I wonder if Trix is feeling this as well, Jim thought. The sense of being followed was subtle, an itch on the back of his neck and a tightening across his scalp. He did not turn around to look back; all he’d see would be headlights, vague shapes walking along pavements, shadows in this place where he should never be. The feeling was slight. And besides, whoever followed them would be at home in those shadows.
He looked forward past the big driver at the streets unrolling ahead. Trix’s hand felt solid and real in his, and he gave her a slight squeeze, smiling when she squeezed back. The driver was speaking, but his words were all but lost in the rush of music blasting from the speakers. Amid such cacophony, Jim found it ironically easy to rest and gather his thoughts.
From what he’d seen of the skyline from the upstairs window in the house they had just fled, this Boston looked quite different from the city where he had been born. How strange that a few significant changes could affect the view so fundamentally, even though ninety-five percent of the city was probably nearly identical.
Yet already he felt so much closer to Jenny and Holly. He and Trix had come through into this reality from another, stepping across the threshold with little more than watery eyes and a sense of shock at their accomplishment, and maybe somewhere in this Boston, Jenny and Holly were breathing, living, striving to discover what had happened to them and waiting for him to find them again. Though this was a strange city, the sense of being an invader here was rapidly fading away.
He could feel the folded letters in his back pocket. Soon they would go to the first of those addresses and look for the first name, but before that he had to see for himself just how different this place was. As Trix had said, both of them had died in this reality and left their loved ones grieving, so his apartment would belong to someone else. But it was the first place Jenny would have checked, and perhaps…
“Perhaps she’s still there,” he muttered.
“What’s that?” the driver called.
“Nothing,” Jim said, raising a hand. “Turn the music up.”
“That I can do!” The driver flicked a dial on the dashboard, and the music roared louder, filling the car and allowing Jim to clear his head.
“She might be,” Trix said, leaning into him and resting her head against his shoulder. “But if I know Jenny, she’d have moved on.”
“Holly will be her priority. She’ll be trying to figure out what the fuck has happened, but she’ll be steered by Holly. They’ll have to eat, and have somewhere to sleep. And if they can’t find anyone who knows them, it’ll be a hotel.”
“Providing she came through with money.”
“Yeah,” Jim said. “And providing the currency here is still dollars.” He wondered what would happen when it came time to pay the cabdriver. He reckoned he had fifty bucks in his pocket, but would the driver recognize the president on Jim’s currency? And beyond that… would they have to steal? And if they were arrested, what story could they give? Their names here matched those of long-dead children.
As they left the North End, Jim took more notice of their surroundings, leaving the problems of money and identity until later. The overall impression he’d gleaned from that brief look at this new Boston’s skyline was becoming more refined now, and initially he was surprised by how little had really changed. The JFK Federal Building was still there, which told him plenty, and Boston Common was still a welcome oasis of nature within the city. It was across the Common, roughly in the theater district, that the cathedral they’d seen from the house rose toward the night sky. It was well illuminated by display spotlights, proudly flaunting its magnificence over the lower buildings surrounding it.
“That is massive,” Trix said, and Jim realized she was leaning across the backseat with him to get a better view.
“What’s the cathedral’s name?” Jim shouted, taking a risk. The driver glanced curiously at him in the mirror, then grinned again and switched into a new, even more verbose mode. Tourists, he must have thought, and Jim vowed to keep an eye on their route.
“That’s the world-famous Cathedral of Saint Mary in the Park, and that in front of it is Saint Mary’s Park. Green an’ lovely, even at night.” He turned the music down, and Trix glanced at Jim and raised her eyebrows. What have you started? But this was good. They needed information, needed to know what this Boston held for them. And who better to ask than a taxi driver?
“Almost thirty years to build, and fourteen souls taken into the cathedral’s bosom,” the driver said. “If you visit it on your stay, make sure you take a look at the shrine in there, built to those brave souls. Beautiful, it is.” He looked in the mirror again, the smile slipping.
“Where are you from?” Trix asked.
“Well, you’re asking me two different things there, young lady,” the driver said, his good humor restored. “As to where I was born, that was Cork back in the home country. But where I’m from?” He waved both hands around him, holding the wheel with his knees. “Lived here since I was three years old, and never been back. So anyone asks where I’m from, I say Boston. Who wouldn’t, eh?”
“Who indeed,” Jim said. A few raindrops speckled the cab’s windows, smearing his image of the cathedral, and he wondered whether Jenny and Holly were getting wet in the same shower.
“You’re here visiting?” the driver asked.
“Looking for someone,” Jim said. Trix tapped his leg, but he moved her hand aside. Why shouldn’t he tell the truth?
“Who’s that, then? Maybe I can help.”
“I doubt it. So… I haven’t been to Boston before, would you believe? The Irish influence is big?”
“You kiddin’ me?” the driver asked. “It’s way beyond just influence. Some of them”-he waved both hands again, a gesture that Jim thought perhaps the man used all the time, but which he was sure would wrap them around a lamppost within the next mile-“… New Yorkers. Y’know? There’s Irish there, for sure, but none of them are really Irish.” He looked in the mirror again. “You’re not New Yorkers?”
“Baltimore,” Trix said, and the driver nodded.
“Knew it. Baltimore. Good city. This one, though, yeah, heavy Irish influences. The best pubs in the States are here, and the best of them are run by guys who’ve come over from the home country to escape the Troubles.”
“The Troubles are”- over, Jim wanted to say, but the man was staring at him in the rearview mirror yet again-“terrible,” he said.
“Got that right,” the man said, voice more cautious now. “Since they started blowin’ up planes and trains… well, Boston’s like the Ireland that should’ve been. Peaceful. Mainly.” They were heading southwest toward Jim’s apartment, and as the streets flitted by left and right he found himself growing increasingly nervous rather than excited. He fully expected to find no sign of his wife and daughter at that address, and that should move him on in his search. But there was something else niggling at him.
He glanced over his shoulder into the glaring headlamps behind them.
“You, too?” Trix asked softly.
“What?”
“Getting the sense we’re being followed?”
“Yeah. Ever since…”
“We came through.”
“Probably the least of our worries. We’re dealing with this,” Jim said. “Coping. I don’t know how, or why, but we are.”
“The why is because this is for Jenny and Holly. We’ve come through to look for them, and that’s making us strong.”