40

She was still asleep, but I could feel her slow breathing.

I tried to sense what was taking place above us, in the world of streets and houses. So much of our lives is like this: trying to be where we are not, imagining what others are doing. Occasionally a car passed on the street above, but there was no hint of any danger.

It was painful to leave her, but I had to hurry. I lifted the manhole cover gently, slid it, letting it settle as soundlessly as possible. Two figures stood at the end of the street. A streetlight gleamed off the plastic visor of a helmet.

Joy made the porchlights, the parked cars, full of promise. I swept through the early evening. I had a new purpose, a new courage. I took only what life I needed, from a man working on a brilliant red sports car, from a woman bathing, from another woman pacing, peering out from between curtains until I took her in my arms.

How many times had I paused before a painting in an art book and thought: I’ll have to sit down and take a long look at this some day. How many times had I heard a favorite piece of music on the radio and thought: some day I’ll have to really listen to that. I had always been called away, frog-marched from insight and pleasure by my own hectic nature.

Once again I let the blood spill from my veins into Rebecca. I had the chilling suspicion that this time it would not work. I kissed her, and she stirred, but did not wake.

I told her I loved her. I said it like a man saying his last words, in a rush, just before vanishing from the earth. It was not even my own voice speaking, but something deeper, the humanity that remained in me.

At last she woke. Her fingers searched my eyebrows, my lips. “He was someone I knew,” she said, her voice broken. “Someone who loved me, a long time ago.”

“Eric,” I said. “Don’t worry about him.”

If she was surprised that I knew his name she made no sign. “Where are we?” she asked at last.

The damp dripped. There was a far-off splashing, four legs breaking the water. I said, “We’re in a special place,” happiness in my voice.

She smiled. Her hand found the wall, the pocked concrete, a seam glued with algae. She recoiled slightly, and I could see her curiosity shift into concern. She turned her head to listen to the pattering of a small animal in the distance.

“No one can harm us here,” I said.

She touched my lips with her fingers. “Your voice sounds so strange.”

I laughed quietly.

She said, “There’s something wrong.”

“Rebecca, you’ll have to be very patient.”

“Tell me where we are.”

“You’ll only want to know how we got here,” I said.

“It’s a secret,” she said with a tentative smile.

“You could say that.” It hurt me. She could not begin to understand.

She thought I was being playful, coy. She felt the hard concrete wall again, the joint of pipes above her head. She said, “If you give me enough time I can figure it out.”

“Try to stand up,” I said.

She stayed where she was. “What am I wearing?”

“It’s very pretty.”

“What is it? Something my mother picked out. She always wanted me to look like the woman on a wedding cake. Did the studio call?”

Conversation like this was so sweet and so foreign to me that I had trouble following her meaning.

She sensed my confusion. “The Arch Street studio. I can hardly move my fingers! I won’t be able to play like this.”

I helped her to her feet. “You’ll be able to do anything you want.”

“They’ll reschedule me,” she said, as though it was a simple fact. She moved her arms, a mannequin come to life.

“Of course they will. If that’s what you want.”

“What color is it?” She pulled at the gown, trying to make sense of the way it felt, falling in hard folds.

“Sky blue, I think. Azure. Can you walk?”

“This place smells so damp.” Her voice was soft, but it echoed. “We’re undergound!” she said. “But—where are the doctors?”

“Try not to be so loud,” I said, making it sound like a game we were playing.

“Richard—are you in trouble?”

I wrenched open a car door and stretched her on the backseat Before now I had the impression that I could start a vehicle by my will alone, empower it with a thought. Now was the time to find out. I sat behind the steering wheel, slipped the transmission from park to neutral.

Ripe, generous—that’s how cars had so often impressed me, pages of glossy magazines with a woman leaning against a fender. This vehicle was a thing of cold iron, grease and slag. I knew this hulk, down to the rust already beginning on the underside of the hood. Fire. It was stone that fire had melted, and now it needed fire again.

A spark. A cylinder jerked upward, and there was the pungent perfume, gasoline. The engine twitched again, a grinding, whining, choking sound, the starter failing.

The engine caught.

“I have a terrible feeling,” she said from where she lay in the backseat. I steered clumsily, as before, almost clipping a parked car.

“I have a very bad feeling that you did something wrong,” she said.

What is it that makes some cats feel they can do anything they want? I almost hit one that darted across the street, not even in a great hurry, running stiff-legged, its paws a blur.

“Tell me you didn’t do it, Richard.”

“Do what?” I tried to sound lighthearted, but I was having a surprising amount of trouble driving. My skill with automobiles was as bad as before, or worse. I searched for the brake with my foot and found it.

Rebecca sat up. She touched my hair, ran her fingers along the back of my neck.

“Richard, promise you’ll tell me the truth.”

“I’ll try.”

She didn’t want to ask. But at last the question came. “Did you do something you shouldn’t do?”

I gave a forced laugh. “Like what—murder Connie?”

“You’re acting so strange, Richard. I can tell you’re some sort of fugitive.”

She said this without irony or exaggeration, offering the statement without a trace of self-consciousness. This had always amazed me about her, her grasp on the essentials that I had always been happy to overlook.

“What would we be running from?” I asked.

“You tell me.” She sank back. “What kind of car is this?”

“I don’t know. Something Detroit decided America needed to drive.” I didn’t want to tell her that I had picked it among the others parked along the street because it didn’t have an alarm.

“It’s not yours?”

“I stole it.” This happens to me. I try to make a joke, and end up telling the truth.

“Richard, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t let a little grand theft bother you,” I said.

“It’s not that. If you feel you have to steal cars, steal cars. That’s not what bothers me. I can tell something terrible has happened.”

“Like what?” I steered, braked, lurching from lane to lane. The glow of freeway lights was ahead, an ugly destination I could not avoid.

Her gown rustled. “I don’t feel right.”

“I told you you would have to be patient,” I said. “I won’t keep any secrets from you. But you have to wait.”

“Are my parents hurt? Is Simon okay?”

“Your family is fine, as far as I know.”

“Richard, there’s something wrong with my body.” There was an uneasy shiver to her voice. “I feel stitches—some sort of plastic thread is holding me together.” I could sense her wanting to say this with something like humor, trying to exact an explanation.

A stoplight changed. Traffic moved. The onramp lifted us onto the freeway, although I found the car mounting the shoulder, weeds and trash clawing the underside of the car. I wrestled it back into the slow lane.

“I was in a coma,” she said at last.

If sleep reflects death, resembling it, then I could answer truthfully. “That’s true.”

“Why do you say it like that. That’s true.”

This brief imitation of my own voice made me laugh. “I’m sorry,” I gasped at last. “I can’t help it.”

She had not joined in my laughter. If anything, she seemed disturbed by it. There was an experiment I had been afraid of making. I made it now. I glanced into the rearview mirror.

There was no sight of her.

The mirror was empty, except for the headlights of the cars behind us on the freeway. Mirrors have always called to us, always wanted us to leave. Now this empty glass invited me, this stream of lights, the place we were fleeing.

The engine surged and faltered. The steering wheel would not respond to my grip, as though the power steering fluid was running out. When I changed lanes to pass a slow truck the car swung too far, nearly sideswiping a yellow van in the far lane.

“How long was I unconscious?” asked Rebecca.

I took an offramp, and stopped at a red light in a neighborhood of small shops, car stereos, custom kitchens. I had thought I could drive north, like any man beginning a vacation.

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know. Right now there’s something wrong with this car,” I said.

“The car?” she said, not believing it. She was drowsy. “I can tell. There’s something wrong with both of us.”

I could sense her reluctance to fall asleep. Weariness claimed her as I drove.

“No, there’s nothing wrong,” I said, when I knew she could not hear me lie.