Jumper 1 - Jumper (7 page)

"Where do you go to school?"

"I don't. Haven't the aptitude."

She looked over her glasses at me. "You don't sound particularly stupid."

I blushed again. "I'm just taking my time."

The lights began dimming for the second act. She finished her champagne and dropped the plastic glass in the trash. Then she stuck out her hand.

I took it. She pumped it twice firmly and said, "Nice talking to you, David. Enjoy the rest of the show."

"You too, Millie."

I cried during the second act. Sweeney's wife, who's had her child stolen away from her and has been driven mad by rape, is revealed to be the mad, dissolute street beggar/prostitute, but only after Sweeney kills her when she witnesses the murder of her rapist, Judge Turpin.

The first time I saw this scene I decided I didn't like it. I went away, in fact, with a very negative impression of the show. It was only after I found myself examining the face of every bag lady on the street to see if she was my mother that I realized why I didn't like the scene.

Still, I didn't stop looking at bag ladies and, after a while, I started returning to
Sweeney Todd.

I skipped the finale and jumped to Grand Central Terminal. It's one of the places you can find a cab late at night. I stuck my hand out and this black man, perhaps twenty-five and raggedly dressed, jumped out in the street. "Cab? You need a cab? I'll get you a cab."

I could have walked to the regulated taxi stand on the Vanderbilt Avenue side, but what the heck. I nodded.

He stuck a chrome police whistle in his teeth and blew it, two sharp piercing blasts. Down the block a cab pulled over two lanes and pulled up. The black guy held the door for me. I handed him a bill.

"Hey, man. Two dollars to get a cab. Two dollars."

"That's a ten."

He stepped back, surprised. "Oh. Yeah. Thanks, man."

I had the cabbie go back across Forty-fifth to the theater where
Sweeney
was showing and had him park it on the curb. I stood on the sidewalk, one foot still in the cab, and fended off people who wanted the cab. "I'm picking someone up. This cab is taken. I've already got this cab. Sorry. No, I don't want to share this cab. I'm waiting for someone. Go away."

I was beginning to question this endeavor when Millie finally appeared, looking very New York with her purse around one shoulder and her neck, her face very determined and purposeful.

"Millie!"

She turned, surprise on her face. "David. How did you get a cab?"

I waved my hands and shrugged. "Magic. Let me give you a lift."

She came closer. "You don't know which way I'm going."

"So."

"I'm staying down in the Village."

"Close enough for government work. Get in." I held the door for her and told the driver, "Sheridan Square." I frowned.
Close enough for government work.
My dad used that phrase. I wondered what other things I did that were like my father.

Millie frowned. "Where is that?"

"It's in the heart of the Village. It's also near some really great restaurants. You hungry?"

"What is this? I thought we were just sharing a taxi." She was smiling, though. "How much is the fare going to be? I was going to take the subway back. I didn't exactly budget for a cab. I'd heard how impossible it is to get one after the theaters let out."

"Well, it's true. It felt like planet of the zombie taxi-seekers there while I waited for you."

"You were waiting for me?" She looked nervous for a moment. "My mother told me not to talk to strangers. How much is the cab going to be?"

"Forget the cab. I offered a lift, not half a taxi. And I'm good for something to eat if you want."

"Hmmm. Just how old are you, David?"

I blushed and looked at my watch. "In forty-seven minutes I'll be eighteen." I looked away from her, at the passing lights and sidewalks. I remembered the events surrounding my seventeenth birthday and shuddered.

"Oh. Well happy almost birthday." She stared ahead. "You act older than that. You dress awfully nice and you don't talk that young."

I shrugged. "I read a great deal... and I can afford to dress like this."

"You must have some job."

I wondered what I was doing in this cab with this woman. Lonely. "I don't have a job, Millie. I don't need one."

"Your parents are that rich?"

I thought about Dad, the skinflint, with his Cadillac and his bottle. "My dad does all right, but I don't take anything from him. I have my own money—banking interests."

"You don't go to school and you don't work? What do you do?"

I smiled without humor. "I read a lot."

"You said that."

"Well... it's true."

She looked out the window on the other side of the cab. Both her hands clutched tightly around her purse. Finally she turned back and said, "I ate before the show, but some cappuccino or espresso at one of those sidewalk cafés would be nice."

A couple of days after the bank robbery, when my nerves had settled somewhat, I moved into the Gramercy Park hotel. This was nice for a while, but the atmosphere of the hotel and the size of the room got to me after a month.

I started looking for an apartment in the Village, first, but, even though I could afford things there, most of the places wanted references and ID and bank accounts—stuff I didn't have. Finally I found a place in East Flatbush for half the money with half the hassle. I got a year's lease and paid the landlord in postal money orders for the deposit and three months' rent.

He seemed happy.

Shortly after I moved in, I did some minor repairs, added iron brackets on both sides of the doors to hold two-by-four drop bars, and walled up a walk-in closet off the hall. When I was done, it was just another blank wall, a room without an entrance.

Except to me, that is.

And, except for the odd pounding, which I was careful to do during the day while my downstairs neighbors were at work, nobody was the wiser since I'd jumped the materials directly into the apartment from a lumberyard in Yonkers. Nobody saw me carry the lengths of two-by-fours or Sheetrock into the apartment.

I moved the money from the library after that, stacking it neatly on the shelves in the hidden closet and devoting an entire week to replacing the Chemical Bank paper straps with rubber bands and then burning the paper straps in the kitchen sink.

Before that, I just knew that I was going to show up at the library and find a policeman waiting for me. Now the worst I feared was the landlord coming in and wondering what I'd done with the closet.

Covering the wall so cleanly really did something for me. It wasn't something I bought with money. It wasn't something someone else did for me. It left me feeling good about myself.

I resolved to do more work with my hands in the future.

To furnish the apartment I bought only furniture that I could lift. If something was too big for me to lift, it had to break apart into liftable pieces. That way I could jump them directly to the apartment.

Most of my furniture purchases were bookshelves. Most of my other purchases were books.

Millie was in town for four more days. She let me follow her through several traditional New York sights—the Bronx Zoo, the Metropolitan Museum, the Empire State Building. I took her to see two more Broadway shows and to a dinner at Tavern on the Green. She accepted them reluctantly.

"You're really sweet, David, but you're three and a half years younger than me. I don't like you spending money on me under false pretenses."

We were walking in Central Park across the Sheep Meadow on our way to the mall. Kites, bright daubs of flitting pigment, tried to paint the sky. Bicyclists went by in clumps on the sidewalk on the other side of the fence.

"What's false about it? First of all, I am not trying to create an implicit contract between the two of us. I have this money and I like spending time with you. The only thing I expect from it is the time itself. Time that I'm not alone. I wouldn't
mind
something else, but I don't expect to buy it.

"And this age thing is a crock of sexist shit. I'm surprised at you."

She frowned. "What's sexist about it?"

"If I were three years older than you, romantic involvement would be possible, even probable. Have you ever dated someone that much older than you?"

She blushed.

I went on. "I think it's acceptable in society because older men have accumulated more worldly goods. Therefore they make better suitors. Perhaps that's the original reason. Perhaps it's that alpha male crap. Older bulls have survived longer, making their genes worth coveting. Aren't you above those outdated factors? Are you going to let a male idea of what and who you should be make your choices for you?"

"Give me a break, David!"

I shrugged. "If you don't want to spend the time with me for other reasons, just say so. Just don't use that age thing." I stared down at my feet and said in a quieter voice, "I have to put up with enough shit because of my age."

She didn't say anything for a long time, until we were walking past the fountain café. My ears started to burn and I was mad at myself—almost ashamed for some reason. I wished I'd kept my mouth shut.

"It's not particularly fair, is it," she said, finally. "We get this conditioning, this mind-set. It's pumped into us from the time we're little kids." She stopped walking when we were back on the sidewalk, and sat on a nearby bench. "Let me try it another way. It's not fair to get involved with you, not for either of us, when I'm flying back to Stillwater tomorrow."

I shrugged. "I already travel a great deal. OSU isn't that far out of the way."

She shook her head. "I just don't know."

"Come on." I grabbed her hand and pulled her up. "I'll buy you an Italian ice."

She laughed. "No. I'll buy
you
an Italian ice. My budget will stretch that far." She held on to my hand after she was up. "And I'll try to keep an open mind about things."

"What sort of things?"

"Things! Just things. Shut up. And quit smiling."

It wasn't until after I got the apartment that I went back to Dad's house. While I was staying in the Gramercy Park, I had the hotel do my laundry and I ate room service if I didn't want to go out, so I had less reason than usual to jump back to Stanville.

My second day in the apartment, though, I needed a hammer and a nail to hang a framed print I'd bought in the Village. I could have jumped to a store, but I wanted to hang it right then.

I jumped directly to Dad's garage and rummaged through the shelves for a nail. I'd found one and was picking up the hammer when I heard footsteps. I glanced out the garage door windows and saw the top of Dad's car.

Oh. It's Saturday.

The door from the kitchen started to open and I jumped back to my apartment.

I hit my thumb twice while pounding in the nail for the picture. Then, when I hung it, I found that I'd put it too low and had it to do all over again, including hitting my thumb.

Damn him, anyway!

I jumped back to the garage, threw the hammer down on the workbench with a loud clatter, and jumped back to the apartment.

Serve him right, I thought, to come running back in again and find nothing.

The next week I jumped to the house and, after determining he wasn't home, did a load of laundry. While the washer ran I walked through the house, seeing what was changed.

The house was much neater than when I'd done laundry four weeks previously. I wondered if he had hired someone since I wasn't there anymore to do the housework. His room was not quite as neat, socks and shirts thrown in a pile in the corner. A pair of slacks hung crookedly over the back of a chair. I remembered finding Dad's wallet when I'd pulled a pair of pants like those off him. That was when I'd found the hundred dollar bills.

The back of my head throbbed, as usual, when I remembered that money. Most of that money had been taken from me when I was mugged in Brooklyn. I felt a twinge of guilt.

Hell.

It took me less than half a minute to jump back to my money closet, pull twenty-two hundred-dollar bills, and jump back. The money made a nice pattern on his bedspread, five rows of four, with a single hundred dollar bill for each side.

I thought about him coming back into the house and finding them there, laid out. I savored the surprise, the shock, and thought about the language he'd use.

When I took the clothes out of the dryer, I resolved to find some other place to do my laundry. I liked the feeling of being out of debt to him.

The only things I would take from the house from now on, I resolved, would be things from my room, things that belonged to me. Nothing else from him. Not a solitary thing.

I started looking for other jumpers in the places I was most comfortable—libraries. My sources were books I used to laugh at, shelved in the occult/ESP section. There wasn't much I could credit as anything more than folklore, but I found myself reading them with a desperate intensity.

There were an awful lot of books in the "woo-woo" section of the library: pretty bizarre stuff—rains of frogs, circles in wheat fields, hauntings, prophets, people with past lives, mind readers, spoon benders, dowsers, and UFOs.

There weren't very many teleports.

I moved from the Stanville Library to the New York Public Library's research branch, the one with the lions out front. There was more stuff, but lord, the evidence wasn't very convincing. Well—actually, what evidence?

My talent seems to be documentable. It's repeatable. It's verifiable.

I think.

To be honest, I only knew that
I
could repeat it. I knew that
my
experience seemed repeatable. I hadn't performed it several times before unbiased witnesses. And I wasn't about to, either.

The only objective evidence I could point to, was the bank robbery. It made the paper, after all. Maybe my hunt for other teleports should pursue reports of unsolved crimes?

Right, Davy. How does that help you find
other
teleports? It doesn't even guarantee that there
are
other teleports, just unsolved crimes.