Lost Cargo (11 page)

Annie Wong was the one bright spot.

That night, Monroe watched Annie turn off the last lamp among Maxwell’s aisles of fine cooking equipment, linens, and organic wine. The recessed lights behind the counter caught the curve of her face, her silver rings, and plum-colored dress.

“You look beautiful,” he told her.

“Well, I don’t feel beautiful,” she said. “I guess I’m just tired.”

“We’ll take the Metro. We don’t have to walk home.”

She shook her head. “I’m fine, really. I can walk.”

“You’re not sick?”

“It’s nothing, really.”

He wasn’t sure he believed her, but sometimes she got like that. Shy, hard for her to say what was on her mind. Besides, she didn’t look sick. She looked radiant, and had for a while, her skin and hair glowing with health. Before they left, she rang up ten lottery tickets for him, locked the cash in the office, found her coat, and draped her long hair over the collar. The lottery tickets were probably a waste of money, but he had to keep a few dreams burning.

They began the long walk to her Dupont Circle apartment.

She took his arm. “So, Monroe Henry Broussard, what are you going to do when you win the lottery?”

“Buy fourteen bulldogs and finish law school.”

“American bulldogs or the short and squatty kind?”

“Short and squatty.”

She laughed. “What else?”

“Fly,” he told her. “Get a pilot’s license and fly over the Pacific. Get away from civilization. Fly over all the islands and pick the best one. Some little patch of sand with miles of sky and stars without a single apartment building in the way.”

“What, no picket fence?”

“Sure, I’ll have a grass hut with a picket fence. What about you?”

She said if she didn’t have to manage a store for somebody else, she would still need something to do, so if she won the lottery she’d have a restaurant in the city, a place where she could bake bread and make soup, convert an old brownstone with a turret, a bay window, and working fireplaces. She’d put plush couches and vintage armchairs around the hearths, the tables would have linen tablecloths, and in the summer she’d serve desserts in a courtyard with climbing roses.

“If you buy an island,” she teased, “we won’t see each other anymore.”

He kissed her. “You can open your restaurant on my island.”

“And you’ll be the only one who eats there, you and the fish.”

The couple left the pubs and shops behind and crossed a dark side street to a neglected bridge. Streetlights with clouded lamps cast their dim light over a wooded gorge. Rock Creek Park. In the daytime old wine bottles and slabs of cardboard the homeless slept on showed up in the weeds, but night masked the city’s harsh realities.

They moved on. The avenue grew brighter. Tiny shops, restaurants, and art galleries appeared. Connecticut Avenue began to run downhill. Beyond the Calvert Street crossroads the Taft Bridge spanned another chasm of black trees, Rock Creek Park again. Stone lions guarded the bridge, their heavy heads lifted as if they were sniffing the night.

Monroe and Annie ducked inside a cafe, a sliver of a place with floor to ceiling paintings, dark wood tables, and Bentwood chairs.

“Let’s get married,” he said over coffee.

She smiled and cast her eyes down. “That’s the third time you’ve said that.”

“Let’s do it. Let’s get married.”

“We don’t have the money for a wedding.”

“We’ll have it later,” he told her. “Let’s get married at the courthouse.”

She bit back her smile. “Let’s have a baby.”

“Later,” he said. “We’ll have twenty-five if you want. Just not now.”

“Seventeen then,” she said.

He closed his hand over her fingers. “Later. Seventeen kids later on, and fourteen bulldogs.”

A tiny furrow appeared on her brow. “No, seriously, Monroe, I want a child.”

“I have to finish law school first,” he said.

The bell on the door rang. More people crowded into the narrow cafe. Monroe and Annie went back into the cold, crossed the avenue, and passed arm in arm under the stone lions onto the bridge.

There were no buildings here to break the force of the wind. It howled over the chasm and wrapped Annie’s long hair around her face. Laughing, she tried to brush the strands from her eyes, but the wind blew it all back. Halfway across, the lovers ignored the cold to share a kiss and gaze at the far lights of Georgetown.

They had left the bridge and started up the avenue when Monroe saw something from the corner of his eye. Disturbed, he turned around.

A huge gray shape squatted on the rail behind one of the stone lions on the opposite side of the bridge. Monroe gripped Annie’s shoulder, trying to understand what he was seeing. The shape billowed in the fierce wind, peeled away from the statue, spread itself out, plummeted over the edge, and disappeared without a sound into the dark wooded chasm.

“I think somebody just jumped off the bridge,” he said.

“You saw it?” she gasped. “You think it was a suicide?”

“I don’t know… I don’t know what I saw.” Maybe some poor soul had just ended their miserable existence, or maybe not. Maybe the wind had blown something over the rail. City charities handed out coarse gray blankets to the homeless. His mind scrambled. That had to be it. One of those blankets. It didn’t look like a blanket, though. He met Annie’s eyes. Traffic rumbled by as the wind shrieked around them.

They had to go back.

When a break in the cars appeared, they ran across the bridge. Monroe searched the sidewalk for a note the jumper might have left behind, but the sidewalk was empty. If anything had been there, the wind must have blown it away.

Nerves prickling, he put his hands on the icy rail. Below the bridge lay a dense forest, solid black except for glittering headlights that snaked down the parkway. It was a long way down, long enough to instantly kill anybody desperate enough to leap.

“I can’t see anything,” he said.

Annie peered into the dark. “I can’t either.”

“You want to go down there and look?”

“No,” she said. “I have a bad feeling about it.”

“So do I. Let’s go.”

He couldn’t forget it, though, and woke up from an uneasy sleep in the middle of the night. Annie slept beside him, breathing softly, beautiful in her nakedness, her hair flowing over the pillow. Under the sheets he could feel the heat from her back and slender hips molded against his body.

He kissed her shoulder, got up to use the bathroom, and walked naked through her small apartment. The aroma of baked bread lingered in the kitchen. Yesterday she’d surprised him with cornbread, black-eyed peas, and okra, a little bit of Mississippi.

When he turned from the kitchen, the museum print of Van Gogh’s
Starry Night
on the refrigerator caught his eye. He’d never really looked at the print before. A village slumbered beneath dark hills in the soft blue shadows of evening. The houses spoke of contentment and reminded him of his life before the hurricane obliterated his family from the world. Mysterious stars above the sleeping village whirled across the night sky.

Madness. Reality. Epiphany.

Anything could happen in this life.

The wind moaned against the house. He parted the curtains to look down three floors to the quiet street. What the hell did he see on the bridge? It couldn’t have been a blanket. The thing had hovered on the rail before it went over the edge. And it couldn’t have been a human being. Even if somebody had decided to jump, they wouldn’t have hovered on a bridge rail. Not unless they were an acrobat.

He had to stop Annie from walking home alone. It was winter now, anyway. She had to start taking the Metro. Tomorrow he would talk to her about it.

The cold was coming through the windowpanes, so he closed the curtains and slipped back into bed. He wrapped his arms around her and felt her warmth. Marrying Annie Wong seemed as natural as breathing. He would remake his life with her. He’d get through law school. One romantic, flowery thought followed another. He’d find a way to buy her a restaurant, get the brownstone with the roses, give her children, the sun and the moon and the stars.

When he fell asleep, he dreamed about the glowing door.

T
he vampire-thin barista in the bookstore cafe handed Ian his change. “Two lattes and two chocolate scones,” the barista said. “I’ll call you when they’re ready. Name?”

“Ian Mitchell.” Ian tucked his wallet in his tweed jacket and turned to his wife. “This is great, Lisa. When we move, we can go for coffee without taking the car.”

They’d stopped in on a whim. The lamps in the bookstore window had enticed them from the cold, damp street into a warm, two-story world of art-filled brick walls and aisles crammed with thousands of books. They followed the aroma of coffee upstairs to a cafe with black lacquered tables, contemporary green upholstered chairs, and wide windows that overlooked Connecticut Avenue.

Four caged cats sat on a glass table in the reading area. A orange tabby saw Lisa and rubbed against the bars of his cage. Beside him, a large black cat, a longhaired black and white, and a pure white cat followed her with their eyes.

“Ian, look at them,” she said. “They’re beautiful.”

“You want to get another cat, go ahead.”

Lisa shook her head. “No, we just got the kitten. One cat is enough.”

“We can have two cats. Go ahead.”

A woman in jeans with a Humane Society Volunteer tag came over. “They’re all up for adoption,” she told them. She didn’t wear any makeup and looked like she was about twelve years old, but was probably pushing thirty.

“I hate seeing anything in a cage,” Lisa said. “What happened to them?”

“Animal control picked them up from a hoarder,” the volunteer said.

“That’s so sad.” Lisa stared at the cats. “Well, maybe we could get another cat. I can’t say no. I could turn into a hoarder myself. Just kidding, of course.”

“Which one do you like?” Ian looked at the white cat. “Hemingway. Take him. Maybe he drinks Scotch and writes novels.”

Lisa gave her husband a wry smile. “No, that’s a girl. You know, we have a girl already. Sometimes females don’t get along, you know, catty.” She turned to the volunteer. “Which one is the least dominant?”

The volunteer pointed to the black cat. “Shadow. He’s shy. He’ll hide right under your bed, but he’ll come around.”

“Mitchell,” the barista called from the cafe.

“What’s the cat’s name again?” Lisa asked.

“Shadow,” the volunteer said. “You’re saving a life. He’s a good cat.”

“Looks like you’ve found a home,” Lisa told the cat.

Shadow blinked his green eyes.

The little piece of turbulent gray sky grew larger and larger as Monroe and Annie reached the street. The steep escalator at the Dupont Circle Metro station always reminded Monroe of Dante’s ascent from hell. Tall buildings rose into view, followed by barren trees. The sounds of traffic grew louder. He looked at Annie, lovely in her blue wool jacket, and glanced over his shoulder at the subway receding far below them. A blast of cold wind hit their faces. Suddenly he saw the apparition of the door and fought to keep from reeling.

Brilliant blue light. Slowly spinning overhead. Shining in his eyes.

His knees wanted to buckle, but by the time the escalator reached the street, the apparition disappeared. Shaken, he caught his breath. Doors full of blue light. What the hell was that about? Maybe Annie’s blue jacket triggered it. Maybe his retina was going, or worse.

The traffic brought him back as they crossed the avenue. He’d talked Annie out of walking home alone, but he couldn’t shake the memory of the thing plummeting off the Taft Bridge. He wasn’t going to let anything crazy happen to her. They had a life together now. Half an hour ago they’d picked up the marriage license, and by the end of the day they’d be married.

They walked two blocks to her building and up the creaking staircase to her tiny third-floor flat. Annie’s place was small but full of light and charm, which had to be a sign his life was changing for the better. The living room had a bay window, built-in bookcases, and a fireplace with a marble mantel she’d lined with his jazz and swamp pop collection.

He tossed their coats on the brass bed. While she put together a simple lunch of soup, salad, cheese, and olive bread, he came up behind her and kissed her neck.

After lunch they sat on the couch with two glasses of wine.

For a split second he saw the tiny glowing door in the window, as if the apparition had chased him all the way from the Metro, but in the next moment it vanished through the pane like a ball of lightning.
Out with it. Tell her
.

“Something’s going on with me,” he said. “I think I need a doctor.”

She tilted her head. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

“I keep seeing things. Maybe something’s wrong with my eyes.”

“Seeing what things?”

“A door,” he told her. “A door with this blinding blue light… it’s in the sky, and it’s wide open, but I can’t see what’s inside it.”

She gave him a guarded look. “You’re dreaming this.”

“No, unfortunately, I’m wide awake.” Maybe he was losing his mind. Would she refuse to marry him?

“How long has this been going on?”

“A month, maybe. I’m not sure.”

“It’s because of your family,” she said. “It’s because you lost your whole family in the hurricane.”

She made sense. He sat back on the couch and stared at her.

“That’s why the door is in the sky,” Annie said. “It’s symbolic. It’s the afterlife. You went through a terrible loss that’s going to affect you for a long time.”

“You really think that’s the reason,” he said.

She nodded. “You know what they say, that the mind can play tricks on itself. Maybe you should talk to somebody. Seriously, sweetheart.”

He put his wine glass down. “In the middle of your life you never think this could be it. You never think this could be the last day. Annie, if anything ever happens to me, if I ever just disappear like my family, remember that I’ll always be somewhere in the universe, loving you.”