A Man Overboard Read online

  When they entered the recovery room, Joseph opened his eyes and smiled the most precious and heart-melting smile his parents had ever seen. His neck was wrapped, and he had some wires connecting him to machines, but other than that, he looked great.

  “Hi, Mommy,” he whispered. “Hi, Daddy.” He lifted his hand and gave a tired wave.

  They both sat down on the bed’s edge and did their best to refrain from drowning him beneath hugs and kisses.

  Laying a hand on his tiny chest, Jack smiled. “Hey, buddy. You okay?”

  He tried nodding his head, but the wrappings made it impossible. “Yeah.” Then he looked to his mother. “Is everything gonna be okay now?”

  “Everything is gonna be okay now,” she said.

  28

  The new Saab rolled to a stop before a wall of raked leaves that had been built at the top of the driveway. Jack stepped out of the car and was welcomed back to his new home by a brisk October 17th wind that pulled at his suit jacket and ruffled his hair. Red-orange leaves snapped from the swaying branches above and whipped past him on the wings of some invisible current to nowhere while dead leaves from the raked piles were summoned upward like smoke from an altar, twisting inside an eerie vortex that provoked thoughts of some time-traveling person from the future suddenly appearing naked in his front yard. But why a body-building robot with an Austrian accent would show up at his house—no doubt on a mission to cut down the family tree belonging to some future Resistance warrior destined to lead humanity to victory in the coming mechanical apocalypse—would be a complete mystery. Though he supposed it could be a Russian assassin finally coming after his family, using some secret teleporting technology. But that wouldn’t make sense. Why would the Kremlin send an agent across the world to take them out now? The CIA, then? Or maybe the swirling leaves weren’t indicative of a physical arrival but only a psychic one. A psychic assassin. He knew the government had them…

  He turned his attention away from the leaves and looked up into the sky, satisfied that there wasn’t a black hole forming in the clouds above his house. He would hate to have to move again. Jogging to the front door, he looked across the street before going in and could see the zipping clouds in the late-afternoon sky racing across the surface of the Delaware. It was strange being on this side of it now, the Jersey side. It hadn’t been an easy sell on Stacey, not with New Jersey seemingly right in the middle of the vaccination war, but all other considerations made perfect sense. Besides, Jack had argued, when armed CDC troops began hauling kids away and summarily executing “irresponsible” parents on their doorsteps, they would be the first ones to make the swim across the river and back into the parental freedom of Pennsylvania.

  “Joseph?” Jack called, closing the door on his Jerry imagination.

  No answer.

  “Mary?”

  Mary was the babysitter, and the reason she was here today was because Stacey’s company was running a huge event at Waterfront Park tonight. Some kind of Live Aid thing meant to raise awareness of the worldwide water crisis. A couple of actors, a Major League athlete, the entire cast of the Trenton Thunder, some politicians, and an author who’d written a book on the subject were all scheduled to speak between performances by some of the biggest names in music.

  “Joseph! Mary!” He walked into the kitchen and tossed his keys onto the counter. He found a piece of notebook paper sitting on the kitchen table, big red letters scribbled across it.

  Hey, Mr. Green. I talked to Mrs. Green and she said it was okay to take Joseph to see the four o’ clock showing of that new Disney movie. Hope that’s ok. Your phone wasn’t on, so I left a message. —M

  “Crap,” Jack muttered, and he dug his cell out of his pocket. He’d forgotten to turn it back on after a meeting. When the screen lit up, it announced five missed calls. Two were from Mary, one was from Stacey, one was from someone at work, and one came from a blocked number. Three voicemails were waiting for him, and he listened to them while looking through the refrigerator for something to eat. His meeting had gone through lunch, and he was starving.

  “Hi, Mr. Green, it’s Mary. I’ve been trying to reach you, but I guess your phone’s off. I called Mrs. Green and asked if I could take Joseph to see Frankenweenie at four o’ clock. She said it was okay as long as I promise to leave if he gets scared. So, I guess we’ll be back around sixish. Bye!”

  “End of message. To save this message, please—”

  Jack deleted it.

  “Next new message…”

  He took out some lunchmeat and tossed it on the table.

  “Hi, Jack. Things are pretty insane today…”

  There was a long pause, and for a second, Jack thought the phone had shut off.

  “—just know that I love you, okay? I miss you. Hey, maybe when I get home tonight…”

  “End of message—message skipped. Next new message…”

  He walked to the counter to grab the salt and pepper and noticed an unfamiliar book a few inches from where his keys had landed. The next message played.

  “The Donzerly Light,” he muttered out loud. And then he saw the author’s name.

  Ryne Douglas Pearson.

  “Jack, it’s Agent Johnson,” the recorded voice was saying in his ear. Jack hadn’t heard a peep from the FBI man since before the whole incident in Connecticut, not even during the ensuing investigation (though the investigation ended rather quickly, the headlines reading that Vadim had settled into a jealous rage, attacking his family when he learning of his wife’s ‘other’ life with a secret husband—the missing doctor, the cruise, and the burning down of their house never being connected).

  But Jack was focused on the book now. Slowly, he reached his trembling hand out and peeled back its cover. He didn’t know what to expect, but part of him seemed to be preparing for a Polaroid of his family—Stacey, Joseph, and even the babysitter, all with some mortal wound, the book delivered from out of the vortex, the image time-stamped from some future date as a warning of what would happen if he ever decided to talk about things. But only the copyright information stared up at him.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  Before he could stop himself, he was turning the book over and checking the back for a Russian note.

  “…I think we should talk…” Agent Johnson said. “…something hasn’t been sitting right with me…”

  Stacey liked the author, so what? He liked Pearson, too. He was just being paranoid.

  “…we’re picking up some chatter…”

  Thunder sounded outside, and a few raindrops splashed against the window that overlooked the back yard. If the coming storm didn’t pass quickly, the event at the park would be a washout, and all Stacey’s hard work would be for nothing.

  “…we don’t think Vadim was the only person involved…”

  Jack frowned, his attention tripping over the voice. What was Johnson saying?

  “…Vadim didn’t write the notes in the book…”

  A bolt of lightning tore through the sky.

  Jack was confused. What was the FBI still doing looking at this? He thought the CIA had shut them down. What was Johnson up to?

  “…I’ll call you back when I have more information. But keep your eyes open, Jack.”

  “End of—Message saved. No new messages. First skip—”

  He hung up just as another call was coming in. Stacey.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, babe, it’s me. Where you been all day?”

  “Forgot to turn my phone back on after a meeting. Looks like you might get rained out.”

  “Yeah, the sky doesn’t look too promising. Guess maybe we forgot to pay our HAARP bill. Did you get Mary’s message?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Did you get mine?” There was innuendo wrapped around her tone.

  “Yeah.”

  “I may need you tonight. Be ready, okay? It’s been a crappy day.”

  His eyes fell to the book. “What’s Donzerly Ligh
t?”

  “What?” she asked.

  “There’s a book here on the counter by Ryne Douglas Pearson. The Donzerly Light.”

  There was a pause on her end.

  “Hello?” he asked.

  “Oh, the book! Sorry, babe. Does that bother you? I’ll totally get rid of it if it does. You know I just like the author.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “What does what mean?”

  “The title, Donzerly Light.”

  Another pause. “I’m not sure. I haven’t started it yet. Why?”

  “Just curious.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  “I will be. Once I’m back in bed with you. I love you, Jack. No matter what, I’ll always love you.”

  “I love you, too. See you when you get back. Good luck.”

  They hung up.

  Jack stared out into the backyard. Something about her word choice seemed oddly cryptic. And he wasn’t referring to the implied night of passion. “Oh, shut up, Jerry.” And he wondered if that was a bad sign, talking to himself like that. Did he have an alter ego? Was he two personalities? A programmed government assassin like Jerry? Was he Jerry?

  He walked to the den with a sandwich in his hands, trying to shrug off the question of why Johnson would call now after three months of complete silence.

  He sat before the television and took a quick note of the framed Bible verse hanging on the wall above it. Love believes all things, hopes all things… It was the same one that Grandmom had, and Stacey even let him hang it up without a fight. He still couldn’t believe that. He let his eyes descend to the TV as he flipped on SportsCenter, and he became immediately inundated with more talk about Peyton Manning’s fourth quarter comeback against the Chargers. He filled his mouth and tried losing the cloud of pursuing thoughts through a maze of sports talk. But he couldn’t escape it. The Donzerly Light by Pearson and a phone call from Agent Johnson all within a matter of minutes? Jerry didn’t believe in coincidences. He dialed his voicemail again and listened to Johnson’s message more closely.

  When the message was over, he ended the connection and tossed the phone onto the coffee table in front of him. He didn’t understand the source of Johnson’s concern. Hadn’t they known from the beginning that the handwriting in the novels didn’t match the handwriting in the letters? So why… And then that little fact dropped into place like a coin in a jukebox, playing lyrics that Jack had never stopped to consider before. Stacey had told him right there in the hospital three months ago that the books came from Vadim. But if Vadim didn’t write the notes… Why would she lie about that? And who could the books be from? Why hadn’t he seen this hole in the story before? Because he didn’t want to, of course.

  He got up off the couch, now completely oblivious to whatever was going on in the NFL, and sat down at the computer. He logged into their Amazon account and checked all prior orders. Donzerly hadn’t come from Amazon. He then checked all their credit card accounts and was pretty certain that she hadn’t used a credit card to purchase it. Next, he checked PayPal and their debit card. Nothing. That left cash, so he looked up the phone numbers to all the nearest bookstores and asked if they carried the book. None of them did. One manager he talked to even said that if Pearson had turned indie, his books might be print-on-demand, which bookstores tended to shy away from.

  So someone (not Vadim, he was dead) had given the book to her. He was pretty sure that Stacey had implied two things on the phone just now: she had the book because she liked the author and that he might not like it because he would relate it to Vadim.

  He swore, got a beer from the refrigerator, and returned to the television.

  * * * *

  Sinking. Moonlight growing fainter and fainter beneath a dark curtain, lungs on fire…

  He always woke up at that moment, right before he could pass out from holding his breath so long. Taking in a lungful of precious air now, he looked around the room and was satisfied that he’d been dreaming. The nightmare just wouldn’t leave him alone, and he wished he could punch Mr. Sandman in the face. He moved his feet onto the floor and held his head in his hands. As the ocean’s depths receded, he was left with the remnants of some mystery he’d been troubled by before falling overboard again. It was knocking on the door of awareness. Robots from the future that wanted to inoculate Joseph? No, that wasn’t it. Then what was this feeling? Why was he sure something was wrong? Russian assassins? Psychic warfare?

  And it came back—the book, Johnson’s call, his conversation with Stacey…

  The front door opened, and a conversation between Mary and Joseph came drifting into the den. Jack looked at the clock below the Broncos and Chargers replay and saw that it was 7:08.

  “Hi, Daddy!” Joseph shouted. His smiling face came rounding the corner, his tiny neck showcasing the long white scar that kept Jack in a continuous state of appreciation.

  “Hey, buddy. The movie good?”

  “Yeah! It was awesome!” he shouted. He threw a fist in the air and jumped, kicking his legs up and under him. Other than an occasional bad dream, he’d made a remarkable recovery from the trauma of that day. So far, at least.

  Mary smiled patiently, wanting to be paid so that she could go straight back to the mall where her friends were already waiting for her.

  “Thank you, Mary.” He pulled out his wallet and extracted a few green bills. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Green.” She turned to Joseph. “See ya later, squirt.”

  “Bye!” Joseph hollered.

  She turned, waved, and left.

  Joseph was already out of the room and halfway up the stairs by the time the door banged shut, and Jack had to chase after him. “What do you want for dinner, Joe?”

  “Pizza!” he hollered back before closing the door to his room.

  “Okay, fifteen minutes, then!” Jack went back to the kitchen to throw a frozen pizza into the oven. It was 7:13.

  Stacey’s event was scheduled to start at 7:30, so he switched the television to the appropriate channel while the pizza thawed in the oven. Who was supposed to sing the national anthem? he wondered, punching the buttons on the remote. Simon somebody. Simple Simon? No, that was the Pearson book.

  The books…

  He turned them over in his mind, sifting Stacey’s lie through his mental fingers. The Donzerly Light… Why did that sound so familiar?

  Before he knew it, the oven was beeping, snapping him away from his pondering. He called Joseph down.

  Making his entrance by sliding across the kitchen floor in his socks, Joseph climbed onto a chair at the table in seamless fashion, half a cheesy triangle in his mouth before Jack could even sit down.

  Ruffling his son’s hair, Jack turned his attention out of the kitchen and into the living room, to the event that was about to take place on the television.

  Donzerly Light… He couldn’t shake the title, the feeling that he should know something about it. He said it out loud. “Donzerly Light.”

  “What did you say?” Joseph asked through the tendrils of melted cheese hanging from his mouth.

  He broke it up into syllables. “Don-zer-ly-light.”

  “Are you okay, Daddy-o?” Joseph asked, giggling.

  Don-zer-ly light…

  He grabbed the book and sat at the table next to Joseph, skimming through the first few chapters in search of something that might explain its title.

  Bingo. Right there in chapter one.

  When he was younger, it said, the main character always thought the lyrics to the national anthem were actually “by the donzerly light.”

  The national anthem.

  And in fact, the singer—the Simon Someone who was actually a woman, his pulling suggestions from the wrong bathroom explaining a crucial reason as to why he’d failed to come up with the right name—was about to kick off Stacey’s event. What the heck was her name? She was somewhat of a political voice, an activist when it came to things like
poverty, AIDS, starvation, human trafficking. She was Bono working on a bigger scale but without the legendary acclaim. And then the bottom of the screen solved his little puzzle before his memory could. Rose Simon. He snapped his fingers.

  “You’re silly, Daddy. You’re a silly monkey!” Joseph laughed, chomping away at another slice.

  The wind blew Rose Simon’s hair back over her shoulders as she smiled up at the packed stadium and the clouds beyond. Raising the microphone to her lips, she began.

  A collage of panning and zooming angle shots faded in and out over her face while she sang, giving a live soundtrack to the editor’s representation of the stadium—the stage erected between first and third base, the crowd, the banners (decorated by a pair of children’s hands reaching up for falling water) flapping in the wind, the American flag atop the stadium…

  Jack’s phone rang.

  Blocked number.

  He swore, to which Joseph began crossing his fingers at him, shaking his head with disapproval.

  “Sorry,” Jack whispered.

  “Jack, it’s Johnson. Did you get my message?”

  “Yeah. What’s going on? I thought—”

  “Just listen. There’s someone else…”

  “What do you mean, ‘is’?”

  “Vadim was just meant to be the fall guy.”

  “Yeah, we knew that already.”

  “No.” He sighed, and Jack could tell he was guarding his words over the phone. “This has nothing to do with the Agency.”

  Jack’s back straightened. “I haven’t heard from you since you left me standing in the mountains. Why are you calling me now?”