Jumpstart the World (12 page)

I winced as it streaked by us. Man. Those things are really ear-splitting up close.

We turned the corner and saw a crowd still gathered. Right in front of my building. That sort of aimless ending point in the gathering of a crowd, when there’s no real reason for them to be gathered anymore, and they almost miss their reasons. Like they’re waiting to stock up the energy to go back inside.

There was blood on the street.

“Somebody must have got hit by a car,” I said to Wilbur. At least, I hoped it was something accidental like that. I guess somebody could’ve been shot, but my brain didn’t want to go there.

“Do you know any of your neighbors?” he asked. Indicating the gathering of people.

Right up until he said that, I hadn’t really looked at them as my neighbors. They were just a bunch of strangers to me. The only neighbors I knew were Frank and Molly. I scanned the crowd for them and came up empty.

“Nope. Not a one.”

I waited nervously in the doorway of my building while
Wilbur talked to two very old women. I was wondering how he had the nerve to do that.

He nodded about four times, then walked to where I was waiting. Or hiding, as the case may have been.

“Something about Crazy Harry,” he said. “He came up behind some guy and started yelling. Startled him right out into the street, and the guy got hit by a cab.”

“Jesus,” I said. Then I wondered if Wilbur was a Christian. I thought I’d seen him wear a little gold cross once. Maybe I’d said something offensive. “Did they say who it was?”

Which was something of a stupid question, of course. I didn’t know any of my neighbors. So why would one name be different from any other?

“They didn’t know. They just said a young man. Which, you know … to them …” He looked over his shoulder at them. They were still gathered. Looking down at the blood and shaking their heads. “Could be fifty.”

“Oh. Well …” It felt weird to say goodbye to Wilbur and be alone. But I wasn’t sure why. Definitely something about the blood on the street in front of my building. Someone could have been killed for all I knew. “Thanks for walking me home.”

“You okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I’m fine.”

Part of me hoped he would hear the lie in that, and stay. But it was Wilbur. Wilbur takes people at their word.

It took me about five minutes to decide to knock on Frank and Molly’s door. Or, at least, to get up the nerve to do what I’d decided.

I mean, one of our neighbors had been hit by a car right outside our front stoop. If I couldn’t put my issues aside at a time like that, what would it say about me?

Maybe they would know who the poor guy was. And if he was going to be okay.

Maybe Frank would want to play Scrabble. Just like the old days.

Maybe Molly would cut up some organic fruit and feed us.

Maybe George and Gracie would rub up against my legs and purr.

Maybe then I wouldn’t have to feel like this.

I knocked. I waited. I waited some more. I knocked again. I waited even longer.

I was stunned by the depth of my own disappointment. Turned out I had needed them to be home. Badly. And I hadn’t even known it.

Until they weren’t.

It seemed funny that they weren’t home on a Saturday. Frank’s day off. Usually he’s tired and really happy to just take a nap on the couch on Saturday. But I guess there are a million places that people can be.

I gave up standing in front of their door, but it was hard. I went back inside my own apartment. Climbed outside on my fire escape. Sat looking down at the blood.

The crowd had dispersed.

Funny, but the cars were all going around that spot. The blood was still fresh-looking and red, and they had just taken down the police tape, but the street hadn’t been hosed off yet and nobody wanted to drive through it. I guess it was just a normal
human reaction to a thing. Even if they had to stop and wait for a spot to open up so they could drive around it. It was like the wrong end of a magnet, only redder.

Near one side of the red patch, I saw something. Something I hadn’t seen from the street. Maybe somebody’s feet had been blocking it.

Maybe I just hadn’t wanted to look too close.

From my fire-escape perch, it looked like a pair of glasses.

At first, it didn’t hit me. Then it did.

I ran straight down the fire-escape stairs to the street. Telling myself lots of people wear glasses. Maybe one person in every three or four. Right? Well, who knows what the statistics are? Who cares? But lots.

It didn’t mean a thing.

Right?

The ladder wouldn’t go down. It was all rusty and old. So I jumped. Landing on the sidewalk hurt like hell, mostly in my shins and on the bottom of my feet. But I didn’t stop to pay attention to any of that.

I stepped out into the street and looked down at the glasses. I remember my insides going numb, but not much else about how I felt. You know what? You want the truth? I didn’t. I didn’t feel. At all.

I reached down and picked up the round wire-rimmed glasses.

Frank’s glasses.

One lens was broken. But I picked them up just the same. At the time I reached for them, I wasn’t focused on the fact that they had been lying in the blood. But then a drop of it fell, hit the street near my foot, and splashed onto one of my favorite old lace-up boots.

In slow motion.

That’s how I knew I felt something in the middle of all that nothing. Because that drop took forever to hit the street. I felt like I could recite the Gettysburg Address while I was watching it fall.

Weird thing is, I had no idea why I picked up the glasses. Maybe I thought Frank would want them back again. Broken lens and all. Because there would definitely still be a Frank to want his glasses back.

Right?

TEN
Clothes. And Control.

I
have no idea how long I sat in that position. My back against Frank and Molly’s door. The broken glasses hanging from my left hand. My head leaned back. Staring at a scuff on the wallpaper, right across from me.

It’s possible I might even have dozed off briefly. Because it definitely got late while I was sitting there.

I would tell the truth about what I was thinking if I remembered. And if I were sure I was thinking.

It was late when I heard them come up the stairs. Somehow I knew it was them, even before they came up onto the landing. I knew this was what I was waiting for. My head said it could be any neighbor who lived on this floor. But this little spot under my sore stomach said, No. This is it.

When they came into view, it was Frank, alive and on his feet. But barely. On one side of him was Molly. On the other side,
a woman who looked about fifty, with long, thick white hair. Somebody I had never met.

I tried to jump up, but my muscles didn’t move. I tried to say something, but nothing got said.

Frank’s head was shaved right down to the skin. All over. He had a big patch of bandage taped to one side of it. And his right arm had been splinted and wrapped in a sling, which looked like it made him hard to grip on Molly’s side. She had to wrap her arms around his waist to hold him up.

Just for a split second, I might’ve thought, Why did they let him out of the hospital in that condition? But, if so, the thought scooted right away again.

By now, I was looking straight up at them as they stood over me. Molly was digging around in her purse, probably looking for her keys.

I think Frank looked at me. It was hard to tell how alert he was. How much he was actually taking in. But his eyes roamed across the doorway and landed on my face and paused there. And just in that moment, the things I hadn’t dared think came up and got thought all at once. Fell all over each other and tangled up in the thinking.

If he had died …

It’s one thing to lose your best friend. It’s another thing entirely to lose your best friend while you’re treating him like shit. Before you even have a chance to make it up to him.

Guilt. I felt it. Big. Had it been there all along? I had no idea.

“Thank God,” I said out loud. “Thank God he’s okay.”

“He’s not that okay,” Molly said. Her voice sounded tight. It sounded like her voice but with somebody else’s disposition in
charge of the tone. She had her keys in her hand now. “You want to move, hon? We need to get him inside.”

I scrambled away from the door so fast that I tripped and ended up on my hands and knees on the hall carpet. My knee landed on the broken glasses, breaking them further. I left them where I squashed them. When I made it to my feet again, they were helping Frank through the door.

I followed them in.

I hadn’t exactly been invited. I definitely hadn’t asked permission. Probably because I wasn’t sure I’d get it.

I just needed to go in. I needed to be there with them. With him. I needed to be a part of this. So I didn’t ask. I took advantage of their one-pointed focus.

Nobody told me to go home.

For the first hour or so, I sat in the living room by myself. The lights were off everywhere but in the bedroom. I sat on the floor by the window, as if I’d take up less space there. As if no one would notice. No one to catch me feeling guilty.

I rested my chin on the windowsill and watched the empty street. It seemed strange that the street should be so empty, even in the middle of the night. It was Saturday night. Where was everybody?

Not even Crazy Harry.

But there was a good reason for that. They had taken him away. Thank God.

I pictured him pacing under a streetlight. Marching back and forth under that circle of light, shaking his head back and forth. As if arguing with someone who wasn’t even there. Or maybe with himself. The way he would have been. If everything were normal.

I heard a little noise, and looked up to see Molly standing near me, looking out the window. Close enough that I could have reached out and touched her. Of course, I didn’t.

“Somebody should do something about him,” I said.

“Who, Harry?”

“Yes. Harry.”

“They did. They took him into custody.”

“I hope they never let him out.”

“They have to let him out. When he’s back on his meds, he’ll come home.”

“They shouldn’t let him come back here. He shouldn’t be allowed to live here.”

“Then where should he be allowed to live?” she asked.

A moment later, when it was clear to both of us that I wasn’t going to answer, she said, “I’m going to make tea. Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Yes, please,” I said.

Like a five-year-old.

I felt like an obstacle in the lives of everyone who came near me. I felt like the stupidest, most abhorrent person in the galaxy. I shouldn’t even be allowed to live around decent people.

Then again, I guess I have to live somewhere. Don’t I?

“How bad is it?” I asked.

We were sitting around the kitchen table. Me, Molly, and Liz. That other woman’s name was Liz. She was a nurse. And their friend.

We had been drinking tea for a long time before I got up the nerve to ask.

Molly sighed, as though she just didn’t have the energy to
answer. She tossed her eyes over to Liz, who spoke for her. Like they did their thinking with only one mind between the two of them.

“His right wrist is shattered,” she said. “Complex series of breaks in his elbow. He’ll need orthopedic surgery. And tons of physical therapy. That’s not really the biggest problem, though. Not right now. Right now the head injury is the worry. They can be dangerous. Tricky.”

“Why did they even release him from the hospital, then?”

A silence as Molly and Liz exchanged looks.

For a while, I thought nobody was ever going to answer me. Such a simple question, too.

“They didn’t,” Molly said. “He left against medical advice. They wanted to admit him. But he refused.”

“
Why?
”

No answer. Just silence.

“That’s crazy. Why would he do that?” I could hear my voice come up. I was disturbed by the tone and volume of my own spoken thoughts.

“He had a bad experience in a hospital.”

“So? I have bad experiences in school all the time, but I still go.”

Molly pushed back from the table suddenly. The squeal of her chair legs on the linoleum startled me. A splash of hot tea sloshed out of the cup and onto my hand. I didn’t say ouch, though it would have been easy.

“I’m too tired to explain it to her,” Molly said. I guess she was talking to Liz. She sounded exasperated. Like I was getting on her last nerve.

She stomped out of the room.

I heard the bedroom door close.

I looked up at Liz, but she was looking down at the table.

“Is Molly mad at me?”

“I guess you’d have to ask Molly about that,” she said.

A long silence, during which I took a paper napkin from the holder in the middle of the table and used it to mop up my spilled tea.

“Other than outright hate crimes”—Liz’s voice startled me—“the two most terrifying experiences for someone in transition are hospitals and jails.” That sat on the table for a moment. I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do with it. “Think about it. Put yourself in his position. In the hospital, they take away the two most important things in the world for somebody like Frank. Your clothes. And your control. All it takes is one bigot. One sadist. He had a really bad experience back when they lived in South Carolina.”

South Carolina? Molly and Frank lived in South Carolina? I had no idea. How could I not know that about them?

“Yeah, but … South Carolina. That’s like a different world. This is New York. It wouldn’t happen here.”

“You sure? You want to guarantee him it couldn’t happen? Like I said. It only takes one.”

I had no idea what to say. My thoughts tangled around for a few minutes, and then arrived at the simplest possible statement.

“Could he die?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it. I’ll monitor his condition all night. If I think there’s any bleeding or swelling on his brain, we’ll get him back to the emergency room, pronto.”

“But … if he could die … How can he not go to the hospital if he could die?”