THE NEXT MORNING
Jerry was up bright and early, having slept more soundly than he had for months. After a quick breakfast of microwave-poached eggs and toast, he steeled himself and returned his mother’s call. While he verbally jousted with his mother, he watched Ana, who was partially hidden by the oriental dressing screen that blocked off the loft’s sleeping area. A pair of his jeans and a freshly unwrapped pale yellow dress shirt hung over the screen. He’d told her to pick anything she liked and Ana had gone directly to the jeans and shirt as if she knew how much they meant to him. It was like Isis all over again.
Oh, well
, he thought,
they’re only clothes
. Ana tossed her dress over the screen and pulled the shirt and jeans over to her side. The dress faded away, in a spooky, back-to-wherever-the-dead-go kind of way. Jerry shivered, then answered his mother’s query.
“That’s right, Mom, I have to work today, a holiday . . . Well, being the new guy, I get to cover the station over the holidays. Also, I’m trying to learn the ropes and I can’t do that at home on the couch . . . Yes, the shirt looks great. Thank you. I’ll be wearing it today at the office.”
Ana pirouetted out from behind the screen, dressed in Jerry’s new shirt and old jeans. She danced around him, making faces and coquettishly flashing wrists and ankles at him.
“Great—I’ll talk to you next week, then. Have a good time at the flower show, Mom . . . Yes, Mom, I’ll be seeing Ana again . . . I know you’re glad I’ve met someone. She’s quite a—
what
? Meet her? When? Do I have any say in this? This is my home, Mom, so it only follows that you wait for an invitation to come visit . . . Well, that particular week in February I’m in Seattle for a trade show. Let me check my schedule and see what—no, don’t buy your ticket, yet. That would be stupid . . . Mom, I’m not calling
you
stupid, I’m just saying don’t buy your ticket until I know if I’m even going to be in the city . . . Mom—
Mother
! Would you please—” His mother interrupted him again so he gave up trying to explain to her. “Good bye, Mom.” He hung up without waiting for her reply.
Ana settled beside him on the couch. Jerry sipped his decaf, trying to calm himself.
“She sounds like a
Zhenshchina s siloy
—a strong woman—Jerry.”
“That’s one of the more polite ways to put it.”
“Does she live alone?” Ana tucked one leg up under herself and turned to face him.
“My father chose death over life with her nagging.”
“He took his own life?!” She was shocked.
“No, it was a heart attack.”
“Then he did
not
choose, did he?”
“No, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he did.”
“Do you miss him?”
“Of course.” He really did. Every day.
“Was he a stupid man?”
“Stubborn yes; stupid . . . far from it.”
“Then do you not think that if he had a choice, he would have chosen life with his family rather than death without?”
“Well, I was really only joking.”
“Jerry, death is no joke—trust me on this.” A tear tracked down her cheek and she wiped it away. “I have been given a chance to taste life again, but my family . . . where are they? What has happened to Alexei? Is my little brother happy where he is? Is he anywhere? What about Mashka? And Tatya and Olga? Are they all ghosts somewhere else?”
“I . . . don’t know.”
“Neither do I, but I do not think that they are.”
“How do you know?”
“How do I speak? How do I float? Why am I connected to a book of old poetry my mother gave me one Christmas? Jerry, your mother cares about you. If she did not care, she would not even waste breath, let alone time and money to telephone you.”
“But she’s—”
“
Da
. I know. She infuriates you, makes you angry.”
“She drives me crazy, and lately it’s been a really short trip.”
“Nurture patience.”
“Okay.” He smiled. “Who am I to argue with royalty?”
“Exactly! A commoner does not argue with a Royal—even a dead one. And for that reason, I wish to ask one further favour.”
“Couldn’t you just command me?”
“I would not dream of it.”
Jerry surrendered. “Then ask away.”
“Can we go for another walk?”
“Of course. It’s supposed to be a nice evening, again.”
“This afternoon. While it is light out.”
“I’m sorry, Ana, but I have to work. Besides, are you really ready for the glare of sunlight?”
“I . . . I think so. If not today, tomorrow then?”
“I have tomorrow off, so sure, I guess so. Maybe we should go for a drive, just to start with.”
“Yes! A drive! You have an automobile?”
“Sure. It’s parked out on the street.” He pointed at the window while he walked over to his desk and turned on his laptop. “I prefer to walk, but I have wheels. Tomorrow we’ll get out and explore. Deal?”
“Deal! I have not been in an automobile in so very long.”
“Then tomorrow it is. Now, I’d better get back to my proposal for Manny.”
He sat at the desk and suddenly Ana popped her head through the laptop’s screen so that it came right out of his document.
“All work and no play—”
“Pays the bills, young lady.”
Ana stuck her tongue out and withdrew from the computer.
JERRY STOOD QUIETLY
in the doorway of the tech booth, proudly watching his staff at work. On the other side of the glass the on-air personality was interviewing a now-vacationing Santa. Santa was definitely just Rolf in a Santa hat and a false beard hanging around his neck, but in radio anything is possible.
“So, Santa, what are you going to do with your spare time now that the gifts have all been delivered?”
“Mrs. Claus gave me a home gym for Christmas so I’m going to exercise, I suppose.”
“Exercise? Is Santa going on a diet, too?”
“I don’t have a choice, young fella. The reindeer all unionized this year and say I have to lose weight, for safety reasons. They claim they’re getting old and can’t carry the weight like they used to.”
“Does that mean you have to cut back on gifts, too?”
“Not a chance, lad. My gift sack is multi-dimensional so it actually doesn’t have any weight to it in this dimension. The science behind it is all a bit complicated so I leave the technical stuff to my head elf, Bobo.”
Jerry laughed at the natural chemistry in the banter, then a new migraine spiked his skull. He winced, ground his fists into his temples and tried not to throw up in the hallway. Eventually he felt steadier and returned slowly to his office, one hand on the wall for balance.
ANA STOOD AT
the window, the sun streaming in, bathing her in its warmth. She held one hand up to the light, examining herself for solidity, and was pleased with the results. Jerry’s forgotten iPhone vibrated on the coffee table and she turned to look at it but made no move to answer it.
JERRY’S HEADACHE SLAMMED
into him without mercy. He made it back to his office eventually but now leaned hard on his desk, trying to catch his breath. He risked taking his hand off the desk and fumbled through a drawer where he stashed his pills. Before he could open the bottle, though, the agony crushed him and he collapsed to the floor, knocking over his in-basket with a crash on his way down.
STARTLED BY THE
sound, Jerry’s assistant, Mika, called out from her office across the hall. “Jerry? Boss? You okay?” She wandered over to see what was up and when she stepped around the corner, she saw Jerry on the floor. “Someone call 9-1-1! Jerry’s collapsed!”
@TheTaoOfJerr: “If I should ever die . . . let this be my epitaph: The only proof he needed of the existence of God was music.”
~Kurt Vonnegut
MIKA, RED-EYED
and emotionally frazzled, sat next to Jerry’s hospital bed, keeping vigil while Jerry slept. She tried to read a magazine from the nurse’s station but couldn’t concentrate. She was reading the same paragraph about ski vacations in Utah for the fifth time when Manny slipped into the room. “Hey, Boss.”
“How is he, girl?” He put a comforting hand on her shoulder and she reached up and squeezed it.
“Sedated. They took x-rays and have scheduled an MRI for next week, I guess. I’m not family, so they’re only giving me hints of what’s going on. Damned frustrating.”
“An MRI for a headache?” He picked up the chair next to the empty bed across the room and placed it next to Mika’s, careful not to let the feet scrape the floor.
“The doctor says the symptoms look familiar.”
“How long does he expect to keep Jerr here?”
“Overnight, at least. He’ll know more in a couple hours.”
“Damnation.”
“Yeah.”
ANA DRIFTED UP
out of her book and glanced around the flat. The lights were off, so she thought that maybe Jerry had come home and gone to bed, although she really wish he’d said hello before he went to sleep. She shook off the remnants of the darkness that seemed to cling to her less and less when she exited the book’s other realm, and stood solidly on the floor. Jerry’s college sweatshirt lay folded on the table, so she slipped it on over her dress. She then tiptoed over to peek behind the privacy screen, but was stopped abruptly at the end of her ethereal leash, a yard short of the screen.
This is rather silly, only being able to travel a few yards
. She stalked back to the coffee table and the tiny book with the weight of a world.
Why do you do this to me?
Why can I not simply—?
And then it dawned on her. Very carefully, as if expecting to be shocked or burned, Ana reached over and picked up the book.
“
O, moy dorogoy Gospod’
!”
Oh, my Dear Lord!
She hugged the book tight to her chest and giggled.
Mashka would mock me so, for being silly and not thinking of this sooner
. To test the new development, Ana walked back to Jerry’s privacy screen. Unlike her first attempt, this time nothing stopped her. She did a little skip of joy and peeked behind the screen. The bed was empty.
She turned back to the main room. “Jerry?” Now that she knew he wasn’t asleep, she could risk calling out. She could see that the door to the toilet was open and the small area beyond was dark, but she knew that meant nothing conclusive. Afraid of what she might find, she walked through the kitchen to assure herself that Jerry wasn’t lying out of sight on the floor behind the counter. Relieved that he wasn’t there, she tapped lightly on the bathroom door. No answer came. “Jerry? I am about to invade your privacy. Please say something before I embarrass us both.” Her only answer was silence, so she reached in, flicked the switch to open the electric light, and poked her head around the corner. The tiny space was empty. Jerry was not at home, and the glowing numbers on the electric heating box in the kitchen said that it was nearly midnight. Ana made her way back to the sleeping area and sat on the floor, leaning back against the bed, keeping vigil.
“Jerry? Where are you?” She slid the book into the sweatshirt’s pouch, wrapped her arms around herself, and remained like that, rocking back and forth, lost and unsure what to do, until she was so exhausted that she was unwillingly drawn back into the book. The sweatshirt crumpled to the floor next to the bed, with the book still tucked away in the pouch.
JERRY REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS
suddenly, as if a noise had awakened him. Alert as he was, though, he was confused. He recognized a hospital room when he saw one, but he had no memory of how he got there. He was also alone. Yes, of course he was alone. His family was back east and Ana was either a figment of his imagination or a ghost attached to some old book of poetry. The only light in his room came from the tall, narrow window flanking the half-closed door. No, he was wrong. There was a glow above and behind him, probably from some piece of health-monitoring equipment. As his eyes adjusted he saw, too, that there was light from a glow of dusk or dawn outside his window. His mind was fuzzy around the edges and his confusion wouldn’t go away.
“Ana? Shvibzik? What happened?”
At the sound of Jerry’s voice on the near silent ward, a nurse poked her head into the room. “Mr. Powell? Good morning. I’m Stephanie. How are you feeling?”
“Lost. Where am I?”
Stephanie came into the room and began checking the monitoring equipment and Jerry’s pulse. “Royal Jubilee Hospital. You collapsed at work and gave your co-workers quite a scare.” She laid the back of her hand against his forehead and seemed satisfied that he wasn’t burning up. “You’re looking much better now. Your colour has improved.”
“I collapsed? During my headache?”