Dark Doorways (7 page)

“I do. She’s staring at us.”
Michael whispered, straight-faced, eyes focused on the barista.

We had no choice but to move
down the counter to await our beverages. Unfortunately, the move placed us in
arm’s-length of her table. We had to acknowledge her.

We both slowly looked up,
very cartoon-like. An anvil was about to fall on someone.

I sipped the hot latte
nervously, happy to hide behind the paper cup. No cinnamon. Interesting. I
could have sworn I ordered it with cinnamon, what Mom had always added.

“Michael. Sarah. Nice to see
you both.”

The contemptuous sneer said
otherwise. Her eyes squinted as she spoke, as if her entire face struggled to
release the words so incompatible with her actual thoughts. And what
were
her actual thoughts? Who
was
this wraith-like misfit?

“Eliza! Nice to see you too.”
Michael’s politeness helped to counter my awkward gaping.

Her body was expanding.
Getting up to harm us was, apparently, too much effort, and so she simply
expanded toward us. Her brown hair had been more tame last time I saw her, her
clothing more in order. She seemed,
what
?
Desperate
?

“Sarah, SARAH!” Michael was
pulling me by the oxters, dragging me off in my immobile state.

Why my legs refused to move,
and why the barista messed up my latte, perplexed me. “No cinnamon, Michael.”

We reached a restroom, a
solitary room at the end of a hallway. I stared numbly at its door, scrambling
to stay conscious.

“Look, Michael, the doorway.
It’s so bright.” It was an off-handed remark, just a comment on its appearance,
not in any way connected to the fact that I was drugged and in danger. They
were just words, just anesthetics speaking before surgery.

“Perfect.” He hauled me
inside, locking the door behind him. “Maybe she can’t get in if the doorway is
luminous.”

“Michael–” My thoughts
slipped in and out of the present. Cloudiness closed in on my vision.

“Sarah, she did something to
your coffee. You shouldn’t have had any.”

“But Michael–”

“Let me see if my phone
works. Maybe 911?”

“Michael.” He was fading with
each word, disappearing as I lost contact with anything tangible. “I might love
you.”

***

I had to pinch myself when I
finally woke up, thirsty and hungry on that disconcerting boat. The inside was
more train than boat, split down the middle with individual rooms on each side.
The boxiness of it unsettled me; it was the movements from being on water that
gave solace.

Michael, who never left my
side, who sat beside me there in our boxcar, squinted out his window as if
there was anything to see but fog. Maybe it was the fog he most wanted to
inspect.

“Michael, where... what
is–”

“You’re awake?” His hand went
to my forehead, checking my temperature when I could have named a dozen other
things wrong with me at that moment. None of them involved my temperature.

After glancing out into the
corridor, in both directions, he lowered his voice to a faint  murmur.
“You
might
love me?”

“Why are we whispering? Why
does my brain feel cloudy?”

“That doesn’t answer the
question.”

Before I had time to contemplate
those drugged words that had emerged from my own mouth, we heard a door open.
Not a normal door, not the clicking and thudding of a large wooden door that
welcomes loved ones into a home. No, this was a whooshing door, the kind that
sucks the life out of you, that separates train cars and perhaps separates
worlds.

“Did you hear that?”

“Shush!” His slender index
finger found its way to my mouth, as much to steady his nervous twitching as to
quiet me.

The man walking by seemed to
walk with a purpose, both in his posture and his intent expression. His suit,
obviously not tourist attire, shimmered like snake skin, reflecting light even
in the darkness of the corridor. Once he passed through the next life-sucking
door– a door that should never be on a boat– Michael’s shoulders
relaxed as I watched him fall back against the cushioned red pleather seat.

“Well, it wasn’t
her
.”

“Eliza?”

At some point we had formed
an unspoken agreement that Eliza no longer deserved the nickname Eli, that
shortened names were reserved for people who maybe did not drug us on a regular
basis.

“Yeah, Eliza.” He frowned out
into the corridor, his eyes focusing on the cheap carpeting. I noticed it too,
how the carpeting was thinner than construction paper, but somehow still left
the imprints of footsteps and food carts. Shimmering Suit Man and a hundred
other passengers had walked that hallway, but to where?

“Can I explore? I mean, I
want to see what’s on this boat, get a drink, stretch my legs...”

“Sarah.” His hand grasped my wrist,
taking me off guard. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. We need to find
a way out.”

“Out? These tour boat just go
along the river then drop you off downtown, right?

“This boat only goes one
way.”

***

I often wondered why the
number seven kept traversing through my life, why there were seven days in a
week, why Mom always kissed me goodnight seven times, why this misanthropic
boat had to creep under exactly seven bridges.

Each one rose slowly,
welcoming us into further imprisonment. Downtown Chicago disappeared into the
fog, each building as invisible as the pedestrians entering them. The third
bridge left us waiting, floating, suspended like the bridge itself. We had no
idea what would happen at the last bridge.

“I still don’t understand how
I got on this boat.”

“I still don’t understand why
you said you
might
love me.”

“Come on, I was
drugged
.
I’m being serious. Did
you
drag me here?” I looked into Michael’s eyes,
noticing for the first time that day how tired he looked.
Drained
.

He slowly glanced back out
the tiny square window, examining the fog again. His countenance reflected such
disgust, such repulsion; these were expressions I was not used to seeing on
him.

Several minutes of silence
engulfed the room, silent staring, silent waiting.
Where was Chicago’s
noise, that clamor that tourists find so disruptive?

So there we sat, Michael
leering at the fog and the boat just simply enjoying its buoyancy.  My
eyes settled on a crack in the pleather seats, that crevice that felt so
comforting in the moment. It welcomed me, cradled me, giving me something
stable to connect with. Part of me began to retreat further into it, shrinking
to fit inside comfortably, when I again began to wonder how on earth I ended up
on this vessel.

“Michael?”

He turned to me slowly,
letting his eyes fall on the pleather crack, where the gray foam poked out into
the red lining. Perhaps we both wanted to fall into that gray space.

“You weren’t responding. I
was afraid you were in a coma.” His words were barely audible, barely spoken.

“At the coffee shop?”

Michael nodded, never taking
his eyes off the seat crack.

“So you dragged me onto a
boat?”

His eyes finally rose to meet
mine, those eyes that grew more weary by the minute.

“No.”

Something replaced the
fatigue in his eyes. Fear. Maybe even terror.

After trying to read his
eyes, I watched as he dejectedly looked back out over the fog. He was conceding
to it.

“No, I didn’t bring you here.
I opened the door of that bathroom, hoping Eliza had left. I thought I could
get a cab and take you to the emergency room.” After a squint out at the fog,
he continued. “But when I opened the door, the coffee shop wasn’t there any
more. It was all fog. I carried you through the fog on what I thought was a
downtown sidewalk. Apparently, I was just walking onto this boat.”

“You were trying to protect
me.”
As boyfriends should
, I thought. It explained his preoccupation
with the fog, his hateful looks toward it. My index finger outlined the
pleather crack, tracing all the small tributary cracks feeding into it. “Maybe
we shouldn’t fight it.”

“What?”

“Even if we find a way off,
Eliza’s going to get us on this boat again.” We both watched my fingers tracing
the fissures in the seat. “Maybe falling into a fracture wouldn’t be so bad.”

***

“Did I ever tell you about a
dream I had with Mr. Parker in it? That guy that bought my mom’s house?”

“What did you call him? Bald
Head Parker?”

“
Receding Hair Line
Parker.”

After deciding to abandon any
unavailing escape plan, we allowed our flesh to relax into the pleather seats
as if they were real leather. We were young and falling in love, and what
better place to do that than on the Chicago River? What did it matter that we
felt tired and somewhat anesthetized, or that it was a disgusting body of
water?

The fog lifted with the third
bridge, revealing the city in all its polluted beauty. Holding hands, we
chatted like it was any other afternoon, like it was an actual date.

“So I guess I told Grace
about the dream, but maybe I never told you.” I shook my head and laughed,
feeling more carefree than I had in ages. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

“What? Should I be jealous?”

“Ha, right. It was–” I
cut myself off. It was
what
? How would I describe the man-wolf enamored
with me? I crossed one boney knee over another, wondering why I felt so
tranquil in this boxy compartment of a soulless boat.

But the city, oh the
gorgeous city
.

“Oh, Michael,” I began in my
saccharine tone. “There’s that Mediterranean café I’ve been wanting to try. We
should go there some night, watch the sunset. Doesn’t that sound romantic?”

We sank further into the
pleather’s crack, losing more feeling in our muscles, but enjoying every moment
of it. Twisting my arm through his, I rested my head on his shoulder to enjoy
the sites. I never remembered loving Chicago so much. It inspired lyrics from
La
Mer
as I gazed out our little window.

“Voyez ces oiseaux blancs...”

“You know those are pigeons
right? And that you hate pigeons?”

“Shut up and kiss me.”

“Okay, I draw a line when you
start quoting 90’s country hits.”

Our bliss might have gone on
like that, in that ignorant state that lovers sometimes prefer. The euphoric
sensations made the sky bluer, the city more thrilling, the boat somewhat
tolerable. We had decided to embrace the journey, to travel in good faith where
nothing was bona fide.

It was my little treasure map
butterfly that broke our trance. Flying up from my purse, it fluttered out of
its slumber to land on Michael’s arm, graceful as ever.

It was that little guide,
Gabi’s map that lead back to her house, that jolted me back to the reality of
our perilous situation. I no longer even had the energy to reach over and
transport the map back to my own lap.

“Michael–”

“I know.”

The map fluttered over to me,
the faintest bit of light still radiating from its fibers. Gabi, my
sister.
Gabi
knew what she was doing when she gave me this map.

“The door on the boat was
dark. Why did we forget that?” I frowned first at the map, then at Michael. We
both knew the boat was attacking us, taking something from us that we never
agreed to give.

“I’m not sure how to get off.
I honestly don’t know how I did it before. I think I just woke up and was back
home.” Michael looked out into the hallway, already envisioning an escape.

“We have the map. I think
it’s time we use it.”

***

It was difficult to
preconcert these things, to plan ahead for such precarious events in our lives.
I had no idea how this boat escape would turn out, but I had a companion, which
was more than I’d had in a long time.

Mom had passed away before
she and I could ever become adult friends. I had watched as Grace and her mom
went shopping or tried out a brunch restaurant when her parents visited.
That
could have been us, Mom.
Instead, I chose college, college in California no
less. Four whole years of missing out on shopping and brunches. Four years I
would have given up in a heartbeat if I had known I’d lose her.

But I had Michael, who held
my hand as we crossed under bridge number four.

“I think we need a plan,”
Michael said gravely.