The flapping of signs off to my right caught my attention. The crowd behind the caution tape hadn’t just doubled; it had swelled into the hundreds. And as I drew nearer, I understood why. The signs—they all had RJ’s name on them.
Free RJ
I love you RJ
We want RJ out AnyDayNow
I would’ve relished my role in the fandom had I not been so worried about him. It had been at least three hours since I’d left. So much could have happened in that time. But I couldn’t focus on that. I had to believe he was alive and waiting for rescue. What would he think about the outpouring of love? Would it make him stronger, or would he shrink further into himself? It made me wonder why he’d been in hiding in the first place. What was the reason he’d chosen to isolate himself, when clearly he was loved by so many?
Leaving the fans and their signs of hope behind, I walked the length of the barrier, trying to find a way back in. In the time I’d been gone, they’d fortified the area with concrete barriers and police officers strategically placed inside the perimeter. I understood the reasoning. For the safety of everyone, they needed to keep the onlookers out, but it just made my job harder. Not only did I need to make my way to the hole undetected, but I also had to get past the barricade.
I spotted my firefighter, Parker, among a gathering of men and women still waiting to go in. I wanted desperately to talk to him, to find out what was happening, but I had a sense if he saw me with a huge backpack on my back, he’d know instinctively what I was doing and report me to his superiors. No, this was my mission to complete, and the only way to do that was to keep it covert.
Sticking to the outer areas of the makeshift wall, I found a place to wait undetected until I was given some sign. I wasn’t sure what that might be, but I was sure I would know it when I saw it. All I needed was a distraction that might allow me to duck behind the barriers and disappear down the rabbit hole.
My chest tightened at just the thought of going back in there. Since leaving RJ, I hadn’t really given much thought to entombing myself once more. I’d been entirely focused on the task at hand. But now that I was lying in wait, the terror was slowly setting in. When I’d left RJ earlier, I hadn’t known what I knew now. I hadn’t known that our small pocket of safety had been supporting the weight of half the building. One more aftershock was perhaps all it would take to bring the rest of it down on top of us.
A popping sound, possibly from an erupting gas pipe, served as the distraction I needed. With the focus elsewhere, I darted past the barriers and ran toward the opening in the earth. Toward uncertainty. Toward danger.
I went for him.
You better be alive in there, RJ Contreras. You promised me.
11
RJ: Fading Fast
Albert never spoke again. I called out his name over and over, even dropping a string of f-bombs to spark his ire, but there was nothing. No movement. No sound. Albert was gone. Suddenly the walls around me closed in. I had been left to navigate alone in this desolate underground. The pain from his loss hit hard, so much harder than it should have for an old man I barely knew. But Albert had made a mark on me, and something had changed.
The importance of our short time together could not be understated. I’d always thought I preferred solitude, even craved it after those crazy AnyDayNow days. I’d come back to an empty home, and the silence seemed a welcome reprieve. But there was something to be said about the power of human connection, and now that I’d had a taste of it, I couldn’t imagine living without it. Things I’d thought I didn’t want—a wife, maybe a few kids—suddenly made perfect sense to me. I wanted what Albert had had. If this experience had taught me anything, it was that life wasn’t meant to be lived alone, not when death was such a solitary endeavor.
Dusk descended on the parking garage not long after Albert’s passing. Whatever miniscule light I’d been afforded at the beginning of the ordeal was ripped from me as I was swallowed up in desolate darkness. In the pitch-black, desperation reigned supreme. My best guess was I’d been trapped inside for three, maybe four hours, and still no bulldozed walls. No first responders calling my name. No signs whatsoever of any help coming my way.
It was hard to rationalize the reason why. I knew Dani was trying—that she’d put everything she had into getting me help—but what if there was no help to be had? What if the world outside the parking garage was worse than the one inside? Visions of an apocalyptic landscape took shape with every aftershock that rattled my prison. The quakes had leveled off in intensity since the first two big ones Dani and I had ridden out together, but regardless, I braced for the impact each time another one rumbled to life, certain the rickety ceiling would take its last bow or that the ground would open up further and devour me whole.
With each bleak hour that passed, I could feel my strength wavering—my future fading away. All the things I should have said. All the things I hadn’t done. What had I been waiting for? Why had I thought time would stand still long enough for me to get my shit together? It wouldn’t… It hadn’t. I’d been so dumb, wasting time I didn’t have. All these months I’d been locked away in my apartment being a fucking baby when I should have sucked it up, swallowed my pride, and jumped right back into the game.
There was a lesson in there somewhere, but right now, with chills racking my body, I really wasn’t in the position to ponder. Instead, I focused on Dani, imagining her warm skin against my shivering body. She’d heat me from the inside out like she’d been doing since the day we met.
Dani. Talk about a wasted opportunity. Come to think of it, why had I wasted it? It wasn’t like I couldn’t have had her if I’d put my mind and body into it. Getting women into bed was a particular skill set of mine, right up there with knowing how to pick the tastiest watermelon. To be fair, my chances were bolstered by the fact that women loved sweaty musicians hot off the stage. I supposed that gave me a warped confidence in my abilities. Maybe as Chad Woodcock, I wouldn’t be turning them on so easily. Maybe I’d actually have to try.
Not that I’d ever tested the theory. When I went off the grid, I purged myself of anything that had to do with my former life, and that included the enablers—the women who put up with my shit for the opulent benefits it afforded them. If they left me, they left the lifestyle too. So they stayed until I’d had my fill, and then I’d kick them to the curb for a new woman and a new cycle of exploits.
But the minute I moved into this shitty apartment, all that changed. Chad Woodcock had no special privileges afforded to him. He was just an average Joe with no known gifts to speak of, and yet, Dani had seen through all that today. She’d looked inside and seen that the douche next door was worth saving. It was maybe the first time in my adult life that a woman had judged me for me and not for the lifestyle I lived.
It made me rethink every encounter with her over the past five months. She’d fascinated me from the start—that sassy-assed balcony warrior who treated me like a commoner and had zero tolerance for my shit. God, she’d been such fun to rile up—the barky Pomeranian bitch-slapping my Great Dane. She was just so over-the-top nippy that I couldn’t help but turn that energy back on her, in the most negative of ways. What I should have done—what I’d wanted to do every day since seeing her sunning in a bikini on our balcony—was to pin her to her reclining chair and give those luscious lips of hers a try. But I’d been so preoccupied with my own problems that I’d abstained from creating new ones. Clearly that had been a mistake because I now understood that this girl had been placed on this earth to save me from myself.