Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

‘I don’t remember saying that.’

‘Are you-’ Diego licks his lips-‘are you all right, Ian?’

Ian looks at his watch. ‘I better get to work,’ he says. ‘Don’t wanna be late.’

‘Ian-’

He rolls up his window, puts the Mustang into gear, and gets the car moving. He glances in his rearview mirror and sees Diego’s car still stopped in the street, taillights glowing red.

In another seven minutes he pulls into work.

At three o’clock he steps outside for no other reason than he wants a few minutes away from his desk. He reaches into his car and pulls a plug of cigar from the ashtray and lights it with a match, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke from the corner of his mouth. He squints at the horizon. Probably should get a bite to eat. Maybe he’ll see what’s floating around the fridge when he heads back in. Pretty good chance he left a carton of General Tso’s chicken in there on Monday, and if no one else got to it-a possibility with these barbarians-he’ll have that.

While he’s out here he should make a call. He should make two calls, one leading directly to the other. Personal calls it would be better not to make from the office. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone, then scrolls through his contacts till he finds the one he’s looking for.

It rings three times, then: ‘Hello?’

It’s a strange thing: Ian does not miss Lisa, but hearing her voice makes him miss the past, a past in which his future, now past itself, was still ahead of him and filled with possibility. He met her when he was twenty-two.

He’d already been married-and divorced-once, to a girl named Mitsuko he met on a train in Paris. They made eyes at each other while they shot through the darkness underground, and when the train stopped at rue du Sentier they both got off. Eventually it became obvious they were headed to the same place-Chartier-for dinner. They got a table on the second floor near the stairs and every time a waiter walked by he would have to tuck in his elbow to avoid getting bumped (and it happened often as against the wall opposite was the silverware cart). Ian would have been mad except every time it happened she laughed and said, ‘Your face.’ He didn’t know what was so funny about his face, but her laugh was adorable. Two weeks later Ian’s trip was over and, not wanting to separate from Mitsuko just yet, he proposed marriage. She flew to Los Angeles a week after him and they said their I dos at a quick-wedding spot in Torrance. And two months after that they were divorced. Mitsuko finally got the courage to call her parents in Japan and after twenty minutes of crying she said she was flying back home. Ian was eighteen when that happened, and in truth he was relieved. He wasn’t nearly as ready for marriage as he’d thought.

But four years later, when he met Lisa on the sand in Venice Beach, he thought he was much older and wiser. He was twenty-two: no kid. She was beautiful and surfed better than half the guys in the water and had a smile that was all tomboy confidence. Looking at her beneath the Los Angeles sun he could imagine a future for himself. Before he even knew her name he could. A happy future with five kids and a house on the beach. His mom still owned Dad’s surf shop then (she hadn’t sold it to pay for the several cosmetic surgeries she was convinced would land her a new husband), but he ran it, and it seemed that as long as she had enough money to stay in vodka and cigarettes she was okay and happy to let him run it. He would have his house and his five kids and his father’s surf shop. The old man was five years dead by then, and it didn’t even hurt much to think about anymore. The future was as bright then as it had ever been. Everything seemed lined up in a row as he stood on the sand and watched her come out of the water soaking wet with a board under her arm.

But now the future is past, and in the end he couldn’t see it clearly at all; it turned out so different.

‘Lisa, it’s Ian.’

‘Ian! God. Is it 1985 again? Please tell me it’s not. I’ve gotten rid of all my stonewashed jeans.’

‘No such luck.’

‘I take it from your tone this isn’t a nostalgia call.’

‘Afraid not. I was hoping you could tell me how to get hold of Jeffrey.’

‘Yeah, do you have a pen?’

‘I’ll remember it.’

The phone rings five times. Ian is about to hang up when the sixth ring is cut off and replaced by a ‘Hello?’

Ian licks his lips. His chest feels tight.

‘Hello?’

‘Jeffrey.’

‘Who is this?’

‘Jeffrey, it’s me.’

Now it’s Jeffrey’s turn to go silent. Then, finally, ‘Dad.’

Ian nods. ‘Dad,’ he says.

‘How’d you get my number?’

‘I called your mom.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘I have some news.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s Maggie.’ Jeffrey says nothing, so Ian continues: ‘She’s alive. I thought you should know.’

Silence from the other end of the phone but for a sound like a desert wind.

‘Jeffrey?’

‘Alive?’

‘We still haven’t got her back, but she’s alive.’

‘Really?’

‘She got to a phone day before yesterday, called for help. We’re working on finding her. But it was her and she’s alive.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I know. Hard to wrap your head around.’

‘Yeah.’

‘It wasn’t your fault, Jeffrey. I know you felt like I blamed you, and I know I’ve been a crummy dad. I’m sorry for that. But it wasn’t your fault.’

Jeffrey does not respond.

‘Jeffrey?’

‘I’m here.’

‘I missed your birthday last month.’

‘You’ve missed a few.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I’d like to-’

‘Listen, I’m at work. I should go.’

‘You got a job?’

‘Of course.’

Of course is right: his son is the same age Ian was when he met Lisa. He had an apartment and worked at his dad’s surf shop and had already been married and divorced. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised to learn that his son is growing up. Part of him expected Jeffrey to stay frozen in time, waiting for Ian to be ready to act once more as a father. But that just isn’t the way things work. It never was.

‘What do you do?’

‘I work on a reality TV show. One of those stupid dating shows. I’m an assistant editor. Mostly I just shuffle footage around on an AVID. But, look, I really don’t have time to talk. I’m glad you called and told me about Maggie.’

‘Okay,’ Ian says. Then: ‘Hey, remember that chess game we were playing?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Queen to b4. I promise to be much quicker about my next move.’

‘There is no next move, Dad. I put that game away years ago.’

Click.

Ian pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at it. The call’s duration is on the screen: 3:53. Less than four minutes.

He should have said different things. He shouldn’t have mentioned that goddamn chess game. He should have said different things.

He drops his cigar to the ground and snuffs it out with the heel of a shoe. He pockets his phone and heads back inside, straight to his desk. He’s decided not to have lunch after all.

Maggie walks around to the back of the stairs. She sits on her haunches and looks at the darkness beneath the bottom step. She doesn’t want to reach in there. She is afraid to reach in there. She swallows and sticks her hand into the shadows. But she does not find the hand-made weapon. Her fingers brush cold concrete, nothing more. Her first thought is that Borden must have taken it. He must have taken it and hidden it from her or destroyed it or showed it to Henry who will now punish her with it. He’s going to make sure she is forever trapped in the Nightmare World, stuck here with him and the damp shadows that lay themselves over everything.