Will McIntosh - Hitchers

There was a terrific humming in my ears, like electricity. Electricity always reminded me of Lorena. Rivers and electricity. Canoes. Lorena hadn’t drowned, though; she’d been on the edge of the water.

Images flashed in my head, incredibly vivid. Geometrical figures flying past, like futuristic cities, each shape glowing colorfully, creating a kaleidoscope that spun and twisted around me. Outside sensations—the press of water, the sound of my body struggling not to breathe, then, finally, giving in and inhaling—receded. Then my thoughts receded too.

Isnapped awake.

The TV was on.

“This is not good. This is not good,” a woman said. She was crying.

I thought it was the woman I’d swerved to avoid in the road, that she had pulled me out of the water and for some reason taken me to her house. But I was in the same seat as the woman, like she was sitting in my lap, only she wasn’t, because she wasn’t blocking my view of the TV. I tried to look around, but couldn’t.

I leaned forward and retrieved a cigarette from a pack of Camels sitting on the coffee table. Only I didn’t. It was as if someone else was moving me. I didn’t smoke. I never smoked.

“Oh, Christ,” the woman moaned. I looked at my hands as I lit the cigarette with a red plastic lighter, only again, I didn’t mean to look at my hands—my eyes just went there. They weren’t even my hands—they were a woman’s hands, slim and pale, with rings on three fingers. They were trembling. The cigarette came to my mouth and my lips wrapped around it. Not my lips, this woman’s lips. I was watching from behind her eyes. She didn’t seem to know I was there.

I felt her heart pounding, and that at least felt right, because I was terrified. Her heart was pounding for her own reasons, though, not mine.

We looked toward the TV. A reporter wearing a medical mask stood in front of a hospital, its windows dancing with reflected red lights from emergency vehicles. Behind the reporter people raced around, all of them wearing masks.

The supporting title at the bottom of the screen read: Anthrax Attack in Atlanta.

The reporter was speaking in a breathless voice. “Peter, Emergency personnel are scrambling to find some way to handle the crush of victims in what is now being described as a terrorist attack that may have originated in the MARTA subway system.”

I thought of Annie, hoped that somehow, against all odds, she was all right.

I stood, or the woman stood, and went into the kitchen. We grabbed a bottle of red wine by the neck, and, as we turned toward a drawer, I caught a glimpse of the woman reflected in the microwave. It was Lyndsay, my date.

We took a long swig right from the bottle, set it down on the coffee table, then picked up a phone, punched a number, got an “all circuits are busy” recording.

“Shit!” We threw the phone down.

I tried to make sense of what was happening to me. This must be a hallucination. I was dying, and for some reason my brain was creating this vivid, pointless hallucination of what Lyndsay might be doing at this moment as it flickered out.

If that was true I had to snap out of it, move my arms and swim. I didn’t want to die at all; I wasn’t like Annie.

On the news they showed Fifth Avenue, an impossible tangle of cars and people.

“Authorities are instructing people to stay in their homes, but clearly, Peter, thousands are not heeding these instructions…”

For a second I considered that this whole thing was a hallucination, starting with my phone call to Annie, or even back to the date. I had stayed home, went to sleep, was having an incredibly vivid dream.

My vision broke apart, splintering into a million colorful shards. The shards morphed into geometric shapes again, and I watched them fly by, twisting and stretching out to an unseen horizon.

“His eyes are open again.”

A face hovered over me. It wasn’t the woman with the cigarette, it was a man with a goatee. He was wet and shaking.

“Can you hear me?” he asked. Droplets of water dribbled off his goatee.

I tried to answer, but my lungs cramped painfully. Water burst from my mouth, briefly creating a fountain rising toward the goateed man. I was seized by a painful coughing fit.

“Get him on his side,” the man said. I felt myself being rolled, and my lungs stopped aching a little. I’d never been so cold. And confused. How had I gone from the bottom of the reservoir to Lyndsay’s living room to here?

“Here,” another man said. I was covered to the neck with a blanket, but it didn’t help. “Nine-one-one didn’t answer.” The man laughed. “Imagine that. You think we should take him to a hospital?”

“Are you kidding me?” the goateed man said. “You want anthrax?” “I’m going to go to sleep now,” I mumbled, drawing my hands up under my chin.

“Whoa, you better not.” The goateed guy said, pulling my wrist away from my face. “Come on, let’s walk to my truck. We can turn the heater up full blast.”

That sounded great. Just the idea of a heater filled me with longing like I’d never experienced before. I struggled to raise myself on one elbow, but couldn’t manage it. The two men pulled me to my feet. They half-dragged me toward a truck, which was parked on the shoulder of the highway.

The woman I’d swerved to avoid was still sprawled in the road. She was an old woman, clearly very sick. She was pleading for someone to help her. Two cars had pulled over. A small group was huddled on the shoulder.

My saviors shoved me into the truck. It was a tight fit for the three of us, but I didn’t care. Heat blasted from the vents—that’s all that mattered. I held my frozen hands in front of the heater, my jaw chattering.

The guy on the passenger side, a big, Italian-looking guy, abruptly leaned away from me. “Hey, you’re not sick or anything, are you? It just occurred to me.”

I shook my head, feeling my neck muscles creak. “I don’t have it.”

He relaxed, let his big thigh settle back against mine. “You’re one lucky bastard. Five minutes ago you were dead.”

“Dead?” I echoed.

“Dead,” the driver said. “No pulse, not breathing.”

“Toby saved your life,” the Italian guy said. “I got it all on my phone.” He showed me the phone. “You want to see it?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to see my own dead body.

“He spotted the back of your head in the water and pulled you out.” He slapped the dash. “Shit, Toby, you saved a guy’s life! Un-fucking-believable.”

I looked at Toby, who kept his eyes on the road, smiling, clearly proud.

“Thanks, Toby,” I offered. It wasn’t nearly enough, but I couldn’t find the energy to elaborate.

“No problem.” He held out his fist. I bumped the top of it with mine, like we were playing one-potato, two-potato, not sure if that’s what he wanted.

“I’m Joe, by the way,” the Italian guy said.

“I have to sleep now,” I said.

A wriggling in my pants woke me. Joe was fishing around in my pocket.

“Don’t worry, I ain’t ripping you off,” Joe said when he saw I was awake. He withdrew his hand. “I was trying to see if there were phone numbers in your wallet, but your wallet’s all wet and it’s stuck to your pants. Is there someone I can call? We’re not sure what to do with you. We gotta be somewhere.”

My first thought was Annie. My second was that I should call my mom to let her know I was all right. She was probably frantic, out in Arizona with no information, calling my phone and getting no answer. Later. Right now I needed someone to come and help me. There was my friend Dave. He had a family to worry about, but if he could, he’d come.