The Marbury Lens (5 page)

I checked my cell phone. It was the next day, and I was on the other side of the planet. I really felt like I’d been torn from my world, even if there was still that lingering emptiness—like I had to wait for the rest of me to catch up.

If it ever would.

The train into London was empty, at least where I sat. Wynn insisted on buying a first class ticket on the Heathrow Express, and I realized that most travelers simply opted for less expensive methods of getting into the city. So I felt like I was inside an egg or something; and shifted my attention constantly between the news reporter on the television screen in front of me and the strangeness of the gray and green world that rushed backwards on the other side of the window glass.

My grandparents had already paid for a room for me and Conner at one of the nicer hotels in the city. It sat overlooking Regent’s Park, just a few hundred yards from the Tube station at Great Portland Street, so it was easy to find, even if I hadn’t ever been there before.

When I got in to the room, I threw my pack down on the bed. My back was sweating from having carried it in the humid summer heat. The room was nice, I guess, but not really much like the places I’d stayed at in America. It seemed so small, claustrophobic.

And there was only one enormous bed, covered with a thick comforter and a ridge of pillows, a headboard as high as I stood tall with a circular mirror in its center. I thought,
Just great, I get to share a bed with Conner
. With a computer desk, an armoire containing a flat-panel TV, a stuffed chair, dressing mirror, and two nightstands, there was hardly any floor at all. I kicked off my shoes—the same Vans I wore the night Freddie Horvath kidnapped me. The guy we killed.

Quit it, Jack.

I looked in the bathroom. Equally small. I found that I couldn’t even open the shower door unless the bathroom door was open—or else I had to step over a tub that was nearly three feet deep, just to get a leg up into it.

Strange.

I filled a glass of water from the tap. It tasted thick and oily.

I checked the time zones on my phone. It was still too early to call Conner, and I didn’t want to talk to Stella yet.

I went to the window.

There was something about the sky in London that seemed so flat and smothering. I was too used to the hills and rises of California. So the skyline in London made me feel like I was under a lens. But the air seemed so clear, too. It definitely didn’t smell like California.

The park across from the hotel was surrounded by hedges and a tall fence. What I could see of it looked unnaturally perfect by the standards of home. Everything was manicured, green, alive. I saw groups of runners entering and leaving through the iron gates.

Good idea.

I opened my backpack. I was tired enough that I could have gone to sleep, but decided to try and stay awake until nighttime so I could begin to adjust to the time change. I took out my running gear and stripped off my clothes. For just a second, I sat on the edge of the bed and watched myself in the dressing mirror, but then I shook my head—like a wet dog—and laced up my running flats.

If I could do that, I told myself, I must be getting better.

The hotel’s lobby was like a terraced cave. I had to walk down a short flight of stairs from the elevator to the crowded main, circular room. Everyone there looked like they were dressed to attend some kind of formal event. So I tried to tell myself that they were all looking at me because nobody would expect to see a tired-looking, skinny kid with uneven hair that hung over his eyes, wearing only running shorts and a holey T-shirt in a place like this.

Then I realized that without pockets, I didn’t have anywhere to keep my room key. It made me nervous to think about leaving it with anyone. I looked over to the front desk. The guy behind the counter was staring at me, smiling. He seemed to catch on to what I was thinking. I slipped the key card into the liner of my shorts, hoping it wouldn’t fall out. Not very comfortable. He watched me do it.

I made my way toward the uniformed men who stood at the entrance. I tried keeping my eyes down on the floor. Dark wood. Just like where I was born, I thought. I was so embarrassed for some reason, I felt like my skin was burning under all the attention.

Stop fucking looking at me.

The doormen stood ready, their gloved hands poised to let me out.

I passed the lobby bar.

Something made me stop.

That was the first time I saw the man with the purple glasses.

And I didn’t realize it at that moment, but that was the first time I had a flash of the other side, too.

I guess I need to slow down here and try to remember exactly what happened.

How things began falling apart for Jack.

There was something about the man wearing the purple glasses that scared and relaxed me at the same time. It’s hard to explain, but it was kind of the same way I’d felt about Freddie Horvath, too.

He stood there, obviously watching me, and when I looked at him, he didn’t glance away. He just kept watching me through those glasses, with a hint of a smile on his face like he’d been expecting me.

And, considering where we were, he looked as out of place in that lobby as I did: He was wearing a long, dull-colored traveling coat and sweater, despite the heat of the day, and he held a rumpled hat in one hand. He seemed young, maybe in his twenties, but he also looked very tired, like he’d been on the road for months. The uneven, sand-colored stubble on his face made him look too young to grow a full beard, and it seemed he hadn’t been in front of a bathroom sink in at least a week. When I passed by, he stood up from the stool at the bar where he’d been drinking a glass of beer and quickly pulled the glasses away from his eyes, jolted, as if he recognized me, but I told myself I was just being ridiculously paranoid about people, and wondered if I would ever let myself relax and trust anyone again.

But the thing that was most intense about him—and I know this now after what I’ve been through, even if I shrugged it off at the time—were his purple eyeglasses. Because they weren’t just purple, there was something else about them, and when I caught him staring at me and looked right at him, I swear that just for a blinking instant I could see something on the other side of the lenses.

Something that was all white and gray, with edges and folds.

Something like two deep holes that stretched farther and deeper than anything I’d ever seen before. Really big, like cracking a layer on one of those stacking Russian dolls and finding something you’d never expect could fit inside.

And I swear that for that smallest of moments, I could see people on the other side of the lenses, too.

All week long, I’d kept thinking about how the drugs Freddie Horvath gave me must have ruined something in my brain.

I gave the man a dirty look. I was sick of people staring at me.

That shit in his glasses had to be nothing more than the reflection of all those creepy old people hanging around in the lobby.

Nothing else.

Fuck this place.

The doormen pushed open the heavy glass doors.

I think I started running before I was even out of the hotel.

I ran.

My ankle hurt. I thought it was probably bleeding inside my sock. I didn’t look. It just wasn’t healing well.

Yeah, I remember you, Freddie.

Fuck you, too.

As soon as I forget about you, you really will be dead.

I ran fast. Sweat dripped from my chin and elbows. Sometimes, I’d look back to see where it left dark coins trailing my direction along the pathway.

The park seemed to stretch forever beside an expanse of lawn where men in white played cricket, and blankets made red or yellow rectangles in the sun where lovers lay tangled, sleeping off the drowsy contents of emptied wine bottles.

Conner and Dana.

And everyone seemed to be looking at me.

Quit it, Jack.

A towering stone building on the other side of the trees to my left supported an immense clock on its highest peak. Five o’clock. I had to think about what time that really was to me.

I kept running, over a bridge and along the shore of a lake where an old man stood throwing crumbs to the birds that came out onto the grass between the water and the path. Behind the zoo, I made a circle around what I guessed was the perimeter of the park, clockwise, back toward the entrance.

Clockwise.

I stopped in a narrow garden that was walled in on both sides by tall hedges and lined with intensely bright flowers along the gravel of the pathway. I was drenched. My shirt was plastered to my skin. I took it off and held it to my face, bent forward, resting one hand on my knee.

“Are you hurt?”

Startled, I let the shirt fall. I straightened up.

An old man with a moustache bent toward me. A cricket player. He smelled like tobacco.

Smoke.

“Huh?”

“Your foot,” he said. “Do you need some help?”

My sock was soaked through with blood where my shoe rubbed against what was left of the mark Freddie Horvath had left on me. I hadn’t even noticed.

“Oh.” I felt myself reddening, picked up my shirt. “I did that a while ago. I thought it was gone now.”

“Mind that, then,” he said. “Cheers.”

And he walked off.

I found my way back to the park’s entrance and turned right onto Marylebone Road.

The man with the glasses was waiting for me there.

He stood with his back to the park’s iron fence and watched me while I pulled my soaked T-shirt back over my head. He wasn’t wearing the glasses, though, and I thought it was odd, since we were outside and they seemed to be so dark. But he still had that expression like he knew me, or at least wanted to say something to me.

My stomach knotted. I was convinced that somehow I was being followed for what Conner and I had done.

I gave him another dirty look, turned my chin in the direction of the hotel’s entrance, and jogged past him.

I took off my shoes and socks. I opened the window, peeled out of my wet shirt, and hung it from the casement hinge. I stretched out on the bed.

My cell phone showed I had a missed call, from Conner. It made me feel good to see his name.

He didn’t say hello or anything. “Jack. How the hell is it over there?”

“Hey, Con. I don’t know. I just got here. It’s pretty cool, I guess. Just everything is different. Strange. It’s real easy to get around. I just got in from about an eight mile run through the park. And wait till you see the room they put us in. It’s kind of weird, too.”

“Like what?”

“Well, there’s only one bed.”

“Don’t tell Dana. You know she totally thinks you’re queer, anyway.”

“You didn’t say anything, did you? About what happened to me?”

“Oh, come on, Jack. You know I wouldn’t do that.”

I sighed and sat up on the bed, like I was looking around the room with Conner’s eyes. “And you have to leave the bathroom door open just to get into the shower.”

“Nice. Super gay.”

“And the water tastes like fish.”

Conner laughed.

“But other than that, and all the weird people, I think we’re going to have fun. And I’m going to be there on Monday at the airport when you get here.”

“So, you’re all okay, then, Jack?”

“Con, it feels like someone’s following me.”

There was silence after I said it.

I looked out the window, my wet shirt hanging there, convinced, now, that maybe somebody had heard what I said.

Quit it, Jack.

Conner made a joke out of it. “You? You’d have to pay someone to follow your skinny ass around.”

I thought about that man in the restroom. Gary.

“I feel a little tripped out about things,” I said. I inhaled. “But I think being over here is going to be good for me. You too. I’ve been making myself stay awake so I can get used to it. I’m going to take a shower now and go out and get some dinner.”

“Dude. Don’t get stuck behind the funky doorway. And go out and get a beer.”

We both had fake American IDs from Idaho, like anyone here would know what an Idaho ID card looked like. But we’d heard how easy it was to get served beer here, too.

“Yeah. Sure.” I said it like I didn’t want one, but it actually sounded good. “Oh, and Con? I need you to do something for me, okay?”

“What?”

“I forgot the charger for my cell phone. Stella’s going to want to kill me about that. Can you go to my house and pick it up for me?”

“Damn. You’ve really been losing it, Jack.”

“I know.”

“Well, call me again before your battery runs out.”

“Okay.”

“And Jack? Everything’s okay now. Really.”

I left the television turned on while I took a shower. I still couldn’t figure out how they’d designed this place because there really was no way you could get in or out of the tub with the bathroom door shut, unless you crawled beneath the open glass shower door. And that was too weird to do, I thought. But it was possible to watch a left-handed version of the televised soccer match in the bathroom mirror and take a shower at the same time, so that was kind of cool.

By the time I dressed and got off the phone with Stella, it was dark. Of course she complained about how I forgot the phone charger, and I could hear Wynn in the background repeating, “Remind Jack they’re expecting him and Conner at St. Atticus on Thursday.” But at least I could make an excuse for ending the call quickly, since I wanted to save my battery as long as possible.

I walked east from the hotel that night and stopped at a place near Warren Street called The Prince of Wales, a pub where there were groups of kids who looked about my age, having dinner and drinking beer.

I realized how hungry I was, and how free it felt to be in a place that would actually serve beer to me, so I went inside.

It was a little awkward being there alone, and I had to sit at a long table with a group of noisy young people who laughed and drank beers. I ate a sandwich and chips, then got my nerve up and finally ordered a beer, which, one of the girls down the table explained patiently, had to be specified by name or I’d look like a tourist.

The kids said hello, asked if I was from California because of my shorts, then ignored me after offering generic well wishes for my “holiday.” They left while I was on my second beer and finally feeling relaxed, almost happy, after the long ordeal of just getting here.

I wanted to call Conner and tell him what I was doing, but I dropped my phone on the floor when I tried taking it out of my pocket. I had to practically crawl under the table to get my hands on it. As I looked across the floor, I could see that the man with those purple glasses had come in to the pub and was standing at the bar across from me.

And he was watching me.

I sat up and put my phone in my pocket. As soon as I did, he took the glasses away from his face. I was sure he’d been following me, and now I was trapped. It was like being caught doing everything horrible and wrong I’d ever done, and I couldn’t help thinking that maybe this guy knew about what I did to Freddie Horvath, that maybe he was going to do something even worse to me.

I felt like I was going to throw up.

I pulled some money out and left it beside my plate. When I started sliding out from the bench I’d been sitting on, the man carried his beer over and stood across the table from me.

It was suddenly so quiet.

“Hello.” His voice had a friendly sound to it, an English accent. Then he said, “Mind if I sit down, Jack?”

My heart almost stopped when he said my name.

What could I do?

I felt myself sliding back against the wall, wishing I could somehow sink into it.

The man sat down and placed his beer on the table between us. He smiled at me, as if he expected me to recognize him. But, except for those couple times earlier that day, I’d never seen him before.

“You know me?” I swirled my beer glass around on the table. Clockwise. It was empty.

He glanced over his shoulder at the bar. “Will you have another beer?”

“No.”

Panic choked at me; my heart raced and my throat constricted in an invisible grip. It felt like I was tied down again. I thought about running.

“I only wanted to see if you knew me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

I looked at him. I could see something human in his eyes, not like Freddie’s. Freddie Horvath’s eyes had no caring in them at all.

“I don’t know who you are,” I said. “Why are you following me?”

He took a drink.

I thought I was about to be arrested or something.

“I apologize if I’ve been rude,” he said. “I really didn’t intend to scare you.” Then he stuck his hand out across the table and introduced himself. “My name is Henry Hewitt.”

It was like falling from a cliff. I shook his hand.

“But really,” he continued, “you seem frightened of me. I can assure you…”

“How do you know me?” I asked. I stared straight into his eyes and I tried to look like I was ready to fight.

Henry leaned forward. “I’ve known you for a very long time, Jack. Not from here, though. From Marbury. Then I saw you—I finally saw you—at Heathrow today, and I knew it was you.”

And I thought, This must be some kind of weird coincidence—that he knows someone who looks like me from somewhere else.

“I think you’re wrong,” I said. “I’ve never been anywhere called that.”

“Marbury?”

“Yeah. Where is it?”

“You’re sure, then?”

“Yes. You must be thinking of someone else named Jack.”

“You are named Jack.” He said it as though he were asking the question to prove to himself who I was. Or maybe to convince me. And he said, “Jack Whitmore.”

My eyes watered. I stifled a yawn and slapped my hand lightly down on the table. “Look. I’m really tired. I’ve been on an airplane all day. I should leave. I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. Really.”

I started to get up, and Henry pulled his glasses out from the breast pocket on his coat. When I saw the shine of the lens, the light seemed to move and shift inside them.

Henry put the glasses on for just a second, looking at me like he was snapping a picture, then he immediately folded them closed and lay them on the table between us without saying anything.

He emptied his beer.

I glanced at the glasses, and then at the man sitting across from me.

“Take care about looking at your friends there, Jack. I mean, in Marbury.”

“I told you I’ve never been where you’re talking about.”

“Look,” he said, and he leaned forward. “Are you certain you won’t have another glass of beer with me, then?”

I was already buzzing. I wanted to sleep, but there was something that kept me there talking to him.

“No. But thank you, anyway.”

“I’ll just have one more, I think,” Henry said, then spun around in his seat to go to the bar.

I stared at the glasses. There was definitely something odd about them. There was something moving inside them. I could see it, but I was afraid to look. I wanted to touch them, unfold them, but I knew that would be rude. Still, there was something that was so unique and attractive about them—and they just sat there on the table in front of me, as though Henry was tempting me with them.

I looked up at the bar.

And Henry Hewitt was gone.

A full glass of beer sat on the bar in front of the taps, and the bartender stood, his arms locked straight where he leaned against his counter, watching me.

I got up. I felt dizzy. The place seemed suddenly empty. There were two older men sitting in a dark corner near the toilets at back of the pub, but that was all.

I said to the bartender, “The man who ordered the beer. Do you know where he went?”

The bartender raised his chin. “He paid for the pint for you, mate.”

He pushed the beer toward me. It made a slick trail of moisture on the wood of the bar top. Like a snail.

A business card had been pinched down by its corner beneath the glass.

I went to the door and looked both directions along the street, but Henry was nowhere in sight.

I turned back into the pub.

The bartender said, “Do you want the beer?”

I picked the card out from under the glass. It was blank, but someone had scrawled with black ink, in all capital letters that smeared from the condensation:
DON’T LOOK FOR ME, JACK. TAKE CARE. MIND WHAT I TOLD YOU. — H.H.

“No, thank you.”

Then I went back to my table, slipped Henry’s glasses into the pocket of my shorts, and walked back to the hotel.

I didn’t get it.

He knew who I was, said he’d known me for a long time. From somewhere called Marbury. But I’d never even heard of that place. He had to be wrong.

He’d followed me around all day. It couldn’t have been an accident that he left those glasses sitting there on my table. It all seemed too intentional, too planned out. But I couldn’t figure out what his messages meant, either. Was this all some kind of perverted joke? Was I on hidden camera or something?

I must be drunk, I thought.

Freddie Horvath did something to my brain.

Sometimes, I know it was just me, but I could almost hear his voice telling me things, trying to scare me.

You haven’t gotten away.