I start toward her, screaming, but every molecule in my body seizes, muscles clenching uncontrollably with stunning agony, and I crash down through the coffee table, shaking and grunting in broken glass and telling myself this isn’t happening.
The smoking man lifts my useless arms behind my back and binds my wrists together cruciform with a zip tie.
Then I hear a tearing sound.
He pats a piece of duct tape over my mouth and sits behind me in the leather chair.
I’m screaming through the tape, pleading for this not to be happening, but it is, and there’s nothing I can do to change it.
I hear the man’s voice behind me—calm and occupying a higher register than I would’ve imagined.
“Hey, I’m here…No, why don’t you come around back…Exactly. Where the recycling and Dumpsters are. The back gate and rear door to the building are both open…Two should be fine. We’re in pretty good shape up here, but you know, let’s not linger…Yep…Yep…Okay, sounds good.”
The excruciating effect of what I assume was a Taser is finally relenting, but I’m too weak to move.
From my vantage point, all I can see are the lower half of Daniela’s legs. I watch a line of blood run down her right ankle, across the top of her foot, between her toes, and begin to puddle on the floor.
I hear the man’s phone buzz.
He answers, “Hey, baby…I know, I just didn’t want to wake you…Yeah, something came up…I don’t know, might be morning. How about I take you to breakfast at the Golden Apple whenever I wrap up?” He laughs. “Okay. Love you too. Sweet dreams.”
My eyes sheet over with tears.
I shout through the tape, shout until my throat burns, thinking maybe he’ll shoot me or knock me unconscious, anything to stop the exquisite pain of this moment.
But it doesn’t seem to bother him at all.
He just sits there quietly, letting me rage and scream.
Daniela sits in the bleachers under the scoreboard, above the ivy-covered outfield wall. It’s Saturday afternoon, the last home game of the regular season, and she’s with Jason and Charlie, watching the Cubs get their asses kicked in their sold-out ballpark.
The warm autumn day is cloudless.
Windless.
Timeless.
The air redolent of—
Roasted peanuts.
Popcorn.
Plastic cups filled to the brim with beer.
Daniela finds the roar of the crowd strangely comforting, and they’re far enough back from home plate to notice a delay between swing and bat-crack—speed of light versus speed of sound—when a player sends a pitch sailing beyond the wall.
They used to come to games when Charlie was a boy, but it’s been eons since their last visit to Wrigley Field. When Jason suggested the idea yesterday, she didn’t think Charlie would be up for it, but it must be scratching some nostalgic itch in their son’s psyche, because he actually wanted to come, and now he seems relaxed and happy. They’re all happy, a trio of near-perfect contentment in the sun, eating Chicago-style hot dogs, watching the players run around on the bright grass.
As Daniela sits wedged between the two most important men in her life, buzzed off her lukewarm beer, it occurs to her that the feel of this afternoon is somehow different. Unsure if it’s Charlie or Jason or her. Charlie is in the moment, not checking his phone every five seconds. And Jason looks as happy as she’s seen him in years. Weightless is the word that comes to mind. His smile seems wider, brighter, more freely given.
And he can’t keep his hands off her.
Then again, maybe the difference is her.
Maybe it’s this beer and the crystalline quality of the autumn light and the communal energy of the crowd.
Which is all to say maybe it’s just being alive at a baseball game on a fall day in the heart of her city.
—
Charlie has plans after the game, so they drop him at a friend’s house in Logan Square, stop at the brownstone to change clothes, and then head out into the evening, just the two of them—downtown-bound, no itinerary, no specific destination.
A Saturday-night ramble.
Cruising in heavy evening traffic down Lakeshore Drive, Daniela looks across the center console of the decade-old Suburban, says, “I think I know what I want to do first.”
Thirty minutes later, they’re in a gondola car on a Ferris wheel strung with lights.
Rising slowly above the spectacle of Navy Pier, Daniela watches the elegant skyline of their city as Jason holds her tight.
At the apex of their single revolution—one hundred and fifty feet above the carnival—Daniela feels Jason touch her chin and turn her face toward his.
They have the car all to themselves.
Even up here, the night air is sweetened with the scent of funnel cakes and cotton candy.
The laughter of children riding on the carousel.
A woman screaming with joy at a hole-in-one on the miniature golf course far below.
Jason’s intensity shreds through all of it.
When he kisses her, she can feel his heart through his windbreaker, jackhammering in his chest.
—
They have dinner in the city at a nicer restaurant than they can afford and spend the entire time talking like they haven’t talked in years.
Not about people or remember-whens, but ideas.
They kill a bottle of Tempranillo.
Order another.
Thinking maybe they’ll spend the night in the city.
It’s been a long time since Daniela has seen her husband this passionate, this sure of himself.
He’s a man on fire, in love with his life again.
Halfway through their second bottle of wine, he catches her looking out the window, asks, “What are you thinking about?”
“That’s a dangerous question.”
“I’m aware.”
“I’m thinking about you.”
“What about me?”
“It feels like you’re trying to sleep with me.” She laughs. “What I mean is, it feels like you’re trying when you don’t have to be trying. We’re an old married couple, and I feel like you’re, um…”
“Romancing you?”
“Exactly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. At all. It’s amazing. I guess I just don’t see where it’s all coming from. Are you okay? Is something wrong, and you’re not telling me?”
“I’m fine.”
“So this is all because you almost got hit by a cab two nights ago?”
He says, “I don’t know if it was my life flashing before my eyes or what, but when I came home, everything felt different. More real. You especially. Even right now, it’s like I’m seeing you for the first time, and I have this nervous ache in my stomach. I think about you every second. I think about all the choices we’ve made that created this moment. Us sitting here together at this beautiful table. Then I think of all the possible events that could have stopped this moment from ever happening, and it all feels, I don’t know…”
“What?”
“So fragile.” Now he becomes thoughtful for a moment. He says finally, “It’s terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, branches into a new world. After the baseball game today, we went to Navy Pier and then came here for dinner, right? But that’s only one version of what happened. In a different reality, instead of the pier, we went to the symphony. In one, we stayed home. In another still, we got into a fatal wreck on Lakeshore Drive and never made it anywhere.”