
“Yeah. I talk to things, talk to myself.”
“So, who was lost and looking for the Orpheus Hotel?”
Now Ernie got a little mad. “What? Those guys don’t have any work to do, they’re just sitting around listening to the boss talk to his roller. What’s up with that?”
She smiled pleasantly, trying to keep him at ease. “I’m just covering all the bases here. I have to make sure there’s no head trauma. You hit your head the last time, remember?”
“Not really.”
She chuckled and nodded. “That’s right, you wouldn’t remember that.” She wrote something down on the chart—made a scribble, actually; she was buying time. “Ernie …” First-name basis. She pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down, closer to eye level, more personal. “You don’t have to be afraid to tell the truth. I’m the doctor, I’m here to make sure you’re okay.”
He seemed to be listening.
“Sometimes when people have had a head injury, they see things, they might see people who aren’t really there. It’s nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about but you see, if you fell and hurt yourself due to a prior head injury, I need to know about it.”
She raised her eyebrows slightly, suggesting she was waiting for his response.
He looked at her for a long moment and she looked back, hoping, expecting …
“I fell off a ladder!” was all he had to say.
Sunday morning, Dane went through the doors of Christian Faith Center, embraced old friends, worshipped, then remained in his pew afterward, joined by friends and Pastor Chuck. Dane told them he was still working through his loss, wondering what to do, trying to resolve lingering issues, and could they pray with him? They nodded and prayed accordingly, even though he meant more than they thought they understood. He just had to hope the Lord would appreciate the spirit of their loving generalities while he silently footnoted the specifics:
That he would not be crazy, that somehow everything would come to rest on a rational explanation he could take home. Preston had a great-sounding theory, but it was so much like everything else he’d been through, simply outlandish, that it could not quell his doubts and fears even as he pursued it.