When I woke up Meghan was staring at me. She had a cell phone in her hand and a panicked expression on her face. I was on the floor, wrapped in Grandpop’s overcoat, his fedora still on my head.
“Christ, Mickey—are you awake?”
“Oh God.”
I groaned, then rolled over on my side, wondering what Meghan was doing here. Wondering how I was going to explain why I was dressed in a coat, hat and gloves on the floor on a sweltering June morning.
“Mickey! Come on, stop screwing around!”
My right arm was still attached to my body, but like the fingers on my left hand, it was completely numb. A useless slab of dead meat hanging from my shoulder. Fingers were one thing. A whole arm was something else.
The pain coursing through my body was unreal. It was like the flu on anabolic steroids.
“I’m one button away from 911 unless you tell me what’s going on. And this time, I’m going to make sure they pump your stomach.”
I looked at her. Swallowed.
“I’m not…I’m not on drugs. I swear. Just help me up and bring over my laptop.”
“What? Your laptop? Why?”
“It’s important.
Against her better judgment, Meghan put the phone down and helped me to the houndstooth couch, then grabbed my laptop from the cherrywood desk and put it on my lap. I used my three good fingers to pull it into a useful typing position.
“Hey—what’s wrong with your arm?”
“It’s numb. Hang on a minute.”
It was difficult to type with three fingers. I knew plenty of people got by with two, but you have to understand—I was hardwired to type with at least eight. (The pinky fingers usually sit out my work sessions, like foremen on a construction crew.) Using three was unnatural. Using three was like trying to put in a contact lens using my elbows.
“Want me to do that for you?”
“I got it.”
I hunt-and-pecked “Patty Glenhart” and looked for the entry I’d found earlier.
It was gone.
I tried searching for it a different way, going to the main page of the true-crime website (SinnersAndSadists.com, it was called—charming, huh?) and search by “W” and “P,” but there was no entry about a girl named Patty Glenhart.
Meghan touched my shoulder.
“What are you looking for?”
“Hopefully, something that isn’t there.”
It sounded absurd, but maybe I’d actually gone back and changed things. Maybe there was a little girl who was alive right now because I traveled back to the year 1972 and pushed a pedophile out of his kitchen window. I’d lost the use of my arm in the process, but that didn’t matter, because maybe, just maybe Patty Glenhart was alive and the bad dreams were behind her.
Meghan looked at me.
“You know, for someone who’s trying to convince me that they’re not on drugs, you’re doing a really awful job.”
“Swear to God, I’m not on drugs.”
“You’re talking gibberish. I found you on the floor, wrapped in an overcoat and wearing a hat. Your right arm is numb. Tell me which of these things does not say,
There were a million reasons not to tell Meghan what was going on. The spiral of insanity I mentioned.
But I told her anyway.
After I’d finished laying it out for her—and I must have done a fairly good job, because she didn’t interrupt once—Meghan asked me if I wanted some Vitamin Water. I told her sure. She removed a plastic bottle from a paper bag she’d placed on the cherrywood desk, unscrewed it, then handed it to me. I was clever enough not to reach for it with my right hand. But not clever enough to realize that my three-finger grip on the bottle wouldn’t be enough. It slipped straight down, bouncing slightly on a couch cushion, and gushing pale purple liquid all over my lap.
“Gah!”
I lifted the laptop out of the way. It was a Mac relic, but it was also my only link to the outside world. That is to say, anyplace that wasn’t Frankford.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” Meghan said, picking up the bottle and then darting across the room in search of a clean towel. Which she wouldn’t find, since I hadn’t done laundry since I’d moved in. There were two paper towels left on a roll that my grandpop must have purchased. She brought them over, started patting my lap.
“Dear Penthouse Letters. I swear this never happened to me before, but one night…”
Meghan shot me a sardonic grin. It was the first joke we’d shared in days, and it felt nice. She finished soaking up what she could, then balled up the paper towels and executed a perfect hook into the sink. Then she grabbed my knees and looked me dead in the eye.
“Here’s how this is going to work.”
“How
“Don’t interrupt me. I’m going to try to shoot holes in everything you’ve just told me. If it all holds up when we’re finished, then I’ll stay and we can talk through this. But if I get the slightest hint you’re messing with my head, or inventing some bullshit story because you’re out of your mind on drugs, then I’m gone.”
“Okay.”
“Last chance. You swear that everything you’ve told me is true?”
“Yes. To the best of my knowledge. Want me to put my numb right hand on a Bible?”
Meghan was her father’s daughter. She wasn’t a lawyer. In fact, I had no idea what she did for a living—if she made a living for herself at all. Our friendship had revolved around life in the Spruce Street apartment building, as well as its nearby bars and restaurants. But some of her father’s prosecutorial skills must have rubbed off on her, because she grilled me like a pro.
First, she demanded to see these “pills.” I told her to check the Tylenol bottle in the medicine cabinet. She found them, tapped one out into her hand. Examined it. Looked for a brand name, but couldn’t find one. They were smooth white capsules with only the dosage (250 mg) carved along one side.
She placed the pill in a small Ziploc baggie like she was preserving the chain of evidence.
“What are you going to do with that?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Next Meghan took me through my alleged physical interactions in the past. So I could open doors and walk downstairs, but I had trouble picking up newspapers and comic books? Why? Light hurt my body, but only direct light—is that correct? What about ambient light? When your fingers fell off, did they disappear right away, or after a few seconds?
“Okay, and you say no one can see you?”
“Almost nobody. That kid I mentioned.”
“Whose name you don’t know.”
“Right. He can see me. And the little girl, Patty. I think she could see me.”
“Hmmmm.”
We went around and around this for a good half-hour until she finally circled back to Patty Glenhart. Meghan wouldn’t let go of it.
“Your only proof was this profile on a blog.”
“A true-crime website.”
