Loud Awake and Lost

Jim and his wife, Diane, had visited me in the hospital a couple of times in those first weeks. I barely remembered them outside the haze of kind voices and hovering faces. When I could, I’d written him, and he’d written back, and there had been a couple of back-and-forths since—it was one of those highly bizarre relationships crafted from a completely unprecedented situation.

But I’d been lucky. Everyone wants to think they could do what Jim Lyford did that night. There’d have been no way to save us both. But the accident haunted him, too. How could it not?

My brain was spinning with it. My hands were fixed and rigid on the wheel as the bridge came into sight. My adrenaline was burning off as I stopped at the dip; the reach wasn’t more than ten yards, but panic had taken over and made a wall—I couldn’t get past it to propel the car forward. I turned into the curve, off-road, edging closer to the bank. My body seemed to find my brain’s messages on a delay—stop, brake, cut the engine, unfasten my seat belt.

Exposure therapy, Lissa had said.

Yes, I was in shock. Rolling in it, powerless to it. My entire body was shaking as I forced myself to get out of the car and walk to the bank on rubber legs. The water was partitioned off with rope and multiple nailed warning signs, the letters in Day-Glo yellow—even if you couldn’t read, you’d know not to take another step.

If I made it out along the lip all the way to the drop, I probably could get myself onto the other side.

My jacket was too light for the weather; I was goose-pimpled under my clothes, and mud oozed and squelched beneath my boots. When I’d reached the drop-off point, I pushed down the rough rope and hauled myself, one leg and then the other, over into what felt like a fresh darkness. Water slapped at my boots as I walked the bank. Everything was so much closer to me now.

No clicks.

I caught the final hours and wound back through them.

We’d been planning Valentine’s Day for a couple of weeks. It was so hard to find time together, with all of his school and work commitments. But somehow, we’d been delivered this pocket of freedom. And I knew that Aunt Gail would be cool about me showing up with a guest—because Aunt Gail was cool about everything. But I didn’t want to tell her too much in advance, just in case she slipped it to Mom and Dad. Who were typically less mellow about these things.

But there was nothing to let me think that everything wouldn’t work out. Earlier that day, I’d packed, driven into the city, found meter parking, and stayed in the car, waiting for Anthony to finish class. I’d brought homework, knowing that he’d bring work, too. Even this weekend, he’d find ways to cram in some extra studying. But he’d also wanted to make it special, too. For us. Valentine’s Day was the six-week anniversary of when we’d met for the very first time, on New Year’s Eve, out on the fire escape of Areacode.

When I looked up, in the gathering twilight, I could see him perfectly, and I watched him walk in that way that was also a bit of a saunter, as he swung out of the front door and saw me, then crossed the middle of the street. Anthony would never not cross a busy street. He lived in the city as if it were his alone. It’s what gave him the nerve to tag, even if his street art had made him a target for the cops, whom he dodged the way Road Runner consistently beat Coyote. With a wink, though, as if it were all a game.

That evening, I watched him with a full and beating heart. His messy, just-out-of-the-shower hair. The raindrops making a pattern on his shabby olive jacket that he wore open, always, whatever the weather. I could see that beneath it he was wearing a favorite T-shirt he and Hatch had silk-screened together last year for Day of the Dead. I’d never been big on clothes with skulls and crossbones. Those grinning dancing skeletons on Anthony’s chest had unnerved me.

Had I felt it even then, a chill of foreboding? But I’d said nothing, as he’d swung into the passenger seat, and then leaned over and kissed me. Anthony’s kiss, so unlike anything else I’d ever known.

As if my lips had no other purpose but to meet his.

We stopped for gas, for coffee. The rain had strengthened as we hit the usual Friday traffic. We hadn’t reached the Henry Hudson Parkway before Aunt Gail’s text had chimed: Sushi or pizza? Or pizza with sushi?

Anthony had read me the text. “What should I write back?” His fingertip hovered. “Dinner with a plus one?”

“No, no. Not yet. I don’t want to throw her off. You’ll need to charm her with your real-live awesome.”

“Easy.”

We’d laughed. We were laughing at everything, that evening. Hours rolling out like a red carpet in front of us. That weekend, for once, we had all the time in the world. Anticipation had made us bold. At the next red light, I’d leaned over and kissed him full on the mouth until the light changed and the cars behind us started to honk, and we laughed at that, too.

Why was I walking so far out? I was freezing, it was impossible to see out here. I was so far from my car. And yet I plunged on in a blind stumble farther and farther into nothing—and what was I looking for? The air sharpened my breath. I shouldn’t have come, my lungs weren’t strong, my corpse-stiff bones were wrapped in a wet cardboard of useless muscles, but still I plowed ahead—listening to the sound of wet sand sucking beneath my boots—and when I saw it, I wondered if I’d been guided here all along.

The moon was shining just enough to direct me to the dull flash of silver, and it might have been anything—but I knew it was only one object, empty and buoyant because we’d finished the coffee, with a plan to stop somewhere for a refill once we’d made it outside the city.

“You live on coffee.”

“Coffee and you.”

Flung from the car to wash up on the bank and lodge here, caught in the long sea grasses all these months, the water lapping at it, anchoring it, a message in a bottle, a message that was mine alone.

When I pulled it from the mud, I used my sweater to rub at it until I could see the initials R.G.O. Though I knew, of course—but only then did I let my knees buckle, because I no longer worked; some deep, animal part of my brain wasn’t allowing me to operate myself, to find the strength to get control, to get myself back to the safety of the car, to drive away from all this. For a while I stayed slumped and heavy in the grass, until my hands reached into my jacket pocket, fumbling for my phone. It was too dark to see—I punched the numbers mostly blind.

The oldest number that I knew. My breath rasped thin and shallow.