“the Empress is a great choice.” She nodded toward the loud woman. “Let’s get out of here.” She tugged him firmly up out of his seat and he let her. The fury was followed by a growing headache and he knew the cool winter air was a better choice than the loud, humid air of the tiny restaurant filled with the sound of the woman’s whine.
“Hmmm?” What had Mika just said?
“How old is your sister?” She released his hand, now that they were outside.
“Um…” He couldn’t remember. She was younger, but he had trouble concentrating. “Three years younger than me, I think. Maybe four.” The sidewalk was wobbling and Jerry had trouble standing still. “I think I’d better call a cab.” He abruptly sat down on a bus stop bench.
“Jerry? What’s wrong?!” Mika crouched in front of him, holding her hands in his and trying to look at his eyes, as if she could see what ailed him that way.
“A headache, triggered by that bitch on the phone.” He lowered his voice and took a long, steady breath, filling his lungs with the chill air. “A taxi… now. Please.”
“Yes. Um, of course.” She stood and turned to face the road, looking up and down the hill for any sign of a cab. It was midday, on a busy downtown street, and so it took only a few moments for a cab to come around the corner. Mika waved frantically and the cabby pulled up right in front of them.
Jerry pulled himself ungracefully to his feet. Mika took his elbow and guided him to the cab. “Broad Street.” He pulled the door open and climbed in. Mika made to follow him but he stopped her. “No, thanks. It’s just a headache. I’ll go get some sleep. You go back to work.” She tried to follow him again. “I’ll be fine, Mika, but Bruce Banner has left the building and I don’t want you to see me if I get all green and mean.”
“You need help, Jerry.”
“No, I need to go home and sleep.” His anger was growing without any real justification and it was tearing him apart that it was aimed at Mika. “Please. I’ll text you when I get home.” He leaned over and pulled the car door shut before she could make another attempt. “Let’s go,” he directed the driver.
JERRY ENDED UP sending Mika a brief apology email from his laptop when he got home because he couldn’t read the tiny texting screen on his phone. He took a double dose of meds and passed out face down on the bed, with no music, no television, and no Ana to keep him company.
THE ONLY LIGHT on in the loft when Jerry finally woke up was the tiny one on Sushi’s fish tank. He rolled himself off the bed and shuffled to the bathroom. When he was done, he worked his way to the desk, still in relative darkness. As he rolled his chair out, he kicked something soft at his feet. He clicked on the desk lamp and found the camera bag when he bent down to investigate. He knew he’d been out taking pictures recently, but he couldn’t quite grasp the memory of when and where. He popped the SD card out of the big Canon, slipped it into the card slot on his MacBook, and brought the computer up out of Sleep Mode.
It took a few moments for Photoshop to open up but he was soon scrolling through the image previews, starting from the beginning of the disk. He swiped the touchpad and the blurry images moved past, right to left. He squinted hard, seeing Sushi in his travel bowl sitting on top of the Jeep back in St. Marys in a set-up shot implying that he’d forgotten his sidekick. “Yup. Fun times. You did pretty well on the trip, buddy, though your navigating sucked.” He scrolled onward, seeing the various “Welcome to…” signs at each state line, a few sunrises, some mountains, an eagle here, a hawk there. He finally got to the photos of the ferry landing in Victoria and his first view of the city. The next shot popped up and caught him completely by surprise. It was the first photo of Ana, taken right there in the loft.
“Oh, shit.” He pushed the chair back from the chair, not sure whether he was ready to see these pictures. But the Apple OS gave him a hint of the photos both before and after the preview he was seeing, so it was already too late. He could see what came next. “Then I guess I’d better get myself a drink.” He got up, started the coffee maker, loaded a K-cup of House Decaf, then sprinkled some flakes into Sushi’s tank, and waited. After a moment he realized he was hungry and so fetched a plastic tub of crunchy coleslaw from the refrigerator and a spoon from the cutlery drawer. The coffee was ready within a minute and Jerry took both his steaming cup and the slaw back to the desk.
He sipped his coffee or munched his salad as he scrolled through the photos, squinting, thinking he’d have to invest in a cheap pair of reading glasses tomorrow. Even with the photos as unclear as they were, he could see that Ana had a terrific sense of composition. Some of the angles she shot from gave her subjects an air of whimsy, especially the parking meters. A tear trickled down his cheek. “Dammit.” He wiped it away and continued. There were the shots where she’d clearly wanted to get the Chinatown lights but was stymied by the flash, then the flash-less shots followed. He stopped when he got to the photo he’d taken of her in front of Chinatown’s Gates of Harmonious Interest in her chin-raised regal pose.
“That’s the one right there.” He clicked on the Eject Disk icon, then removed the little SD card and took it over to the big screen. He fumbled getting it into the slot on the side of the plasma screen, turned the card around and finally got it to fit. He booted the screen up, then moved to the couch, grabbing the remote control as he shuffled past the coffee table. The buttons were tiny and his eyesight sucked, but he’d gone through the process of putting his images up on the screen so often that he really didn’t need to clearly see what he was doing. After a minute or two of slow scrolling through the screen’s menu and then the files on the card, he had the same regal photo of Ana up bigger than life. From this distance the image still wasn’t perfect, but he could now make out many of the details, including some of the sparkle in her eyes. He carefully placed the remote on the couch beside him, leaned back, and wept.
He wept for losing Ana, and for what the cancer was doing to him. He wept that he’d never see Isis again, or her parents. He wept for his new family at the station, and he especially wept for Mika. Then he wept for his mother, for Carole, and for Jean-Marc. Finally, he wept for his father. Of all the people he needed with him most right now, when the odds weren’t particularly good, it was his dad. A former Navy pilot and lumberjack, his dad had once been described by his future in-laws as a big teddy bear, and at this moment, in a city at the far end of the country his family had helped found and build, Jerry really, really needed to be held by that big teddy bear, and told that it was all going to be okay.
MIKA CALLED A little after eight in the morning. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“It is damned early, but we’re radio folk, so I’m used to the early hour.” He’d slept on the couch with the afghan pulled over him, and it had been one of the most restful sleeps he’d had in years.
“Manny has given me the day off to make sure that you get to the airport on time to pick up your family. He’s even ordered a limo.”
“What? Mom will go nuts. She’s not one for flashy. I should make him come with us so he can explain it to her in person.”
“He was going to, but he has a meeting with a member of the local CRTC staff. He wants to make sure your cool proposals are kosher with the Radio and Television Commission before we start implementing them.”
“Smart man.”
“He says it was your idea.”
Jerry laughed. “At least one of us remembers our conversations.”
“So, what’s your Mom’s flight number and exact arrival time, please? I’ll drive over to your place and have the limo meet us there an hour before they land.”