“And how is the other thing?”
“The thing with my mind picking up other people’s feelings? The thing about maybe killing myself if I can’t make it stop?”
“That thing, yes.”
Emily looked over at Samuels and realized that she had never seen him dressed this way: casual red linen shirt, gray slacks, worn but clean loafers. You’d never know he wore a doorman’s brass-buttoned coat a few days before, and more recently, a paper hospital gown. He was an accountant, a widower. He knew about ancient forests and the First Peoples who had moved through them. And he believed her. She stopped him with a gentle hand on his liver-spotted forearm. “I’m not going to do it.”
Samuels took Emily’s hands and surprised her by leaning in and kissing her on the head. He squeezed her hands and let one of them drop, electing to hold the other one as they continued on their walk. “What changed?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “The experiment seems to have worked. I can still feel all of THEM but only as that white noise I told you about, nothing more distinct. In fact, even the white noise is beginning to fade. It’s like I know it’s there, but I’m getting so used to it I hardly even notice anymore.”
“Same as it not even being there?”
“Close enough.”
A woman in a sundress splashed with banana-yellow flowers wiggled by after a micro-dog on the end of a red patent-leather leash. She jabbered into her cell phone, dopplering up to and then past them.
“…that she had any idea that what his really real motivation was about…”
“How’s Marty…Michael…Marty, whatever. How’s he doing?” Emily asked.
“Michael-Marty-Whatever, is doing very well. He’s to be released in the next couple of days pending another round of tests.”
“What are they looking for? I mean, I thought they already knew that it was just his congenital thing.”
“Yes, but of course they have to check everything and check it twice. Actually the last time I was in his room, one of the shmoks they’re attempting to pawn off as physicians came in reading from a clip board. Marty was lacquering her nails for the fifth time in an hour—I was getting light-headed from the acetate—and when the shmok looked up he paused.”
Emily giggled.
“Yes, quite, right, I was holding my own mirth in check. Anyway, the young man paused and our Marty raised her painted-on eyebrows and without skipping a beat said, ‘I knew it. I’m fuckin’ pregnant.’”
They were just entering the cool of a tunnel under a stone bridge that arched over the path. Emily’s laughter rang against the stones and chipped a sparrow from its hidden perch. It piped its outrage and flashed into the sunlight on the other side.
A man stepped into the tunnel facing them.
Emily’s laughter fell frozen from the air. She could feel him instantly, a miasma pushing against her head and then through like her skull was the rind of a rotten fruit. She winced and jerked her hand out of Samuels’s. A silent snarl wound her features into a wedge. Her hands grew into claws. A low hum, almost a growl, sluiced in her throat.
Samuels looked from Emily to the silhouette at the other end of the tunnel. Whomever it was just stood there, a pylon. Samuels’s heart began to race. He looked back at Emily. Her eyes were squeezed into slits. The man at the other end of the tunnel tilted his head to the side. The skin on the half of Samuels’s body nearest to Emily spiked in gooseflesh. A whiff of something that reminded him of an electric train crackled in his nose. He’d believed Emily before about her having some kind of psi-ability, but nothing like this. Samuels took a step away from her and glanced again at the man in the tunnel.
“Hello, Emily,” the man said. His voice was as flat as the light, revealing nothing. But Samuels could feel him like a bad smell. Something was happening to him. He was being affected, taking radiation from these two. “I think you might remember me from a few days ago at the hospital.”
Emily could barely speak. His dead rage closed her throat and burned in her chest. The arches of her feet ached. She wanted to charge him like a bull.
“Drummond Fuh-Fine,” she stammered. “Phobia Kuh-Killer.”
With a sound like wax paper being balled up, a thin crack unzipped the pavement beneath her feet and stopped just short of Fine’s tennis shoes. Dust sifted from the roof of the tunnel.
Fine looked down at the crack and took a step toward her. “I’d like a word with you.”
“Samuels,” Emily hissed out of the side of her mouth. “You nuh-need to guh-go.” He didn’t answer. She wrenched her eyes away from the shadow man at the end of the tunnel over to find Samuels down on one knee, clutching his chest.
“I can feel the old man’s ticker. I’ve got his whole world in my hand, so to speak.” Fine bore down and Samuels yelped, now grabbing his left arm. “Things have changed since you and I first saw one another.”
Emily’s eyes quick-scanned the tunnel, but there was nothing for her to pick up with her mind and hurl. It was like standing in the barrel of a huge cannon. A flash of the hand print embossed in the grill of that SUV flitted behind her eyes. She didn’t need to throw anything. Light appeared under Fine’s feet as she picked him up. Samuels let out a relieved “Ahhh,” as Fine’s startled grip released him. Emily hesitated a moment to see that he was all right and phosphorus ignited in her chest. She would have shrieked but the pain was too great and there was no air.
Fine dropped to the ground with Astaire-like grace. “I see things have changed for you as well. That adds a certain dimension to the situation.”
Samuels backed up against the wall of the tunnel. His head was spinning. Would these be his last few moments? What a strange end it would make. An unlikely end really. The chances were greater that someone would come along in a few seconds and interrupt the scene. In fact, the chances that a man in a black t-shirt and blue jeans would mosey through the tunnel from Fine’s side in the next 12.7 seconds were exactly 1 in 4. Samuels blinked. What the in the name of? Now it was 1 in 2. Now it was…
“Hey, is she okay?”
Fine whirled on the man who had just strolled up behind him. “What?” he barked. “What do you? Huh?” He turned back around but Emily and Samuels were gone.
* * *
BAST, THE ANCIENT Egyptian Goddess of health and healing (among other things not so nice), watched over Emily and Samuels as they sat panting on a bench in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Egypt and Medicine exhibit. Four ten-foot tall cat-headed women overlooked their bench and the reflecting pool beyond. Emily had sprinted most of the way, dragging Samuels along an inch off the ground. In his shock he believed he was running along next to her, even though he knew it was next to impossible. In fact, he knew precisely the probability of everything upon which he concentrated.
After a few minutes to catch their breath, hearts still bruised and aching, Samuels said, “You’ve infected me. You and your friend back there.”
Emily sat back. “Friend? Fuck you, Samuels.”
He gripped the edge of the bench and bowed his head, sighing. “I’m sorry. I’m just terribly afraid right now.”
Emily took a shaking breath. “Yeah, me too. I shouldn’t have cussed at you like that.”
“Yes, you should really work on your ability to empathize with people.”
“Cute.”
Emily looked up at the Bast statue second from the right. They were all nearly identical, but the noses were slightly different. It was a strange effect, the scantily clad body of a young woman with the head of a lioness. Emily smirked. She and Bast had the same size boobs.
“How the hell did he know where to find me?”
The question pushed Samuels back into his mind. He saw their encounter under the bridge as a single point, all the contingencies and possibilities radiated out in glowing strings in every direction. Images of people and places pulsed along their lengths. The probability of Fine just guessing where they would be and exactly when, was a flickering
, waning ghost. The string representing Fine going through the files at the hospital to find Charlie’s address was more substantial, and the string representing Fine following them was even brighter. But the contingency string of Fine torturing a young man with dark hair for the information of where Emily could be found and then of Fine following her from Charlie’s apartment to the park was glowed like a live wire. Now his mind took a turn and calculated the probabilities of any of the other contingencies being true. He knew exactly how many others there were. Four tenths and three one-hundredths of a second after Emily asked the question, Samuels muttered, “I have the strand.”
She turned to him, “What?”
His eyes cleared and he looked at her. “The probability that Fine kidnapped Charlie’s friend with the dark hair and glasses and got his address from him is the greatest, about one in one-point-zero-zero-zero-three-seven-four… It keeps going.”
The Bast quartet just stared. So did Emily. “I don’t get it.”
Samuels leaned over and reached a hand into the reflecting pool next to them. He came out with a penny that looked like a chip of dark jade. He handed it to Emily. “You know how to skip stones, right?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. You know how to skip a stone?”
“Yes.”
“Skip this penny across the water and I’ll explain what I think is happening.”
“But—”
Samuels held up a deeply lined palm. “Indulge me.”
Emily sighed, cocked her arm—flash of her and Daddy at Lenders Pond a hundred-thousand years ago—and slung her hand out, allowing the penny to roll along and off the inside of her index finger. Before the penny hit the surface of the water, Samuels said, “Five.”
Splash, splash, splash, spl-splash.
“Lucky guess,” Emily said. “I still don’t get what you’re doing. What are you doing?”
“That was a good one. I can only ever get three at most,” he said and handed her another. “Try it again.”
The coin was cold, like a river stone. A Chinese boy with a patient face watched as Emily cocked her hand back again. “Should I make a wish?”
“Five,” Samuels said.
Emily slung her hand and the tiny flying saucer slashed out over the water. It nicked the surface one, two, three, four, and was yanked under on the fifth. “Huh,” she said. “Five again. What are the chances of that?”
“One in five-hundred, fifty-seven thousand, two-hundred twenty-one point seven and a shitload of threes.”
Emily reached into the water and scraped out a handful of pennies. She zipped them out over the water rapid fire. With each throw Samuels called a number: “Three. Two. Four. Six—ooh, good one. Three.” Emily stopped. For a minute she was quiet then looked at him. The Chinese boy beamed.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had a, a thing like mine before? A power.”
“Because there wasn’t anything to tell you about until a few minutes ago. You and that man, Fine… Something happened to me when the two of you rubbed up against each other.”
“Something.”
“I don’t know, but it’s like you switched something on in me.”
“Why didn’t it happen before?”
Samuels’s head tilted. “One in one-point-zero-zero-zero-seven-etc. that it was because and you and Fine were using your powers at the same time and I was connected to the both of you.”
“But how, exactly? I mean like what are the mechanics?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t have the strand on that.”
“And what’s that mean—you don’t have the strand?”
“It’s how it appears in my head. I’m seeing strings, strands of probability radiating from a central point, an event. I can see how many strings or contingencies there are and which one is the most likely. That’s the strand.”
Emily leaned in. “How far ahead can you look?”
“Well, this is all brand new. Aside from a few pennies and whether or not I was going to die at the psychic hands of that maniac, I’ve never used this before. Why?”
“I’m thinking lottery ticket, here.”
Samuels looked through the triangles of tessellated glass that made up the west wall of the great room where they sat with the ancient gods. The park rolled away outside the windows, tourists strolled, New Yorkers strolled faster, an unseen cloud passed over the sun and inked the air. “What was he doing to us? It felt like I was having a heart attack again, but it was different. External.”
“Like the pain was a pressure from outside your body?”
“Just so.”
“He got me with that, too. If that guy hadn’t come along…”
“Can you do that, Emily? Reach into someone like that?”
“I don’t think so. No, I think I have to be able to see what I’m moving.”
“How do you know?”
Emily blushed.
“What?”
“Last night I was trying to, um, play a little with Charlie.” She couldn’t finish.
Samuels let out a tired chuckle. “Had his trousers on?”
She looked away, her cheeks absolutely burning. “Yeah.” She switched back to
the original line. “I don’t know why Fine can do what he does. Maybe it’s because he’s already so fixated on giving people heart attacks.”
“Except now he doesn’t have to terrorize them to death. He can just reach in and squeeze.”
Emily shuddered and absently chucked another penny out over the water.
“Four.”
“Hey,” she said. “Lemme’ see your hands.”
Samuels held them out. “Why?” Aside from a slight old-man tremor, they were still.
“Lucky duck,” she said. She still had to use her power against herself to still her hand. She wished she could just let it shake, but if Charlie saw he’d get worried and… Emily suddenly went cold. “Samuels, what are the chances that Fine will go looking for Charlie now that we’ve gotten away from him?”
Samuels titled his head to the side. After a moment his eyes cleared. “We should find him right now.”
~~~~~~~~
Chapter 23
DRUM WAS NOT an impatient man. He strolled through the park, contemplating his options. Time was money: accrued and spent. You wanted something, you had to wait for it. If his suspicions about Emily’s empathic power were correct, she was worth a wait. She could be the gateway to the fears of every man, woman and disgusting, snot-nosed child in the city. If he could force her to tap into them all and then tap into her, he would experience the greatest burst of terror imaginable. If only he hadn’t lost her under the bridge. Well, patience. He had other options. The boyfriend for one. The MRI tech had told him where to find him as well. (A remarkable feat considering how little of his lips were left at the time.)
As he walked by Bethesda Fountain—an angel statue showering divine love and septic water on the masses—Drum considered the logistics. He would have to incapacitate Emily physically as well as convince her not to use her apparent new telekinetic ability. Her new trick was impressive, but not as precise as his own power. He had a scalpel, she a broadsword. Why lift him off the ground like a nightclub bouncer? Why hadn’t she burst a blood vessel in his brain, or squeeze his heart? It was incidental. The greatest concern was to ensure that all the minds in the city felt terror when he forced Emily to open and focus on them. Otherwise it would be an exercise in crowd noise when what he wanted was a chorus of a single, terrified note.
Drum walked up the steps and past the small marble amphitheater decorated by skate punks dangling their booted legs over the stage. He moved on toward the roller disco and its informal troupe of kinetic eccentrics. A black man, muscles inflated to gigantic proportion, twirled like a ballerina. An old woman in a pink jumpsuit slid by backward, her skates weaving a perfect double helix. She held out a hand and exchanged a casual high-five with the black guy as they passed. Drum smiled and they bo
th dropped dead.
He remembered his first mass frenzy on Fifth Avenue the other day. What was it that helpful soul had shouted as the bodies began to pile?
Gas! Gas! The terrorists are gassing us!
It would take a poisonous rumor or two. Sirens began to wail toward the roller disco. Drum focused. Right, first thing was first. It was time to get back to the hospital. He needed to consult with a nurse.
* * *
CHARLIE LOVED BEING an ED nurse more than any other type of hospital work. He’d tried several specialties, but in the ER, someone came in with trouble and you took care of it. It was quick and simple and you always knew what good you did or did not do. On an interesting day Charlie got to do this with at least twenty people.
Charlie was having an interesting day. He’d only been on shift since about noon and in the last three hours he’d seen three broken bones, a gunshot wound (self-inflicted), and a near-fatal encounter with an electrical transformer. The last was the most notable. The transformer box on the side of a power pole had somehow gone hot and some poor sucker had leaned up against it. Con-Ed flared on his back in perfect white lettering set in a charcoal corona. The guy was going to make it, and with a decent lawyer, he’d have a meal ticket for the rest of his embossed life.
He was just grabbing some chair-time for the first time that day, leaning back with a really shitty cup of coffee, when a page came through from the front desk. He took a sip, grimaced and trotted into the white linoleum hall, his tennis shoes squeaking. Detective Bilko was standing by the desk.
“Mr. Dunbar.”
“Charlie, please.” Charlie smiled and stuck out his hand. “What can I do for you Detective? This about Fine or McCafferty or...?”
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“Yeah, sure. Doctors’ conference room is empty. C’mon.” Charlie led the way down the hall and into a small room with two couches facing one another across a small coffee table. Charlie copped a squat on one and Bilko on the other. Just as she opened her mouth, Charlie jumped up, “Two seconds,” he said and rushed out of the room. Bilko raised a penciled-in eyebrow and waited. Charlie popped back in with his cup of coffee in one hand and a fresh cup, relatively, for the detective. “I’m assuming you need this as much as I do.”