Forty Leap (6 page)

So I did not feel guilty, but I did feel
angry. I felt ashamed. It was a mistake I could never take back.
And a mistake I could never forget.

Standing there in the cold wind and snow,
tears freezing on my cheeks, I wept openly because I knew that the
wounds inflicted during life scarred badly.

The trip back to my apartment in Manhattan
was long and lonely. I had brought a paperback with me, but
couldn’t find the reserves with which I might concentrate on it.
Once back home, I climbed the three flights of stairs to my
apartment, rather than use the elevator, and found I had two
visitors.

Both were men and both were police officers,
but both were dressed in suits and long coats. Both were already
inside the apartment.

The senior of the two men was a squat black
man with graying hair crowning the back of his head. He presented
me with a smile and a badge and introduced himself as Detective
Remy Winslow. I placed him in his upper forties. He was probably
eligible to retire, but seemed to very much like his work.

The younger man was more reserved, regarding
me with instant suspicion. His expression remained passive as he
showed me his badge. Though he said nothing by way of introduction,
he held the badge out long enough for me to read his name. Warren
Li. Detective Li was much taller than his companion with an
unusually large frame for an Asian. His face was square without the
hint of five o’clock shadow. I disliked him immediately without,
oddly enough, the sense of being intimidated.

I was annoyed at their appearance and even
moreso by the fact that they had chosen to enter my apartment
uninvited. This anger, which seemed more and more to be taking hold
of me, prompted a challenge. “Do you have a warrant?”

Winslow’s expression was one of confusion
while his partner seemed to grow irritated by the question. It was
Winslow who responded. “We’re not here to arrest you, Mr.
Cristian.”

“You haven’t the right be in my apartment
either.”

Winslow looked around as if only just
noticing his surroundings, but Li was unwilling to put on a show.
He responded this time. “The law grants certain latitude in cases
of terrorist activities.” I noticed that he did not use the word
latitude
as a way of sugar coating another meaning. It was
the word he had chosen for his explanation. He was telling me in a
way that suited him that he could do whatever he wanted. I
identified him as pompous.

Closing the door behind me, I began to shrug
out of my coat. The two gentlemen had originally made themselves
comfortable on the couch. When I had walked in, Winslow was reading
a novel, which he had quickly stashed inside his coat, and Li had
been staring at the door.

The good host in me demanded that I offer
them a drink. The angry and depressed individual that was on the
outside squashed that impulse. Even the threat implied by Li’s
statement had had no effect on me.

“I thought that had all been cleared up,” I
told them.

It was Li who said, “At that time, we were
unaware that you had been fired from your job recently.”

And that, of course, would be my motive. “I
didn’t find that out until the day of the threat.”

“About that…” This time it was Winslow who
spoke. His entire tone and demeanor were different. It was clear
that each of them was meant to ask certain types of questions.
Their styles could keep a person off guard, while each different
question could be posed in a correct way as determined by the two
detectives. “Your replacement had actually been on the job for
almost three weeks on January 3
^rd
. What’s unclear is
that you say you didn’t know you were…let go…and yet someone else
was doing your job.”

“I hadn’t been to work in a while.”

“Any particular reason?” This, from Li.

I hesitated, unwittingly giving them the
impression that they had caught me in a lie. The trouble was that
they had caught me in the truth. “I have been experiencing episodes
of lost time.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Winslow
said.

“One minute it’s six o’clock on Friday. The
next minute it’s 3 o’clock on the following Wednesday.”

Winslow looked like he was trying to
understand. Li looked skeptical.

“When did this happen to you last?” Li
asked.

“November 23
^rd
. Around four
o’clock.”

“And the ‘next minute’ was the morning of
January 3
^rd
?”

I nodded. I didn’t expect them to believe me.
My own brothers didn’t believe me.

Winslow took over again. “So, where were you
for all of that time?”

I shrugged very matter of factly. This was
becoming old hat to me. “Nowhere.”

“You don’t sound sure,” Li accused.

“I’m not sure,” I replied.

“Does anyone else know about this?” Winslow
asked.

“No one who believes me,” I answered. “Except
maybe Morty.”

Winslow suddenly produced a pad and flipped
through it. “That would be…Morris Yovanovicz?”

If I was supposed to be surprised about the
fact that the detectives had Morty’s name on hand, I wasn’t. I just
nodded.

There was this uncomfortable silence between
us. I stood there, looking from detective to detective, each one
looking at me. I suppose they were looking for some facial
expression that might give away some vital piece of hidden
information. But I was hiding nothing. If they wanted to know
something, they would simply have to ask.

So they did. Or, rather, Winslow did.

“Um…you are aware that Mr. Yovanovicz is
deceased?”

“I’m aware,” I said sadly, under my breath.
Morty’s death seemed far away. Even though, by my reckoning, I had
seen him just two days before, the interruption of my schedule and
the loss of my mother had detached me from reality. All of the
people I knew and all of the things I normally did seemed
surreal.

Li asked, “Can you account for your
whereabouts on December 17
^th
, about six o’clock in the
evening?”

The question caught me off guard and I
hesitated, trying to figure out what I had been doing on that date.
It took only a moment for me to realize that I had missed it
completely, but the hesitation was noticeable and branded me a liar
once again.

“I wasn’t anywhere,” I said. “I told you
that.”

Li continued, “Of course you did. Can anyone
corroborate that for you?”

I looked at him as if expecting him to
suddenly understand what I was trying to say before realizing that
he understood completely and was simply ignoring my answers.
“What’s so special about the 17
^th
?”

Winslow said not unkindly, “That was the day
Mr. Yovanovicz was killed.”

I looked directly at Li. “Do you think I was
driving the bus?”

“Of course not,” Li said without any hint of
emotion. “The bus driver’s interview is on record. Witnesses,
however, claim that Mr. Yovanovicz ‘looked like he was
pushed’.”

Now I sat down. Just the thought of someone
actually pushing sweet old Morty in front of a bus made me sick to
my stomach. I stumbled through them to the sofa and sat heavily.
The fact that Li was implying that I had been the one to push Morty
dissolved into the ether. It was irrelevant at that time.

“Are you sure Mr. Yovanovicz was the only one
who knew about your episodes?”

I nodded. “He was the only one who didn’t
think I was crazy.”

“Is that why you were seeing Doctor Helena
Mason?” My psychiatrist.

I nodded in answer to his question. It seemed
that I was to be cursed with endless nodding.

“And when was your last visit with Dr.
Mason?” Li had taken over the interview completely now. Winslow
simply remained in the background, looking sympathetic.

This time I got to shake my head. I didn’t
really remember. It had been a few weeks, not counting the time I
had missed. That made a couple of months at least. I told him
so.

“Can you account for your whereabouts on the
21
^st
of December?”

I just looked up at him, stupefied by his
total disregard for me. “No. I can’t. I skipped it.”

He must have found that an interesting choice
of words because his eyebrows actually went up an eighth of an
inch.

Winslow, seeing an opportunity, stepped in.
“That was the day that Dr. Mason was killed.”

“What?! How?”

“Auto accident,” said Winslow.

“She was forced off the road,” Li added,
looking at his partner. “Not much of an accident.”

In what seemed an all too familiar gesture of
disbelief, I buried my face in my hands. And yet it wasn’t really
disbelief. I was growing accustomed to the notion that the world
was always changing. It changed around us all day by day, hour by
hour, minute by minute. But I was missing the gradual progression
of those changes. A person could die one day and give you the shock
of your life. Multiply that by three over five weeks and you’ll
have the fragile emotional state that was becoming my uncomfortable
second skin.

“Mr. Cristian, are you planning to ‘skip’
anymore time in the near future?”

I looked up at Li, looked him directly in the
eye. I had lost all inhibition. “You’re an asshole.”

He didn’t respond. He simply found the door
and left, Winslow now standing awkwardly by himself in my living
room. With little grace, he fished a card out of his coat and
dropped it on the coffee table. “Take care of yourself, Mr.
Cristian.” And then he was gone, too.

It’s funny sometimes, how things work out.
Losing my job put me into some financial stress. But with my mother
passing, I was due a decent inheritance. Not a fortune by any
stretch, but a few thousand dollars after splitting the whole thing
with my brothers. I was very surprised when the check arrived in
the mail a month later. In all of that time, my brothers and I had
not spoken. I had twice tried to call Wyatt and once to call
Jeremy. I did not even hear from Livvie.

I missed them.

Without them, and without my mother, and
without Morty, I was very alone. I spent the first week in my
apartment wishing for a leap. What else could I do? I was hoping to
leap far into the future so that I could start a brand new life in
a brand new world. But that was a fantasy, really. Even if I had
the power to leap, I still did not have the power to stop it. My
brand new life would end the next time I leaped and left that brand
new world behind for an even newer one. Thus, my thoughts turned to
suicide. I suppose it was just a simple step in the progression. As
my life fell apart around me, I began to wonder what I was living
for. It was a notion I soon dismissed, though. I did not want to
die. I wanted still what I had always wanted. I wanted to find a
comfortable and happy life.

I ate sparsely and slept long hours. I
watched a lot of television and spent more and more time running
into dead ends on the internet. I learned a lot though. I learned
what it’s like to live in the poorest regions in Africa. I learned
about the crisis in the Middle East and sectarian genocide. I
learned about a dog in Wisconsin that had saved an entire family
from a burning house.

You can learn a lot in a week.

You can also become extremely bored.

I got another job. It was at a K-Mart
bordering Union Square. I needed the income because I was afraid of
using my mother’s money, but I really just needed a schedule. I put
the inheritance into a self-managing account that would earn some
interest as it sat. It was a semi-liquid account. I couldn’t tell
if it would be enough but I figured it would be there whenever I
was. I could get retail or labor jobs at the drop of a hat, but I
would probably lose each one. Whenever I disappeared (or, actually,
reappeared), I would need money until I started earning some.
That’s where the account would come in. Maybe it wasn’t much of a
plan, but I had never been much of a planner.

The days and weeks blended into one another.
There was very little for me to do, even less than before. At least
I wasn’t confined to a 5 day work schedule. I found myself asking
for and taking more hours at the store. My days off were dark and
dreary. It was the dead of winter. The cold crept out of the
physical and into the emotional. Night fell early and the internet
and television were poor company, even for someone who had grown
accustomed to poor and no company. I tried just once to give a call
to Livvie, but she did not pick up her cell phone and I did not
leave a voice message.

The worst of February went by in the middle
of the month and the weather began to brighten as March approached.
It did a little bit to ease my spirits, but not much. There was no
follow up from the police department, indicating that they had lost
interest in me. I went to visit my mother’s grave six times, each
time praying that she would reach down from Heaven and bring me a
solution to my problem. I wondered then if an end to the leaping
would be an end to the problem. After all it had cost me I began to
think it was all I had left.

On March 6th, at the end of a shift, I folded
my K-Mart vest and stuck it into my K-Mart locker. Before I went, I
felt like something sweet so I bought a candy bar with nuts and
nougat. Sticking it into my pocket, I made for the exit. One of the
checkout ladies, an older woman named Estelle (just like the
receptionist at my old job), told me to button up because it was
cold. She flashed me a kindly smile and I flashed her back my best
imitation. I had seen her a few times while working. With all of
the hours I worked, I had seen just about everyone that worked
there. I was well regarded as the best employee and the worst
company. As I stepped through the door and into the street, the
world around me changed. The change was so fluid and sudden that I
might not even have noticed it if the scenery wasn’t so different.
To begin with, it was warm. I immediately became uncomfortable
inside of my coat. The dark air smelled of soot and garbage and
something foul that I couldn’t put my finger on. The pavement
beneath my feet was not smooth and lined, but broken and crumbled.
I stepped into the night and my foot twisted on a loose block of
concrete and I went down. Silence was all around. I pulled myself
to my feet, relieved that I was uninjured, and took in my
surroundings.