Don't Kill The Messenger (7 page)

He looks at her intently from across the table without saying a word. He then reaches out and holds her hands in his for many seconds, still not giving an answer. I watch as he opens that third eye he spoke of and searches deep within Rebecca’s very being, trying to complete the message I started—the
why
to my
what.

Stelios stares at her for thirty seconds, then forty-five. Almost a full minute passes before he releases her hands and says, “No, I can’t see it.”

“You can’t?” I ask, surprised.

“It … changes,” he says cryptically. “Today’s danger may be different tomorrow.”

“What does that mean?” Rebecca asks.

“I wish I knew,” Stelios says quietly. “Sometimes, what I see is very clear to me. Other times, it’s like I’m seeing it through cloudy water. You, my little Persephone, are very cloudy water. Maybe you stay with Stelios for a few days, the image will get clearer.”

She smiles pleasantly, looking for the right words to decline, but I beat her to the punch. “Tempting as that is, we have to head north. Your moussaka and your hospitality were impeccable, though. And thank you for sharing what you shared with me.”

We all rise, and Rebecca is the first to the gangplank. She makes her way back to the pier, and I am about to follow her, when I feel a hand on my shoulder. Stelios pulls me aside to speak to me privately.

“You know, don’t you, that you can’t fall in love with this girl?” he says discreetly.

I notice that Rebecca is watching us from the dock, but she can’t hear what we’re saying.

“So I’ve been told,” I answer quietly. “But no one can tell me why.”

“The water is not as cloudy as I let her think. But she can’t know the reasons, not now.”

The question I’ve been pondering and dreading surfaces, because I know that he may be the only one who can answer it for me. “Stelios … am I the danger she has to avoid?”

“Tristan?” she calls to me from shore. “You coming?”

“Be right there,” I call back, then look back at the fisherman.

“You might be. But you must take her where she needs to go. She needs you. And you need her.”

“I need
her?
”

“You will. Soon. Now go on. There’s a long way to travel yet.”

“Thank you, Stelios.”

“Be careful, Tristan.”

I rejoin Rebecca on dry land as Stelios goes to get his toolkit. “What were you two talking about?” she asks me.

“You know, boy stuff. Football, beer, pretty girls.”

“I see. Was one of those girls me?” she asks coyly.

“Come on, you know I can’t violate the sanctity of boy stuff.”

We make our way back to the car, climb inside, and lower the top again. The weather is pleasant today, not too hot. Good driving weather, which is a good thing, since there’s a hell of a lot of that to do.

As we pull out of Tarpon Springs, Rebecca asks me, “So, did we just save that man’s life?”

I smile a little at the realization that she’s right. “Yeah, I think we did.”

“God, that’s freaky. And how weird was that when he called you by your name? I saw you look at me like ‘what did you tell him?’ But then you knew I didn’t tell him anything.”

“It was a little disconcerting, I have to admit.”

“Think how I feel!” she says. “Two days ago, I thought that psychics were just people trying to scam you out of twenty bucks in a storefront. Then I meet you
and
Stelios, and all of a sudden it’s like a psychic fair.”

I don’t respond, and the absence of a reply affects her. “What?” she says. “What is it?”

I feel caught. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing. Did he say something to you? What did he tell you?”

“Rebecca, it’s nothing, really.”

“He told you what’s going to happen to me, didn’t he?” she guesses. “He couldn’t tell me, but he told you …”

“No,” I reply quickly, and for the most part honestly. “He doesn’t know and I don’t know.”

“If you do know, I want you to tell me. Even if it’s bad, I want to know. Promise me you’ll tell?”

“I promise.”

A familiar silence ensues for about ten minutes, but I start to feel guilty because of it, so I start up the conversation again. “So when did you change your name?”

The question catches her off guard. “What are you talking about?”

“At some time, you must have changed your name to Rebecca. I was just wondering when. And, you know … why.”

“Why do you think I changed my name?”

“I didn’t until today. When we boarded that boat, I told Stelios my name was Alex. I usually give a false name, to avoid complications. You decided to play along and you told him your name was Persephone. But when he saw through me, he started calling me Tristan. And to the end, he called you Persephone. So I have to think that it’s your real name, which is why he didn’t see through it.”

I can see her working it out inside, considering whether she can make something up to cover for it, and then deciding that the truth is out. “On my eighteenth birthday. I was tired of my old name. And Rebecca was my middle name anyway, so I changed it legally.”

“You were tired of your old name. That’s the only reason?”

“Yes. Why?”

She sounds defensive, and I don’t want to upset her. “Well, it’s just that a legal name change is a big step. Most people who don’t like their name just go by a nickname unofficially. I just wondered if there was something more that was motivating it. Some reason why Persephone wouldn’t want to be Persephone anymore?”

She is silent, and I can’t tell why. Either I’ve offended her by asking because she was telling the truth or I’ve upset her by asking because there’s something more she isn’t telling me. Whichever the case, I won’t get anything else by prying, so I do the honorable thing … for a change.

“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

The apology seems to disarm her a bit. “It’s okay. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. We’re gonna be in this car together for a long time, and I should be friendlier. You want to know more about me; that’s natural. It’s just …”

“Just?” I prompt.

“What happens once we get to Ohio? After you drop me off? Are we going to be friends? Will we call each other? Send e-mails? Christmas cards? Or will you just drop me off and never see me again?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I hadn’t thought about it. This is all new terrain for me.”

“Because …” she starts, “I feel like this is a big thing we’re going through together. You may have even saved my life, I don’t know. And I feel like that should make us … you know …
friends.
But that takes an investment of myself. And I’m not sure I’m ready to invest that, because I just don’t know where I stand with you, Tristan.”

She has me dead to rights, and I have no defense. “Nobody does, Rebecca. You want to know the real me? That’s the real me. A man who’s been unable to have a meaningful relationship with anyone in years. Even before this whole crazy mission of mine started. Maybe that’s why I was chosen—somebody knew I wouldn’t be leaving anybody behind. You know the reason why I let you come along with me? Do you think it was because I was being nice? No. It’s because for a couple of days, I had the chance to interact with someone on a personal level. Someone pleasant. Someone … pretty. And now it seems that I couldn’t even do
that
right. Because you’re sitting there, and you don’t know what to make of me, just like the rest of the world.”

In my peripheral vision, I see that she is looking intently at me as I look at the road ahead. I feel naked in front of the former stripper, and with each second that passes without a word spoken by Rebecca, I feel smaller and smaller. If she rejects me now, after opening myself up to her this way, I’m fairly certain I’ll vanish into a diminishing puddle of my own self-doubt.

Just before that moment arrives, I hear her quietly utter: “I want to be your friend.”

My difficult brain tries to invent other things I might have misheard her say, but I realize at once how unhelpful that is, and I am willing to accept that she may have actually said what I thought she said.

Gracious, thoughtful people would respond, “Thank you.” I respond, “Why?”

“Because you’re unexpected,” she replies directly.
Curious response.

“Unexpected like a bee sting?” I ask.

“No, unexpected like a warm day in December, when you’re sick and tired of the cold.
That’s
what you are. You’re that warm day.”

“I have no people skills,” I say apologetically. “I haven’t since this whole thing began two years ago. Now I travel around so much, and the nature of what I do is so isolating …”

“You have no people skills because you have no people. Now you have a person. And I promise, when you act like a dick, I’ll gently let you know, so you can work on those skills.”

A surprising amount of happiness is starting to well up inside of me. And I swear that I am on the verge of smiling broadly and saying something very kind and thoughtful to her. Unfortunately, at this precise moment, the universe chooses to fuck me once again.

A wave of intense pain starts at the base of my spine and rockets up into my neck and my head. This is new, this is unique; I’ve never before gotten a message while I was behind the wheel of a car. My vision blurs, and my hands clutch the steering wheel so tightly, small rips appear in the vinyl under my fingernails.

I am marginally aware that drivers around me are honking and swerving, trying to get out of my way as I try to get out of theirs. The message is coming in, loud, persistent, fast, detailed. But I can’t crash the car. I think Rebecca is calling my name. When I don’t respond, I feel her grip the wheel and pull us to the shoulder of Route 19. As the message plays out and the pain subsides, I feel the presence of mind to take my foot off the gas pedal and move it to the brake. Once we come to a complete stop, I put the Sebring in park, and sit there for a moment, gasping for breath.

“So,” she says calmly, “where are we going this time?”

I look at her, taken by her aplomb, while simultaneously terrified at how close I just came to crashing the car, and utter a single word: “Atlanta.”

Chapter 6
 

A few minutes later, I am able to continue. Rebecca decides that safety is more important than the rental company’s rules, so she takes the wheel as I rest up in the passenger’s seat.

“So are you all right?” she asks as we continue north on Route 19. “Because that looked … shit, that looked pretty weird.”

“You seemed calm at the time.”

“I figure one of us had to be. Inside, I was scared. I didn’t know if you were gonna be able to keep control of the car. You didn’t tell me this could happen when you were driving.”

“It never has before,” I tell her.

“So why now?”

“Urgency, I think. We don’t have much time to get there.”

“Atlanta?” she says.

“Atlanta.”

“What’s the assignment?”

I give her the details and she looks anxious. I’m feeling it too this time. If I’m right, there’s an awful lot at stake. “We have a little less than eight hours, and it’ll take almost that long to get there,” I inform her. “I want you to go no more than five over the speed limit.”

“I can go twenty over if it’ll help.”

“It won’t help us if we get pulled over. Keep it at five over and we should be fine.”

“It’s weird,” she says, “it’s just weird. This is so last-minute. I mean, as important as this is, you’d think they’d give you more time … whoever the hell
they
are.”

“The best I can figure, this situation just arose, and there wasn’t time to give me more warning.” I shake my head as my strength slowly returns to me. “Something feels wrong about this. I know this sounds crazy, but something just feels … different, and not in a good way.”

“You’ve never done one like this before?”

“Not exactly like this, no. Here, you’ll want to get on I-75 North here.”

She takes the on-ramp to the interstate, and we quickly accelerate to seventy-five miles per hour. Finding the words, she poses a difficult question. “What happens to you … if you can’t help this person?”

“As long as I try, nothing bad will happen to me. I can’t control whether they listen to my warning or not. If I refused to try … well, let’s just say it wouldn’t end well for me.”

“Shit,” she says quietly.

“Still want to be my friend?” I ask with a little laugh.

Her answer is sincere and without hesitation. “Yes. Of course I do.” She almost sounds offended that I’d ask. “This is … Jesus, this is unique. Who else gets this opportunity? You’re the only one, right?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met anyone else who does this, but there could be others. I just don’t know.”

“I’ve never read about anyone doing this,” she says. “Never saw anybody on TV. This is such an amazing thing you do. Why don’t you tell the world about this?”

“Rebecca, this is the age of reality television. The last thing I need for credibility is a camera crew following me around everywhere I go.”

“Yeah, okay, I can see that.” A realization comes to her. “Does that mean I’m the only person you’ve trusted with this?”

“Well, I have to give some detail to each person who gets a message, but you know more about it than anyone else.”

“Does that make me your best friend?” she asks cheekily.

“When you grabbed the steering wheel, did you keep me from plowing into oncoming traffic and killing us both?”

“Well … yeah, I guess so.”

“Then
that
makes you my best friend,” I answer.

The hours of the afternoon speed by with the traffic on Interstate 75, as we make our way north from Florida into Georgia. After three uneventful hours with Rebecca behind the wheel, I feel well enough to resume the driving, so I thank her for the reprieve and take my traditional spot.

We make excellent time, though it is at the cost of anything remotely resembling sightseeing. Several times, Rebecca sees roadside signs advertising Florida’s fun-filled attractions, and the look on her face must be a perfect replica of ones she displayed as a child on a family car trip, when Mom and Dad wouldn’t stop at Circus World or Cedar Point.