Bedbugs (35 page)

I suddenly feel a powerful impulse to get up and just run away—from Laura, from everything. I find myself wishing that I could dissolve, just disappear into the rush of activity around us, but everything seems so far away . . . so distant, like I’m watching life through a thick plate-glass window.

Besides, I know that Laura won’t let me run away.

She’s always been the kind of friend who doesn’t let me get away with anything. And she’s always been there whenever I’ve needed her.

“So then what?” she says in a voice as airy and light as a spring breeze.

It sounds to me almost like we’re talking in a vacuum. All the other city sounds around us seem strangely muffled and distant compared to the closeness of her voice. When a car passes by, less than ten feet from the bench where we’re sitting, I almost can’t hear the soft whisper of its tires on the wet pavement.

“It . . . it wasn’t until Mr. Nolan came into the room that I finally realized what was going on,” I say.

Laura shakes her head, her liquid brown eyes clouding with confusion.

“I don’t know who Mr. Nolan is,” she says mildly, but her voice is also strong enough to urge me on.

“He was my high school English teacher during my senior year at Gorham High School.”

Laura nods, her whole demeanor saying—
yes . . . and?

I find it difficult to breathe. The blood in my veins feels like it’s turning to ice. Every nerve in my body is numb, like I have pins and needles all over.

“But you see—” I finally manage to say. “Mr. Nolan is . . . dead.”

I can hardly hear myself speak, and it’s dark enough now so I’m having trouble seeing Laura’s face clearly, but I can tell by her reaction that she heard me. When she looks at me and silently mouths the word
dead
, I nod, my head sagging like a marionette whose strings have been cut.

“He died of liver cancer more than twenty years ago, a year after I graduated from high school.”

The worried expression on Laura’s face cuts me deeply. I can see the concern she feels for me, but I can also tell that she’s realizing just how bad off I really am. I know that she’s thinking what happened last week has totally unhinged me.

I want desperately to tell her that this isn’t what’s happening. Even considering the circumstances, I still feel pretty stable, but I can tell, no matter what I say, that she won’t believe me.

If our situations were reversed, I wonder if
I
would believe
her
.

“You’re sure it was him?” Laura says edgily. She’s no longer able to disguise what she’s really thinking behind a low, calming voice. “It wasn’t just someone who looked a lot like him?”

I bite my lower lip and shake my head firmly, blinking my eyes rapidly to force back the tears. A thick, salty taste fills the back of my throat, almost choking me.

“No, I know it was him. Without a doubt. I’d recognize him
anywhere
.”

I look around, suddenly afraid that I must be shouting and drawing attention to us, but the passersby seem not even to see or notice me.

“And then,” I say, “when I looked back at the woman who had walked in earlier, I realized that I knew her, too. She was Gail Grover, my roommate from college, freshman year. But you see—I read in the alumni magazine maybe four or five years ago that Gail Grover had died in a car accident out in California.”

Laura has nothing to say. She just sits there, looking at me with total patience and understanding, but I know that she’s thinking I definitely will have to be hospitalized if I keep talking like this.

“And the other man—the one sitting across the room—I finally realized that he was Frank Sheldon, a longtime friend of my father’s.”

“And he had died, too, I suppose,” Laura says.

I hear something crackle in my neck when I nod.

“Yeah. He used to fly small engine planes and take aerial photographs of people’s houses, then go door to door trying to sell the pictures to the homeowners. He took me up in his plane a few times when I was a little girl. I remember being really scared. I was maybe ten or eleven years old when his plane crashed somewhere in New Hampshire.”

Laura lets her breath out in a slow sigh. She uncrosses her legs, folds her arms across her chest, and leans back against the slats of the wooden bench and just stares straight ahead, acting as if I’m not even there. Before long, I can’t take it any longer, so I say to her, “And there were more.”

Laura looks at me with a faint, distant light in her eyes. She looks dreamy and far away in the deep twilight. The streetlights have come on, and some of the shop windows glow with soft, buttery light. The maple tree we’re sitting under throws a long, angular shadow across the sidewalk and up the wall of the store across the street from us. Somewhere in the distance, I can hear the high, winding wail of a siren. It sounds like someone crying out in pain.

“There were other people in the restaurant—lots of them, and all of them were people I had known before and who had died.”

Laura’s expression doesn’t alter in the slightest. She just sits there and stares at me, but for some reason I can no longer tell what she’s thinking. I have no idea if she believes me or if she thinks I’m lying to her. In some ways, I decide, it doesn’t matter because at least I’m finally talking to someone about it!

“I saw my cousin—Rachel Adams. She died many years ago, when she was fourteen. She drowned swimming in the Royal River out behind her house. And my Aunt Lydia was there, and all four of my grandmothers and grandfathers, and Mrs. McMillan—Edna McMillan, the old lady who used to live next door to us when we lived out on Files Road.”

The whole time I’m talking, Laura just stares straight ahead, but I can tell that she’s still listening to me. The muscles in her jaw rapidly tense and untense. I can see and almost hear the rapid throbbing of her pulse in her neck. She takes several shallow breaths as though trying to calm herself.

“It sounds like an absolute nightmare,” she finally says, still not turning to look at me.

“It was!” I shout, and this time I notice that a middle-aged man wearing a three-piece suit who’s walking by turns and looks at me like I’m a crazy person. He gestures and starts to say something, then, still looking mystified, shakes his head and continues on his way. His footsteps echo hollowly in the darkness.

“It was like . . . like having to face all of your worst fears all at once,” I say in a low, trembling voice. “I had no idea what was going on, but finally I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I got up and ran out of there. Jimmy called after me, and I stopped and looked back at him to see him scrambling to get up from the table to come after me, but I was out the door and on the street before he could catch me.”

“And did he catch up with you?” Laura asks.

I lower and shake my head sadly.

“No. The heavy wooden door slammed shut behind me, but he never came outside. The night was cold and dreary. The street was slick with rain, but I ran as fast as I could down the street. I was terrified that all those
dead
people had left the restaurant and were coming after me.”

Laura sighs and clicks her tongue as she shakes her head. I can see tears streaming down her face. They glisten against her pale cheeks, looking like quicksilver. She swallows with difficulty and then turns to me.

“So what happened after that?” she asks.

I open my mouth, but before I can say anything, I realize that I don’t remember what happened next. Whatever it was, it feels like the memory of a dream that’s rapidly fading away, like fine beach sand, sifting through my fingers.

“I . . . I don’t know,” I finally say.

Huge chunks of my memory seem to be missing, like the faint tracing of words that have been written on a chalkboard and then erased.

“I remember running down the street, heading this way, toward Exchange Street. I was thinking that I’d parked my car around here somewhere. I remember seeing the city lights reflected in the rain on the street and sidewalks, ribbons of bright, shifting color. I remember hearing the clicking sound my shoes made on the asphalt. The sound echoed like gunshots from the buildings on both sides of the street. I wasn’t paying attention when I crossed the street, and a passing car almost hit me. The driver blasted his horn at me, but I didn’t care. I just kept running. And after that, I . . . I—”

I shake my head again and sigh.

The soft, steady rush of wind still smells fresh with rain. It whisks my voice away like smoke.

“—I can’t remember where I went or what I did after that.”

“Try . . . try to remember,” Laura urges.

The mild tone in her voice has returned, and it soothes me, at least a little. When I look at her again, I see the warm glow of friendship and love and trust in her eyes, and I think—for just an instant—that everything might still be all right, as long as I have a friend as faithful and loyal as Laura.

“The next thing I remember is . . . being back at my house. It was dark, and I’m pretty sure it was still raining, although my hair wasn’t wet and there was no other evidence that I had been outside. No wet raincoat. No puddles on the floor or anything. It was only after I got home that I realized—like I was remembering it—that Jimmy was—”

My voice chokes off again, but Laura completes the sentence for me.

“
Dead
,” she says. “You remembered that Jimmy was dead.”

For a shattering instant, I have the unnerving impression that my voice is coming from Laura. I’m terribly aware of the darkening street around us, of the shops and passing cars, of the people drifting by in gauzy slow motion, but they all appear to be impossibly distant. They’re no more or less . . . substantial than the memory I have of all those dead people in the restaurant.

“Yeah,” I say. “I remembered that Jimmy was in a . . . a car accident and that he was . . .”

I can’t finish the sentence because I still can’t bring myself to say the word
dead
.

Saying it would mean that I accepted it.

Then I hear Laura whisper softly, so close to me. “Good Lord,” she says. “I wish there was something I could say or do to help you.”

She sighs again and shakes her head from side to side. I hear the soft whisking sound of her long, brown hair, brushing against her shoulders. Tears are streaming like tiny rivers from her eyes, but—surprisingly—I don’t cry.

I
can’t
cry!

I think I must have used up all of my tears over the last few days just getting through Jimmy’s funeral. That must be it.

“So what you’re telling me,” Laura says, “is that you think, even when you were sitting there in the restaurant with Jimmy, that he was already—”

This time, even Laura can’t say the word that echoes hollowly inside my brain.

I close my eyes and shiver the whole length of my body as I nod and whisper, “Yes.”

The rushing sound of the busy street around me warbles and fades away even further, and I am swept up by an incredible sinking sensation of being alone.

Utterly alone.

For a timeless instant I keep my eyes tightly closed. I feel lost in a dark, directionless void that seems to want to absorb me, but I struggle to focus on the tiny, flickering spark of my own identity.

When I speak again, my eyes are still closed, and I hear my own voice booming inside my head like the rumbling roll of kettle drums but I know it barely makes a sound in the real world.

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” I say.

I can’t help but notice how different my own voice sounds when I listen to it with my eyes closed.

“I’m absolutely
positive
that what happened in the restaurant really did happen, Laura. I’m positive that I saw all those dead people there. I
know
I did. I even saw
Jimmy
! And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that it has to have been a dream or something, a . . . a hallucination.”

I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter until the shifting patterns of light behind my eyelids intensify. Jagged lines of light and darkness spiral inward like razor-lined whirlpools, sucking me in.

“You’re the only person I’ve ever mentioned this to,” I say, feeling the heavy vibration of each word in my throat.

“I can’t explain what happened. I have no
idea
what it was or what it could mean, but I do know that . . . somehow . . . Jimmy was reaching out to me. He was trying to contact me . . . to comfort me . . . like you’re doing now.”

My hand is trembling as I reach out, feeling for Laura’s hand to grasp and hold. The emotions swelling up inside me are almost too much to bear. I feel as though I can’t breathe, that a huge iron band has been wrapped around my chest and is steadily squeezing . . . squeezing. . . .

“
Laura!
” I call out.

My voice is a long, wavering moan that reminds me of a soft gust of wind in a lonely, deserted alley.

A thin sliver of panic stabs me when I open my eyes and look around. For a terrifying moment, I can’t see anything except the dark street and faint hints of darker motion shifting all around me.