“LJ, is that you?” she asked .
“Alexis?” It was LJ. He sounded surprised.
“Yeah, you called me.”
There was a click on the other end of the line. He’d hung up on her.
Alexis stared at the cell phone in her grasp. “What the hell?”
Her mom used to say that LJ could lapse into these crazy spells, and he’d be in his own little counterculture, ’60s-radical world for a while. “Uncle LJ blew out his pilot light again,” she’d say, “He forgets it’s 2010. Just leave him be, let him ride it out, and he’ll be on track again.”
Swallowing hard, she clicked off her phone and then forged on down the sidewalk, leaving the store and restaurant lights of Fremont’s commercial district behind her. She glanced over her shoulder at the tall rocket perched above the store entrance to a squat building on the corner. It was silhouetted against the darkened sky.
On the sidewalk below it, she saw a man with a baseball cap hiding most of his face in the shadows. Even so—she still felt his eyes on her. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his army fatigue jacket and crossed the street to her side.
Alexis quickly turned and started walking again. She guessed the man was about a half-block behind her. Not looking back, she picked up the pace. She saw a lamppost ahead and hurried toward it. She’d feel safer in the light, where the passing cars could see her. She thought she heard his footsteps behind her, but she wasn’t sure.
She still had at least four or five blocks to LJ’s.
As she moved farther down the street, the houses and storefronts along the way became more and more rundown. The lights were farther apart. It was easy to get lost in the darkness. Maybe that was what that guy had done, because when Alexis glanced over her shoulder again, he wasn’t behind her anymore.
Catching her breath, she stopped and stared for a few minutes. She saw something move behind a telephone pole, but then realized it was just an old flier that had come loose, flapping in the wind.
Alexis sighed. How did she get so paranoid all of a sudden? Simply because he’d crossed to her side of the street, it didn’t mean the guy was Jack the Ripper, for God’s sake.
She decided to try LJ again. She speed-dialed his number—Lucky #7—and anxiously counted the ring tones. He picked up on the third ring, but didn’t say anything.
“LJ? Lynn? Are you there?” she asked.
There was a long pause, and then he cleared his throat. “The wingspan of a Boeing 757 is 125 feet . . .”
“LJ? What—”
“So—how could it punch a hole in the Pentagon that’s only sixty feet wide? It doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Even if the wings broke off on impact, there would have been a lot more debris outside. It doesn’t make any goddamn sense at all. . . .”
“LJ, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how they pulled the wool over the public’s eyes, honey!” he replied loudly. “For Christ’s sake, if the wings broke off, why didn’t we see that in all the photos they took of the Pentagon on 9/11? You didn’t see any plane wreckage in any of those pictures. It was all a lie, goddammit, all a lie. . . .”
“LJ, please, just calm down. You’re scaring me. . . .”
“The people have been duped,” he went on, “just like they were back in sixty-three. Back then, they all bought that lone-gunman theory. No one bothered to ask the basic stuff. Like why would Oswald—when he’s living in Texas, where he could get an untraceable gun just about anywhere—would he order that rifle from a Chicago Sporting Goods store? It makes no sense. . . .”
“LJ, just—just—”
“Damn them. It’s just like I’ve told you before, ‘We gotta have our own conspiracy that’s even better than their conspiracy.’ It’s time. We need to raise some hell!”
She heard a click. He’d hung up.
Shoving the cell into her purse, Alexis hurried down the sidewalk. She wasn’t sure if LJ was stoned or loopy or both. But she had an awful feeling in her gut that he’d hurt himself or someone else if she didn’t get to him soon.
She ran for three blocks until she spotted the dilapidated building LJ called his warehouse. It was really more like two adobe shacks side-by-side, across the street. One had a sign on the front lawn: YOLANDA THE MYSTIC—FORTUNES READ—KNOW YOUR FUTURE! A small sign was posted above the door of the other shack: LYNN’S ORGANIC PERFUMES & OILS—WE MAKE GOOD SCENTS. The fortune-teller was long gone, and LJ had expanded into her space even though he rarely sold perfume anymore.
Dodging the traffic on Fremont Avenue, Alexis scurried across the street. She could feel feathers shedding from her skirt. She ran up to the front stoop of LJ’s warehouse and pounded on the door. “LJ? Are you there?” She caught her breath and listened.
No one answered. She couldn’t hear a sound, just traffic noise on the street behind her.
She tried the doorknob and heard it click as she gave it a twist. Biting her lip, she opened the door and peered inside. The small, darkened room was lined with shelves holding perfume bottles of all shapes and sizes. Alexis got a strong whiff of combating scents, but it wasn’t unpleasant. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. LJ had an old fashioned hand-crank cash register on the counter—along with a scribbled sign: if you’re here to shoplift, fuck off! Behind the counter was another room with the door ajar. Alexis could see a dim light filtering from that annex.
“LJ?” she called, craning her neck. “Are you in there?”
With uncertainty, she moved around the counter toward his back room. The hinges squeaked as she opened the door and stepped inside. It was his lab, with a big poster on one wall—and it was right out of the ’60s, too: Jane Fonda as Barbarella. On the other walls, shelves were crammed with a variety of jars and bottles, a scale, beakers and a Bunsen burner. But everything was covered with dust. Cobwebs linked the jars and beakers together. Alexis figured it had been ages since he’d done any work in there.
She heard a noise—like someone gasping or snoring. The sound seemed to come from the other side of the Jane Fonda poster. “What the hell?” she murmured, her brow wrinkled.
She peeled back the poster and discovered a hidden door. She hesitated, then gave the door a push. It yawned open to reveal a wooden staircase to a basement—a basement she never knew existed. She could hear the snoring sound more clearly now.
“LJ? Are you down there?” she called, a nervous tremor in her voice. “LJ? It’s me, Alexis.”
She took a deep breath, and then started down the stairs. The wooden steps creaked under her weight. Was LJ down here? What if it was someone else—waiting for her?
At the bottom of the stairs, she spotted two gasoline canisters and a bag of fertilizer. They almost blocked the way, as if LJ had set them there temporarily. Either he’d just carried the stuff down or he was about to haul it up.
Pausing at the bottom step, Alexis stared down the narrow corridor—with one low-watt, bare lightbulb on the ceiling to illuminate the way. It was one of those pull-string fixtures. The dirty floor was painted gray, and peeling. The musky medley of fragrances upstairs had now been replaced by a sharp mildew smell.
Alexis took out her cell phone and speed-dialed LJ’s number again. She waited. She heard it—in the distance, his familiar ring tone: “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”
The phone to her ear, she stepped around the fertilizer bag and the canisters, then ventured down the gloomy corridor. LJ wasn’t picking up, but she followed the sound of his ring tone. Photos and posters lined the unpainted walls. One showed an Asian man shooting another Asian man in the head. The victim wore a slightly geeky short-sleeved checkered shirt and had a horrible grimace on his face. Another photo was of a thin little girl, running down the street, naked. She was crying. LJ had other photographs, too—Lee Harvey Oswald posing with a rifle, and shots of the Twin Towers.
She clicked off her phone, and the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” ring tone ceased. “LJ?” she called.
There wer
e also several photos of the Fremont Troll statue under the north ramparts of the Aurora Bridge. The hulking sculpture was perpetually posed as though ready to crush a near-life-size Volkswagen in his hand. On some of the photos, LJ had drawn what looked like a time bomb. Arrows showed how a bomb could be planted inside the Troll’s Volkswagen.
Staring at those pictures, Alexis thought of what he’d said earlier: “We gotta have our own conspiracy that’s even better than their conspiracy.”
She glanced back toward the stairs at the bag of fertilizer and those canisters of gasoline. She thought of something else LJ had said—when he didn’t know she was listening: “Sons of bitches, they’ll never know what hit them.”
“Oh my God,” she murmured. “He wants to blow up the Aurora Bridge. . . .”
She looked at her phone and scrolled through the recent calls. She found the incoming phone number she didn’t recognize. Highlighting it, she pressed redial. After a moment, Alexis could hear the opening strains of Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries” sing out.
She saw an open doorway at the right, near the end of the gloomy hallway. The snoring came from in there. It was almost drowned out by the Wagner ring tone. As she stepped inside the room, the Valkyries got louder. She smelled marijuana smoke and saw LJ curled up on a sofa, dead asleep. “LJ? Wake up!” she said, hanging up her phone.
He muttered something under his breath, then sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Hey, honey. I was just thinking of you.” He grabbed something off an end table. At first glance, it appeared to be a silver poker chip. “Look at what I’ve been holding on to,” he said. “I found it earlier tonight.”
Alexis gazed down at the cheap little silver disk that had both their names on it. She remembered him getting it at one of those imprint machines at the Gayway fair by the Seattle Center. LJ & ALEXIS AUSTIN, HIS FAV GAL, it said in a circle around the token’s edges.
She worked up a smile for him. “I was trying to call you,” she said.
He let out a little laugh and quickly shook his head. “No, no, you couldn’t call me, not now. I’m in the middle of an experiment, and the phone—”
“Is that what the gasoline and fertilizer are for, an experiment?” She glanced around the cramped, windowless room. “What is this place anyway? I didn’t even know this basement was here.”
Across from them was a beat-up wooden desk. On top of it, he had a lava lamp, a bong, two fat candles—and in a cheap frame, a photo of her mom and her from when she was about five. They were on the beach, building a sand castle together. Alexis still remembered the pale blue one-piece swimsuit she wore in the photograph. Her mother had on a peasant blouse and jeans. Edith was laughing, and her hair was blowing in the wind. She was beautiful.
Beside that framed picture was something that looked very much like the bomb LJ had drawn on the photo of the Fremont Troll under the Aurora Bridge. Three sticks of what must have been dynamite were bound together—with colored wires and some little gizmo black box displaying a digital countdown: 1:39 . . . 1:38 . . . 1:37 . . .
A wire attached to the box led to a cell phone.
“What’s going on here?” Alexis asked.
“This is where I work,” he replied. He gave her a stoned, sleepy grin and scratched his head. “And I—nah, I can’t tell you, honey. I can’t let you get involved.”
Her eyes wrestled with his. “What are you up to, LJ? When you called me, I heard you saying all sorts of strange things—I’ve been trying to call you back, but you were asleep.”
“You phoned me?” he said, his bloodshot eyes widening. “When?”
“Just a minute ago. But you changed your ring tone. It was that opera song they used in Apocalypse Now. You know. When they were surfing—”
He bolted off the sofa. “‘Walkürenritt’? Oh, Jesus, we’ve got to get out here!” he cried.
“Why?”
“That’s a dummy phone! It’s a detonator. It’s set to go off with a delay. You called that number?”
Paralyzed, Alexis stared at him. She couldn’t move.
“A bomb!” he shouted at her. “Get the hell out of here! C’mon, c’mon! I’m right behind you.”
“But can’t you just dismantle it or—”
“Jesus Christ, go!” he screamed.
Without thinking, Alexis swiveled around and raced down the corridor—past the poster of that screaming little girl. She could hear LJ’s footsteps behind her.
“Go, go, go!” he cried.
Breathlessly, she weaved around the gas canisters and the bag of fertilizer, then raced up those creaky old steps, and through the door. Jane Fonda’s poster was torn off the secret doorway as she ran into the annex.
She headed out the store’s entrance. “Hurry, for chrissakes!” LJ yelled.
She sprinted across the street, dodging between cars, and then turned to see him in the warehouse’s doorway.
Suddenly, there was a blast. Alexis put a hand up to cover her eyes from the blinding light. She felt the ground shake beneath her. Glass popped and shattered in the explosion. It rained shards along with smoking cinders and debris.
Car alarms wailed.
With a roar, black clouds plumed up from the inferno that was once LJ’s lab. Traffic on Fremont Avenue screeched to a halt.
She couldn’t see LJ past the thick smoke. “LJ?” she screamed. “LJ!”
“I saved it!” she heard him say over all the noise.
Alexis blinked and saw him in silhouette, hobbling through all that soot and smog. LJ came into view. He had a dazed smile on his dirt-smudged face. His clothes were burnt and torn. Dust matted down his long gray hair, and blood dripped from a cut on his forehead.
In his hand, he showed her the cheap silver disk souvenir.
Alexis gasped.
LJ didn’t seem to realize that a spear of glass was protruding from the side of his throat—just where his neck met his shoulder. But then his smile waned, and he collapsed on the street at the edge of the curb. She ran back across the street to his side.
“Go away!” she heard him gasp. “You have to. Please . . . Alexis. You—you don’t want to get involved. Your mom would never forgive me. You . . .”
But words no longer came out—just a strange, gurgling sound. He sighed, and then became very still.
Stunned, Alexis stared down at him. Tears clouded her eyes. He’d urged her to flee, but she hesitated. Part of her couldn’t just leave him there—though she knew he was dead. Already people were climbing out of their cars to look at the fire—and the charred, bloody corpse at the edge of Fremont Avenue.
“Are you OK?” she heard someone ask. Alexis numbly gazed at the middle-aged woman approaching her. She had auburn hair, glasses, and a fisherman’s sweater. In her hand she held a cell phone. “Did you know him?” the woman asked loudly—over the crackling fire and the car alarms.
Alexis opened her mouth, but she couldn’t get any words out. She saw the car’s headlights reflecting off that silver disk in LJ’s hand.
Her name was on it.
But she couldn’t go back. There was no way she could ever go back.
Sobbing, she ran as fast as she could—in the other direction.
CHAPTER 13
NANCY RAWLES
MERCIFULLY, IT STARTED TO RAIN. She felt the water on her face, and it seemed as if the sky had seen her grief. She kept on running until her legs let go, and she found herself on the ground near a bed of ivy. She knew this trail. She remembered walking past ivy when she was a small girl, holding her mother’s hand. It had been snowing that day. The city had closed down. Buses were stuck on the hills, cars skidded through the ice, sirens sounded in the distance. Edith decided they should walk. They would take the Burke-Gilman Trail all the way home.
That day in the snow, Edith had been red with cold. She’d forgotten her gloves, and her hands were hard to the touch. On a patch of ice near the university, she’d suddenly fallen, pulling Alexis down with her. Edith laughed, so Alexis laug
hed, too. But whenever she revisited that day, she remembered it as the first time her mother had fallen. The fall had frightened Alexis. In her tumble, she had lost her mother’s hand.
Now she found herself, weary and disbelieving, on that same lovely trail. A runner stopped to ask if she was all right. It must have been ten o’clock by now. The rain was coming down in sheets. Alexis looked at him but didn’t answer. Her eyes were glazed with tears. When he touched her shoulder, she shook her head. He smiled weakly, then went on his way.
She pulled herself up and continued walking. She had seen too much. Too many people had fallen away. She couldn’t comprehend all that had happened.
Some people look better in winter. And are the dead so different? We were walking and you fell. A sheet of ice hidden under snow. We were walking and you fell. A crack in the sidewalk I didn’t see. Next time me.
Fear gripped Alexis. Eyes were staring at her from the darkness. Despite the late hour, students passed on their way home from Friday night dates. Skateboarders, cyclists and, as always, the runners. Where were they all going at this time of night? What had they seen that caused them to flee?
LJ’s body. A flash of light. Smoke and heat. Had they heard the sirens? Had they called 911? She could see Edith, sleeping. The hotel crumbling, collapsing into dust. And Linda, running away from her.
She stumbled along the trail for what seemed like hours. By now, she was drenched. Her new silver shirt clung to her body. She thought about stopping one of the strangers and confessing all that had happened to her. But she didn’t know what to say.
Once, when one of the hotel residents had come crying to Edith about a cat who had died, Alexis, then four, looked up at the large sad face and offered, “So what? Everybody dies.”
“Ah, the existential response,” Edith had commented. Years later, when she recounted the story, she marveled at her young daughter’s wisdom.
But death was different now. Alexis was old enough to understand the end. Still, sometimes she forgot. She forgot that her mother was dead. She forgot that both of her parents were dead. She had no parents left. Death was the ending of childhood.