Yoo-Hoo instead of a can, how big a deal could it be?
Forget it, he advised himself. It’s over.
A great idea, except by period three he knew it wasn’t over; it was just beginning. He sat in pre-algebra, watching Mr. Knopf solving simple equations on the board, and realized with dawning horror that a whole new set of memories was surfacing in his mind. It was like watching strange objects float slowly toward the surface of a muddy lake.
I’m in a place I don’t know, he thought. I mean, I will know it—or would have known it if the Cadillac had hit me. It’s the way station— but the part of me that’s there doesn’t know that yet. That part only knows it’s in the desert someplace, and there are no people. I’ve been crying, because I’m scared. I’m scared that this might be hell.
By three o’clock, when he arrived at Mid-Town Lanes, he knew he had found the pump in the stables and had gotten a drink of water. The water was very cold and tasted strongly of minerals. Soon he would go inside and find a small supply of dried beef in a room which had once been a kitchen. He knew this as clearly and surely as he’d known the pretzel vendor would select a bottle of Yoo-Hoo, and that the doll peeking out of the Bloomingdale’s bag had blue eyes.
It was like being able to remember forward in time.
He bowled only two strings—the first a 96, the second an 87. Timmy looked at his sheet when he turned it in at the counter and shook his head. “You’re having an off-day today, champ,” he said.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Jake said.
Timmy took a closer look. “You okay? You look really pale.”
“I think I might be coming down with a bug.” This didn’t feel like a lie, either. He was sure as hell coming down with something.
“Go home and go to bed,” Timmy advised. “Drink lots of clear liquids—gin, vodka, stuff like that.”
Jake smiled dutifully. “Maybe I will.”
He walked slowly home. All of New York was spread out around him, New York at its most seductive—a late-afternoon street serenade with a musician on every corner, all the trees in bloom, and everyone apparently in a good mood. Jake saw all this, but he also saw behind it: saw himself cowering in the shadows of the kitchen as the man in black drank like a grinning dog from the stable pump, saw himself sobbing with relief as he—or it—moved on without discovering him, saw himself falling deeply asleep as the sun went down and the stars began to come out like chips of ice in the harsh purple desert sky.
He let himself into the duplex apartment with his key and walked into the kitchen to get something to eat. He wasn’t hungry, but it was habit. He was headed for the refrigerator when his eye happened on the pantry door and he stopped. He realized suddenly that the way station— and all the rest of that strange other world where he now belonged— was behind that door. All he had to do was push through it and rejoin the Jake that already existed there. The queer doubling in his mind would end; the voices, endlessly arguing the question of whether or not he had been dead since 8:25 that morning, would fall silent.
Jake pushed open the pantry door with both hands, his face already breaking into a sunny, relieved smile . . . and then froze as Mrs. Shaw, who was standing on a step-stool at the back of the pantry, screamed. The can of tomato paste she had been holding dropped out of her hand and fell to the floor. She tottered on the stool and Jake rushed forward to steady her before she could join the tomato paste.
“Moses in the bullrushes!” she gasped, fluttering a hand rapidly against the front of her housedress. “You scared the bejabbers out of me, Johnny!”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He really was, but he was also bitterly disappointed. It had only been the pantry, after all. He had been so sure—
“What are you doing, creeping around here, anyway? This is your bowling day! I didn’t expect you for at least another hour! I haven’t even made your snack yet, so don’t be expecting it.”
“That’s okay. I’m not very hungry, anyway.” He bent down and picked up the can she had dropped.