“Gone?”
“His office is abandoned, closed up. No trace of his nurse or receptionist. He must’ve gone back to China.”
“Without telling his patients?”
“His filing cabinets and desk drawers were empty too—emptied, we must hope, by him.”
“He never would’ve written anything down about Alex. He was too careful a man.”
“As I said, that is what we must hope.”
*
Alex wondered if he eased open their door now whether they might be standing there, continuing the conversation. He’d tell them never to let him play football, warn them about what was coming a whole bunch of years down the road. Give them the exact date and time, so they could be someplace else. He’d never thought much about why he could never remember going to the doctor, but realized now it must’ve been because of Dr. Chu’s sudden departure.
Alex continued watching the vision of his younger self tossing the football into the air and running under it. The next toss struck the overhead ceiling fan and light fixture, splaying shadows in all directions until it stopped swaying at the same time his mother peeked out from her bedroom to survey the scene.
Don’t hurt yourself, Alex.
Spoken with her eyes seemingly fixed on him instead of his younger self. Then the little-boy version of Alex in football regalia vanished, and the Alex of today pressed on toward his bedroom.
The lump in his throat thickened further as he eased his bedroom door open, stopping just short of flipping on the light. Couldn’t do that, couldn’t do anything that might alert the cop watching the house that someone was inside. There wasn’t much light, but it was enough to move to his bed and clamp a hand onto the sketchbook he kept between his mattress and box spring. He hadn’t drawn in it for a while, not since football had started up again over the summer. And because of that the visions he’d failed to sketch out on paper, a kind of relief valve, had begun haunting his dreams. Visions of vast machine-like assemblages strung into barely recognizable forms lurking at the edge of his consciousness.
Just like in the motel room, covering the walls with the ink of a couple Monterey Motor Inn pens he must’ve dug out of a drawer. Once drawn, the subject of the visions would retreat to the farthest reaches of his mind, where they could not hold him hostage to their whims.
Sliding the sketchbook out in the spill of light coming from a streetlamp beyond, Alex realized very few pages were still blank, his efforts having filled far more than he had recalled. He sat down atop his bed, soothed by the familiar squeak of the springs, and paged to the end as if to refresh his memory.
But none of the drawings touched any chords, as if he’d traced them in his sleep. Had he woken up a few mornings with what he thought might be ink staining his fingers? That thought did strike a chord but he wasn’t sure. And what did these drawings mean in any event?
The evening left his room bathed in shadows, sparing him further glimpses of his life until forty-eight hours ago. The pair of jeans hanging off the edge of his bed, collection of sneakers pushing their way out of the closet. He didn’t want to think, didn’t want to look. But something made him strip off the still-stiff cheap pair of jeans he’d bought at the Buy Two store and slide his old jeans on in their place, careful to replace the folded pages containing the results of Dr. Chu’s lab tests into the back pocket. Then he grabbed a pair of sneakers and replaced the cheap ones that were more comfortable than Dr. Payne’s but still not right. Alex felt instantly better, himself again. That’s what it was—he felt like himself.
Except that person didn’t exist anymore; in point of fact, had never existed. His entire life was a lie and changing his clothes couldn’t change that. Still, he fished a shirt from his drawer and pulled his arms through it, the scents of fabric softener and laundry detergent sending a lump up his throat because they made him picture his mother doing laundry, obsessive about adding just the right amount of both.
That lump, and a heaviness that had settled in his chest, accompanied him back to his bedroom door, which he eased open all the way.
“Hello again, Alex,” said the hazy shape of the ash man.
90
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