The Ghosts in Their Boroughs

Chapter 8

The answer, of course, was no. She’d have responded when we called out (and we’d called out a lot). But what if she were sick, or wounded— unconscious, even? What if she’d been unable to hear us, or to respond even if she did? What if she’d been too debilitated to reach the door? Was it really magical thinking to suppose—

Amanda exhaled, defeated. “Sebastian ... what can I do?”

I turned to look at her as she shrunk down in the sand, looking more tired than any twentysomething had a right to—more haggard, her eyes vacant and puffy, her cheeks sallow. “I mean, how long do you think they’ll last? One small, overgrown grocery store ... and a mini food-mart? (by ‘overgrown’ she’d meant the ubiquitous moss and vine—presumably prehistoric—which had come, along with the Compies and the pterodactyls, immediately after the Flashback) Six months? Couple of years—if we’re lucky?”

I scanned the nearby homes. “Longer than that. Plus there’s the bars and restaurants—not to mention all the houses.” I looked at the darkening horizon. “It’ll be light for a while. We should keep searching.”

I felt her eyes follow me as I walked toward the Jeep.

“Sometimes I don’t know what you want from me,” she said.

I paused before climbing in. “I want you to help me find my wife,” I said.

After which, realizing how cruel that had been, how unfair (for she’d been helping me tirelessly), I added, “You should get some rest. It’s—it’s going to be dark. I’ll push on from here; okay? Don’t wait up.”

And I put the Jeep in gear.

––––––––

The first thing I noticed when I got home to the duplex—it must have been around midnight—was that Amanda’s unit was dark while mine was illuminated; something quickly explained when I swung open the door and saw the burning candles, not to mention the tinfoil-covered plate and half bottle of wine; or, for that matter, the greeting card-sized envelope—from which I withdrew a letter that read, simply, Happy 50th, S.B. We’ll find her.

I guess I must have smiled.

“S.B.” —Sebastian Adams. She had a memory like a steel trap.

I lifted the tinfoil and peeked at the dish—a fusilli pasta topped with white marinara sauce—but wasn’t any hungrier than the last time she’d cooked; and merely re-covered it. I looked around the table. That wine, though.

I snatched it up and fetched a glass (funny she hadn’t left me one) and then went out onto the deck—startling a Compy in the process, which leapt from the round table next to my chair and strutted—its little head bobbing, its tail jouncing—across the planks; into the cycad bushes.

“Boo,” I said.

Then I settled in: propping my feet on the stool and looking out at the Atlantic, purposefully ignoring the little framed picture of Búi; disregarding the spilled peanuts and disturbed water glasses, some of which had been knocked over and some of which remained standing, but all of which contained or had contained small amounts of water, because now I was doing it (wasn’t it funny, how couples could rub off on each other?).

“Tomorrow we’ll do Resorts World,” I said, still not looking at the picture. “If that’s okay with you. I mean, it’s like I’ve always said: You’re the boss. No, no, that’s how I want it. You should know that by now.”

I took a drink straight from the bottle, which Amanda had left open, and exhaled. Then I tipped it again and drained the entire contents. “Well, honey, you wanted purple yams, remember? But it looks like your dinky dau sense of direction finally got the best of you. So you lost your way and mistook north for south; and now you’re probably on the other side of Bailey Town—alone, confused, and terrified, I’m sure.”

I looked at the sky—just a vast, black pit, mostly, like the ocean—but didn’t see any lights, nor the prism-like jewels that had hung there since the Flashback—the time-storm; whatever—I suppose because of the clouds.

“Or ... have you disappeared to somewhere else; like everyone else on this island? Another time, another place, another epoch ...” I lolled my head against the backrest, woozily. “What the hell is this Flashback, anyway? I’ll tell you what I think; I’m afraid Time itself has somehow been changed so that half the planet never existed. I’m afraid the first wave took the others and the second wave brought the dinosaurs and a third wave, well, a third wave took you. Because, honey, I’ve searched ... and searched ... and you just don’t seem to be here. Not f*****g anywhere.”

A moment came and went; a moment in which I might have shattered, a moment in which I was capable of anything. But, as I said: It came ... and it went.

And then I did look at her picture; at her round, youthful face (although we were both precisely the same age), and her large, straight teeth. At the big brown eyes I’d often joked would eventually outgrow their sockets (to just dangle from their stalks, I’d said), and her ability to smile for the camera even after a terrifying ride in Miami (with a drunken boat captain) had almost ended our vacation—and our lives. At the girl from Bình Du’o’ng Province, South Vietnam, whom I’d married 7 years prior and experienced the initial Flashback with—as well as the meteor-caused tsunami which had happened immediately after—but who had then vanished without a trace on a trip to get purple yams. And chia seeds.