“You see, Sammy, we’ve been so happy these past few months. I never expected it to go this fast or be this good. But it is.” I thought he might start crying. I thought I might start screaming when I saw the men reach into their jackets.
So this is how it’s all going to end, I remember thinking. Then it hit me. They think Lucas is the guy. They think I’m having my meeting and they’re here to kill him.
So, okay, quick on my feet time. I need to let them know Lucas isn’t the guy without Lucas knowing it.
“And with every day we spend together I feel more and more sure in my heart. And in my head. My head and my heart together. Like us together. You and me. Together.” He’d gone off script, but I wasn’t paying much attention anyway.
I saw the glint of a blade in the symphony courtyard lights. The two men spread out, one to either side of Lucas. Twenty feet away. Ten.
I reached out and grabbed Lucas by the lapels, pulled him in and kissed him. I broke him off mid-sentence.
“And I feel like if it could stay this way forev—”
The two goons were genuinely confused. It stopped their march forward. I held my eyes open during the kiss, seeing what I could past Lucas’s head. I waved my hand, shooing the two assassins away.
They took their cue. Still confused, they started to retreat. I saw the blade go back inside a coat pocket.
As I was about to break the kiss and give up on the idea of the meeting for the night, my nine o’clock arrived. Late.
I pulled Lucas even tighter, not letting him up for air. My eyes went wide and I turned my head to gesture toward the short, nervous man who came around the opposite side of the fountain. Inside, the orchestra swelled.
The two hit men took the clues. My contact gave an equally puzzled look as he approached for our meeting to find me kissing another man. His confusion was the right distraction they needed.
Like two dark swooping birds they came at him from both sides. The knife blade reemerged from the jacket then disappeared again into his chest. It flashed in the light before quickly plunging back into the man’s heart. Four times, again and again and again and again. I’m sure my kiss was shit. I wasn’t exactly paying attention to Lucas right then.
The man with the knife stepped back and his partner slid an arm up under the dead man and walked him off like a drunk pal after a long night. The knife got a quick wash in the fountain water and they were gone.
I ended the kiss. Lucas took a deep breath of air.
“Let me finish, Sam. I know you know it’s coming, but…” He dropped to one knee. I did not know it was coming.
“Samantha, will you marry me?”
There you have it. The most romantic night of my life played out against the backdrop of a switchblade assassination. Story of our relationship, really.
THE LOCAL, NOT THE EXPRESS
The bus stopped. It’s what busses do. My anxiety creeped up each time we pulled over, though. I knew the movies in my head were a product of the concussion, but a part of me also wanted to be really sure and to make it to Lucas before the movie-lady made it there first.
With my eyes open I had a hard time tuning in to the frequency that made the head-movies play. I shut my eyes and try to latch onto the signal floating on radio waves or x-rays or whatever it was that let me see through the other woman’s eyes. The image came in tiny and flickering like an old silent movie. She was driving, I think. I saw a stop sign. She blew right through it. She was moving fast. I knew that. Faster than the bus.
I saw it as a good thing that the images were getting harder to see. It might mean my head was going back to normal. The swelling going down or something.
We were still stopped and I looked around for another guy with a cane. What I saw was worse, in a way. A woman had just gotten off loaded down with what looked like laundry. She waddled off the bus and away down the sidewalk but had left her purse behind on the seat. It was black, simple. Probably nothing of much value inside. She was taking the bus, after all. But I felt that tug inside me.
I had to return it to her. Why? Because it was the right thing to do. No other way to explain the feeling. Before, I could look at that and know that running after her was the right thing, but now I had to do something about it. I had to.
My feet were up and moving before I knew it.
“Hold it,” I called to the driver. I snatched the purse. “She left this.”
As I made my way to the back door I pleaded with the driver.
“Please don’t leave without me. I’ll be right back. It’s really important I stay on this bus. Please.”
My last few words were lost as I stepped onto the sidewalk and began jogging after her. I waited to hear the sound of the bus roaring away, but I didn’t. Up ahead the woman struggled under her burden.
“Excuse me. Excuse me, ma’am.”
She kept walking, ignoring me. In this neighborhood, probably a good idea.
“You left your purse. Ma’am?”
A tiny spark lit in my brain and with the pain came a flash of the other woman behind the wheel of a car. A stolen car. How did I know that? She skidded around a line of stopped vehicles and blew through a red light. A pain stabbed behind my eyes.
I’d reached the woman and held out her bag.
“Oh, thank you. Thank you.”
I waved her off, breathing heavy and trying to massage away the headache. I turned back for the bus, now half a block away, and started running.
“Bless you, child,” she called after me. I hoped the blessing stuck. I’d need all I could get.
Halfway to the bus I heard the engine rev. I picked up my pace. With all my training, I was in good shape. I could sprint it out if I needed to. And I knew I needed to.
“Wait. Wait, you—”
My brain wanted to curse him out, to call him a jackass, a douchebag, a motherfucker. My mouth wouldn’t obey. If I couldn’t swear, my brain must be seriously damaged.
I reached the rear of the bus as it pulled away form the curb and I slapped the side.
“Hey, I’m here. I’m here, don’t leave.”
The bus downshifted. I sucked in a deep breath of exhaust. He slowed and I made my way to the front door and slumped up the steps inside. He gave me a withering look but I thanked him anyway.
HONEY, I’M HOME!
Lucas’s house is one of those wedged into the side of a hill types with no back yard to speak of since it’s all a sharp rise of wooded hillside. The garage is on the ground floor and the front door sits on a second level with a third level perched on top. It’s very mod, very sixties, and it took some getting used to, but at the moment I got off the bus and started running down the block toward it—and saw no strange cars parked out front—there was no other place in the world I wanted to live.