“But are you okay?”
He was looking at my forehead, and when I put my hand to it, I realized that I was bleeding from a wound just above my left temple. It didn’t hurt, and I had other things to worry about at the moment.
“I’m fine. We need to find her.”
He nodded and yelled the message to others who were coming over, and we all started combing through the brush. I was in a total panic, screaming her name and desperately rushing around, but knowing in my gut that if she were all right, she would be answering me.
Three police cars arrived and I told one of the officers what had happened.
“How far back did you start to lose control of the car?” he asked.
“I don’t know … it couldn’t have been too far,” I said. “The storm came up so fast…”
“What storm?”
I did not have time to discuss the weather with this man; I needed to focus on finding Jen. “There was a storm. It got completely dark, and windy … I couldn’t see, even with the lights on.”
“We need to get a bandage on that wound,” he said, referring to the blood coming from my head. It had mostly stopped, and was not something I was worried about. I told him to disregard it, and reluctantly he did.
The police helped to organize the search, going well back down the road in case Jen had been thrown out early in the incident. It didn’t seem possible, since I had heard her scream just before we rolled over. But I didn’t want to rule anything out, and they weren’t listening to me anyway, so I continued looking.
Time passed; it seemed like hours but it was probably only minutes. It wasn’t possible, but Jen just wasn’t there. I was starting to face that fact when one of the officers came back to me and confirmed it.
“Your girlfriend is not here,” he said.
I nodded, but none of it was making any sense.
“Have you had any alcoholic beverages, sir?”
“You think I’m drunk?” Was this guy kidding me?
“I didn’t say that, sir. Please answer my question.”
“It’s eleven o’clock in the morning.… We went for a ride.… No, for God’s sakes, I haven’t had anything to drink.”
He asked me to perform a few physical maneuvers … walking a straight line, touching my nose with my eyes closed … things like that. I was frustrated, but I did it so we could move on.
He was finally satisfied, and the talk turned back to the accident and Jen’s disappearance.
“Maybe she was dazed,” I said, though not really believing it. “Maybe she walked away.”
He obviously didn’t believe it either. “Where would she go?”
“Well, she was from around here, so…,” I said, and then I saw it. On his uniform shirt, the name
WINSTON
.
“Are you Jack Winston?”
He was surprised that I knew that. “Yes. How is it you know me?”
“The woman I was with is Jennifer Ryan.”
There was no sign of recognition in his face, so I pressed on. “She was your girlfriend in high school. Jennifer Ryan.”
Still no reaction. “I don’t believe I know the name, sir.”
How stupid was this man? “Her family lives up the road. Can we go there? Maybe somebody picked her up and drove her home.”
“Without you?” he asked.
“I don’t know … but she’s got to be somewhere.”
He agreed to take me to the house, and I led him there. When we pulled up, he said, with apparent skepticism, “Your girlfriend grew up here?”
“Yes.”
As soon as the car stopped, I jumped out and ran to the front door. Somewhere in the back of my mind it registered that the house looked slightly different, perhaps more tattered and less well-cared-for. Effects of the storm?
Officer Winston came up behind me as I rang the bell and Janice answered. “Yes?” she asked in greeting.
I started to babble about the accident, but my attention was drawn to the interior of the house. It appeared different; it’s hard to explain, but it looked as if somebody had gone over the place with a warmth remover.
Janice was confused and looked at Winston. “Jack? What’s going on?”
I didn’t hear his answer, as I was already moving past Janice and into the house. The differences were even more stark than I had first realized; the furniture was not the same, family pictures were gone from the walls.… I moved quickly toward the room that Jen and I had slept in.
I vaguely heard Winston yelling after me as I opened the door and received what felt like an electric jolt. It was no longer a bedroom; it was more like a den or office.
My mind couldn’t seem to process what might be going on. I headed back to the living room and ran into Janice and Winston, who had been following me.
“What is going on here?” I demanded. “Why have you changed everything?”
“What are you talking about?” Janice asked.
“Where is Ben?”
Janice almost recoiled from my question. “My husband Ben?”
“Yes.”
“He died almost twenty years ago.”
I was starting to lose it, and I grabbed her arm. “Why the hell are you saying this? Why are you doing this?”
Officer Winston roughly pulled me away. “That’s enough. We’re out of here. Sorry, Mrs. Ryan.”
I pulled back. “Wait. Janice … Mrs. Ryan … I stayed here the last four nights. With your daughter. Jen and I are going to be married, but we were in an accident.”
Her reaction was immediate; she slapped me in the face and would probably have killed me if Winston would have let her. “Get out of my house,” she said through clenched teeth. “Get out and never come back.”
Winston led me outside, but I again pulled away and ran toward the rear of the house. I headed toward the gazebo where Jen and I had made love the night before, where we had committed to a life together, but it no longer existed. In its stead was an old pickup truck, out of service and up on blocks.
And that’s when I went crazy.
The next thing I can remember, a shrink was asking me questions. If he told me his name, I don’t recall it. He seemed to be assigned to this small-town medical clinic emergency room, so it probably wasn’t Freud.
I was a little fuzzy-headed; they checked me out and bandaged my head, and I assume they gave me a sedative. I can’t blame them; I had gone berserk to the point where I can’t remember exactly what I had done. I regretted my actions, since they were counterproductive, and they left me lying in the hospital instead of out looking for Jen.
“This young woman who is missing … you can visualize her clearly?” he asked.
I nodded. “Of course. We are engaged. This is not somebody I met once on the street.”
“Have you had many serious relationships with women?”
This guy had to be kidding me. “Look, am I being held here?” I asked. “Did I commit a crime?”
He smiled. “You committed no crime, so you are not under arrest. But I think you will admit that you are troubled, and—”
I stood up, adjusting myself so as not to lose my balance. “Troubled? You have no idea.”
The doctor tried to persuade me to stay and talk to him some more, but that was obviously out of the question. I was already trying to formulate a plan in my mind. There was some kind of conspiracy going on, some effort being made to keep Jen away from me, maybe even to deny her very existence. But too many people knew the truth; not everyone could be in on this, and I planned to retrace our steps until I found people I could count on.
Once I left the hospital, I got my bearings, at least location-wise, and realized that I wasn’t far from Nancy Brunell’s house. I headed over there, understanding that she might well be a part of whatever was going on, but hoping that she wasn’t.
I rang the doorbell and a young man answered it. For a brief moment I feared that there was no Nancy Brunell, that maybe she had disappeared as well. “Is Nancy home?” I asked.
“Sure,” was his cheerful response, before calling out, “Hey, Nance! Somebody here to see you!”
Moments later Nancy appeared, and my relief was tangible. I was not crazy; I had met this woman the day before, I was in this very house, and my knowing that she lived here was proof of it. At least to me.
“Nancy,” I said, “something really weird is going on. Jen and I were in an accident, and now she’s gone.”
Nancy’s face reflected confusion and then a little fear, and I saw her tug on the young man’s shirt as he started to leave, in effect asking him to stay. No doubt to protect her from the stranger saying these strange things. To protect her from me.
“Do I know you?” she asked.
I could hear my heart hit the floor. “I was here yesterday. With Jen.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ve ever met you before, and I don’t know any Jen.”
“Not you too…,” was all I could say. “Not you too…”
The young man said, “Sorry, pal. You must have the wrong house,” and closed the door in my face. As I walked away from the door, almost staggering to the street, I saw Officer Winston sitting in his squad car, obviously keeping an eye on me. He was clearly waiting for some provocation to arrest me, to get me off the streets of his happy, cozy, stinking town.
I figured that maybe this was all a dream. That would be a good thing, because it would still be going on, and Jen would be there when I woke up. There could be no other explanation. I was not crazy. I simply was not crazy.
I knew I had to get out of that town. I walked down to a rental car place I had seen a few days before, when I was with Jen, when the world made sense. My car was badly damaged and I remembered Winston saying it was being repaired, but I couldn’t stay there another day. I rented a car and had reached the outskirts of town when I saw the General Store, which Jen and I had stopped in on the way into town. I pulled into the parking lot, willing to give this insanity one more chance to end.
A woman stood behind the cash register, and I approached her.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Do you know someone named Jennifer Ryan?”
She thought for a moment. “Don’t think so. She from around here?”
I nodded. “Do you know Janice Ryan?”
She brightened. “Sure do. Lives about two miles from here.”
“Does she have a daughter?”
She hesitated for a moment. “No.”
“Is Janice married?”
“Not anymore,” she said.
“What happened to her husband?”
She seemed suspicious. “Why do you want to know all this?”
“I think I might know her.”
She nodded, as if that were good enough. “Ben must be dead a good twenty, twenty-five years now.”
“Can you tell me how he died?” I asked.
A wary nod. “Killed himself. Hung himself out in back where they used to have a gazebo.”
“Do you know why he did that?”
She looked at me even more suspiciously. “After all this time … why are you asking these questions?”
“Please, I’m not trying to hurt anyone. It’s just important that I know.”
“Their little girl died … she was murdered. Ben just couldn’t handle life after that.”
I had to get home.
Home was where I lived, where my friends were, where I prayed Jen was. I didn’t feel like there was any chance of my getting to the bottom of this; at least not in that town. The unhappy truth seemed to be that there could be no real-world explanation. None of this was consistent with reality; it was either a dream or I was insane. Or both.
I would find out when I got home.
The drive was surreal. I kept looking over to the passenger seat, to Jen, to see her as she was when we’d made the drive out earlier in the week. The fact that she was not there didn’t stop me from looking.
I drove down the West Side Highway and parked in the lot underneath my building. Our building. I realized with some embarrassment that I was not ready to go upstairs. It was as if our home were the last card I had to play, and I didn’t want to use it quite yet.
I walked over to the Legends Sports Bar. It was college bowl season, so I could be pretty sure John and Willie would be there. I was feeling very mixed emotions; on the one hand I was craving being with someone I knew, friends who would acknowledge the history we had together. On the other hand, I was afraid of what they would say about Jen. They had to know her, I was positive they knew her, but I was still scared shitless that they wouldn’t. And for all I knew, maybe they didn’t exist either.
I felt some relief when I saw them sitting at our usual table. There were three women with them, two of whom I recognized from the other night, which seemed decades ago. The third one I’d never seen before.
At least I didn’t recall ever seeing her before. She was the first one to notice me walking toward the table. She brightened, an immediate look of recognition on her face, and stood up. She said, “You made it,” with obvious pleasure, and kissed me. It was a light kiss, on the mouth, but it didn’t feel like a first kiss.
Willie said, “We were about to put out a police report on you,” and John added with apparent concern and relief, “Where the hell have you been?” He looked at my bandage. “What happened to your head?”
I decided to go straight for it. “I’ve been at Jen’s house. Where she grew up.”
The woman who kissed me put an exaggerated pout on her face and said, “Who’s Jen?”
“It’s his sister,” John said.
“No, Jen’s his grandmother,” was Willie’s response.
“His dog,” John said. “Definitely his dog.”
They were joking, trying to cover for me in front of this woman, who apparently had some right to be jealous. But the question was, did they really know Jen?
“I’ve got to talk to you guys.”
I apparently said it with enough intensity that they realized that whatever was going on was not a joke.
“Okay … sure,” John said.
“Can we take a walk?” I asked.
Within moments we had left the table, and I could hear the women talking among themselves about the weird way I was acting. I waited until we got outside to start.
“I’ve got to ask you guys something. I am not joking, so please give me straight answers.”
They both nodded, worried but clueless about where this was going.
“Last weekend, was I here with you, at this bar, watching the Knicks play the 76ers?”
They both nodded, and John said, “Sure. What’s going on, Rich?”