Elixir (22 page)

This would’ve bothered Sean in the past, wild rumors attached to his name. But it seems so insignificant now. He has bigger problems to deal with, real problems. “Sorry bro, but I’ve got some shit to do. I’ll give you the whole story some other time.” He stands. “I got to go now though.”

“I hear you homie.” Kyle gets up and hugs him. “Great to have you back.”

A few moments pass. “I wouldn’t really call it back.”

“You’re not here for good now?”

He’s quiet for a while. “I don’t know what I am right now.”

Kyle can detect the distress on him. He remembers this look, the day he dropped the OxyContin off four years ago. “Well, hit me up when you can get together. I still have the same number.”

“Yup. One more thing. Don’t mention to anyone you saw me. Okay?”

Kyle can tell he’s serious about this. “Yeah bro. Will do.”

“We’ll catch up. I promise.” Sean turns and starts walking off.

“Wait,” Kyle says with urgency. “You might as well have this now.” He pulls something out of his wallet. “No need for it anymore.” Curious, Sean returns to him. He hands him a creased old photo of the two of them in their baseball uniforms, both twelve years old. “After they said you were dead I kept it on me. You know, to remember you by.” He lets out a soft laugh. “I also thought it would bring you back somehow. Kind of dumb, I realize a picture doesn’t have the power to do things like that.” He pauses. “Well, you’re here now, so I guess I don’t need it anymore. Figured you might as well have it.”

Grasping the corner, Sean gazes through the fog at the slice of captured space and time, recollecting the exact moment. “Thanks man,” he says, sliding the photo in his back pocket, appreciating the influence he must have had on Kyle’s life for him to carry around his picture for that long. The guys wave to each other and go their separate ways.

Advancing into the haze, Sean starts thinking about Natasha and the influence he’s had on her life. His insides get heavy when he realizes that pending a miracle he won’t be able to do this next big thing for her and she may soon only exist as a photo in his wallet, just like he existed as one in Kyle’s after getting smashed by a truck on his way to a camping trip in Arizona.

That night Dante, the man Stone recommended to the others at Colzyne Systems, drives a black Lincoln town car with tinted windows on the 101 Freeway toward Los Angeles. He’s Native American by heritage but hasn’t worn his hair long or dressed in tribal attire since leaving the reservation for the military over twenty years ago. He has a crew cut and athletic frame, maintaining the appearance of a combat soldier even in his early forties. The surfaces of his almond-shaped eyes are pure white, no little red veins or other imperfections, and his brown irises are so dark they almost look black.

In about an hour he enters Pasadena’s Fresh Stop convenience store. Passing a display of New Year’s hats and blowers, he walks to the magazine rack, plucking
Popular Mechanics
,
Hunting
, and
Muscle & Fitness
. He heads to the counter and places them down. As an attendant keys the prices on a register, Dante glances around, the backdoor, the window, the security camera in the far corner.

The employee jams the magazines in a small plastic bag and says, “Fourteen seventy-eight.” He hands him a twenty and the man peels some singles from the drawer. “Thank you sir.” Dante collects the change and bag and exits into the parking lot, glow of the store sign piercing the fog in thin rays.

He gets in the Lincoln, pulls out, and cruises a minute or so. He turns onto the professor’s block, scanning the house numbers, slowing as they approach eighty-six. He coasts to a stop about a hundred feet outside the Merzberg home and shuts off the engine. He glimpses the time on his Rolex watch, then adjusts his fitted gray suit in the rearview. Reaching to the passenger’s seat, he removes an In-N-Out cheeseburger from a to-go bag, unwraps it, then bites. Gaze on the front door, he waits.

Inside the residence, the professor flips through a heap of papers on his dining room table with his reading glasses on, each sheet filled with names and contact information of chemistry faculty in California universities, vase, decorative plates, and fruit bowl removed and stacked on the rug to make room.

He stops on a page and dials a number on his phone. “Hi,” he says into it. “Marshall, this is Steven Merzberg from SoCal Tech...yes, the Lonheimer Conference. How are you? Excellent. I’m sorry to be a disturbance, but I’m in desperate need of a favor. I’m searching for some chemicals for a project. Tonight.” He listens for a while, expression subduing. “I understand. Yes I realize it’s New Year’s Eve. All right. Enjoy the party. So long.” With a sigh he hangs up and continues poring over the sheets.

Sean’s body is stiff on the couch in the den one room over, live footage of Manhattan’s Times Square on the TV, the New Year Ball in the background hours away from dropping, bubbly female announcer in earmuffs introducing a pop band about to perform. He can overhear the professor’s frantic shuffling of paper above her voice.

Aliza enters, a cup of chamomile tea in each hand. She rests one in front of Sean and sits next to him with hers. “Have some of this,” she says. “It’ll help.” She pats his knee. “Steven will find someone. Don’t worry.”

He observes the steam rising from the drink, how it curls and disappears reminding him of his breath in the cold weather the last night he saw Natasha in Zurich. He looks at Aliza sipping. The way the light from the screen hits her gives her red hair a kind of pink hue.

He starts fidgeting. “I’m gonna take a shower,” he says, hoping it’ll calm him down some.

“Okay darling. There’s fresh towels in the linen closet.”

He crosses the living room, carpet still stained from his spill earlier, then goes up the stairs, 1950’s wood squeaking beneath him. He yanks a towel from a closet packed with over-the-counter medicine packages, brings it in the room he’s been sleeping in, undresses, and wraps it around his waist.

Moonlight spills around the lawn’s tree branches and through the window and onto the floorboards in diamonds. He walks across them with his bare feet into the hallway, where he overhears the professor on another call, tone of voice not promising. Sean goes in the son’s old bathroom and turns on the lights, a bulb out, a shadow covering half the space. He peels back the Superman shower curtain and twists the handle, the plumbing groaning behind the walls.

He gets inside, water pressure low, a notch above a dribble. He watches the silver drain, a liquid stream winding around it, a gurgle below. Closing his eyes, he hums a song and sways back and forth, water trickling down his face. He thinks about death for a while, still not definite after all these years what becomes of people after they’re gone from Earth. He pictures his sick girlfriend six thousand miles away without him, staring at the end. He feels connected to her at the deepest level, him a part of her and her a part of him. If she died, in a way, he’d die too.

“Sean,” the professor says a level below, voice ringing with enthusiasm. Sean rips back the curtain and juts his upper body toward the door, moisture dripping from his hair onto the tiles. “Sean.” He flips off the shower, ties his towel around himself, and bolts out the room. He trots down the stairs into the den, a trail of soggy footprints on the rug behind him. The professor, grinning with dimples, clasps his phone in his left hand, a piece of paper in his right. “I got one.”

“You did?” Sean throws his arms around him, drenching the front of his shirt, and kisses his bald head.

“Quick, look up flight times. San Francisco International.” He points at his laptop on the table with a trembling finger. “Get on the next one out. A colleague of mine, Victor Case, will pick you up from the airport, drive you to his lab at Benley University, and gather the chemicals for you. I’ll give you all his contact info.”

“Thank—”

“Thank me later dammit. Go. Find a flight.”

About fifteen minutes later Sean comes down dressed,
Easy Rider
sunglasses hanging from his collar. He shakes the professor’s hand and says, “I’ll call you when I land.”

“Good luck boy.” He smacks Sean’s shoulder, holding it for a couple moments before letting go.

Sean walks to Aliza, sipping her tea by the kitchen entrance. He hugs her. Balancing her cup with one hand, she pats his back with the other and says, “I want to meet her someday. Promise me.”

He nods. “I promise.” With a wave he strides to the door, pushes it open, and steps into the fog.

Through the mist, Dante watches someone walk up the Merzbergs’ stone lawn pathway, a match of his target’s age, gender, and height. He lowers his
Popular Mechanics
magazine and spins his key in the ignition. As the kid climbs inside his Explorer, Dante creeps onto the street, headlamps slicing through the haze. Keeping some distance, he follows the Explorer as it coasts along the block, its red brake lights radiating in the darkness in front of him.

Sean puts on the radio, a classic rock station, “Crystal Ship” by The Doors playing. He leans forward to see better, fog impairing visibility. Chilly, he turns on the heat, vents blasting cold air for a while, then warm.

As he crawls toward the main road, Dante’s Lincoln sedan appears in his rearview, only other vehicle around. Sean passes some businesses, all closed, pharmacy, cleaners, dentist. He turns right. So does the other car. He drives for about a minute, reaches a stop sign, then makes a left. So does the Lincoln. Studying it in the mirror, he attempts to identify the driver, wondering if someone’s following him.

He glances at the clock on the console. 8:03 PM. He figures he can spare a few minutes to make sure he’s not being tailed before going to the airport, next available flight not for almost three hours. He considers whether the FBI found out he was back in the country. Worse, Paul Pine.

He assumes if the vehicle trails him for two more lefts, three in a row, it’ll be going in a circle with no purpose other than to stalk him. He approaches a traffic light, pulling into the left-turn lane. The sedan does the same. The signal flashes green, the car mimicking him as he makes his second consecutive left.

He ascends a hill, dozens of big houses tucked away off the street on tree-dense lawns, haze heavier up the slope. It’s quiet in this part of town, his radio the only noise around, “Waterloo Sunset” by The Kinks now on. At the next stoplight, he noses into the left-turn lane, a suspicious eye on his mirror. The sedan doesn’t stop behind to his surprise, instead to his right. Head straight, he twists his gaze to the side trying to see the driver, nothing in return except his own reflection in the tinted window.

The signal turns green, Sean hooking his third left. He glances back, the sedan idling. He distances from it, mulling over why it isn’t moving. He advances for a while, then almost loses control of the Explorer as a white shine wraps it, the Lincoln’s high beams on for the first time. He squints to battle the glare. Motor revving, the Lincoln speeds up. “Shit,” Sean says to himself, a gust of nausea in his stomach. He pushes hard on the pedal, accelerating to sixty-something miles per hour.

He takes a sharp right onto a double-yellow-line road, brakes screeching, skid marks burning into the asphalt. The sedan makes the same turn. Listening to the roar of the chasing vehicle, he figures something other than a town-car engine must be under its hood.

They fly into a business district, sidewalks filled with drunk people barhopping for New Year’s. Sean sees a yellow light ahead and decides to floor it to make it through. He cuts across the four-lane intersection at close to eighty miles per hour just in time, cars honking at him.

He spots the sedan in the mirror, stuck at the just-changed red light. “Ha,” he says, banging his hand on the steering wheel in celebration. Swinging his attention back to the traffic, he notices a blurry octagon in his field of vision. He ran a stop sign while looking back, his SUV now barreling onto a crosswalk. He hears a girl scream, sees a young couple diving out of his way. He punches the brake before hitting anyone, the Explorer’s rear whipping to the left, whole vehicle wobbling. It teeters along the street for a few moments, then topples, glass and sparks shooting as the driver’s side grinds against the pavement.

It slides to a stop, smoke ascending, oil oozing from the bottom. Twelve spectators approach shocked. In ten seconds or so the passenger’s door opens toward the sky. Sean squirms out battered, gravity slamming the metal slab back down, a wince as it strikes his collarbone. He lies on the side of the SUV for a few moments, gasping, still trying to comprehend what’s going on. His heartbeat is so strong he can feel it vibrate against the steel shell under his back.

Groaning, he pushes himself to a knee, then stands. The onlookers gawk at him, busted
Easy Rider
sunglasses hanging from his shirt, specks of windshield in his hair. “Holy shit, dude,” a Latino guy in a Dodgers cap says. “Are you all right?” Sean doesn’t acknowledge him, scanning the road through the fog for the Lincoln. No sign.

He hops down, landing on a pile of glass and oil. The observers aren’t sure what to do. He decides he needs to escape, get away from the driver of that black car. He jogs toward a strip-mall parking lot across the street as the volume of a police siren in the distance escalates.

Entering the lot, he notices the left hemline of his jeans is soaked, red all the way around. Stopping behind a closed GNC store, he bends and lifts the pant leg, ankle flesh torn in three directions. Almost to the bone. He leans against the cement wall, a yellow cage bolted above, a single bulb in it, the only light around. Head down, he thinks about his next move, the initial shock of the accident wearing off, his body no longer numb, pain from the wound rushing in.

He makes out a dumpster in the periphery of the light beam, a sign on it saying “Dumping for Grand Pasadena 16 Multiplex ONLY.” He remembers going there when he was younger, on Thursday movie night with Mary sometimes. Wanting to avoid being in plain sight of his pursuer, he decides to hide out in the theater and call the professor for help. He spots a bunch of doors along the building, back exits for all the screening rooms, a number spray-painted on each. He limps to the first, ankle throbbing, and jiggles the handle. Locked. The second. Locked. He tries a few more, all sealed.