Bridge, p.32
Bridge, page 32
“It’s about your daughter, ma’am. May I come in?”
“Which one?” the woman says, as if this is a good joke. Maybe she has several.
“Bridget Kittinger-Harris. Although I believe she also goes by the name Bridget Ainsley? It’s about her ex-boyfriend, Franco.”
The woman sags. A flash of anger. “Of course it is. Come in,” she says, then looks past her to the lot where the rental van is parked, inconspicuous among the other tenants’ cars, and Mr. Floof II is curled up on his blankie in the back with water and the windows cracked. “Where’s your vehicle?”
“My partner dropped me off. He’s following up on something related.” And this is enough to satisfy her.
The town house is in the process of being packed up, boxes everywhere, and no pictures, no ornaments, no indications of a life. An in-between place. The couch is well worn with cat-scratched edges but no sign of a cat. A yoga mat and twenty-pound kettlebells on the floor—ambitious for such a scrawny woman. The one indication of luxury is a faux-fur throw chucked over the sofa next to a brand-new laptop. The bed pillows on the floor, beside a grease-marked pizza box, make it seem like this is where she sleeps. What’s the matter with the bedroom, hmm?
“Is she all right? Bridget?”
“Fell asleep at the wheel. She’s in the hospital, minor injuries, but I wanted to talk to you about her parenting, regarding custody.”
“I’m really not involved,” she says, too vehemently. “I don’t want to be involved. It’s not my fight.”
“Just moved in?” Amber says casually. There’s something wrong here, setting her on edge. She reaches out again for that special connected feeling of the worm, but it’s a dead line.
The woman looks around as if seeing the apartment for the first time. “Hoping to move out, actually.”
Amber takes a notebook from her jacket, flicks it open. Props are reassuring, especially if it’s As Seen on TV. “To confirm, you are Joanne, mother of Bridget Kittinger-Harris?”
“Joanne Kittinger, no Harris. Divorced so long ago I barely remember. Oh, no, wait. It’s Kaye now. I changed it. There was an issue with Bridget’s boyfriend, Franco. There’s a restraining order.”
“It’s in your records.” Giving the message Here to reassure, ma’am.
She folds herself onto the couch beside the laptop and motions for Amber to sit in the dark blue armchair opposite, also ripped up by sharp scrabble claws once upon a time. There are fine white hairs marking the armrest.
“Your kitty around?”
“I’m allergic,” Joanne says. “I always preferred dogs. Used to, I should say.” She smiles as if at a private joke and then frowns. “So what’s happened to Bridget this time? Are the children all right?” She pulls down her ponytail and runs her fingers through her hair. A nervous gesture. It’s shot with gray, matches the wrinkles, a knot of worry between her brows, lines tugging at the sides of her mouth. A heaviness weighing her down just under the surface of that quicksilver confidence.
“I take it you’re not close?”
“We were once, I think—” She cuts off the sentence. But Amber can wait through a silence. She’s very comfortable with it, and finally, Joanne twitches. “Do you want some tea, coffee?” She nudges the pizza box at her feet with that knife-slice of a smile. “Leftover pizza?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“Forgive the mess, all the boxes. I’ve been very depressed. The kind where you want to lie down and die. But I’m working on it, getting fit again, fattening up.” She raises the edge of the sweatshirt, pinches at the loose skin on her belly from too much weight loss too suddenly with that same flicker of impatience and frustration. “I’m sorry, I’m not used to company.”
“Related to your family problems? The depression?”
“Oh God, yes, the custody battle, Bridget’s drug use, her boyfriend. It’s been physically and emotionally exhausting. I wiped out my savings, lost my job. Only as a high-school science teacher, total dead-end, but you can imagine.” She gives a bright laugh, like glass. There’s something like contempt in her voice, a disconnect, as if she’s talking about someone else. “There were days, weeks I wouldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t bring myself to eat. Lying there with the curtains closed, waiting to die. I stopped feeding the cat. I think she ran away. Or he.” She laughs again, full of jagged edges. “I didn’t check.”
“You seem to be doing better.”
“It was such a waste of a life. But yes, I had a change of perspective, though it’s still an adjustment. Work in progress. I’m trying to get strong again, look after myself. So no, to your question. Bridge-et”—she corrects herself—“and I haven’t been close. Maybe in another life.” Another little self-pleased smile, because she doesn’t know Amber is right in there with her on that joke, even if she hasn’t figured out how. “It was really ugly with Franco. The drugs, the harassment. She—I had to change my name, move out here to get away, and they found me anyway. I’m a little hazy on that time, forgive me.”
“I can see that would be tough.”
“My daughter tried to reach out to me a couple of weeks ago, but I could hear it in her voice that she wasn’t ready. She still didn’t sound right. Are you a parent?”
“No.”
“Then maybe you won’t understand. I want my little girl back. The way I knew her.”
“Do you mind if I look around?” Amber gets up.
“I’d rather you didn’t.” She stands up with alarm to follow her. “Excuse me, do you have a warrant? Are you sure Bridge is all right?”
No -et that time, Amber notices, also the way she’s talking around the subject, the vagaries, as if she knows Bridget has been infected. With any luck, if she’s still Transgressed, she’ll be heading over here for a family reunion. It would be the most convenient way this could play out. Maybe she could get Joanne to summon her over a little sooner, phone her with directions. She moves toward the bedroom.
“That’s private.” Joanne tries to take Amber’s arm, stop her from going in, but Amber forges ahead, pushing open the door into a room that’s been usurped for another purpose. The double bed and mattress are up on their sides against the wardrobe, leaving space for a trestle-table bench covered in a variety of tools: a soldering iron and screwdrivers, an Arduino board, and a peculiar lamp with a circular shade cut with slits. No, not a lamp. A children’s toy, the spinning one.
“What is this called?” She holds it up.
“A zoetrope. It’s a craft project, for my depression.” Joanne is hovering, trying to get between her and the table and one item of special interest, the one that explains why Amber is not having a Reaction.
She flusters. “You really can’t be in here. Sorry. Now, how can I help you with Bridget?”
“And this?” Amber reaches past her, picks up the box, which has been emitting this whole time—Joanne’s very own Frequency Machine. And now where did she get a thing like that?
Amber experiences a surge of adrenaline. It takes her a second to realize it’s echoed, not hers, from another iteration in the Ourmind. Amberlynn.
Gunshots in an empty college building.
She’s torn between checking in and staying in the moment. Amberlynn will have to handle it, Amber decides. There is something new here, and she needs to get to the bottom of it.
“It’s very fragile. Please be careful. It’s part of my research.”
“What does it do?” Amber lets her reclaim her box, a shoddy imitation. She’s enjoying the luxury of letting this play out.
“It’s for my epilepsy,” Joanne says, taking it back with her to the couch, putting it down beside her like a pet. Her missing cat. “I have epilepsy, my whole life. The box emits a particular frequency that helps control the seizures. I really can’t have anyone touching it.”
“How strange,” Amber says. “What a giant coincidence.”
“What is?” Joanne puts one hand on the box as if Amber is about to try and snatch it away.
“I also had a brain injury,” Amber says. “When I was tiny. We all did. That’s why it’s different for us. It must be why it’s different for you.”
She’s suspicious. Only now, poor thing. Trying to be polite, but you can hear the hook of apprehension in her voice. “Could I see that badge again, please? Which department did you say you were with?”
“What do your daughter and her friends call it? The dreamworm.”
Joanne has deer eyes, wild and wide. “How do you know—” And then realization. “Where is she?”
Amber takes the combat knife out of her jacket pocket and unfolds it. It’s a vicious-looking thing, freshly purchased this morning from a hunting shop downtown because she couldn’t fly to Colorado from North Carolina with a gun in her luggage. It’s menacing, black, with a tip tapered for jamming home between someone’s ribs. “You tell me.”
DOM
There’s Been a Shooting
Everything’s unreal—high-pitched, slow motion; they’re only able to latch onto snapshots. The hellshriek machine is ringing in their ears. No, it’s the gunshots. Their hands are tingling, numb. The elevator doors are closing only now—that’s how quickly everything happened. Amberlynn is holding the gun in both hands, like a soldier would, to steady it. They can smell the acrid bite of gunpowder.
Somehow, they jab their heel into Amberlynn’s knee as hard as they can, and she staggers. They grab Tendayi’s hand. They are running, Tendayi gasping alongside, whining hitches and pops of breath. She’ll need to cut that out, Dom thinks. Someone is still screaming. Who is screaming? Are they screaming?
Caden can’t scream. They glance back. Caden is leaning against the lab door, but “leaning” suggests agency. Suggests he’s still alive, that his brains are still in his head and not splattered against the door, mixed with bits of skull and broken glass and splintered wood, and Dom is still screaming. Howling and running.
Another shot, a roar of the world ending, eardrums bursting. Dom ducks. Like you can dodge bullets. A dull rip of flesh, blood sprayed across the corridor. They skid, nearly tumble. Their least favorite trope, the fleeing victim who keeps falling down.
Dragging on Tendayi’s hand. Pulling themselves up. Tendayi is shoving the handle of a door down, but it doesn’t budge. You need a key. Dom swallows. Their mouth is so dry. Who got shot? Whose blood? Brains on the wall in the neuroscience lab. Seems appropriate. Don’t laugh.
But this is the bad dream, the worst kind, where you can’t run away fast enough and all the doors are locked.
Dragging Tendayi along, tugging on door handles, and Amberlynn is walking toward them, lining them up, double-fisting that gun. They’re trying to talk to her, talk her down, but every sentence is punctuated with a nervous hiccupping hitch of breath.
“You don’t want to do this, Amberlynn.” Hic. “It was an accident. It went off.” Hic. “It’s okay. We’re friends, remember?” Such good times in the car.
“Where is she?” Amberlynn yells. “Where’s Bridget?”
They are propping up Tendayi, pressing their back against her to shelter her, both of them up against the wall and these useless doors that go nowhere. Like Caden said. Oh God, Caden. They’re not going to let that happen to anyone else.
You Kevlar, now, come mierda? Big fucking hero? Maybe they said it out loud because Tendayi moans, her breath hot against their neck. The back of Dom’s shirt is soaked through. Cold sweat.
“That’s a good point,” they say to her, glancing back over their shoulder, trying to smile, stay calm. They could defuse this whole situation if they had the chance. If everyone could just stop and give them a moment to think. Their fault. They brought her in here.
Tendayi’s eyes are wild. There’s something wrong with her neck. Hic. They turn their attention back to Amberlynn, going for placatory. “Bridge must be around here somewhere. We should go find her.” But they sound desperate, manic, even to themselves.
“Where is she?” Amberlynn shouts. “I don’t want to hurt you.” Her hands are shaking, her lips pressed thin.
“Cool. Cool-cool-cool!” Dom yells back. “Then don’t hurt us.”
Tendayi is slowly sliding down the wall behind them. They can’t hold her up and negotiate with their own personal psycho killer. Qu’est-ce que c’est? The tune catches in their head. Stand on your own damn feet, they think. She’s making a rasping, bubbling sound right in Dom’s ear. And oh. Oh no.
“Don’t,” they say, turning to catch her. It’s blood, not sweat, soaking into their shirt. And where is it coming from? Foamy red on Tendayi’s lips. Blood where it’s not supposed to be. A Rorschach spreading from under her ribs. Her throat jutting at a weird angle like she swallowed part of a coat hanger. Tendayi gasps, her eyes imploring. Dom is trying to remember their first aid, what this means. Bullet must have punctured a lung. It’s collapsing, the pressure yanking her trachea out in that horrible angle. But doesn’t have to be fatal. Please.
“Uh-uh,” Dom says, desperate. “No way. No te me mueras, puñeta. No te me mueras que te mato. You hear me? You stay alive. Tendayi, no te mueras.
“Hey,” Dom calls back to Amberlynn without really looking. “Hey, she’s hurt.” No shit, Sherlock. Run, run, run away. Can’t look. Because she’s not going to help, is she? She’s going to pull the trigger. Dom holds Tendayi’s face, blinking, gasping, pops of blood on her lips. Jackrabbit breaths. Praying to a god they don’t believe in: “Por favor diosito por todo lo que tu quieras, no te la. Jesus, don’t you dare fucking let her die.”
They hold Tendayi’s glazing eyes: “It’s okay, you’re going to be okay.” They don’t turn around.
BRIDGE
The Sign at the End of the World
Looping around Calder Street for the third time while her phone buzzes with another call from an unknown number. She’s too afraid to answer it. It could be Franco, borrowing a stranger’s phone at the gas station after rattling off a sob story. Or worse, the school. There’s been an incident. She ignores it. Let Franco think she drove his car off the road, that she’s dead in a ditch.
Bridge threw his phone out the window on the highway in the direction of a freight truck, hoping that it would be chewed up by all eighteen wheels so he couldn’t track it, couldn’t find her. As if he doesn’t know exactly where she’s going. Throw is a strong word. She opened the window and dropped the phone out, so she doesn’t actually know if it was splattered into so many component parts, rendered useless. Unfortunately, she’s only two steps up from useless herself. Everything feels limp and heavy, and it takes all her focus to manage the pickup. Thank God it’s not stick.
She also has no way to know which of these tatty houses is supposed to be her mother’s, absent a neon sign flashing on the lawn or an interdimensional wormhole swirling above one of the low-rise apartment complexes. She could get out and ring every doorbell or stagger down the center of the street, still feeble, still bleeding, shouting Jo’s name like a girl in an apocalypse movie. It feels like everyone might be dead. There’s no one on the street, barely any other traffic.
Calder isn’t that long, maybe two miles end to end. If she drives slow enough… and then she spots it. A white delivery van. It’s parked in the lot of a town house complex styled to look like mountain cabins, two-story cookie-cutter in gray clapboard. There must be a million white vans. A literal million. But there was one in the parking lot outside Budgie’s apartment, and this is the closest thing she’s gonna get to a darkened sky, a luminous vortex, a neon sign.
The phone starts vibrating again. But this time the caller ID reads MAYBE: JOANNE KAYE, and Bridge pulls over to answer it, even as she spots something hanging from the eaves of a porch: a square Chinese bell.
Her hands are tingling; she nearly fumbles the phone. Joanne Kaye. It must be. It has to be, after all this. She needs it to be Jo, her Jo, so desperately. Her mother. The longing is a shining spear through her panic, the lingering dizziness, making her gasp.
If it’s really her, what will that mean? It’s too huge to wrap her head around. She wants Jo to brush aside her hair, kiss her forehead. Make it okay. Because Jo can help—her mom knows how this works, she wanted her to come here. She’ll know how to fix everything.
She answers the phone, tries to find the saliva to speak. “Jo?” It’s hard not to hear the yearning in her own voice. The need.
“Bridget, this is your mother,” she says in a strange stilted way, but Bridge recognizes the particular intonation. Maybe. Maybe she’s fooling herself. But the woman on the other side hesitates, hearing it herself.
Incredulous: “Bridge?”
“Jo.” Alive. Holy fuck. Here. She’s crying with relief and shock. “Mom. Yes, it’s me, I’m here. I came to find you.” And a flush of anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell her the address.” Sotto voce, but she recognizes Amber, and her heart free-falls through her body. How much time does she have left?
“You need to get away!” Jo shouts. “Bridge, you need to run as far as you can.”
“I can’t, Mom. She’s going to—”
The sounds of a scuffle. Amber suddenly on the line. “You come here now, girl, four forty-nine Calder. You know what I’m capable of.”
“Don’t. Don’t come!” Jo yelling. There’s the sound of a slap, a real one, and an involuntary whimper. “Don’t come here!”
The line goes dead.
But she is already here. Right outside. Her hands on the steering wheel. She’s come so far. And Jo is in there. Her mother is in there.
She grips the steering wheel with white knuckles and screams as loud as she can, burning her vocal cords, digging her fingernails into her palms. Sits there, shaky, furious, taking stock. There’s Amber’s torture box in the stained Whole Foods tote bag at her feet. The baseball bat is on the back seat.
Where else is there to go?
BUDGIE
