Collide. Megan Hart
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…” I couldn’t explain.
He laughed and stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “You must be on some pretty good shit. But you should be more careful. This neighborhood, it ain’t so great. I mean, I live here and all. But you don’t. I’d have seen you around here before. Are you new, or just visiting?”
“I was just walking past.” It wasn’t a lie.
“You want to come inside? Gotta bunch of friends over, just hanging out. Having a little party. C’mon,” Johnny said, as though I needed any persuasion. “You’ll have a good time, I promise.”
He stood, tugging me onto my feet. The earth didn’t rock. I didn’t spin. With Johnny holding my hand, I wasn’t going anywhere but wherever he took me.
His house here in 1970s New York was a tall brownstone a lot like the one in present-day Harrisburg. It had to be newer, but it wasn’t as nice on the outside. Inside, it was so similar to my own I let out a low murmur of surprise as we entered the foyer. Stairs in front of us led up, a long and narrow hall pointed toward the kitchen and an arched doorway to our right led into a formal living room. A beaded curtain hung in the archway.
I heard music, louder in here, from upstairs. I heard voices, too. I smelled pot.
“C’mon in.” Johnny linked his fingers through mine and tugged me down the hall toward the kitchen, where a group of men and women sat around a wooden table or leaned against the counters to watch another man cooking something on the stove. “Hungry? Candy’s cooking.”
At the sound of his name, the man at the stove turned and flashed a grin of straight white teeth. He bent his head, Afro waving, as regally as any king welcoming a subject, his stirring spoon a scepter. “Welcome, welcome, sister. We got enough to feed you, if you’re hungry.”
I was hungry, intensely so. My stomach rumbled. I’d never been hungry in a fugue before. Oh, I’d eaten and drank, but never from need. I put my free hand, the one not still clutching Johnny’s, over my belly.
My clothes hadn’t changed. I looked down at the familiar friction of material under my fingertips. I was even wearing my winter coat, though it had come unbuttoned. No wonder I’d been so hot outside. No wonder everyone was looking at me so strangely.
“You can take that off,” Johnny offered.
I nodded and let him help me out of it. Women’s lib might be going strong, but Johnny was still a gentleman. He hung my coat on a hook behind the door and put his hand on the small of my back as I stood under the scrutiny of everyone in the kitchen.
“This is Emm,” Johnny said, like he brought strangers home all the time. He probably did. “That’s Wanda, Paul, Ed, Bellina and Candy’s at the stove. Say hi, everyone.”
They did, in a chorus, while I stared and tried to keep my mouth closed. I didn’t recognize Wanda or her name, but Bellina Cassidy was a playwright, her shows performed on Broadway by casts of the biggest names in theater. Edgar D’Onofrio had been a celebrated poet who’d killed himself sometime in the late seventies. Paul was probably Paul Smiths, the photographer and moviemaker who’d directed a handful of Johnny’s early movies. And Candy …
“Candy Applegate?”
Candy looked at her with a grin. “That’s me.” “You have a restaurant,” I said. “And that cooking show on TV.”
The room bubbled with laughter. I was looking at the Enclave. I licked my mouth and tasted sweat.
“Naw, girl, that ain’t me.” Candy shook his head and dipped the spoon back into whatever was simmering so deliciously on the stove. “Must be some other Candy.”
“No, it’s you,” I said, but shut my mouth up tight before I could say the rest.
Fugues were never like dreams, which I could sometimes control. I’d never been able to fix the course of what happened when I was dark. Sometimes that meant they were scarier than nightmares. Other times, like now, I just had to remember this wasn’t real and I could do nothing about it. I could tell them I knew the future, but I’d only look crazier than I probably already did.
Johnny, in fact, was studying me. “Feed her, Candyman.” “I’ll feed her,” Candy said.
And they did. A great, steaming bowl of some spicy, meatless stew. We all ate it over fragrant, sticky rice and sopped up the gravy with thick slices of homemade bread. I had to stop to taste everything twice, not because I was greedy or hungry, but because it tasted so, so good.
We all ate a lot. Laughing and joking. Talking about politics and art and music I knew only from history lessons or the classic rock station. They dropped names casually—Jagger, Bowie, Lennon. They dipped bare fingers into the communal pot and ate with their hands. They passed a pipe without telling me what was in it, and I smoked some of it because, after all, none of this was real.
Through it all, Johnny watched me from across the table. I watched him, too. I hadn’t asked what year this was and knew even if I did it wouldn’t matter. By the length of his hair, I guessed Johnny was about twenty-four. This made me older than him by about seven years. He didn’t seem to care.
I definitely didn’t.
We ate and talked and laughed. Someone brought out a guitar and started to play a song I was surprised I knew the words to. Something about flowers and soldiers, and where had they gone. And then they sang “Puff the Magic Dragon.” I’d never known it was about marijuana.
Sometime during all of this, our places around the table changed. I ended up next to Johnny instead of across from him. Our thighs pressed together. Our shoulders brushed when he leaned forward to grab up a slice of Candy’s bread, or to refill my glass with the kind of rich, red wine I avoided in real life.
Johnny turned his face toward me and smiled. And I kissed him. Just a brush of lip on lip, his breath warm and soft against me. He smiled into the kiss and his hand came up to cup the back of my neck beneath my hair.
Nobody noticed, or nobody cared. By that point I think most of them were drunk and high. Ed had passed out, his head on the table, snoring softly. Johnny squeezed my thigh beneath the table.
“Take me someplace,” I whispered into his ear.
He looked into my eyes for a moment, curiously. Then he nodded. He took me by the hand and led me from the table. We didn’t say goodbye, and I didn’t look back. We went up the long, narrow stairs, our hands linked loosely. My hand trailed the banister. I looked over the side, to the floor below, then up to the floor above. Stuck between, Johnny leading me, woozy from the food and whatever was in the pipe … I followed.
But at the top of the stairs, I led. I kissed him. I pushed him back against the wall, my leg cocked between his thighs, against his crotch. His belt buckle, something huge and metal, pressed my belly through my skirt. I slid my hands up his front, over the slick-smooth fabric of his ugly-patterned shirt. And I kissed him, long and smooth and hard and slow and deep.
He looked at me curiously again when I pulled back. “Who are you?”
“Emm.” I wasn’t slurring, but my voice was definitely hoarser than usual. I tasted him when I swiped my tongue across my lips.
“Emm,” Johnny said, as though considering something important. “That’s your name, all right. But who are you?” “Nobody,” I assured him.
Our bodies pressed together. His hands fit on my hips. Downstairs, I heard the burble of laughter and music. Smelled the tang of weed. Here, up here, it was quiet.
I’d been away too long. Any minute I would start to fade from this place and wake, maybe blinking away only a few seconds of time. Maybe on my knees, or worse, my face, on the ground. Maybe I wouldn’t wake at all.
The first door in the hallway, just to Johnny’s left, was cracked open enough to show me a bedroom. I took his hand and pulled him toward it. Through the door, to the bed, which was neatly made up with a blanket of