Red 1-2-3

27

Red One held a very short list in her hand. Do this. Then do that.

Karen had absolutely no confidence that even a small part of their plan would work and total confidence that it would all work. She ricocheted between contradictory doubts and beliefs like a stray gunshot deflecting off a shiny steel surface.

She was seated behind the wheel of a rental car, a nondescript gray Chevrolet four-door that she had sent her nurse out earlier that day to bring back for her. She had traded keys with the same nurse, before asking the young woman to head out on some made-up errand driving Karen’s car.

The nurse had been mildly surprised, especially when Karen had dressed her in her own overcoat and had pulled a knit woolen cap down over her blond hair. Nurses were accustomed to grudgingly following directions from doctors, regardless of how crazy, dumb, or mysterious these directions might appear to be, and the nurse had seemed satisfied with the cryptic explanation: “I think this guy I had a bad breakup with has been watching me, and I’d like to avoid some ugly confrontation.” Her nurse had much experience with her own never-ending series of bad boyfriends, so this all seemed to make some sort of bizarre sense to her.

She had readily taken off in Karen’s car in the opposite direction-letting Karen sneak from her office undetected, or so she hoped. She had assigned superhuman capabilities to the Big Bad Wolf. He didn’t need sleep, food, or drink. He could render himself invisible or soar in the air above like a hawk hunting for prey. He could follow her scent like the Wolf he was, picking up Karen’s odors on the barest of breezes.

But this evening she hoped he would be following the wrong person.

She looked out through steamed-up windows at the world around her and reassured herself: You are alone. The rental car was parked on a gloomy, deserted street, not far from some decrepit warehouses that had once housed mills and manufacturing businesses but now sported boarded-up windows, chain-link fences, and rusty barbed wire stretched over doorways. Swathes of graffiti marred the walls. It had been nearly half an hour since any other vehicle drove past, and no one had wandered down the cracked and crumbling sidewalk. It was a sad, lonely, and abandoned part of the small city, unsettling in the growing shadows. It looked like a Hollywood set for a murder; the faded redbrick of the adjacent buildings was stained with grime and cold rain spat heartlessly at the black macadam. A yellow streetlight did little to dispel the growing dark. Karen was parked in a spot that cried out abandoned and forgotten, as if some disease had carved all the life away. It was the type of place where nothing good seemed possible.

But it was the best spot for what she had to do.

She looked at her watch. For an instant, she was nearly overcome with a shapeless sadness. She did not form the words It’s happening now in her head, but she could feel her pulse quicken.

Sarah pulled her car into a bus stop no-parking zone and cavalierly made sure that she was illegally blocking the space.

For a moment she closed her eyes, afraid to look out the window. It was the first time she had been to the juncture of roads that had crushed her life so abruptly.

But, just as surely, she knew it was the only place to leave what she intended to leave behind. The location would speak as loudly as any final message she could write. Quickly, keeping her head bowed and her back to the intersection, she slid from behind the wheel and moved just beyond the clear Plexiglas hut where folks waited in bad weather for the bus to arrive. It was empty, as she hoped it would be.

On the opposite side of the sidewalk behind the bus stop there was a large oak tree, which provided a bit more shelter and shade in the summer. Sarah looked at the barren branches and thought, They would have bloomed fully by that day. Lots of green leaves. They would have rustled in the breeze. It’s a nice sound that quietly reminds people of the fine days to come.

Sarah was carrying a large satchel. She tugged out a small hammer and some nails as she walked up to the tree trunk. She took a determined, workman’s stance and removed an 8-by-10 glossy picture of her husband, herself, and their daughter, taken about a year before the fatal accident. She had carefully covered it with plastic see-through wrap to protect it from the drizzle that fell around her.

She nailed the picture to the tree trunk. Eye height.

Working rapidly, she took a large pink envelope from her purse. This was encased in a waterproof clear plastic bag. She nailed this directly beneath the picture, using two nails to make sure it wouldn’t fall to the ground. The hammering noise was like pistol shots fading into the evening gloom.

The outside of the envelope had a simple message written in large letters and strident red ink: GIVE THIS TO THE POLICE.

Not very polite, she thought. Not even a please or a thank you. She turned and stole a look toward the intersection. She stopped suddenly, as if hypnotized, breath coming in short, sharp gasps. They were coming that way. The fuel truck was speeding through the stop. They were probably laughing when it happened. Maybe he was singing. He always liked to sing in the car to our daughter. It was silly and he would make up the words to songs, but she would giggle helplessly because no one in the entire world could possibly be as funny as her daddy. Sarah choked. She could hear the screech of tires and the terrible sound of impact and metal twisting. It was an explosion of memory and her hands shook and she could not help herself; it was as if all the muscles in her body had been suddenly sliced through. She fell to her knees like a supplicant in a church, staring at the place where all her hopes had died.

Her hands involuntarily lifted up and covered her face. For a moment she held them there, as if playing the child’s game of peekaboo. She had the terrible thought she would never be able to move, ever again.

At the same moment, she could hear a firm voice she didn’t immediately recognize yelling within her: “Do it, Sarah, do it now!”

It took every bit of effort to stand. She could feel her pulse racing. Her legs were still weak. She knew her face was heart-attack pale.

First she took one step, then another, as she turned her back on all her sorrows. She stumbled at first, drunkenly putting one foot in front of the other and picking up momentum.

Then Sarah ran.

Near panic, filled with fear, but increasing speed with every stride and understanding that she had no other route, Sarah raced into the growing darkness.

One block flew by her, followed by a second. Sarah didn’t try to pace herself; she sprinted. She could barely see the buildings she swept by.

Find the river, she thought.

Running desperately hard, trying to leave all memories behind, she dashed forward. The sidewalk narrowed slightly on the approach to the bridge, but she pounded to the top. Then she stopped, gasping for breath.

The bridge had four lanes of roadway and stretched across a portion of the river just beneath Western Falls. There was a treatment plant nearby which used the natural flow of the river to help cleanse sewage. The water was dark, fast, turbulent, and dangerous; more than one fisherman working the stretch above had slipped and died in the powerful currents created both by the demands of the plant and the twenty-foot drop forged by nature and helped by turn-of-the century engineers. But the plant barely worked anymore and the industries that had sprung up nearby had closed, so now the only thing that seemed to have life were the black, rain-choked, swirling waters.

Even the small fence supposed to keep people from getting too close to danger was in disrepair. A faded yellow sign warned passersby of the risks. Not many people used the footpath by the bridge. She stripped off her overcoat and let it sink, crumpled up, to the ground. She felt a sudden chill against her neck.

It was a fine place for someone consumed by despair to die.

Sarah bent over, trying to catch her breath. She looked up suddenly. Soon, she thought. Any second now, Red Two.

Fourteen points, eight boards, a pair of assists, and we won by eleven.

Red Three had taken her customary seat alone in the back of the school’s van. Even with her solid, nearly spectacular contribution to the team’s victory, she was still left alone on the road trip. There had been a few perfunctory “good game” and “way to go” hand-slapping reactions in the immediate aftermath, but by the time the steam from the showers in the away-girls locker room had dissipated and the last brush had been drawn through wet curls, Jordan was back to her routine outcast status, which was what she had counted on.

She sat with her face pressed up against the glass in the window by the back row. It was cool against her forehead, but she felt hot and sweaty. The other girls on the team were lost in various conversations. The coach was driving and the assistant coach was in the front seat.

Jordan had played at this other school a half-dozen times since making the varsity. She knew the route the van would travel back to her school. She knew how long it would take and what streets they would pass.

She had adopted a forlorn, lost look, as if her thoughts were elsewhere, when they were actually riveted on what she could see outside. At the stoplight, we’ll take a right. Five minutes. Maybe less.

She could feel her body tighten with tension. The muscles on her arms were taut, and her legs seemed like rubber bands being pulled to breaking. It was like the locker room anxiety before the start of a big game.

It’s up to you. It’s always been up to you. Doubt crept into her, settling alongside fear. He’ll never stop. Not until we’re all dead.

Jordan tore her eyes away from the window. The coach was driving slowly and cautiously, because the unwieldy van was hard to handle on the slick highways. The assistant was going over the stat sheet from the game, using the light from the dashboard to read off numbers. Her teammates were continuing to talk about boys and parties and classes and tests and music and assignments and all the usual stuff that occupies teens-talk about nothing and everything, all at once.

She returned her gaze to the window. We go left, then past the apartments and the bodega where they probably sell under-the-counter drugs along with overpriced foodstuffs. There’s a stop sign, which he will only pause at, because this shortcut takes us through a bad part of the city and he’s got a van filled with rich white girls and that’s potentially a bad combination. So he’ll accelerate a little, even in the bad weather, right up the street past the empty warehouses and onto the bridge.

She gritted her teeth. It was a little like Jordan could see it all happening seconds before it did. She could feel the Big Bad Wolf’s presence, just as if he were seated beside her, breathing heavily into her ear.

The engine sound increased as the van picked up speed. Now! Jordan told herself. Do it now!

She took a huge deep breath and then let loose with an immense, terrified, full-throated panicky scream that exploded in the confined van.

Sarah took one last look down the roadway, then vaulted the fence.

She hesitated above the black, swirling waters. Goodbye to everything, Red Two, she told herself.

The van swerved wildly across an empty lane, the driver-coach almost losing control at the piercing shriek from the back. Jordan had pushed partway onto her feet and was pointing furiously out the window into the creeping blackness of falling night, her arms waving wildly.

“She jumped! She jumped! Help! Help! Oh my God! The lady, she was standing there by the bridge, I saw her jump!”

The coach wrestled the van to a stop and managed to throw on his emergency flashers. “Everybody stay where you are!” he shouted. The assistant coach was struggling with his seat belt and trying to open his door. He yelled, “Someone call 911!” as he went through the door and ran to the concrete barrier by the side of the bridge to search the pounding ink-sweep of water. The other girls were all shouting incomprehensibly, craning their heads in the direction Jordan pointed, a cacophony of fear and panic. One had grabbed a cell phone from a backpack and was furiously dialing for help. Jordan abruptly slumped down, head still pressed against the glass, moaning and starting to sob uncontrollably, deep, guttural sounds of despair mingling with, “I saw it. Jesus Christ. I saw it. She jumped, she jumped. I saw her jump…”