He didn’t knock on the door. Meaning he must have known that Amelia was gone. Hell, maybe he made this same trip every day now. Maybe this was a ritual for him.
As he came back to the car, he saw me sitting on my motorcycle. I flipped my visor down and took off. I didn’t bother to see if he was following me.
Then when I was close to home-when I was about to make that last turn onto Main Street-that’s when I saw the flash of red in my rearview mirrors. I turned around and saw the BMW convertible, closing fast.
It was him.
I made the turn and took off down Main Street. If you know anything about motorcycles, you know that even a midsized bike will out-accelerate anything on four wheels. I left him far behind me, pulled off and waited a while, then looped back into town.
After so many empty days… with no sight of Amelia. No luck with the safes. So much time frustrated and alone, with nothing to show for it except this. I avoided getting run over by Amelia’s ex-boyfriend. That’s it.
I didn’t think he’d be waiting for me. I mean, really. But as I took the turn off Commerce Road, there was his car, parked at the gas station. He came out in a blur and surprised me. I gunned it down Main Street again, but it’s not like it was an open road or anything. One little bobble and I would have ended up on somebody’s hood or plastered all over the sidewalk.
He was right behind me as both vehicles came to the railroad bridge. I slowed down just enough to avoid the embankment. Zeke slowed down just enough to avoid death, but not enough to avoid the sickening sound of the entire left side of his car being scraped away on the concrete. Sparks flew and the car came wobbling out of the turn, air hissing out of his left front tire.
I paused for one brief moment, watching the car finally stop a few yards away from the liquor store. I pulled the bike into the parking lot and sat there, waiting for whatever was going to happen next.
The driver’s side door opened. Zeke came out, looking unsteady on his feet. There was a thin line of blood running down the left side of his face. When he saw me sitting there on the bike, he found his legs and he came at me like a bullet. I hopped off the bike, threw off my helmet, and met him somewhere in the middle, ducking under his wild swing and then waiting for him to try a few more. He finally clipped me over the eye, but that was good, it was beautiful, because I wanted him to hit me. After everything that had happened, I wanted to bleed a little bit and to mix my blood with his.
He swung again, but I was already inside his reach. I nailed him in the chin with an uppercut and then in the stomach and then the best one of all-on the side of his stupid fucking wealthy ponytailed head.
I stood there waiting for him to get up. He didn’t. I turned around and went into the liquor store. Uncle Lito was standing by the front door, looking out through the glass. His face was bright red.
“Who the hell was that?” he said. “And since when did you start hitting people?”
I went into the back room. The same back room where I had spent so many hours as a kid. Where I had first taken apart a lock and figured out how it worked. I sat in my old chair and took out the safe lock the Ghost had given me. My heart was racing. I could hear a siren in the distance.
Chaos. Noise. The voices screaming in my head.
I turned the dial to the right. I felt what was going on inside. I heard it. In some far corner of my mind I could see it. I turned the dial back to the left. Then to the right.
The sirens were getting louder.
I need this. I need this.
The heartache, the misery, the loneliness, the pain, the eight-year-old boy still living inside me, the only one who can do this.
I could feel it. I could feel the slightest touch of metal on metal in that lock now.
So what? Fuck this, I thought. This doesn’t matter. I need the real thing.
I need the real thing because I know what’s waiting for me there.
So I went right back outside and got on the bike. A police car was on the scene now. Another police car was pulling up to join the first. I pulled out onto the street and gunned it. Going too fast, weaving in and out of traffic, somehow managing to keep it together and not crack myself up on the way down Grand River. These same miles I’d been riding every single day. I knew it would be different this time.
I knew it.
I got to the store. I parked on the street. Let someone steal the motorcycle, I thought. I don’t care. The Ghost appeared at the door, on his way out it looked like. Done for the day, but then he saw me. This man who had never once seemed to take the slightest interest in how I was doing, he stopped me and asked me what the hell was wrong with me. Why I looked like I was out of my fucking head. I pushed past him and went through the store, throwing things out of my way in the darkness.
I went to the safes. I sat in the chair and pulled it up to the safe named Erato. The Ghost’s favorite. I leaned my head against the cold face and felt my heart pounding in my chest.
Quiet now. Everybody quiet. I have to listen.
Quiet quiet quiet.
That’s when I heard it. The sound, like someone breathing. Steady but shallow.
Spin a few times. Park at 0. Go to the contact area.
The sound was coming from inside the safe.
Park at 3. Go to the contact area.
There was somebody inside the safe. Suffocating.
Park at 6. Go to the contact area.
If I didn’t open it in time…
Park at 9. Go to the contact area.
Then he would die.
Park at 12.
He would run out of air.
Go to the…
He would die inside the safe and stay there forever.
… contact area. It feels different now. It feels shorter.
I parked at 15. The contact area back to normal.
18. Normal.
21. Normal.
24. Boom. There it is again.
I got 6. I got 24.
You have to hurry. You have to get him out of there right now.
27. 30. I kept going. Parking at each three spot. Testing. Feeling. I worked my way through, got my three rough numbers. I went back and narrowed down each one until I had 5, 25, 71.
I cleared the dial and started cranking. The Ghost appeared behind me.
“Easy,” he said. “You don’t have to go so fast. Just get it right.”
I kept working through the combinations, faster and faster.
“Relax, will you? You can work on the speed later.”
I’m ignoring you, I thought. You are not even here. It’s just me and this big metal box.
The air is gone. He can’t survive this.
The sweat was running down my back now. I dialed left three times to 71, right two times to 25, then left until the dial was finally sitting at 5. As soon as I grabbed the handle, I could already feel it.
It might be too late. He might already be dead in there.
Nine years, one month, twenty-eight days. That’s how much time had passed since that day.
Nine years, one month, twenty-eight days. I pulled the handle and the door swung open.
The next day, Amelia came home.
Twenty-four
Michigan
September 2000
It felt strange to be back in the state of Michigan. I never thought I’d be able to come back here, and with every passing mile I kept wondering if I had made a huge mistake. Still, I kept going. This sudden unexpected chance to see Amelia one more time, even for just a moment… it was more than I could resist.
I rode through Milford first. It didn’t look much different. Until I got to the bend in the road and I got my first big surprise. The Flame was gone. In its place was a generic-looking family restaurant now, the kind of place you’d go after church on Sunday. More importantly, the liquor store was gone, too. Replaced by a wine store, of all things. Not quite as upscale as Julian’s, but still. On another day, it would have made me laugh.