Dead Ends and Dark Alleys

Michelle Scott

Copyright 2011 Michelle Scott

Smashwords Edition

Dead Ends and Dark Alleys © 2011 by Michelle Scott

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the

author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living

or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First Edition • May 2011

Contents

The Fourteenth of April

On Sunday, hours before Karen was due to arrive, David’s willpower failed him, and he succumbed to temptation.

Already loathing himself, he went into the kitchen and stood in front of the refrigerator. He would only look at the calendar, he promised himself. He would not touch it. He had kept his New Year’s resolution for over three weeks, and wasn’t about to break it now.

But the moment he saw the calendar, he knew he couldn’t resist. The four neatly labeled boxes at the bottom of the page that marked the end of the month called out to him, demanding that he violate their purity. 28, 29, 30, 31. He was helpless to deny them. After all, how could any man resist the temptation to know his own future?

His heart fluttered. He would touch the squares, but quickly. Just a single, rapid jerk of his index finger across the boxes; like swiping a credit card through a reader. He licked his lips then he poked his index finger at the current date – the 28th.

The moment his skin made contact with the calendar’s shiny paper, he was enveloped by a warm sense of wellbeing that made him smile. Of course it would be a good day; Karen was coming. He sighed with contentment. If only every day contained this kind of pleasure.

He realized that his finger should stay put in that tiny box – that little square of safety marked 28 – and not moved on down the line, but he did it anyway. The compulsion was just too strong. He had to find out what the rest of the month would bring. He couldn’t bear not knowing. Holding his breath, he jerked his finger right to the next square…

…and let out another sigh. Okay, the 29th held a hint of disappointment, but it was nothing, really. A favorite shirt would be ruined in the wash. Or he’d be sitting on the john and suddenly realize that he’d run out of toilet paper. Nothing major, certainly. Encouraged, he moved on.

The 30th was good. Definitely good. Not winning the lottery good, but positive all the same. David smiled. So far, the remaining days of this month held no terrible surprises. Nothing to dread. He moved his finger to the right to touch the final box.

He was met with a terrible, nerve tingling shock that made his right hand – from fingertip to elbow – ring with displeasure. A moment later, the pain kicked in, and his muscles cramped. He grit his teeth and sucked in his breath. It seemed that the 31st would be a very bad day indeed.

The bad premonition set him fully into motion. There was no stopping him. He had to know what the new year would bring. He swiped through all of February, tensing at every stinging date, relaxing at the good ones. March, too, brought an equal amount of good and bad. But April…

It started out okay, but then there was a string of six bad days in a row, each growing progressively worse, until – finally – he reached the 14th. When he touched that blank square, white hot pain spiked up his arm and into his chest. Any hurt he’d ever felt in his life previously – like the time in high school when he’d taken a direct hit to the nuts by a baseball, or the incident a few years ago when a dentist’s drill had touched a raw nerve – was eclipsed by that moment. His knees weakened, and he dropped to the floor, curling up in a ball. His vision grew red at the edges, and his stomach bucked. Whatever problems he’d had in his life until now were nothing compared to what was awaiting him on the fourteenth of April.

Someone shook his shoulder, then touched his cheek. He caught a whiff of flowery hand lotion and heard Karen’s worried voice. “David? David!”

He sat up, blinking. Mercifully, the pain had ended. But his relief was cut short by a burning sense of shame. He’d wanted her to come in and find that he was okay. That he’d brewed fresh coffee for her and had pastries waiting. Instead, she’d discovered him curled up on the kitchen floor.

She was leaning over him, her hair brushing against his face. “Are you all right?” He wished that her concern sprang from something other than pity, but the look in her eyes said it all. He was pathetic, and she felt sorry for him. It was almost too much to endure.

“I’m fine,” he said, rising.

“Are you sure? Should I take you to the ER?”

He shook his head.

“It was the calendar, wasn’t it?” She sounded bitter, but unsurprised. When he didn’t answer her, she plucked the thing from the fridge. “I’m getting rid of it.”

“No, please. It’s okay.”

Since they both knew that he’d go and buy a new one the moment she left the apartment, Karen sighed and hung it up again. “I really wish you’d…” Then she shook her head in irritation. “Never mind. You’re a big boy. Do what you want.”

“Thank you,” he said, relieved to see the calendar hanging there once more. He couldn’t bear to be without it, and raised his hand to it as if in blessing.

Karen took a dishrag from the drawer and began to wipe down his spotless countertop. It was a quirk he remembered from when they’d been living together; before she’d broken off their engagement. When she got angry, she needed to be busy. “So what day will it be,” she asked.

“The fourteenth of April,” he said, watching her. “And it’s going to be bad.”

“Bad like in Armageddon? Or World War III?” He supposed that she he was trying to be funny, but her voice was taught with annoyance.

“You know I can’t predict those things,” he said. “The feelings I get only relate to me.”

“I know, I know.”

He could never tell if she believed him or if she, like the psychologists that she’d insisted he see, thought it was merely self fulfilling prophecy at work. At times, he even doubted himself. Today, for example, was supposed to be good, yet so far, it wasn’t turning out that way.

“Anyway, it probably won’t be that bad,” he assured her, though his heart jumped nervously when he thought of what that date might hold. “Someone could shoot me during a bank holdup. Or I might cut off a finger when I’m slicing a bagel. Or…”

“Stop it! Just stop it already. God, you’re so morbid.”

He could tell just by looking at her that she was near tears, but when he tried to touch her, she backed away. “So you’re just going to stay in your apartment all day with the shades drawn, waiting for something bad to happen?”

She knew him so well. “Pretty much.”

“That’s no way to live, David.”

He shrugged. “I don’t have a choice.”

“Yes, you do!” She was about to say something else, but stopped. They both knew this argument so well that they might have been actors rehearsing lines together. The script never changed.

She held up her hands in surrender. “Okay. Whatever. Live your life the way you need to.” But then her face paled. “The fourteenth of April? Saturday the fourteenth? Are you sure?”

He nodded, worried.

“That’s my…” She bit her lip. “Look David, I wanted to tell you this the right way.” She reached into her purse and took out a diamond ring that she slipped on her left ring finger. David couldn’t take his eyes from it. “That’s my wedding day.”

He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even look up to meet her eyes.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you for so long,” she said in a rush. “But I didn’t know how. You knew I was seeing someone, right?”

He’d known, yes. But ‘seeing someone’ was a long ways away from engagement. All the breath had left his body, and he couldn’t remember how to draw another. He would have sagged against the fridge if not for the fear that he’d brush against the calendar with all of its potentially painful dates. “Who is it?”

Tears had formed in the corners of her eyes. She moved to the fridge and pointed to the bottom of the calendar. Beneath the row of dates was a small, black-and-white photo of a grinning man in a business suit next to the words, “Courtesy of the R.A. Hampton Insurance Agency.” As David leaned in closer, focusing in on that toothy smile, those dark pinpricks of eyes, he felt his heart sink. And today was supposed to be a good day. A good day!

Karen’s nose had begun to run, and her eyes were growing red. “I’m sorry. I should have told you before that it was getting this serious.”

He plucked a tissue from the box on the counter and held it out to her. “No. No, that’s fine. Congratulations.” He always known, of course, that she wouldn’t remain single forever. Nor had he wanted her to. Not really. He loved her, and he wanted her to be happy. He wanted her to have a family. To have a normal life with someone who didn’t obsessively look into the future to try to determine which days were lethal as opposed to merely poisonous. Someone who didn’t jump at shadows because he couldn’t tell if a bad day meant his car would break down along the highway or if he’d receive a phone call from the doctor explaining there was a black spot on a lung x-ray.

He held out his arms and, to his great relief, she let him hold her.

They went out for sushi. They got sentimental and toasted the engagement with too much sake. He kissed her on the lips, then went home and fell asleep on the couch. It was a good day after all.

On the 29th, he found a library book that had fallen behind the couch. When he took it in, the fine was over fifteen dollars. It was a minor disappointment, just as the calendar had foretold.

On the 30th, he discovered that the movie channel was playing a Clint Eastwood marathon, and he watched Pale Rider while eating leftover sushi. A good day, of course, but David couldn’t relax and enjoy it, since tomorrow was predicted to bring tragedy.

He woke at two a.m. in a cold sweat, his stomach so bloated he was sure that it would pop. His thoughts churned, and the floor seemed to sway under his feet. He made it to the bathroom, but just barely, and spent the rest of the night with his cheek pressed against the toilet seat between bouts of vomiting. It was the damned sushi, he realized as his gut clenched and he heaved yet again.

By three in the afternoon, it was finally over. His body felt like a dried out husk, but his stomach had settled. He sipped lukewarm Coke and dozed in front of the television, happy in the knowledge that he’d survived the calamity of the 31st.

David had been in this video store hundreds of times. Its unpleasant mildew and wet carpet smell was as familiar as the aroma of lemon furnish polish in his own apartment. He knew the inventory better than the clerks who worked there. The dust from the store’s shelves was always on his jackets. So when he saw the Help Wanted sign in the window, he’d decided to apply. It was part of his campaign to lead a normal life. A pathetic attempt to impress Karen with how well he was doing.

But, so far, the interview was going poorly. He hadn’t touched the calendar that morning, purposely not wanting to know how this day was going to turn out. Now however, as he shifted nervously from one foot to the other, he desperately wished that he had. The suspense was killing him.

“I know how to read a calendar,” he told the man behind the counter, “I just can’t touch one.”

The man rubbed his stubbly cheek as he thought. “And you were fired from your last job because you had to touch calendars?”

David shrugged. Since he hadn’t had a secretary, he’d scheduled all of his meetings himself. After the third time his boss had found him curled up on his cubicle floor, David was let go. “I know it sounds weird.”

“Sounds weird? It is weird. Weirdest damned disability I’ve ever heard of.” The owner, Al, was a big man, weighing two-hundred fifty at least. He dressed in a flannel shirt, un-faded blue jeans, and suspenders. He viewed DVDs with suspicion, preferring VHS tapes. David liked him immensely. “But I’ve seen you in here plenty of times. You seem normal.”

David let out his breath. At least the guy wasn’t laughing at him. “I’m normal enough.”

The bell over the door rang, and when David saw who walked in, his heart jumped. It was R. A. Hampton, the man from the calendar. Karen’s fiancée.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Al said, sounding pleased.

“Hey, old man.” Hampton reached across the counter and clapped Al warmly on the back. It was a smooth gesture, completely natural; something David would have never been able to pull off without looking awkward and ridiculous.

The two men chatted, leaving David to wait uncomfortably on the edge of their conversation. Hampton’s booming voice filled the small store. His grin revealed perfectly even teeth. He was the kind of guy who made people light up and feel good about themselves. Someone who instinctively knew how to do the things that David – even with practice – always failed at: tell a funny joke. Liven up a dull party.

David immediately hated him.

“So what can I do for you?” Al finally asked.

“I need to buy a couple of DVDs,” Hampton said. “Romantic comedies. Chick flicks. Whatever’s good.”

Al looked astonished. “You want to watch chick flicks?”

Hampton gave a self deprecating laugh. “No, they’re not for me. I’m putting a Valentine’s basket together for my wife. And Karen loves those things.”

David was suddenly galvanized. Wife?

“Newlyweds,” Al said with mock disgust. “Wait until you’ve been married as long as June and me. She’ll be lucky if she gets a Hershey’s bar for Valentine’s Day.”

Did he just say that Karen was his wife?

As Hampton perused the displays, David stared unabashedly, watching his every move. This guy and Karen were already married? Impossible! What had happened to the fourteenth of April?

When Hampton returned to the counter with his movies, David swallowed hard. “I thought you were getting married on the fourteenth of April.”

Hampton frowned. “How did you know that?”

“She told me. Karen said that she was getting married on the fourteenth. And I knew it was true because the fourteenth felt so wrong.”

Hampton looked surprised, then intrigued, as if the neighbor’s cat had suddenly called him by name. “You’re not David, are you?”

David nodded miserably.

“Hey, man, I’m sorry.” Hampton’s eyes were full of the same pity that David always saw in Karen’s. “Karen told me about you. About what happened when you two were together.”

David was acutely aware that Al was hanging on every word.

“After she talked to you, she decided to push things ahead,” Hampton said. “We were both tired of doing all that work for one lousy day. The planning. The to-do list. Who to invite; who not to invite…”

David remembered. Those days of frantic wedding preparations had overwhelmed him. All the dates crowding together. Sending out invitations by the first of the month. Getting fitted for a tux on the twentieth. The date of the engagement party. The time of the rehearsal dinner. It was endless and terrible and baffling. It was, he knew, what had sent him over the edge. He’d always been sensitive to dates – even as a child he knew if it was going to rain on school fieldtrips – but it was the constant stress of the wedding that had sent him into full crisis mode.

“…who needs it, right?” Hampton clapped David on the back so hard that David took an involuntary step forward. “But I’ll take good care of her. I promise.”

From another man, this might have sounded phony or even arrogant, but looking into Hampton’s earnest blue eyes, David could tell that the man meant what he said. He was sorry. He did love Karen. Hampton nearly oozed sincerity.

David bet that he sold a lot of insurance.

David tried to be casual, but his hands were sweating so much that he dropped the phone. He fumbled with the receiver and then pressed it tightly to his ear.

“What did you say?” Karen asked.

“I met your, uh, husband.” He nervously cleared his throat. “He said that you already got married?”

There was a long pause at the other end. “David…”

“Because that’s okay. I mean, I understand.”

“David, listen…”

“But didn’t your parents feel bad? I mean, that you eloped and everything?”

“David! We didn’t elope. The wedding was small, but our families were there.”

His heart felt like it was on a broken elevator that was plummeting to the bottom of the shaft. “But what about your friends? Darlene from Chicago? Ted and Lindsay?”

Her voice was soft. “They came, too.”

“You were afraid I was going to come, weren’t you?”

Her silence said everything.

He was pathetic. Really pathetic.

The calendar told him that the twenty-sixth of February was going to be a bad day, so he called Al and told him he couldn’t come into the video store. He sat on the couch all afternoon, staring out at the gray sky and thinking of Karen. He ate nothing. Drank nothing. Just sat.

While he was getting ready for bed, a light bulb over the bathroom sink burned out. As he changed it, it broke, and he got a sliver of glass wedged painfully under his thumbnail. And when, in his anger, he’d jerked open the medicine cabinet to get a bandage, he pulled on the door too hard, yanking the entire unit out of the wall and sending it crashing to the floor.

As he carefully swept up shards of mirror and broken bottles of pills, he wondered. Was this the source of the bad day? Or had he made the day bad himself by moping around his apartment, mooning over the girl he loved? Was he, in fact, creating his own ill fate?

That night, he couldn’t sleep.

Some weeks later, David sat on the couch with the calendar carefully propped up on the coffee table in front of him. Steeling himself, he leaned forward and quickly stroked the little square marked the fourteenth of April. Immediately, he was thrown back against the couch cushions, his teeth grit in agony, stars dancing before his eyes. The day was still painful.

David was outraged. “What!” he demanded of the calendar. “What’s wrong? What’s going to happen?”

The calendar lay passively on the coffee table.

He grabbed fistfuls of his hair and pulled. “Tell me!”

But the calendar had nothing to say.

After the first week of April, David’s health took a turn for the worse. His guts grumbled continuously, and his stomach churned. He felt sick when he ate, and even worse when he didn’t. It seemed that he was being stalked by the fourteenth of the month. Something terrible was coming up, and he was helpless to stop it.

In a desperate attempt to make himself feel better, he touched the fifteenth of April thinking that if the day was good – or even neutral – it would mean that he’d at least survived the fourteenth.

But when he touched that Sunday, what he felt shocked him more than anything he’d ever felt before. For the fifteenth of April held nothing. Not good, not bad, not even neutral. Just nothing. It was as empty as the blank white squares that marked the end of almost every month.

And that terrified him.

9. 10. 11.

David quit working at the video store and stayed in his apartment. At mealtimes, he ate nothing but a few crackers, both because he no longer had money coming in and because his stomach was too upset to handle anything else.

12. 13. 14.

He sat on the couch, the calendar open on the coffee table before him. R. A. Hampton’s picture grinned at him from the bottom of the page. Over the past few weeks, Hampton – Richard, as David now knew him – had frequently stopped by the video store. And in the end, David couldn’t resist the pull of Richard’s personality; he had no choice but to like him. He admired Richard’s confidence. The way nothing seemed to faze him. His ready smile and easy laugh. His seeming fearlessness.

If Richard had been cursed with a prescience into dates, David knew, he wouldn’t be cowering in his living room with the blinds drawn. Richard would have gone into work. He would have met whatever disaster had awaited him head on. It was why Karen loved him.

The realization struck David like a physical blow. He’d always known, of course, that it wasn’t his bizarre ability to read the future that had made Karen leave him, but his inability to face it. The bald truth of the situation filled him with shame. He was a coward, and Karen deserved better than that.

He flung the calendar aside and stood, stretching muscles that had cramped from his hours of sitting. Tonight he would be a coward no more! He would take action. He would be the master of his own destiny. No matter what today brought – even if he did not live to see the next day – he would meet his fate head on. Like a man.

Though it was late, he was too keyed up to sleep. And after days of a near starvation diet, he was also ravenous. There was a fast food restaurant not far from his apartment that was always open . He’d walk there and order some take-out.

Leaving the apartment, he glanced at the clock and saw that it was eleven o’clock. Whatever fate held for him, it would happen during the next hour. He felt a tremor, but determination kept him moving through the front door.

Outside, it was bracingly cold. David reveled in it. He could never remember feeling so alive. So exhilarated. He stopped walking to inhale the scent of damp sidewalk and the raw-earth smell that hinted of thawing ground and reawakening tulips. The street was deserted, and he felt as if he had the world to himself.

The restaurant’s sign glowed like a beacon, and David – heedless of the danger – ran across the street without bothering to wait for the change of the traffic light. If he was meant to die at the hands of an unwatchful motorist, so be it! He was a vibrant. A source of energy. He might be facing his last hour on earth, but he would live it with gusto.

To his surprise, two other customers were in line ahead of him. The cashier – a twenty-something wearing a grease-spattered apron – was gripping the counter and gaping at the man standing by the cash register. The third man was someone David immediately recognized.

“Richard!” He was genuinely happy to see Karen’s husband. Suddenly, he very much wanted to talk with him. To thank this man for liberating him.

Richard turned. His face was deathly pale, and there was something lock-jawed about his expression. “Get out!” he shouted to David.

The customer by the register swiveled, giving David a glimpse of the gun in his hand. David’s ears rang from the explosion when the trigger was pulled, and he felt white hot pain in his upper thigh. His knees gave way and he fell hard against the metal counter. A second shot sounded, and this time it was Richard who collapsed. His left eye was gone, and blood pumped through the empty socket.

In the second that David clung to consciousness, his entire being cried out in grief at the sight of Richard’s lifeless body stretched out on the floor across from him. Ah, no, David wailed. No!!

He was carried forward through time on a wave of painkillers, and buoyed upward by white lights and white noise. Shock, they told him. You’re in shock.

He let the drugs work their magic and thought of nothing. Felt nothing.

On the sixteenth, he woke. A matronly nurse was adjusting his IV and looking at the clipboard cradled in her arm. “Hey,” she said, “you just missed your visitor.”

David licked his dry lips. “Who?”

“I don’t know her name. Short, brunette gal. She sat by your bed for quite a while.” The woman lowered her voice. “I heard she lost her husband in the shooting. Such a shame.”

Until that moment, David hadn’t realized how important Richard had become to him. And now this man – this friend – was gone. Tears squeezed from David’s eyes. Never once had he considered that the ill-fated fourteenth of April would bring him such grief. Pain, yes. But not the deep sorrow over the loss of a friend.

The nurse, looking worried, patted his foot. “Don’t worry,” she said. “The woman said she’d be back soon.”

Karen would be back soon. But did she want him to comfort her, or did she blame him for what had happened? He wanted to prepare for either possibility.

The nurse had returning the chart to its place on the wall and was about to leave when David stopped her. “Do you have a calendar I could look at?”

Did Karen hate him or not? Could they find comfort in each other’s company?

She frowned. “Calendar? You got a hot date or something?”

“I just need to see a calendar,” he said. “I just need to know.” He’d touch today’s date, and then he’d be through with calendars forever.

Maybe.

On Both Sides of the Devil’s Door

Though Claire was already late for work, she paused by the newsstand to buy a paper. Setting her cup of chai on a window ledge, she turned to the horoscope. She memorized the lucky numbers, then quickly glanced at the paragraph under her sign, Taurus.

“Don’t tell me that you still believe that crap.”

The voice made Claire instinctively grimace and clench her hands into fists. Barry. Of all people to find her indulging in her obsession. Having him turn up like this was like seeing your priest while you were making out with your date at the movies. No, worse. Like having the devil walk into the examination room when you were flat on your back, your feet in the stirrups, getting a pelvic.

She turned slowly, knowing there was no other choice but to face him. If she walked away, he’d only follow her, hovering at her elbow until she finally said hello. Claire’s only satisfaction was seeing how bad Barry looked. He was her senior by over ten years (and that would make him forty, gads!), but with his thinning hair and puffy eyes, he could have passed for an even older man. A double chin pouched under the graying stubble of his beard and his stomach bulged beneath the oxford he wore.

He didn’t seem embarrassed by her scrutiny; in fact, he seemed to enjoy it. “Still looking for a little real magic, are we? Trying to find that gap in the universe that will let you crawl through to face the Unknown?”

Claire seethed. He was mocking her with her own pillow talk. That she’d ever slept with him filled her with a deep sense of shame. But what was worse than the physical closeness she’d given him was the way she’d opened herself up emotionally. She’d made herself vulnerable by sharing her secrets, and now he was brutish enough to use those weaknesses against her. That, in her opinion, was unforgivable.

Hands trembling, she folded the newspaper and tucked it under her arm. She even remembered the cup of chai. Then, drawing herself up, she lifted her chin and said, “Nice to see you looking so fit. It seems that South Beach has done you a world of good.” Score one for Claire! she thought triumphantly, stepping back out onto the street as if the two of them were nothing more than complete strangers who had shared a brief conversation about the price of a newspaper.

He followed her. “Ah, Claire, don’t be that way. I was only kidding.”

And that was the worst thing about Barry. The way he could deliver the cruelest of jibes and then have the gall to look wounded when she got mad, holding up his hands in surrender, and saying not quite innocently enough to be believed: I was only kidding.

She turned on him. If she’d been a dog, she would have bared her fangs. “Get lost, Barry.”

He jogged a bit to match her stride. “You’re not still mad are me, are you? I mean, it’s been what, two years? Three?”

Four and a half. But who was counting? And then she had a thought. Was this really a chance meeting, or had he arranged it in some way? He was great at doing that, orchestrating these happy little coincidences that were not coincidences. In fact, he could be downright brilliant, almost as good as those outrageously planned schemes you could see on TV. No one else she knew could do it.

She stopped walking so fast that he bumped into her. The contact, though slight, brought with it a terrible physical anguish, a horrible inner cramping that tightened every muscle and galvanized every nerve ending. Her knees buckled, and she nearly fell. And before Barry could extend a hand to help her up, she arched away. “No! Don’t touch me.” Panting, her face slick with sweat even on this frigid January day, she leaned against a parking meter for support. It was as if he’d hit her with an all-over joy buzzer, one that might have fried her internally had she kept in contact with it for a moment longer. “What the hell was that?”

Barry didn’t touch her, but he leaned in close. The light in his eyes burned like fire; his smile grew cunning, almost cruel. “I’ve tapped in, Claire.”

Tapped in? She eyed him uneasily. He looked no different. And yet… Around them, people rushed along, their heads bent against the driving snow, yet no one cursed Barry for blocking the way. Traffic roared past, throwing muddy slush up onto the sidewalk. The bottom of Claire’s jeans were soaked, but Barry was completely dry. Claire’s hands were numb with cold, the tips of her ears were on fire, and her nose ran. Yet Barry seemed blithely unaware of weather; if anything, he looked overly warm. And, for the first time, she noticed that his feet were bare.

Barry’s cunning smile increased. “I’ve done it. Just like I always said I would. I found the gap in the universe that you’ve been looking for, and I went through it.”

There was a moment of belief. If anyone could break through to the other world, it was Barry; she’d always thought so. And her entire life she’d so desperately wished to see it happen. Just once. She wasn’t asking for much: just the tiniest glint of genuine magic; a single eyelash from whatever higher power ruled the universe. Something to give her hope that there were experiences that exceed those in the mundane, physical world around her.

But one look at Barry made her realize how very close she’d come to making a fool of herself. Though he sounded sincere, he was just waiting to mock her the moment she showed any belief in his outlandish tale. “Get lost.”

“Listen, Claire, I can be a bastard. I realize that, and I’m sorry.”

Sorry? Not once in their three years together had Claire ever heard Barry apologize. Not the time he’d spilled a beer over the keyboard of her new laptop and completely fried it. Not the time he’d accused her of stealing sixty bucks from his wallet only to find it later on in his pants pocket. Not the time he’d laughed at her when she slipped on the icy front steps and fell hard enough on her ass to fracture her tailbone. The apology itself was nothing short of a miracle.

For a moment she stared at him in stunned silence. Then her expression hardened. “Go to hell.”

He gave a weak laugh. “I’m already there.” And he did something even more amazing than giving an apology. He turned and walked straight through the brick wall of the downtown post office. Though she thoroughly searched the street – her perplexity rapidly turning into a kind of panic – she couldn’t find him again.

“So you dated this guy for three years …why?”

Claire and her boss, Sheila, were sitting in the curtained-off back room of Wycks and Stycks eating Lo Mien from the Chinese takeout across the street. “Well, I was younger back then,” Claire began.

Sheila snorted. “Younger? What, like twenty?”

“Twenty-two. Just out of college, you know? And Barry was this great older guy who was really into me. He was really handsome, too. He’s the only guy I’ve ever liked with a beard.”

“He still sounds like a loser.” Sheila sucked up a noodle with a slurp. “I mean, the guy laughed at you for breaking your tailbone. Am I right?”

Claire had been working at Wycks for over six months, and while she didn’t quite consider Sheila a friend, she’d been so disturbed about seeing Barry that she’d confessed the encounter. Now she regretted it. It had been difficult enough to defend the downsides of the relationship to her friends back when she’d been dating Barry, but now, nearly two years later, the task of explaining it seemed insurmountable.

“Barry could be a real jerk,” Claire said, “But he was pretty amazing most of the time. He was a magician.”

“A magician? What, like a wizard? Or like the kind of guy who does kids’ parties?” Sheila set her takeout box aside and picked at her teeth with one black-lacquered fingernail. “Sawing a lady in half? Pulling doves from a hat?”

Annoyed, Claire stabbed at a piece of chicken in the bottom of her box. “A stage magician. That’s how we met; he advertised for an assistant, and I applied for the job. He said I was the loveliest girl to apply and hired me.” Claire flushed pleasantly at the memory. She knew that she was no beauty. She was thin, true, but her face was rather long and her teeth large and prominent. When she feeling unkind, she told herself that she looked like a horse. She could even lift her lips high in an uncanny imitation of Mr. Ed. But that afternoon, Barry – a tall, slightly imposing, man (not a college boy, but a man!) with a ginger beard and crew-neck sweater that made him look like a Ralph Lauren model – had said she was – not merely cute, the catch-all term used by every frat boy on campus – but the loveliest assistant a magician could ask for. In that instant, Claire had been swept away.

Sheila rolled her eyes. “What a line.” Though Claire’s boss fully looked the part of the Wycks and Stycks proprietor – black hair so short it bristled like Astroturf on her head; tattoos climbing up both arms; piercings in eyebrow, nostril, and lip; ghoulishly stark makeup – she was first and foremost a no-nonsense business woman. Impressing her was never easy.

“I guess you had to be there,” Claire said. “But it wasn’t just that. He was different somehow. Special.” She shrugged. Any of the words that she really wanted to use in describing him – dynamic, masterful, mesmerizing – would have ended up sounding ridiculous. “Even after I’d been a part of the show for a year and knew every one of his secrets, I would still be up on stage sometimes and find myself believing that he was doing real magic. It was amazing.” No, not amazing. Terrifying. For whenever she lay motionless in the Chest of Nefertari, she swore that she’d felt piercing pain and warm trickles of blood as Barry thrust the knives into her. And during the Divided Lady, hadn’t she truly felt the halves of her body separate? The memories made her shiver. Not because of the pain or the fear, but because more than anything else in her life, Barry had made her believe that such a thing as magic was possible. “He always said that he could tap in to the realm beyond this one.”

“I’ll bet. There’s nothing like a hatful of colored scarves to make a person seem like he’s in touch with the infinite.” Sheila was teasing her now. Her lips twitched in a smile. Claire’s boss might have made her living selling crystals to enhance auras, and chakra pendants to direct energy, and cast-iron cauldrons emblazoned with pentacles, but she believed in none of it and secretly scorned those who did. Her eyes sparkled with the joke.

“Never mind.” Claire frowned and dumped her empty carton into the garbage. She was older than Sheila by a few months, but the other woman always managed to make her feel like a child. Suddenly, she wanted to cry.

“Oh, hey.” Sheila jumped down from her desk where she’d been sitting. “I’m sorry, okay? This guy really means something to you, doesn’t he?”

Claire stared at the boxes in the trashcan to keep from looking at Sheila. “Yes. I didn’t realize it until I saw him today, but yes he does.” She shrugged helplessly. “Though I don’t know why. He could be such a jerk! But when I saw him on the street this morning, he looked so dispirited.”

“Do you think he’s really dead?”

At first Claire thought that her boss was once more razzing her, but when she looked up, she saw that Sheila looked truly interested. “I don’t know. I tried to call him, but his cell number’s not in service. His website is down. I even went onto some of the online magicians’ forums to ask about him. But no one knew a thing.”

“He didn’t have any real friends?”

“A few. But I have no idea where to find them.” Claire tucked the paper slips from the fortune cookies into her pocket in order to scrutinize them later on at home. “I guess I’ll just have to haunt that block of sidewalk until I find him again.” She smiled at Sheila who grinned back.

Sheila dumped her empty carton as well, then sat down at her desk. “Would you mind closing up? I’ve got to get a deposit together.”

Claire passed through the curtain and out into the showroom that held a hundred delicious smells: sandalwood oil and lemongrass bath salts, polished wood and beeswax candles, jasmine tea and lavender sachets, and, underlying it all, the honest smell of a dusty, old store. Flute music, playing on the speakers hidden among the shelves, was punctuated with plashing water from the rock fountain flanking the door. Claire had come to work at the store hoping, once again, to find a link to the great unknown. But after working here for over half a year and seeing the plain, ordinary faces of their customers (middle-aged housewives, mainly, with a few flighty co-eds thrown in) and hearing nothing except the same, dull gossip, she’d given up hope. But while she’d lost her faith in the occult, she still loved the trappings.

Though it was only six o’clock, it was dark out, and the streetlights were on. She drew the metal shutters over the windows and threw the bolts on the front door, making the tarnished bell that hung above it jingle nervously. Then she swept up, noticing with dismay that someone had knocked over a display of smudge sticks and left them scattered on the floor. Or maybe it had been the cat. Reiki was fat and lazy and, in her opinion, not nearly as agile as he should be.

The barest stirring of cold air brushed her cheek and made the tiny hairs on her forearms lift. She shivered. Thinking that Sheila had opened the back door – the one that led to the alley where the Dumpsters were parked – Claire stood up and replaced the smudge sticks. The breeze came again, stronger this time, making the wind chimes above the cash register tinkle madly. The flute music on the CD suddenly hesitated and then trembled, playing the same note over and over again in eerie ululation. Claire’s heart skipped along with the CD, and she hurried behind the counter to shut it off. “Sheila?” she called. There was no response. The store was utterly silent.

Claire hurried through the rest of her chores: finishing the sweeping, straightening the rack of photocopies depicting chakras and advertising palm readings, and filling Reiki’s food and water dishes in record time. Her final task was to turn off the stone fountain and the lighted sign over the door. As she did so, she passed by the reading nook and saw that, seated on the oversized ottoman, was Barry.

“I need your help, Claire.” He was looking even more haggard than he had that morning. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and his tie hung loosely around his neck like a hangman’s noose that had yet to be tightened. Sweat stained his armpits in large, dark circles. He mopped his perspiring brow with his arm. “God, it’s so hot here.”

Now Claire felt it as well – heat radiating from the shelves of books as if the reading nook was a blast oven. Sweat popped out on her forehead. She felt woozy.

“I need water.” His expression was pitiful. “Please.”

Claire hurried away to grab a bottle of water that was behind the counter then quickly returned. Remembering the terrible feeling she’d gotten from touching him that morning, she tossed the bottle to Barry who grabbed it and drank it straight down. But when he’d finished, he gave a bitter laugh. “It doesn’t do a thing. I can’t even feel it in my mouth.” He lifted his gaze from the bottle to her. “Claire, get me out of here.”

Her mouth was so dry that she could hardly speak. “Where are you?”

He laughed again in the same brittle way and waved his hand around. “Can’t you tell?”

The smell of sulfur hit her full force then, nearly choking the breath from her body. Her Catholic upbringing surged to the forefront, and she imagined lava pits and pitchforks and the agonized screams of sinners being endlessly tortured. She thought she might collapse where she stood and leaned against a bookcase for support. Barry was in hell. And that thought was followed by another, far more fearsome idea. There really was a hell. It wasn’t imaginary after all.

“Help me, Claire.”

She couldn’t bear the idea of anyone being in that place. Not even Barry. “How?”

“I need you to trade places with me.”

The world seemed to close in. The heat and the stink made her head swim. “No.” She shook her head vehemently, making the room around her spin. She thought she might be sick.

“Wait!” He stood and held up his hand. “Listen to me. I can leave if I have someone willing to take my place. But once you get here, they’ll immediately know that they have the wrong person and let you go.” A little of the old Barry returned; the overbearing, condescending man she remembered from her past. “It’s been done before, Claire. I’ve looked into it.” His eyes blazed. “There’s no one else I would depend on to do this.”

Claire’s heart bounded like a frightened rabbit. She backed away, shaking her head. “No.” Her shoulder struck a display of gemstones that teetered and fell, the stones hitting the floor with a sound like crystal raindrops. “No!”

Barry looked at her, his expression stricken. “Don’t leave me here.” But the farther she got from him, the more ill defined his feature looked. His form wavered like a heat mirage. In a moment, he was gone.

“Claire?” Sheila called to her from the back of the store. “Claire? You okay?”

Claire stared at the place where Barry had been. A sob hitched in her throat.

“My God, why is it so hot in here?” Sheila came to stand next to Claire. “And what the devil is that terrible smell?”

The two women hurried down the dark street towards the bus stop. Claire, weighted down with amulets to ward off evil, and crystals to ground her firmly in the world of the living, rattled when she walked. The jewelry was a gift from Sheila who insisted that Claire take it. “I don’t believe in any of this shit,” she said as she grabbed handfuls of necklaces from the display cases, “but it can’t hurt.”

The fact that Sheila was taking all of this so seriously scared Claire even more than the apparition had. It was like going in to see the doctor for what you convinced yourself was a innocent little lump on your neck, and having him immediately send you to an oncologist for a biopsy. Sheila’s concern meant that the apparition was real. And if Barry was really in hell, then there was a possibility that Claire might end up there too.

They waited in silence until the bus roared up to the curb. Then, before Claire could climb in, Sheila grabbed her arm. “You sure that you’re okay? I meant what I said about you staying with me.”

Claire tried to smile. “I appreciate that, but I’ll be okay.” She wanted home and familiar surroundings. Staying in a strange place would just make her feel weirder. “Matt will be downstairs if I need anything.” Her almost-but-not-quite boyfriend lived in the flat below hers. Claire was certain that if she needed a warm body to cuddle up with during the night, he’d be glad to oblige.

Sheila released her arm. “Okay, then. See you tomorrow.”

The only other passenger was a teenage boy who wore the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up to hide his face and shook his head in time to the music from the mp3 player he held. Claire paid her fare, then made her way to the very back of the bus so that she could sit and see everyone who came on. She couldn’t bear the thought of someone sitting behind her. She wanted no surprises.

Halfway to the back of the bus, one of the necklaces broke. Beads fell and scattered across the floor. The bus lurched from the curb, throwing her against an empty seat. Another string broke and the amulet fell with a clunk. The lights flickered, sizzled, then went dark. All of the jewelry around her neck broke. Both of her coat pockets ripped, spilling the crystals.

“What’s going on?” The teenager stood up. “What is this?”

“Sit down!” the bus driver demanded.

Claire’s knees weakened when she recognized the smell of sulfur. “Leave me alone, Barry!” She screamed it, the words scraping her throat raw. “Just go away!”

“Who’s Barry?” the teen asked. “What’s going on here?”

Heat rose up from the floor, making the skin on Claire’s shins blister. “I won’t go with you!” A sob clenched in her chest. “I’m not trading places!”

“Turn off the heat, man!” the boy yelled. “I’m burning up in here.”

The bus stopped with a lurch, its brakes groaning. “Sit down or get off!” The driver stood.

“Get lost, Barry! I mean it. Get lost!”

The lights flared briefly, then returned on. The temperature dropped. The boy muttered something and sat back down. Within moments, the bus pulled out into the street. Claire dropped into the closest seat and wiped her face with her scarf. She was free.

For once Barry listened to her. After two days of not seeing him, Claire stopped cringing at every unfamiliar sound and shying away from dark corners. Four days later, she was relaxed enough to forget about filling her pockets with crystals. A week after that, whenever she thought of how she’d seen him in the street or in the store, she remembered the incidents as if they’d been a dream – the memories growing fuzzy at the edges like an old photograph looked at too many times.

But still she thought of him, wondering where he was exactly. She continued to delve into the Internet, though that turned up nothing. She exhumed an old address book that had been moldering in a box of junk at the back of her closet and called a few people she thought might know where he was, but to no avail. She combed the obituaries, but that, too, was a dead end. Claire couldn’t find him on earth, yet she had no proof that he’d died and crossed over to the other side, either. She shuddered as she envisioned him in the hot, stinking realm he’d contacted her from, lost in a limbo from which he couldn’t escape.

Days passed. Then weeks. Winter stretched in all directions like the endless expanse of an ice-covered lake then, when it had reached its crisis point, fractured, letting a few warm afternoons show through its cracks. Snow melted. Winds softened. The ground slowly thawed.

Claire grew more and more bored.

In the wake of Barry’s appearances, she’d begun to realize just how futile her reach for the infinite was. At an early age, she’d recognized that the Catholic eulogy with its bells and smells was no real substitute for reaching the divine. Nor were the polished stones, dried herbs, and colored glass sold at Wycks and Stycks. What was a little incense? A handful of withered grass? A few colorful bobbles? None of these things had once ever given her even the briefest glimpse of the infinite that she so craved to see.

The last days of April bloomed as bright and yellow as the daffodils along the sidewalks, but Claire, gloomy, kept her shades pulled against the spring, and haunted the shadowy recesses of the shop. “What’s wrong with you?” Sheila asked, annoyed, when Claire still hadn’t unpacked the boxes of ceremonial robes as she’d been instructed.

Claire, who slouched behind the counter, her chin propped in her hands, shrugged. “Spring fever, maybe.”

“More like depression, maybe,” Sheila said. She put a couple of water-filled mugs into the microwave and minutes later set a steaming cup of tea at Claire’s elbow. “St. John’s wort,” she said. “Good for what ails you.” She leaned on the counter next to Clair and blew the steam from her tea. “You still seeing that guy?”

Claire shrugged again. “Not really.” It had been over a month since she’d talked to Matt from downstairs. Nearly twice that long since they’d spent time together.

“Look, I’m worried about you, okay? You sit here like a zombie all day at work and then go home and do, what, sit on the couch, eat popcorn and watch reality TV. Am I right?”

Claire sipped her tea so that she wouldn’t have to admit how close to the truth Sheila was. Tears threatened.

Sheila’s voice gentled, becoming almost motherly. “What’s going on with you?”

It was the feel of Sheila’s hand on her shoulder that finally made Claire break down. One moment she was holding herself together and the next sobs convulsed her so that her shoulders shook and her nose ran. It was a while before she could speak, and even then it was only a single word. “Barry.”

Sheila grew alarmed and searched the shop as if expecting to see him there. “He’s bothering you again?”

Claire shook her head. “No. Not since that night on the bus.”

Sheila, perplexed, fingered the ring in her eyebrow. “So what gives?”

“Barry’s tapped in, just like he always said he would. I mean, he’s really tapped in! Somehow he found that little crack in reality and he slipped through it.” The words rushed out now, unstoppable. For the first time in weeks, Claire felt energized. “He’s in another place, another – I don’t know – dimension, I guess. Realm, maybe. For sure he’s out of the world we live in.” She left her seat and began pacing in front of the counter, her hands moving in wild, expansive gestures. “All my life I’ve wanted to contact that world.”

Sheila looked astounded. “So let me get this straight. Are you telling me you’re jealous? Jealous that your old boyfriend is in hell?”

It sounded so weird when it was put that way, but at the same time, Claire couldn’t deny the truth. “I’ve always known it was there, but I’ve wanted proof.”

“But you have proof,” Sheila argued. “You saw it yourself, remember? Barry’s ghost right here in the store. If that’s not evidence of the infinite, I don’t know what is.”

Claire sighed miserably. “I know, but that’s not enough. I want to be able to touch it, not just see it.”

Sheila’s forehead puckered with worry. “Claire…”

“I’ve been like a kid with her nose pressed up against a bakery window, wanting so desperately to be inside. And Barry… Now Barry is in that bakery.”

“Claire?”

“But I’m trapped out here. Out in the mundane world. When all I want is to be inside.”

“Claire! Are you listening to yourself?”

Claire let her hands drop to her sides. Her shoulders sagged. “You don’t believe me.”

“No, I do believe you. But, honey, Barry’s in hell. Hell. Remember? You want to go to hell?”

Claire, anguished, raised her eyes to meet Sheila’s worried gaze. Then she slowly nodded. “Yeah. I really think I do.”

When Sheila couldn’t talk Claire out of swapping places with Barry, she made her promise to at least wait two weeks before she did anything. And Claire reluctantly agreed. But in the end, she couldn’t wait. So on a Wednesday morning, just before she was about to leave for work, she impulsively gave in to her burning curiosity and summoned Barry.

It wasn’t at all difficult. Before the words, “Barry, I want to trade places,” were even fully out of her mouth, he was there. It was as if he’d been waiting for her all along.

The sight of him nearly scared her into recanting her decision. Since she’d last seen him, he’d gone from corpulent to sickly thin, the skin stretched tightly across his cheekbones, making dark hollows under his eyes. The tie was gone as was his shirt. His ribs showed like slats on a picket fence; he had to hold his pants to keep them up. And yet he smiled when he saw her. “Claire.” His voice was like the rasp of an old key in a rusted lock. “You’ve decided to rescue me. Good girl.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. Fear made her voice nearly as thin as his. “Are you really sure I’ll be able to come back?”

“I’ve checked it out. There’s no need to worry.”

There’s no need to worry. Hadn’t he said the same thing when she’d let him drive her car one night after they’d both been drinking, and hadn’t he ran it into a stop sign? And didn’t he use those same words the time that they’d been practicing a new escape trick but instead had tied the knot wrong and had left her painfully bound on his living room floor for nearly twenty minutes while he consulted the book? And hadn’t he once fed her spoiled hamburger that he’d taken from the back of his fridge, all the while assuring her that it was perfectly okay?

Barry was wrong, of course. There was plenty of reason for her to worry. And yet, as her bedroom heated up and the smell of brimstone overcame the scented oil plug-in, Claire knew that she had to go. She had to see. She just had to. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.” Barry eagerly held out his hand, and Claire took it.

Barry found the address from a pay stub Claire had left on her kitchen table and, after he’d slept and showered and eaten and then repeated the cycle for five or six days, he went to visit Wycks and Stycks. If only to keep that Sheila person from calling again.

A skinny woman with hair the color of a bowling ball and enough jewelry in her face to set off every metal detector in the Detroit metro area stood near a display of fragrant bath soaps talking to a middle-aged hausfrau in a sweat suit. She glanced up at Barry when he walked in, then did a comical double-take. Her face paled. “You’re Barry, aren’t you?”

He bowed. “In the flesh.”

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