The fat orange sun was sinking in a gasoline sky when the stolen Charger lurched over the bridge into the hometown of Peter’s wife. He could smell the ocean. Long Beach wasn’t as developed as the picture in his mind, but neither was it suburban. The shingled single-family houses were pushed close together with small yards separated by chain-link barriers and an occasional beat-up picket fence.
He got turned around looking for landmarks. He was almost clipped by a garbage truck coming down the wrong side of a street that had been one-way in his memory. He pulled over and climbed onto the hood of the car and looked up and down and across the yards and spotted the steeple of a church on the block where his wife grew up. In four minutes he had found her house. He parked across the street and turned off the engine.
On the small front lawn of her father’s house, Janice Crowley, age ten, was turning cartwheels.
“She exists,” Peter said out loud. The little girl on the lawn was familiar to him from black-and-white photos in his wife’s family album, from scratchy home movies played on Christmas Day. He was amazed that she was in full color and three dimensions. In every step she took, in every shake of her head, in every wrinkle of her nose, it was Janice. She had come back to him.
He sat watching her for a long time. He didn’t know what to do next. She ran into the house, and he despaired. Four minutes later she came out again, carrying a green hula-hoop. The streetlights came on. Soon she would disappear back inside. He got out of the car and walked to the edge of the yard.
“Hey,” he said.
She looked up at him. She was neither curious nor interested. She said hello and went back to her hula-hoop.
“You’re pretty good at that,” he said.
She counted spins: “Eleven, twelve, thirteen…”
“You’re Janice.”
She stopped spinning and looked at him.
“Are Tim and your folks inside?”
She said, “You know my brother?”
“Sort of.” He took a step onto the lawn. He was working without a net now. “Do you know me? I’m Peter.”
“I don’t know.”
“What grade are you in, Janice?”
“Grade four.”
A door slammed open and a familiar New York accent demanded, “Hey! Who the hell are you?”
The boy looked around and broke into a grin. “Gus!”
The compact man was moving toward him, out of the house and across the lawn. “Who are you?”
“I’m Peter. Peter Wyatt. You look good, Gus! You look so young!”
In 1970 Gus Crowley was an undercover narcotics officer working around the New York beaches and airports. It was a dangerous job. He wore a walrus mustache and shaggy hair to blend in with the criminals he pursued. He lived with the fear that one of them would learn where he lived and threaten his family. He was always on alert. One look at this kid’s eyes pushed all his panic buttons.
Gus got close to the boy’s face and said, “Tell me who you are and what you want.”
Peter couldn’t stop grinning. His wife was real. His remembered life was not a delusion. He looked at his father-in-law and said, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’m the man who’s going to marry Janice and be the father of your grandchildren.”
Gus Crowley brought his left fist into Peter’s right eye. There was a crack. Peter staggered. Gus shouted for Janice to run inside and lock the door. Peter said, “No, Janice! Stay with me!” The cop hit him again and a tooth snapped out of his mouth, root and all. Peter hit the lawn as Gus’s boot broke into his ribs.
He saw the face of his father-in-law upside down and filled with hatred.
He heard his mother shouting as Dr. Terry rushed at Gus. The pain drained away as he slipped out of the world.