Concrete Savior (11 page)

The phone on his desk started ringing as soon as he settled onto his chair, but the number on the ID screen wasn’t familiar. Out of habit, Casey snatched up a pen and jotted it down as he answered.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Casey, it’s Gina.”

For a moment he was so surprised he couldn’t say anything. He’d never really expected her to call because she really seemed like she was perfectly content with their almost daily lunches. He had even started turning over the idea of not showing up for a couple of days, just to see if that would make her miss him or something. Ultimately he didn’t want to chance it—what if it made no difference to her whether she saw him or not? Or worse, if him not being around made her stop looking for him . . . to ultimately disappear into the mass of humanity that was this huge city.

But here she was, on the other end of the phone line.

“Gina—hi. How are you?” Only a small pause, hopefully not noticeable. He might not have a lot of experience with girls, but he was good on the phone with customers; he could use that skill and at least make this appear to be an effortless conversation.

“Good. I just wanted to make sure you were available for lunch today.”

Casey inhaled, taken aback for the second time. He stopped himself before saying
Of course
, instinct kicking in to make him realize that was giving her the upper hand in a really big way. “Let me check my schedule,” he told her instead. He tapped a few random letters on the keyboard, making sure the movements were loud enough to give out a few business-sounding clicks. “Sure, I can make it. The usual?”

“Let’s go someplace other than a jam-packed fast-food place. There’s a restaurant on LaSalle a little north of Adams, a place called the Potbelly Sandwich Works. If we’re lucky we can get a booth inside, or even one of the outside tables. Why don’t we meet there at twelve-thirty?”

“Twelve-thirty sounds great. See you there.”

Sorry, Gina. Can’t make it until twelve forty-five. Didn’t want you standing around.

—but when it was finally answered, Casey got his third surprise.

“Uh, hello?”

Casey’s heart dropped into his stomach at the sound of the male voice. “May I speak t-to Gina?”

There was a long pause, as if the other man was figuring out what to say. Then finally, “Sorry, buddy. I think you’ve got the wrong number. This is a pay phone.”

And the surprises just kept rolling in.

“THERE’S SOMETHING I WANT
to talk to you about,” he told Gina when they were settled into their booth and had their sandwiches in front of them. He’d ordered a mushroom melt but it had gotten cold when Gina had changed her mind about sitting at an outside table and they’d had to wait for one inside. He didn’t argue the point; she was probably afraid of being seen and what he wanted to say was dipping into that arena of things she wasn’t supposed to disclose but had.

At his statement, Gina’s eyebrows raised a bit but she didn’t look particularly concerned. “What’s that?”

Casey opened his mouth, but the rush of words and emotion that spilled out startled even him. “Are you
kidding
me, Gina? Don’t you read the papers? You can’t tell me you didn’t hear about Glenn Klinger, the man you sent me to save last Friday!”

“I never sent you to do anything, Casey. I just told you about him.” She took a bite out of her sandwich but her pretty brown eyes were focused steadily on him. He stared at her in amazement and when she swallowed, she said, “And no, I don’t read the papers. I don’t have time for that. I do watch the late night news, but I must’ve missed it. You’re so upset—did he die in the hospital or something, because of another seizure? Maybe he had some kind of brain cancer.”

Casey leaned forward so far that his shirt almost touched his food. “Christ, everyone’s talking about it. He went to work on Wednesday, and then at the end of the day he went into the office part of his factory or whatever it was and shot everyone. Killed them
all
, Gina, and then committed suicide.”

“Really—wow. That’s terrible.”

“Terrible?” He grimaced. “It’s beyond terrible. It’s my
fault
. If I hadn’t gone to the subway and kept that guy from getting killed, none of that would’ve happened. Eleven people are dead, twelve if you count Glenn Klinger himself.”

“That’s kind of a paradox,” Gina said calmly.
Too
calmly, Casey thought. “He would have already been dead if you hadn’t saved him from that subway train.”

“Are you saying he doesn’t
count
?”

“No, of course not.” Gina wiped her fingers on a napkin, then reached across the table and nudged him backward. “You’re going to get your shirt dirty.”

Casey looked down at his shirt, then back at her. He felt kind of . . . numb. “I don’t understand how you can be so unconcerned about this.”

She looked at him, and he was relieved to see nothing cold or distanced in her expression. “It’s just that there’s nothing we can do about it. Don’t you understand that? What I said about poor Glenn Klinger isn’t the only paradox. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. You had no way of knowing he would go insane and do something like this. I didn’t, either. What are you going to do, stand by and watch someone die because you can’t see if he’s going to be a good guy in the future?”

Casey was silent.

“There is no rewind button on life, Casey. There’s only moving forward and trying to do better next time. There’s no arguing that the first time didn’t turn out very well. But what about the second? And the third?”

He looked at her, startled. “The third?”

She nodded, then glanced around like she always did before she was going to tell him something she shouldn’t. Despite himself, and despite the guilt he was feeling over what Glenn Klinger had done, Casey felt a tickle of excitement in his belly.

“When?” he asked. He pushed his sandwich aside, all thoughts of lunch gone. “What’s going to happen?”

“A young woman,” Gina said in a near-whisper. “Today, right in the middle of rush hour, on the Clark Street Bridge.” She glanced away again, then looked sideways at him. “You can swim, right?”

Casey’s mouth dropped open. “She’s going to jump?”

“I don’t think so, but I’m not completely sure,” Gina told him. She looked stricken. “Sometimes what I see isn’t real clear, you know? It’s foggy, like I’m seeing it through a wet window, or through someone else’s eyes.”

He swallowed. “So what
can
you tell me about her?”

Gina tilted her head. “She’s with a group of people, I know that much. And I don’t think she’s very old, only a teenager.”

Casey ground his teeth. A teenager? After reading about Klinger, he’d told himself he wasn’t going to do this anymore. Who was he to change someone’s destiny? It was chaos theory, like what happened in that old Ray Bradbury story, “A Sound of Thunder”—change one tiny thing and somewhere else in the world a war breaks out, or an earthquake strikes. That’s what Casey had done with Glenn Klinger when he’d saved his life, and as a result, the entire course of history had been changed. It might sound like an exaggeration, but who really knew? Even if the eleven people who’d died were unremarkable, what might their children have been like? Or their children’s children?

“I—I don’t know,” he finally said. “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea anymore.”

Gina looked shocked. “You would let her die when you might be able to save her? You wouldn’t even
try
? Casey, she’s just a kid!”

“I know, I know.”ubbed at his eyes, trying desperately to sort it all out. Was it the right thing to do? What if the world was in some kind of balance or something, and him stepping in just pushed it all out of whack?

“Casey, if you’re thinking something bad is going to happen because you save this girl’s life, that’s ludicrous. That thing with Glenn Klinger—it was just a coincidence, that’s all. He was crazy, or there was something messed up with his head.” She tapped her forehead for emphasis. “He probably had a brain tumor, you know? It’s not like the general public would ever be told if he did. With all the crap that goes on in the world today, by tomorrow the newspapers will have forgotten all about the guy. Front-page news will be something Obama said and the latest on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and any leftover space will be devoted to who’s playing on Navy Pier.”

Casey still didn’t say anything. Although he felt immensely guilty about what Glenn Klinger had done, Gina was completely correct in that there was nothing he could do about it now. But the future . . . well, he couldn’t really
do
anything about it, but he
could
just let it go on as it was, perhaps, meant to.

“And what if you’re wrong?”

Casey jerked his attention back to Gina. “What did you say?”

“I asked you, what if you’re
wrong
?” Gina stared at him without blinking. “Let’s say you decide not to do anything with what I’ve told you. You just go on home and leave her to whatever the universe or God or fate has in store.”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“But that’s not the point, Casey.” She sounded like she was talking to a particularly trying relative, and that’s the last thing he wanted. She had relaxed a little during their conversation but now she sat forward again and her fingertips gripped and tensed on the tabletop. “Do you really want to take that chance?” she demanded. “Do you really want to be the person responsible for some pretty little teenager having her life cut short when she’s barely had a chance to do anything—can you live with that?”

“No, of course not.” The words slipped out of his mouth before he could think about them, but they would have been the same in any case. “No one who’s responsible does something like that.”

“Nor would someone who has a good heart,” she pointed out. “Someone like you.”

His nails found a dent at the edge of the table and he poked at it. “You’re betting an awful lot on me when you don’t know anything at all about the real me.”

“I know enough.” Suddenly she reached over and covered his hand with hers. “You’re a good person, Casey. You’ve shown that twice already. Self-doubt is an insidious thing. It twists up everything, turns everything you think you’ve got figured out upside down.”

Casey nodded, but suddenly all he could think about was that she had touched him—was
still
touching him.

Gina pulled her hand away, then folded her napkin. She looked at his uneaten sandwich and frowned. “You haven’t even touched your food, but I really have to get back to the office.”

Casey stood when she did. “It’s all right,” he said. “I guess I just wasn’t that hungry. Too much stress.”

“Don’t let it get to you.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “There are great things ahead, Casey. No one can tell you that more than me.”

He nodded automatically, but before he could think of anything to say, Gina stepped forward, put one hand on each of his wrists, and kissed him full on the mouth.

Casey was so stunned that his mind went blank—all the thoughts and all the things he might have been going to say simply just disappeared. All he could do was stand there and
experience
it—the feel of her warm, soft lips pressed against his, the way her fingers were lightly wrapped around his wrists, the fact that there were only a few inches between his body and hers. Yes, they were in a crowded, noisy restaurant on LaSalle Street at the end of the lunch hour rush, but all of that felt like it was gone, too. He wasn’t so geeky that he hadn’t had a girlfriend or three in his life, kissed them, slept with them.

But Gina . . .

He didn’t know what it was about her, but she was
special
somehow. He’d known it the first time they’d had lunch and the feeling had just grown ever since. And this kiss just confirmed that—it was . . . all-encompassing, surpassing his hopes, his expectations, his dreams. It was
everything
.