Collide
“Tired,” I said.
“That’s to be expected. Are you dizzy? Drink some water.”
I did, not because I was dizzy but to wash away the lingering taste of citrus. She took the cup from me and tossed it in the trash, then gripped my elbow to help me off the table. I waited half a minute, used to the way the floor sometimes tilted at first when I’d just finished a treatment. It didn’t today, but I rested a moment longer than normal, anyway.
“Emm. You sure you’re all right?” Dr. Gupta is a tiny, dark-haired woman with big dark eyes. She reminds me of that old newspaper cartoon Dondi.
“Sure. Fine.” I gave her my brightest smile to convince her.
Dr. Gupta didn’t look convinced. She drew another cup of water from the cooler and handed it to me. “Drink that. You’re a little pale. I think next time we’ll concentrate on a super Ming Men instead of the Shen Men. We’ll do some energizing in addition to the tranquilizing.”
I’d been having acupuncture treatments for three years now, but that didn’t make me anything like an expert. In fact, I was more of the “I don’t need to know how it works” school of thought. I’d never studied the mechanics of it, or the philosophy.
“Sure,” I told her.
She laughed. “You have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s okay, so long as it works, yes?”
“Yes.” I drank the water, though by this point my back teeth were swimming.
She patted my shoulder again. “I’ll see you in a month, unless you have something you need taken care of before then.”
She left me to rearrange my clothes. Standing in the quiet room with the soft music playing, I should’ve been way more relaxed after a treatment. Instead, I felt electric. Buzzing. Not bad, exactly. And not the way I often felt after having a fugue, sort of fuzzy and disoriented for a few moments.
This feeling was more like an ache in my chest. An anticipation, not quite anxiety. No pain. There was never pain associated with any of this.
When I left the office, the smell of oranges once again assaulted me. I braced myself in the doorway, jaw clenched … until I saw the cleaning cart and the jug of citrus-scented cleaner, cap open, and the floor still gleaming from it. The woman at the cart saw me look and smiled apologetically.
“We spilled almost the whole jug,” she explained, holding up a mop. “But it’s okay, you can go past now.”
She couldn’t have had any idea about why I was laughing, but she laughed, too. I wanted to give her a high five as I passed her, but restrained myself. I couldn’t keep the grin off my face, though, as I stopped at the front desk to make my co-pay and book my next appointment.
“This is what I love about my job,” said Peta, the receptionist.
“Taking my money?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Seeing how people come in here full of pain and leave full of peace.”
I paused with my checkbook still in my hand. “That’s a great way of saying it.”
She dimpled. “Maybe I should put that on an inspirational poster, huh?”
“Maybe. But … it’s true, isn’t it?” I felt more at peace, certainly, once I’d learned the smell hadn’t been the harbinger of a fugue, after all.
“It really is. Take care, Emm, see you next month.”
I waved at her as I went out, my steps more springy and my heart lighter. Behind the wheel of my car I took a few more deep breaths to center myself out of habit. When you’ve had your license taken away because the authorities fear you might spaz out and cause an accident while you’re driving, you tend to better appreciate your ability to drive yourself when you are allowed. But as I pulled out of the parking lot, I realized the buzzing, churning tumble in my chest hadn’t really gone away, just faded.
Bad tacos for last night’s dinner, maybe. Too much coffee on an empty stomach. I gripped the wheel and checked my eyes in the rearview mirror. A little wide, but the pupils weren’t pinned or anything funky like that. My vision wasn’t blurry. I wasn’t smelling anything but my own cologne from where it had rubbed into my scarf.
Nevertheless, I drove slowly. Carefully. Taking no chances at yellow lights or intersections. By the time I got to my street, my fingers ached from gripping the wheel and my back hurt, too, from my too-tense posture.
“Motherfucker,” I muttered when I saw that someone had once again taken my spot. I really needed to get some lawn chairs and set them up when I left, the way my neighbors did.
I drove farther down the street and found an empty spot. The last time the plow had gone through, a thigh-deep pile of snow had been pushed into someone’s shoveled spot. The vehicle that usually parked there, a blue SUV, could no longer fit. I spotted it parked a block farther down and felt no guilt at squeezing my much smaller car into the space. I considered it karma.
The fact I’d once again parked in front of Johnny’s house was a nice little bonus, one that had me humming under my breath with glee and buzzing in an entirely different way. I paused after I’d closed my car door to study his house. When had I ever felt this way before?
The answer was, never. I’d had crushes before, plenty of them. In seventh grade I’d thought I would die unless a sophomore named Steve Houseman liked me back. I hadn’t died. And even then, when I’d gone to sleep every night wishing on every star I could see that he’d look at me like I was a real girl and not some junior high geek, I hadn’t ever felt like this.
The curb was icy, but the sidewalk in front of Johnny’s house was bare and well-salted. Unfortunately, his neighbors weren’t as conscientious. I was so busy trying to peek through his windows without making it obvious I was a pervert, I didn’t pay attention to where I put my feet. I hit a slick patch and slid, arms wheeling. I’d never been a gymnast, but I managed a pretty nice split that had me gasping in gratitude I was wearing a skirt, even though I tore my stockings.
So focused on keeping myself from totally wiping out and doing a face plant into the pile of filthy snow, I didn’t pay attention to the man who’d just crossed the street and stepped up onto the curb in front of me. I caught a flash of a black coat, a striped scarf. I had time to think, Oh, shit, it’s him, before I took another step and slid with that one, too.
We collided hard enough to snap my jaws together. I caught my tongue between my teeth and tasted blood. I looked into Johnny’s face, those green-brown eyes so close I could count his lashes. He had a mole at the corner of one eye I’d never noticed before. He grabbed my upper arms.
I smelled oranges.
I was falling.
Chapter 05
“Hey, foxy mama.”
The man in front of me gripped my upper arms to keep me from falling. I’d tripped on a loose piece of concrete in the sidewalk. I stared at it, thinking there was something wrong.
And then I knew.
Holy shit, it was summer. The man in front of me, Johnny. And he was … young.
“You okay? You having a bad trip or something?” He laughed and shook his hair out of his eyes. “Trip. Sorry.”
The moment Dorothy steps out of her black-and-white house into the Technicolor glory of Munchkinland is one of the greatest in movie history. I was Dorothy now, my eyes wide, legs trembling. I looked around at the way my world had changed and ducked instinctively in case a house was getting ready to fall on me. I’d have fallen if Johnny hadn’t held me up.
“Chill, little sister,” he said in a kind voice, and led me to the porch stoop where he eased me onto the heat-soaked concrete and sat beside me, my hand in his.
The colors were all so bright. I heard music, the steady disco thump of a song my mother had sung to me when I was a kid. A woman in short shorts and a tube top roller-skated past us, jumping effortlessly over the crack that had tripped me up. Her hair flew behind her in a long, gleaming wave.
A garbage truck rumbled past on the narrow street lined with wide cars all in shades of brown and green. It said New York City Municipal Services on the side, and I swallowed a sudden rush of saliva.
Bright sunshine. Heat. And yet I shivered, teeth chattering even as my butt scorched against the steps. The backs of my calves were worse, having no protection but my ripped panty hose. I hissed and shifted.
“Chill,” Johnny said again, soothingly.
I didn’t smell oranges. I smelled car exhaust and the faint whiff of sewage, probably from the alley next to this house or the garbage cans lined up along the curb. I smelled sun-baked concrete. I smelled him, too.
I leaned closer without thinking to take a long, deep breath of his neck. His hair tickled my cheek. He smelled like a man should—not like cologne but clean skin, a little bit of summer sweat, fresh air. He smelled better than I’d ever imagined he would, and I’d imagined he’d smell pretty fucking fine.
“Hey,” Johnny said softly.
Blinking, I pulled back, the heat in my cheeks and throat having nothing to do with the summer sun beating down all around us. I’d just sniffed him like a dog testing out a fireplug. During my fugues lots of things happened that didn’t in real life; I behaved in ways I’d never have done while conscious and never felt embarrassed about it the way I did now.
“Sorry,” I managed to say, and tried to pull away, but his hand holding mine kept me anchored onto the step.
“No sweat. What’s your name?”
He was even more beautiful than he’d looked in pictures. It wasn’t fair to compare this young Johnny to his older version, but I couldn’t help it. This Johnny smiled at me, while the older one never had. He ducked his head a little now, peering at me from the silky fringe of long bangs.
“You have a name, right?”
“Emm,” I said. “My name’s Emm.”
“Johnny.” He lifted our hands and shook them before letting them drop, this time to his thigh.
I felt his skin beneath the back of my hand. I shivered again. I blinked and breathed. This was a fugue. I was imagining all of this. Somewhere else I’d gone dark.
“Oh.” The word eased out on a moan and I closed my eyes. “Johnny.”
I meant the one in winter, in the black coat. The one I’d run into and was now likely making a fool of myself in front of.
“Yeah. That’s me.” He shifted, our thighs touching. “I don’t know you, but you seem to know me. How’s that?”
This was a fugue, I reminded myself. It wasn’t real. But no matter how hard I tried, I could sense nothing but this now. This place. This man in front of me. No glimmers of anything else, even though I knew it had to be there, in front of me, if only my brain would let go of me long enough to get back to it.
I didn’t want to get back to it, I realized, looking at Johnny’s smile. It was for me, that grin. So was the appreciative gaze he swept over me, his eyes lingering on my breasts a second too long before he focused briefly on my mouth and licked his lips. When his gaze swept up to meet mine again, I got lost in those eyes.
“You don’t talk much, huh?”
“I just … This is a little …” I couldn’t explain.
He laughed and stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “You must be on some pretty good shit. But you should be more careful. This neighborhood, it ain’t so great. I mean, I live here and all. But you don’t. I’d have seen you around here before. Are you new, or just visiting?”
“I was just walking past.” It wasn’t a lie.
“You want to come inside? Gotta bunch of friends over, just hanging out. Having a little party. C’mon,” Johnny said, as though I needed any persuasion. “You’ll have a good time, I promise.”
He stood, tugging me onto my feet. The earth didn’t rock. I didn’t spin. With Johnny holding my hand, I wasn’t going anywhere but wherever he took me.
His house here in 1970s New York was a tall brownstone a lot like the one in present-day Harrisburg. It had to be newer, but it wasn’t as nice on the outside. Inside, it was so similar to my own I let out a low murmur of surprise as we entered the foyer. Stairs in front of us led up, a long and narrow hall pointed toward the kitchen and an arched doorway to our right led into a formal living room. A beaded curtain hung in the archway.
I heard music, louder in here, from upstairs. I heard voices, too. I smelled pot.
“C’mon in.” Johnny linked his fingers through mine and tugged me down the hall toward the kitchen, where a group of men and women sat around a wooden table or leaned against the counters to watch another man cooking something on the stove. “Hungry? Candy’s cooking.”
At the sound of his name, the man at the stove turned and flashed a grin of straight white teeth. He bent his head, Afro waving, as regally as any king welcoming a subject, his stirring spoon a scepter. “Welcome, welcome, sister. We got enough to feed you, if you’re hungry.”
I was hungry, intensely so. My stomach rumbled. I’d never been hungry in a fugue before. Oh, I’d eaten and drank, but never from need. I put my free hand, the one not still clutching Johnny’s, over my belly.
My clothes hadn’t changed. I looked down at the familiar friction of material under my fingertips. I was even wearing my winter coat, though it had come unbuttoned. No wonder I’d been so hot outside. No wonder everyone was looking at me so strangely.
“You can take that off,” Johnny offered.
I nodded and let him help me out of it. Women’s lib might be going strong, but Johnny was still a gentleman. He hung my coat on a hook behind the door and put his hand on the small of my back as I stood under the scrutiny of everyone in the kitchen.
“This is Emm,” Johnny said, like he brought strangers home all the time. He probably did. “That’s Wanda, Paul, Ed, Bellina and Candy’s at the stove. Say hi, everyone.”
They did, in a chorus, while I stared and tried to keep my mouth closed. I didn’t recognize Wanda or her name, but Bellina Cassidy was a playwright, her shows performed on Broadway by casts of the biggest names in theater. Edgar D’Onofrio had been a celebrated poet who’d killed himself sometime in the late seventies. Paul was probably Paul Smiths, the photographer and moviemaker who’d directed a handful of Johnny’s early movies. And Candy …
“Candy Applegate?”
Candy looked at her with a grin. “That’s me.” “You have a restaurant,” I said. “And that cooking show on TV.”
The room bubbled with laughter. I was looking at the Enclave. I licked my mouth and tasted sweat.
“Naw, girl, that ain’t me.” Candy shook his head and dipped the spoon back into whatever was simmering so deliciously on the stove. “Must be some other Candy.”
“No, it’s you,” I said, but shut my mouth up tight before I could say the rest.
Fugues were never like dreams, which I could sometimes control. I’d never been able to fix the course of what happened when I was dark. Sometimes that meant they were scarier than nightmares. Other times, like now, I just had to remember this wasn’t real and I could do nothing about it. I could tell them I knew the future, but I’d only look crazier than I probably already did.
Johnny, in fact, was studying me. “Feed her, Candyman.” “I’ll feed her,” Candy said.
And they did. A great, steaming bowl of some spicy, meatless stew. We all ate it over fragrant, sticky rice and sopped up the gravy with thick slices of homemade bread. I had to stop to taste everything twice, not because I was greedy or hungry, but because it tasted so, so good.
We all ate a lot. Laughing and joking. Talking about politics and art and music I knew only from history lessons or the classic rock station. They dropped names casually—Jagger, Bowie, Lennon. They dipped bare fingers into the communal pot and ate with their hands. They passed a pipe without telling me what was in it, and I smoked some of it because, after all, none of this was real.
Through it all, Johnny watched me from across the table. I watched him, too. I hadn’t asked what year this was and knew even if I did it wouldn’t matter. By the length of his hair, I guessed Johnny was about twenty-four. This made me older than him by about seven years. He didn’t seem to care.
I definitely didn’t.
We ate and talked and laughed. Someone brought out a guitar and started to play a song I was surprised I knew the words to. Something about flowers and soldiers, and where had they gone. And then they sang “Puff the Magic Dragon.” I’d never known it was about marijuana.
Sometime during all of this, our places around the table changed. I ended up next to Johnny instead of across from him. Our thighs pressed together. Our shoulders brushed when he leaned forward to grab up a slice of Candy’s bread, or to refill my glass with the kind of rich, red wine I avoided in real life.
Johnny turned his face toward me and smiled. And I kissed him. Just a brush of lip on lip, his breath warm and soft against me. He smiled into the kiss and his hand came up to cup the back of my neck beneath my hair.
Nobody noticed, or nobody cared. By that point I think most of them were drunk and high. Ed had passed out, his head on the table, snoring softly. Johnny squeezed my thigh beneath the table.
“Take me someplace,” I whispered into his ear.
He looked into my eyes for a moment, curiously. Then he nodded. He took me by the hand and led me from the table. We didn’t say goodbye, and I didn’t look back. We went up the long, narrow stairs, our hands linked loosely. My hand trailed the banister. I looked over the side, to the floor below, then up to the floor above. Stuck between, Johnny leading me, woozy from the food and whatever was in the pipe … I followed.
But at the top of the stairs, I led. I kissed him. I pushed him back against the wall, my leg cocked between his thighs, against his crotch. His belt buckle, something huge and metal, pressed my belly through my skirt. I slid my hands up his front, over the slick-smooth fabric of his ugly-patterned shirt. And I kissed him, long and smooth and hard and slow and deep.
He looked at me curiously again when I pulled back. “Who are you?”
“Emm.” I wasn’t slurring, but my voice was definitely hoarser than usual. I tasted him when I swiped my tongue across my lips.
“Emm,” Johnny said, as though considering something important. “That’s your name, all right. But who are you?” “Nobody,” I assured him.
Our bodies pressed together. His hands fit on my hips. Downstairs, I heard the burble of laughter and music. Smelled the tang of weed. Here, up here, it was quiet.
I’d been away too long. Any minute I would start to fade from this place and wake, maybe blinking away only a few seconds of time. Maybe on my knees, or worse, my face, on the ground. Maybe I wouldn’t wake at all.
The first door in the hallway, just to Johnny’s left, was cracked open enough to show me a bedroom. I took his hand and pulled him toward it. Through the door, to the bed, which was neatly made up with a blanket of orange, ribbed fabric. My grandmother had used bedspreads just like that one. I sat on the bed and spread my legs. My skirt, too long for this era, dipped between my thighs, and I pulled it up inch by inch, watching him watch me.
I pulled the fabric up over the torn remnants of my panty hose and crooked my finger at him. “Come here.”
Johnny, grinning, was already unbuttoning his shirt. He tossed it to the floor and then crawled up over me. Our mouths locked. His tongue stroked mine. I cradled him against my cunt, my legs open wide to accommodate him. My fingers drew circles on the bare flesh of his back.
I rolled him onto his back and straddled him. I hooked fingers into my nylons and tore them to keep any barrier from between us, but his jeans were still there.
“Cock blocked,” I murmured, and tugged at his zipper.
“What?” Johnny laughed and put his hand on mine to help me pull down the zipper.
“Your jeans. They’re cock-blocking me. Take them off.”
He laughed again. I wanted to eat it up, that laughter. His mouth. All of him. I bent to kiss him with my hair hanging down all around us, and when he was naked underneath me, myself still clothed, I covered his body with my kisses.
He didn’t protest when I nipped and sucked, or when I licked. He didn’t protest when I lifted my skirt and pulled my panties aside to slide down on his cock. And Johnny didn’t protest when I fucked him, sweating, both of us concentrating hard, not speaking, not even kissing, as the pleasure built higher and higher and crashed over us both.
He only protested when I got up to leave, but by then it was too late. The edges of this place were fading. Shaking in the aftermath of my orgasm, I kissed him. My skirt fell down around my knees. Johnny held my hand and made a wordless noise of complaint, but I tugged my fingers gently from his and stepped backward out the door, closing it behind me.
And then I woke up.
Chapter 06
My knees hurt. Throbbed and stung. Blood oozed from several scrapes. My panty hose had indeed been shredded, but on this sidewalk now, not from me tearing them away in order to get at naked Johnny.
He had one hand on my elbow, the other at my hip, holding me in place. “You all right?”
I blinked rapidly, putting myself in place. I knew where I was. I knew who I was. Most importantly, I knew when I was.
“Fine. I slipped on the ice. I’m sorry, did I hit you?”
My breezy explanation wasn’t cutting it with him, I could tell. How long had I been dark? I hadn’t conveniently glanced at my watch before the fugue.
“You should be more careful,” Johnny warned, sounding stern.
I could still taste him. I swallowed against the flavor of his mouth and skin. We were standing too close for strangers, which is what we really were. He let go of my hip but kept hold of my elbow, and I was grateful because my legs had suddenly gone trembling and weak.
“You look like shit. You better come in here.”
Yew bettuh come in heah.
From anyone else I’d have laughed a little at that accent, but on Johnny it was utterly drool-worthy. I couldn’t say anything, could only let him pull me along and up the brick stairs, through his front door. And then I stood inside Johnny’s house.
It was beautiful, of course. I hadn’t expected anything less. I stood on his parquet wood floors, my panty hose shredded and the hem of my coat dripping. I hadn’t noticed that before, that I’d gotten wet. I looked at my feet and the growing puddle of dirty water, then at him.
“Oh, God. Sorry.”
Johnny had been hanging up his long black coat and that scarf on a brass hook on the wall just inside the door, and he turned to give me an up-and-down look that left me feeling totally lacking. “You should come into the kitchen. Get a drink. You look like you’re going to pass out.”
I felt white-faced and shivering, certain I looked like shit just as he’d said. “Thanks.”
“C’mon.” Johnny made a shooing gesture down the hall toward the kitchen, then followed me. “I’ll make you a cuppa tea. Unless you want something stronger?”
“Tea’s fine. Good. Thank you.” I sat in the chair he pointed to, at a table that couldn’t be the same one my brain had created, no matter how much it looked like the one in my fugue.
Sometimes, not every time, I did come out of a fugue this way, disoriented and a little sick. Most of the time it passed quickly. Today, I had to take slow, shallow breaths and sip at the air to keep my stomach from revolting up my throat.
Johnny moved around his kitchen in silence. He filled the kettle and settled it on the gas range. The burner hissed and sparked without lighting until he fiddled with something, and then the blue flame whooshed up, high.
“Damn thing,” Johnny said, but not to me.
Word vomit. That’s what Jen had called it. I’d laughed at her then, but understood it now. I had to clench my jaw tight to keep myself from blurting out the most random, insane thoughts crossing my mind and, even then, didn’t quite manage. “You have a beautiful house.”