The Long Wait for Tomorrow Page 17

  Patrick glanced down and saw Kelly’s finger tapping against his own thigh.

  Getting through it all by simply tolerating it.

  “This is stupid, Kelly,” Patrick said, words overlapping Cody’s repugnant taunts. He could barely hear his own voice over the off-key lyrics saluting Old Glory. Filling his lungs with a bit more ammunition, he began to repeat it over and over, voice rising: “This is stupid, Kelly. This is stupid, Kelly. This is stupid, Kelly. This is stupid, Kelly!”

  Cody whirled around, hand still stitched to his heart. “Shut your hole, Patrick!”

  Kelly turned on Cody, eyes livid. “Don’t talk to him like that.”

  Before Cody could retaliate, Patrick simply repeated it one last time. “Kelly … this is stupid.”

  Kelly gave him a questioning look, a reminder that this had been Patrick’s idea.

  Patrick simply nodded.

  Kelly winked, and without so much as kissing Cody goodbye, he broke ranks.

  Tossing the playbook aside, Patrick followed.

  Though not immediately apparent, a gradual fold had taken place in the texture of the crowd. Barely noticeable murmurs spreading through the anthem like a virus, the sounds of a radio dial trapped between stations. Catching the ears of news crews; cameras like compass needles, tilting toward the two boys marching along the field with confounding strides.

  Kelly stalked up to Jenna, standing at attention alongside her own brigade of gingerbread models.

  Her chest hiccupped once, unprepared to see Kelly and Patrick before her.

  “I was wrong,” Kelly admitted against the final strands of music. “You were right. Patrick and I are getting out of here. And you’re invited because you belong with us.”

  Sensing that their days on that field were numbered, Kelly and Patrick moved on. Heading for the exit as the land of the brave was overtaken by a full stadium rhubarb of bewildered sports fans. They passed through a split between the bleachers, stadium lights at their back. Falling into shadow as their number grew to three.

  Patrick looked over and saw Jenna matching them step for step.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  Kelly turned to Patrick, and Patrick gave him the OK.

  “We’re going to get that goddamn memory card back.”

  n hour and a half after leaving Charlotte, Jenna came to a stop in front of the mailbox. Patrick and Kelly were out in an instant, doors closed as the car pulled away, heading west along the dark, empty stretch of country road. Crouched low, they stole down the driveway. As they kept close to the left side, the surrounding trees gave perfect cover, shielding them from the whitewash of a solitary lamppost just twenty yards down the street.

  It was hardly the residential cluster of Verona’s inner sanctum. Out there, large patches of forest and private fields kept neighbors well out of each other’s business. The only stores in the area were gas stations. There were no sidewalks and, consequently, no pedestrians. And as a result, any and all suspicious activity fell under a very simple principle: if it was an activity, it was suspicious.

  The driveway sloped down, widened, at which point Patrick and Kelly followed the line of trees around to the dark side of the house. First-and second-story windows bare like slates of marble.

  “So far, so good,” Kelly whispered.

  The front-yard lights came to life, sent light sprawling over them.

  Kelly grabbed Patrick’s shoulder, yanked him back into the trees. He fell flat on his stomach, head buried between his arms. Dried leaves and pine needles poked at him. Breathing in the smell of dried forest bed and discarded bark, heart drumming in some dangerous time signature.

  “Patrick …”

  Raising his eyes, Patrick peered beyond the tree line.

  A raccoon was scuttling across the flower beds, a stealthy blob on a brightly lit stage.

  “Tripped off the motion sensors,” Kelly whispered. “Once it leaves, we’ll wait for the lights to turn off, head to the back. You’re sure we can get to his room from there?”

  Patrick nodded.

  “You still got the crowbar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hang on to it, I don’t want to be searching for shit in the dark.”

  “OK.”

  “You sure you still want to do this?”

  “Shut up, already.”

  Without moving, they waited for the raccoon to leave.

  Then for the lights to go.

  Once their eyes had readjusted to the dark, Kelly led the way to the back. A couple of swift steps brought them to the base of a network of twisting ivy, weaving its way up the house along cross sections of cedar lattice.

  Patrick pointed toward the far-right window jutting out over the roof. “That’s Cody’s room …” He then pointed to the window directly above and to the left. “That’s Redwood’s office.”

  “So we go in through there,” Kelly concluded.

  Patrick nodded.

  Kelly didn’t stand on ceremony. Securing his foot into the lattice, he hoisted himself up. In a matter of seconds, he had already scaled his way up to the roof. He waved down with an all clear.

  Patrick glanced around, wary of any witness hiding in the dark. Nothing out there but the sound of crickets and the forest settling. He pulled the gloves Kelly had given him tight around his hands. Sheathing the crowbar between his belt and Armani pants, he reached up and hooked onto the wooden frame. Closed his eyes, visualizing the next step. Preparing himself, because he knew that would be the one that made it all real.

  After this, no more kidding yourself, his angels cautioned. This is actually happening.

  To his surprise, the thought had a calming effect. He tightened his grip and dug his toe in, lifting off as though he’d spent every morning for the past four years doing pull-ups. The crowbar tapped against his foot with every new foothold, flat ivy leaves brushing against his teeth. By the time he reached the top and took hold of Kelly’s outstretched arm, Patrick’s body was oversaturated with joyous adrenaline.

  “Got you smiling now,” Kelly chuckled as Patrick came to rest on the shingles. “How about that?”

  They took a moment to enjoy the end of phase one. With the woods surrounding them in quiet serenity, the two of them sat and basked in the glow of stars and a rising half-moon.

  Patrick gave Kelly a pat on the back. “Let’s do this.”

  “Right on.”

  Inching up to the window, Kelly fastened his arms around the screen. He glanced back and let out a breath. “This is going to be noisier than you might like,” he warned before closing his eyes and ripping the screen from its home. It ended up taking two brutal yanks, each one accompanied by the pained creaking of metal. Then two harsh pops as the bolts tore free.

  They paused, expecting a SWAT team to come sliding down a swath of suspended cables, semiautomatic rifles blazing.

  A car sped past on Erwin Road, an oblivious metal trilobite.

  Kelly laid the screen down beside him, reached back with his hand.

  Patrick handed him the crowbar.

  Positioning himself for a better angle, he rested the round end of the crowbar against one of the rectangular panes. Gave a few practice taps.

  “What are you doing?” Patrick whispered.

  “Going to break the glass. Unlock it from inside.”

  “I thought you were going to pry it open.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Kelly tapped a few more times. “You can’t pry open a window, that’s doors you’re thinking of.”

  “Then why not the back door?”

  “You said there was an alarm system,” Kelly whispered. “Whole downstairs is covered with motion sensors, wired to the front and back doors.”

  “How do we know this window isn’t?”

  “Well, is it?”

  “I don’t know!”

  With a quick thrust, Kelly sent the crowbar through the window. It didn’t shatter as much as crack apart. Large, geometrically confused p
ieces of glass came toppling down, no louder than the removal of the screen, but there was something about glass.

  “Guess not,” Kelly concluded, snaking his arm through the gaping hole.

  Once inside, Patrick led them through the dark. He’d been in Cody’s house on numerous occasions. Always with Kelly, of course, and Patrick had to wonder how much of this was coming back to the would-be time traveler.

  Things versus events, Patrick’s angels recalled.

  The hallway was lit by the sickly orange glow of a scented plug-in. Now that they were safely inside, their concerns ebbed. Tiptoeing with a bit more abandon, they made it down to Cody’s room. The door was ajar, and they opened it wide as they could to maximize the hallway light.

  Patrick surveyed the room. It wasn’t unlike Kelly’s; hip-hop posters, clothes scattered about, dresser drawers agape, bookcases home to awards for athletic excellence. Imagining himself as a detective, he slowly approached Cody’s desk. With an alert yet relaxed gaze, he took in every detail before moving in. Lowering into a crouch to get a different angle on things. He turned on a mental sound track, a few tunes from the album Clifford Brown with Strings. Nothing more than a collection of standards, but the sound of Clifford’s trumpet, set against the backdrop of a studio full of strings, always had that kind of 1930s detective feel to it….

  “Got it,” Kelly announced.

  Patrick found him sitting on the box spring of Cody’s bed. The mattress had been lifted at a corner, alligator jaw resting against Kelly’s back. A large ziplock bag dangled from his hand.

  Way to shine, Dick Tracy, Patrick’s angels chided. Wouldn’t sell the farm if I were you.

  He approached the bag and peered through the plastic. There was the memory card, along with what appeared to be oblong pills of undetermined color. Patrick smiled, glanced up. “How did you know?”

  “Remembered his secret stash,” Kelly said, now holding up an issue of Barely Legal, in one of many skinny bags tucked farther down the mattress. “Thank you, Larry Flynt.”

  “So, one more time …,” Patrick said, feeling more at home now that they had found what they were looking for. “Why did we bring the crowbar?”

  “Just in case I was wrong and we had to do a little lock busting. Better safe—”

  “—than sorry,” Patrick finished. “There, we’re both time travelers now.”

  “We should hang out more.”

  “What are these?” Patrick asked, pointing to the pills. “There’s a lot of them.”

  Kelly closed his eyes tight, sorting through his limited memory. “Didn’t Jenna say something about Cody acting a little more psychotic than usual?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Though that’s a common misconception,” Kelly muttered to himself. “Still, if Cody’s predisposed to that kind of aggression—”

  “You’ve seen the guy when he loses,” Patrick interrupted. “I doubt there’s an object on this planet he hasn’t punched. What’s the point?”

  “Steroids.”

  “No.”

  “Cody’s a little monstrous for a sophomore, don’t you think?”

  “Still …”

  “Got any better suggestions?”

  “Maybe they’re just some kind of prescription—”

  “Sure …” Kelly grabbed the rest of the porn mags, fanned them out like dirty playing cards. “And I suppose these are all past issues of the Wall Street Journal. They’re here because they’re contraband. Take my word for it, Cody’s been juicing.”

  “Well, maybe Wellspring’s got a shot at winning state after all. We’ve got the card. Let’s get out of here before some squirrel calls the police.”

  “We’re taking all of it,” Kelly said decisively, folding up the bag and shoving it into Patrick’s pocket. “If Cody finds just his card missing, he’s going to know it was us.”

  “We take the whole bag, he’s going to know anyway.”

  Kelly walked out into the hallway with Patrick in tow. “Yeah, but now he can’t finger us. Because he knows that if he does, we can just say, yeah … we came for a plastic memory card that happened to be in this bag filled with a controlled substance. We all go to jail together.”

  They made it back to Redwood’s office, at which point Patrick stopped Kelly in his tracks. “I don’t want to go to jail, period.”

  “For over forty years, the U.S. didn’t want to disappear in a radioactive mushroom cloud,” Kelly told him, shrugging. “They called it the cold war, and if mutually assured self-destruction worked for an entire planet, it’ll probably work for us.”

  “The U.S. still doesn’t want to disappear in a radioactive—”

  “Then if I were you, I’d get the hell out of this country before the year 2012, my friend.”

  Even in the dark, Patrick knew his horrified expression must have made an impact.

  “Just kidding,” Kelly said grimly. “Looks like you do believe in time travel, after all.”

  “Asshole.” Patrick exhaled, hand clutching at his chest. “Can we go now?”

  “Hell yes.”

  The pair of them snuck back out the window, mindful of the broken glass.

  Out onto the roof, where they shimmied back down their white lattice ladder.

  Cutting through the forest, they came to the edge of Erwin Road, a strategically dark stretch between widespread streetlights. They kept to the trees, waiting. After a few minutes, they heard the sound of Kelly’s car slowing to a stop across the road. Not another car in sight, and that was the icing on the cake. They sprinted across the road, and jumped into the convertible.

  “Where to?” Jenna asked, checking to make sure all limbs were tucked safely into the vehicle.

  “I, for one, could use a drink,” Kelly said.

  “Maybe a game of nine-ball?” Patrick added.

  There was a momentary pause, and even the moon blushed with a fulfilled glow.

  “I think I know a place where we can get both,” Jenna said, switching on the headlights and hitting the gas.

  elly ignored the extinguished neon sign, the word OPEN reduced to a sooty, ashen color. Only one or two cars were parked along Broad Street. Scant traffic, especially for a Friday night. The funeral parlor across the street was on lockdown, green awning drooping like an eyelid.

  There didn’t seem to be much life coming from inside On The Rail, either.

  Kelly was seconds away from knocking when a wooden door at the other end of the building swung open into the street.

  Casper leaned out, arm flat against the door, fingers spread out.

  “Oh shit, Kelly!” he laughed, grin of a practical joker wishing for you to just see your face right now. “You are a gosh-damn lunatic, man! Get on in here with your friends.”

  Inside, the house lights were off. Above the bar, a few nicotine-colored bulbs gave the immediate area a 1970s hue. The fluorescent lamps above the tables had also been turned off, save two or three. At one table, a pair of men in paint-spattered clothes were setting up a rack of nine-ball. The air was still dense with the exhaust from an evening’s worth of Olympic smokers, fusing to the music of Wayne Shorter, a little number from The Blue Note Years.

  Kelly put an arm around each of his friends. “Can you dig it?”

  “I can dig it.” Jenna grinned.

  “I can dig it,” Patrick echoed, unable to remember the unease he’d felt when they’d first walked in there, just yesterday.

  Casper strode behind the bar, downing the remains of a Pabst before slapping his hands down before his new invitees. “Glad you could make it, Kelly McDermott.”

  “I know that yesterday you told me after two,” Kelly said. “But we were driving by, saw the sign turned off—”

  “Closed up early!” Casper declared. “Kelly, what you pulled tonight … Got to give you ten out of ten for style.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s all over the news.” Casper grinned. “Local, ESPN, MSN, all over. Star quarterback takes off
in the middle of the national anthem! I’m surprised anyone even bothered to watch the game after that. Oh, and your team won, by the way.”

  “All part of my master plan,” Kelly said with a wink.

  “Lunatic!” Casper wagged his finger between Patrick and Jenna. “Which one of you is driving?”

  Patrick laid his hand out on the bar, face up.

  Kelly dropped the keys into his waiting hand, cool as could be.

  “Beats the hell out of catching them upside your head,” Patrick commented.

  “Ha!” Casper smacked his palms together and crouched down. He resurfaced with a squat bottle of bourbon. “May I interest the rest of you in a little Knob Creek?”

  Jenna groaned, lowered her head to rest on the bar.

  “Do you sleep in that outfit?” Casper asked her, leaning over to get a better look at her skirt. “Because that’s just fine with me. There ought to be a law, far as I’m concerned.”

  “I am the law,” Jenna informed him, voice muffled. “None for me, thanks.”

  “Kelly?”

  “Can I get some ice with that?” Kelly asked, a wry smile saluting under tired eyes.

  Casper shoveled some ice into two red plastic cups. He poured, setting one down in front of Kelly, raising his own high above his head. “To Kelly and his brass balls!”

  The pair mashed their red cups together in a plastic toast and opened wide.

  Casper grimaced with raw ecstasy, slammed his cup down. “Patrick!”

  Patrick had been staring at a muted television screen situated on top of the fridge. “Huh?”

  “Got my iPod hooked up to the speakers.” Casper motioned with his head. “Get on back here and let’s make ourselves a playlist.”

  Patrick felt Kelly’s elbow dig into his ribs.

  An hour or so later, the clock had drifted well past one in the morning. Patrick and Jenna were seated in a corner. The heavy wooden benches beneath them were built right into the wall, just below one of the sprawling front windows. A couple of sodas rested on the table before them. It was covered in stained green felt, for the benefit of any card players who happened to be looking for a game.