Collide (8 page)

Nothing happened.

I pressed my eyes closed tighter, my senses heightened. I heard the squeak-squeak of wheels, the soft click of the door opening. I opened my eyes, turned my head toward the sound. It was Dr. Gupta, who greeted me with a smile and a pat to my shoulder.

“I apologize for being a little late to remove the needles, Emm,” she said. “We had a little accident out in the hallway. Someone came to clean it up, but there’s quite a mess. Be careful when you go out there.”

She plucked needles from my skin as she spoke, slipping them into the red sharps container marked with the biohazard symbol. Then she took hold of my arm and helped me sit. She handed me a paper cup of water.

“How do you feel?”

I didn’t want to tell her about the fugue I may or may not have fended off. I breathed in. The scent of oranges had faded, though not disappeared. My mouth squirted saliva, lips puckering at the memory of the citrus taste. I hadn’t eaten oranges in years, unable to stomach them, but this gustatory illusion was unusual. Mostly I just smelled the oranges, I didn’t taste them.

“Tired,” I said.

“That’s to be expected. Are you dizzy? Drink some water.”

I did, not because I was dizzy but to wash away the lingering taste of citrus. She took the cup from me and tossed it in the trash, then gripped my elbow to help me off the table. I waited half a minute, used to the way the floor sometimes tilted at first when I’d just finished a treatment. It didn’t today, but I rested a moment longer than normal, anyway.

“Emm. You sure you’re all right?” Dr. Gupta is a tiny, dark-haired woman with big dark eyes. She reminds me of that old newspaper cartoon
Dondi.

“Sure. Fine.” I gave her my brightest smile to convince her.

Dr. Gupta didn’t look convinced. She drew another cup of water from the cooler and handed it to me. “Drink that. You’re a little pale. I think next time we’ll concentrate on a super Ming Men instead of the Shen Men. We’ll do some energizing in addition to the tranquilizing.”

I’d been having acupuncture treatments for three years now, but that didn’t make me anything like an expert. In fact, I was more of the “I don’t need to know how it works” school of thought. I’d never studied the mechanics of it, or the philosophy.

“Sure,” I told her.

She laughed. “You have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s okay, so long as it works, yes?”

“Yes.” I drank the water, though by this point my back teeth were swimming.

She patted my shoulder again. “I’ll see you in a month, unless you have something you need taken care of before then.”

She left me to rearrange my clothes. Standing in the quiet room with the soft music playing, I should’ve been way more relaxed after a treatment. Instead, I felt electric. Buzzing. Not bad, exactly. And not the way I often felt after having a fugue, sort of fuzzy and disoriented for a few moments.

This feeling was more like an ache in my chest. An anticipation, not quite anxiety. No pain. There was never pain associated with any of this.

When I left the office, the smell of oranges once again assaulted me. I braced myself in the doorway, jaw clenched…until I saw the cleaning cart and the jug of citrus-scented cleaner, cap open, and the floor still gleaming from it. The woman at the cart saw me look and smiled apologetically.

“We spilled almost the whole jug,” she explained, holding up a mop. “But it’s okay, you can go past now.”

She couldn’t have had any idea about why I was laughing, but she laughed, too. I wanted to give her a high five as I passed her, but restrained myself. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face, though, as I stopped at the front desk to make my co-pay and book my next appointment.

“This is what I love about my job,” said Peta, the receptionist.

“Taking my money?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Seeing how people come in here full of pain and leave full of peace.”

I paused with my checkbook still in my hand. “That’s a great way of saying it.”

She dimpled. “Maybe I should put that on an inspirational poster, huh?”

“Maybe. But…it’s true, isn’t it?” I felt more at peace, certainly, once I’d learned the smell hadn’t been the harbinger of a fugue, after all.

“It really is. Take care, Emm, see you next month.”

I waved at her as I went out, my steps more springy and my heart lighter. Behind the wheel of my car I took a few more deep breaths to center myself out of habit. When you’ve had your license taken away because the authorities fear you might spaz out and cause an accident while you’re driving, you tend to better appreciate your ability to drive yourself when you are allowed. But as I pulled out of the parking lot, I realized the buzzing, churning tumble in my chest hadn’t really gone away, just faded.

Bad tacos for last night’s dinner, maybe. Too much coffee on an empty stomach. I gripped the wheel and checked my eyes in the rearview mirror. A little wide, but the pupils weren’t pinned or anything funky like that. My vision wasn’t blurry. I wasn’t smelling anything but my own cologne from where it had rubbed into my scarf.

Nevertheless, I drove slowly. Carefully. Taking no chances at yellow lights or intersections. By the time I got to my street, my fingers ached from gripping the wheel and my back hurt, too, from my too-tense posture.

“Motherfucker,” I muttered when I saw that someone had once again taken my spot. I really needed to get some lawn chairs and set them up when I left, the way my neighbors did.

I drove farther down the street and found an empty spot. The last time the plow had gone through, a thigh-deep pile of snow had been pushed into someone’s shoveled spot. The vehicle that usually parked there, a blue SUV, could no longer fit. I spotted it parked a block farther down and felt no guilt at squeezing my much smaller car into the space. I considered it karma.

The fact I’d once again parked in front of Johnny’s house was a nice little bonus, one that had me humming under my breath with glee and buzzing in an entirely different way. I paused after I’d closed my car door to study his house. When had I ever felt this way before?

The answer was, never. I’d had crushes before, plenty of them. In seventh grade I’d thought I would die unless a sophomore named Steve Houseman liked me back. I hadn’t died. And even then, when I’d gone to sleep every night wishing on every star I could see that he’d look at me like I was a real girl and not some junior high geek, I hadn’t ever felt like this.

The curb was icy, but the sidewalk in front of Johnny’s house was bare and well-salted. Unfortunately, his neighbors weren’t as conscientious. I was so busy trying to peek through his windows without making it obvious I was a pervert, I didn’t pay attention to where I put my feet. I hit a slick patch and slid, arms wheeling. I’d never been a gymnast, but I managed a pretty nice split that had me gasping in gratitude I was wearing a skirt, even though I tore my stockings.

So focused on keeping myself from totally wiping out and doing a face plant into the pile of filthy snow, I didn’t pay attention to the man who’d just crossed the street and stepped up onto the curb in front of me. I caught a flash of a black coat, a striped scarf. I had time to think,
Oh, shit, it’s him,
before I took another step and slid with that one, too.

We collided hard enough to snap my jaws together. I caught my tongue between my teeth and tasted blood. I looked into Johnny’s face, those green-brown eyes so close I could count his lashes. He had a mole at the corner of one eye I’d never noticed before. He grabbed my upper arms.

I smelled oranges.

I was falling.

Chapter 05

“H
ey, foxy mama.”

The man in front of me gripped my upper arms to keep me from falling. I’d tripped on a loose piece of concrete in the sidewalk. I stared at it, thinking there was something wrong.

And then I knew.

Holy shit, it was summer. The man in front of me, Johnny. And he was…young.

“You okay? You having a bad trip or something?” He laughed and shook his hair out of his eyes. “Trip. Sorry.”

The moment Dorothy steps out of her black-and-white house into the Technicolor glory of Munchkinland is one of the greatest in movie history. I was Dorothy now, my eyes wide, legs trembling. I looked around at the way my world had changed and ducked instinctively in case a house was getting ready to fall on me. I’d have fallen if Johnny hadn’t held me up.

“Chill, little sister,” he said in a kind voice, and led me to the porch stoop where he eased me onto the heat-soaked concrete and sat beside me, my hand in his.

The colors were all so bright. I heard music, the steady disco thump of a song my mother had sung to me when I was a kid. A woman in short shorts and a tube top roller-skated past us, jumping effortlessly over the crack that had tripped me up. Her hair flew behind her in a long, gleaming wave.

A garbage truck rumbled past on the narrow street lined with wide cars all in shades of brown and green. It said New York City Municipal Services on the side, and I swallowed a sudden rush of saliva.

Bright sunshine. Heat. And yet I shivered, teeth chattering even as my butt scorched against the steps. The backs of my calves were worse, having no protection but my ripped panty hose. I hissed and shifted.

“Chill,” Johnny said again, soothingly.

I didn’t smell oranges. I smelled car exhaust and the faint whiff of sewage, probably from the alley next to this house or the garbage cans lined up along the curb. I smelled sun-baked concrete. I smelled him, too.

I leaned closer without thinking to take a long, deep breath of his neck. His hair tickled my cheek. He smelled like a man should—not like cologne but clean skin, a little bit of summer sweat, fresh air. He smelled better than I’d ever imagined he would, and I’d imagined he’d smell pretty fucking fine.

“Hey,” Johnny said softly.

Blinking, I pulled back, the heat in my cheeks and throat having nothing to do with the summer sun beating down all around us. I’d just sniffed him like a dog testing out a fireplug. During my fugues lots of things happened that didn’t in real life; I behaved in ways I’d never have done while conscious and never felt embarrassed about it the way I did now.

“Sorry,” I managed to say, and tried to pull away, but his hand holding mine kept me anchored onto the step.

“No sweat. What’s your name?”

He was even more beautiful than he’d looked in pictures. It wasn’t fair to compare this young Johnny to his older version, but I couldn’t help it. This Johnny smiled at me, while the older one never had. He ducked his head a little now, peering at me from the silky fringe of long bangs.

“You have a name, right?”

“Emm,” I said. “My name’s Emm.”

“Johnny.” He lifted our hands and shook them before letting them drop, this time to his thigh.

I felt his skin beneath the back of my hand. I shivered again. I blinked and breathed. This was a fugue. I was imagining all of this. Somewhere else I’d gone dark.

“Oh.” The word eased out on a moan and I closed my eyes. “Johnny.”

I meant the one in winter, in the black coat. The one I’d run into and was now likely making a fool of myself in front of.

“Yeah. That’s me.” He shifted, our thighs touching. “I don’t know you, but you seem to know me. How’s that?”

This was a fugue, I reminded myself. It wasn’t real. But no matter how hard I tried, I could sense nothing but this now. This place. This man in front of me. No glimmers of anything else, even though I knew it had to be there, in front of me, if only my brain would let go of me long enough to get back to it.

I didn’t want to get back to it, I realized, looking at Johnny’s smile. It was for me, that grin. So was the appreciative gaze he swept over me, his eyes lingering on my breasts a second too long before he focused briefly on my mouth and licked his lips. When his gaze swept up to meet mine again, I got lost in those eyes.

“You don’t talk much, huh?”

“I just… This is a little…” I couldn’t explain.

He laughed and stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “You must be on some pretty good shit. But you should be more careful. This neighborhood, it ain’t so great. I mean, I live here and all. But you don’t. I’d have seen you around here before. Are you new, or just visiting?”

“I was just walking past.” It wasn’t a lie.

“You want to come inside? Gotta bunch of friends over, just hanging out. Having a little party. C’mon,” Johnny said, as though I needed any persuasion. “You’ll have a good time, I promise.”

He stood, tugging me onto my feet. The earth didn’t rock. I didn’t spin. With Johnny holding my hand, I wasn’t going anywhere but wherever he took me.

His house here in 1970s New York was a tall brownstone a lot like the one in present-day Harrisburg. It had to be newer, but it wasn’t as nice on the outside. Inside, it was so similar to my own I let out a low murmur of surprise as we entered the foyer. Stairs in front of us led up, a long and narrow hall pointed toward the kitchen and an arched doorway to our right led into a formal living room. A beaded curtain hung in the archway.

I heard music, louder in here, from upstairs. I heard voices, too. I smelled pot.

“C’mon in.” Johnny linked his fingers through mine and tugged me down the hall toward the kitchen, where a group of men and women sat around a wooden table or leaned against the counters to watch another man cooking something on the stove. “Hungry? Candy’s cooking.”