The Long Wait for Tomorrow Read online

  Officer Mustache turned to Patrick, raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, there you have it, Officer …” Patrick did what he could not to take the officer’s look and throw it in Kelly’s face. “How’s a guy going to know he’s got a history of sleepwalking unless he’s awake, am I right?”

  “So does he, or doesn’t he?”

  “Not officially.”

  “Not officially,” echoed the clean-shaven officer, eyes bowed slightly as though writing it down. He had remained with hat planted firmly on head, perhaps to detract from gray streaks infiltrating his sideburns. When he looked up, his eyes shot over toward Kelly. “And your parents are where?”

  Kelly shrugged. “I don’t know—”

  “Hilton Head Island,” Patrick interrupted.

  “Hilton Head,” Kelly repeated, nodding his head slowly.

  “They’re visiting a client,” Patrick added. “Kelly’s parents are lawyers.”

  “You seem a little out of it, Kelly …” Officer Mustache made his way around the table. “Eyes looking a little red there. You been doing any kind of drugs this morning, late last night?”

  “No sir, Officer, sir,” Kelly replied, appearing somewhat surprised at his own certainty.

  “Seems like that’s the only thing you are sure of.”

  “Yet, you don’t even know where your parents are.” Officer Sideburns rounded the other side of the table. “You sure you haven’t been doing any drugs there, son?”

  “I’m positive,” Kelly affirmed, with a less-than-positive frown.

  “He doesn’t do drugs,” Patrick volunteered, addressing all he could to Officer Sideburns. “Period. I mean, he’s in great shape, just look at him …”

  “We got a good enough look outside, thank you.”

  “If he’s acting a little strange, it’s because you woke him up,” Patrick told them, all the while still wondering why Kelly was acting beyond strange. “I don’t know if you know this, but waking him up in the middle of something like this can result in permanent brain damage. Some somnambulists have been known to die of shock.”

  Officer Mustache frowned. “Somnambulists?”

  “Sleepwalkers.”

  “All sleepwalkers, or nonofficial ones like Kelly here?”

  Officer Sideburns chuckled.

  “Look, please …” Patrick felt circumstances tilting in an uncomfortable direction. Kelly’s behavior was making attentive cops out of previously bored ones. Once interested in the situation, these two officers might actually get interested in their jobs, after which it was anyone’s guess what they’d do to Kelly. Slap on the wrist or jail time, Patrick didn’t feel like risking it. And so he reached into his treasure trove of bullshit and began handing out shiny gold coins. “Give Kelly a break, Officers. If he’s not all that comfortable talking about his sleepwalking, it’s only because he’s never been diagnosed. And he’s never been diagnosed because there’s no telling what that might do to his career.”

  “Career?”

  “I don’t want to brag, but you’re looking at the Buckeyes’ starting quarterback come August.” Patrick caught Kelly’s confused expression out of the corner of his eye, charged ahead before the cops could notice. “Ohio State University, division one. Could’ve gone to Notre Dame, Michigan, Florida State, they were all clawing at each other for a piece of Kelly McDermott. Now, would either of you, given such an opportunity, want somnambulism as an official diagnosis? A disease that’s been linked to vitamin D deficiency, hypoglycemia, and bone apoplexy?”

  Officer Sideburns winced. “Bone apoplexy?”

  “The worst kind of apoplexy,” Patrick added, reminding himself to look up apoplexy, first chance he got. “The worst kind.”

  “Wait a second.” Officer Mustache straightened, thumbs hooked onto his belt. “Did you say Kelly McDermott?”

  Patrick swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “Kelly McDermott?”

  “Yeah, we told you that when you brought him in—”

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” Officer Mustache smacked his citation book against his hand, followed up with the same against his partner’s shoulder. “Richardson, this is Kelly McDermott! I read about him in the Observer…. I read about you in the Observer, young man.” Officer Mustache was focusing on Kelly once again. “Last month! They bumped Arizona to page two, for high school football. Talking about you being unstoppable. Destiny’s child, that was the joke…. Remember that, Richardson?”

  Officer Sideburns scratched his hat, sending it askew. “Well …”

  “I do remember now!” Officer Mustache took a seat next to Kelly, who bobbed his head at a pacifying pace with everything he was told. “Yes. Yes, I remember you had applied to Ohio State, that’s right! And you got in, well, that is great. Got the state finals this weekend, against …”

  Patrick saw Kelly’s eyes go blank at the sight of fingers snapping and decided to jump in. “Wilson. Going to play Wilson tomorrow.”

  “Going to beat Wilson tomorrow!” Officer Mustache laughed, stomping his foot and giving Kelly’s neck a robust pinch. “I’m sorry, Kelly, we didn’t know it was you. Did we, Richardson?”

  “No, we didn’t,” Officer Sideburns agreed, growing bored once again.

  Patrick masked his relief with a quick cough. “I’m sorry, anybody got the time?”

  “Oh hell …” Officer Mustache checked his watch, forgot to share. “You boys should be getting to school pretty soon, shouldn’t you?”

  “Well …” Patrick smiled best he could. “Don’t think Kelly can show up like this, now, can he?”

  Officer Mustache shook the windows with his laughter, giving Kelly a few odd pats on the chest. “No, I don’t suppose he could, now,” he agreed, getting up and motioning Officer Sideburns toward the back door, laughter trailing behind him in giggly little bursts. He wiped a tear from his eye as Patrick opened the door, ushered them out onto the deck.

  “Sorry about all this, Mr. McDermott,” Officer Mustache called over his shoulder before turning to Patrick. “You keep an eye on him, son. Got a big life ahead of him.”

  “You bet,” Patrick replied amicably.

  “Shit.” The officer grinned. “Time he gets to Ohio, he’ll be playing football in his sleep!”

  Another burst of satisfied laughter.

  Patrick nodded, grinned widely, and shut the door.

  Kept his pearly whites on display, cheeks straining, until he saw them safely around the corner. Patrick could almost hear his face creak back into neutral as he let out a shaky breath. Placed his arm against the door, and leaned his head against it. He closed his eyes, trying to get past what had just happened. It was over, done. Probably hadn’t been more than five minutes, from the time the cops had caught Kelly dancing around outside …

  Patrick opened his eyes, spun around.

  Kelly’s seat was empty.

  “Kelly?” Patrick called out, voice cracking.

  A muffled response came from nearby.

  Patrick walked into the middle of the kitchen, gritty feet scraping against the floor.

  The door to the walk-in pantry opened, and out came Kelly. The quilted blanket now wrapped around his waist, he held a box of coffee filters in one hand, a bag of Starbucks Italian Roast dangling triumphantly from the other.

  “I thought I remembered my parents as big coffee drinkers,” Kelly announced, pleased as a toddler with a block of wood. “I hope this coffee tastes as real as the rest of this feels…. Crazy, baby.”

  “Kelly …” Patrick followed Kelly with his eyes, over to the coffeepot, where Kelly scooped up the plug, holding the cord in his fist like a dead black flower. “You don’t drink coffee.”

  Kelly searched for an outlet. “You want some?”

  “I don’t drink coffee.”

  “Why the hell don’t you drink coffee?”

  “Because you don’t, Kelly.”

  Kelly found an outlet, stuck the plug in. He paused, leaning against the counter, frowning.
“And why the hell don’t I drink coffee?”

  “Because it’s unhealthy.” Kelly found himself repeating what Kelly had always told him. What Patrick, as a result, had always been proud to tell others. “Caffeine is addictive. It raises your heart rate, causes dehydration, which in turn can lead to gradual muscle damage. Not to mention that, as a stimulant, it keeps people from sleeping in ways that perhaps, you know … we shouldn’t be doing to ourselves….”

  Kelly nodded thoughtfully. “This is all true. However, it does bring up an interesting question, doesn’t it?”

  “It does?” Patrick watched with disbelief as Kelly proceeded to prep the coffeemaker. Filling the pot, three scoops in the filter, smacking open the basket, plopping the filter in as he transferred water from pot to reservoir, all with the efficient speed of a lifelong coffee drinker.

  “And that question is …,” Kelly continued, smacking the basket back into place and snapping the power on with a swift flick of his thumb. “What happens when dreamers drink coffee?”

  Patrick desperately wanted to figure out what was happening to Kelly, only Kelly didn’t seem to be giving him any opportunity, and so he entertained the question as best he could. “What do you mean?”

  Kelly lifted himself up onto the counter. The ease with which he did it seemed to fill him with pleased astonishment, and he glanced down at his biceps. “Hey, check me out, I’m not half bad.”

  “Kelly, dreamers, what were you—”

  “Shit, that smells good,” Kelly said, leaning in close to smell the brewing coffee. He straightened, hands pressed against his thighs in a casual manner. “What I mean, Patrick, is what you yourself said. Coffee keeps you awake. That being the case, when we dream, and dream of drinking coffee, what then? I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve dreamed. The shit they’ve got me on, side effects won’t even let me dream, I still don’t know how all this is happening but …”

  Something caught his eye, and he turned to the row of windows behind him.

  Patrick followed his gaze, tried to. Caught sight of a robin hopping around on the table outside. Chest an orange-rusty color, it cocked its head a few times with a 570 heartbeats-per-minute enthusiasm, let out a chirp.

  Kelly raised his hand to the window. Caressed the spotless surface, as though patting the robin itself through some untold agreement with space and perspective.

  Patrick leaned to his right, tried to catch Kelly’s expression in the window’s reflection.

  Daylight. Too bright.

  Though Kelly must have sensed it, and he turned back to Patrick with a sad smile.

  At least, Patrick thought it was a sad smile. Seeing it on Kelly’s face made him wonder. It was very much like trying to pick a professional acquaintance—the guy at Blockbuster, Waffle House, BP station—out of a lineup. Without the right environment, some people were simply unrecognizable. Members of the workaday world just walked on past each other on the streets, in parking lots and stores that weren’t their own.

  All like Kelly’s displaced smile, suddenly gone as he continued to lecture. “Point is, to the best of my recollection, dreams elicit emotions. Right? You run into a monster, you’re scared. Fall off a cliff, your stomach does a jig and the breath gets sucked right out of you. Kiss a girl, your heartbeat quickens. Hell … screw some pretty lady in your dreams, you wake up with a mess in your pants.”

  Patrick gave an awkward half nod.

  “I don’t mean you, Patrick,” Kelly assured him, shadow of a smirk lost somewhere behind unrecognizable green eyes. “I mean everyone else.” He leaped down from the counter and pointed in several directions at once. “Mugs?”

  Without thinking, Patrick pointed to a cupboard in the far left corner.

  Kelly jogged over, took down a coffee mug, and trotted back to the coffeemaker. “At any rate, if dreams have that kind of influence on our bodies, both sleeping and waking … well, then.” Kelly dislodged the coffeepot and poured himself a cup. He turned to Patrick and held the mug under his own nose, eyes closed. Two deep inhalations, and his lids fluttered open; content and lazy, almost lecherous. “If we grant the premise, Patrick … what happens when we drink coffee in our dreams? Does our body treat it like a wet dream and act accordingly? Do we wake up? Or, being in a state of consciousness within the dream, does the caffeine affect that reality? Does all that roasted goodness, in fact, get further and further from waking us up, while sending us deeper and deeper into our dream?”

  Kelly shrugged, took a deep breath. “Only one way to find out.”

  He raised the mug to his lips and took two large, scalding swallows. His eyes closed once again, cheeks imploding against his face, as though trying to suck out any rogue drops that had escaped his tongue. Eyes opened, rolled back momentarily in an eerie kind of ecstasy before righting themselves, lids wide, pupils dilated.

  “Damn on a hot tin roof, that’s good shit!” Kelly exclaimed, words peppered with pleasure-domed vowel sounds. “Oh! Damn, that is so—Hell, yes! Patrick, you’ve got to try some of this, amigo. It’s like there’s a party in my mouth and everyone tastes like the best damn coffee I’ve ever had!”

  Patrick found the mug shoved under his nose, and his brain became one with his reflexes.

  “No!” he cried out, swiping the coffee out of Kelly’s hand, watching it fly across the kitchen.

  Both of them watching it fly across the kitchen, through the doorway leading to the dining room. Soaring over the antique dining-room table, toward the glass cabinet filled with crystal plates and goblets, carrying with it fresh roasted coffee and the midflight certainty that some things simply can’t be taken back.

  It was with this understanding that Patrick barely flinched when the glass shattered. Glass doors to an antique cabinet housing a small fortune. The impact set off a chain reaction as the top shelf of finely polished mahogany collapsed, smashing down on the second shelf, smashing down on the bottom of the cabinet, obliterating all objects resting in between.

  The world’s most priceless sandwich.

  Patrick found it in him to bring his hand to his mouth.

  Two stray shards of glass broke away from the cabinet windows.

  The afterthoughts of destruction.

  Wind chimes, really.

  Coffee dripping down onto the white carpet, and Patrick turned to Kelly.

  Kelly did the same, only there wasn’t the slightest bit of concern on his face. Less than concern, it was as though he actually had welcomed the destruction. As if it had proven some point. Kelly simply winked, went to get another mug, and poured himself another cup of coffee.

  He took a sip, keeping a sly distance. “You sure you don’t want any of this?”

  Patrick shook his head. “You always said …”

  “No, I understand….” Kelly brought the mug up to his lips. “I mean, good for everything I’ve ever told you, Patrick. It all sounds so wise, but …” Another sip. “Hell, this is just a dream, anyway. I’m thinking maybe wisdom’s just not what’s right for what little time we’ve got.”

  Patrick opened his mouth. A few seconds later, he spoke: “Sorry about the crystal.”

  Kelly gave the dining room little regard, shrugged. “Ah, well.”

  “Seriously, Kelly—”

  “So, what are we doing today, Patrick?”

  Patrick blinked. “We’ve got to go to school.”

  “School, eh?” Kelly walked over to the kitchen table, picked up the newspaper. “That’s right, school’s still in. That ought to be interesting….” He tucked the newspaper under his arm and gave Patrick a salute. “Guess I best get ready for school, then, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Patrick managed.

  “All right.” Kelly nodded.

  He made his way past Patrick, down the hallway toward the front door. Found it was still open and closed it, not bothering to lock up. Then, without further ado, he plodded up the stairs.

  Patrick took another look at the shattered remains of Kelly’s family heirlooms.


  Shattered glass and coffee stains soaking into the rug.

  He heard Kelly rushing back down the stairs, saw him peek his head over the banister.

  “Patrick!”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re taking the car to school, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Kelly’s head bowed down in a strange act of humility. “Can I drive?”

  Patrick squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. “Yeah, you always … yeah, you can drive.”

  “Yeah!” Kelly proclaimed. His arm shot out from nowhere, raising the coffee toward a hanging chandelier. “See you in a few, Patrick!”

  Once again, Kelly’s footfalls shook the walls.

  And Patrick was left in the kitchen.

  He glanced over to the coffeemaker, saw the orange light staring at him.

  The clock on the stove read a digital 8:15, and Patrick let himself get back to the basics.

  Time to get ready for school.

  Up above, second floor, the shower came to life.

  Patrick strode to the coffeemaker and flipped the switch.

  The orange light died out, and from somewhere upstairs, he heard Kelly singing.

  atrick had simply assumed they were going to be late.

  Even after Kelly stepped out of the shower, he remained in a state of cheerful disorientation. From his shoes to his keys, book bag and playbook, the entirety of Kelly’s routine had to be retraced for him. He was like a large, dangerous child; even when Patrick managed to lead Kelly in the right direction, there was always another deviation to be dealt with. A brief couple of seconds sorting through his clothes, and Kelly had asked to be escorted to his father’s closet. There he went about selecting a white dress shirt, black tie, and pants and a coat to match. They were nearly out the door when Patrick had to remind Kelly to get his cell phone. The two of them had bolted up the steps, Patrick leading his best friend through his own house, over to where his phone had been charging.

  Kelly took one look at it, strode to the bathroom, and tossed it in the hamper.

  “I got everyone I need, right here,” he had said, winking. “Almost.”