With narrowed eyes, I slap the underside of his shirt basket, upending the clementines once more, and stomp out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JULIAN
It’s an armpit of a day, ninety percent humidity and eighty-four degrees at seven in the god-forsaken morning. My left arm feels hot and gummy beneath the Velcro cast, but there’s no rest for those withpizza belly.
It’s been two weeks since the Pot Luck, but my body hangs on to cheese bloat like it’s a piece of doorframe in icy Atlantic waters that wasdefinitelynot big enough for two, justice for Rose DeWitt Bukater. But maybe another long, sweaty run on the river trail will finally wring me out—my fifth one this week.
When I arrive, there’s only one car in the parking lot. Apurplecar.
No. A purple Kia Soul.
My pulse quickens.
Whatever, lots of South Jerseyans drive unnecessarily flamboyant cars. If I were afraid of them all, I wouldn’t be able to leave my house. Still, I take the path in the other direction. A minute later, a car door slams, and I whip around, but nothing. No movement in the lot. No one on the path. The cough-syrup car sits unchanged.
I swipe my slick forehead. I’m going crazy.
The fall of my footsteps resolves into a steady, comforting beat, and I slip in my headphones. I’m listening to a middling podcast because this guy I knew from med school named Todd whosuckedis the guest, but onimpulse, I switch the settings to allow background noise. There’s nobody else on the path except for a runner far behind me. From the look of his tiny running briefs and racing tank, he’s serious about his exercise, so hecan’tbe a stoner. He won’t bother me, but… still.
“A debilitating neurodegenerative disease is experiencing an uptick—what’s been your clinical experience with Parkinson’s disease in the emergency medicine setting, Dr. Todd?”
He goes byDr. Todd? Insufferable.
“Well, Nancy, akinesia, or the sudden impairment of motor function, can become quite severe in Parkinson’s disease patients.”
No shit,Dr. Todd. I glance back. The runner’s closing the distance, his ropy legs cycling toward me in a churning stride.
I pick up my pace.
“—in advanced stages of the disease, or with sudden disruptions of medication, concurrent infections, even a bad fall, a Parkinson’s patient can enter a full akinetic crisis, which is life threatening and must be attended to immediately—”
Loose gravel crunches behind me, and I lurch around. It’s the runner, so close now his mirrored sunglasses reflect my anxious face. His hair is buzzed bald, a Phillie Phanatic sweatband ringing his dome. He runs alongside me, his even strides effortlessly keeping pace with my panicked ones. I’m fumbling to turn off the podcast when additional footsteps crackle along myotherside.
Except for the long, frizzy brown hair bouncing off his chest like unappetizing cotton candy, the man to my left is the other’s perfecttwin.Same mirrored shades, same sweatband, same tiny racing briefs. It’s like being escorted by a pair of Dickensian ghosts. Which one is my future? Which is my past? I run faster, but they easily match my pace. I slow down, and the same. Thefuck?
The distinct, funky smell of men sweating out marijuana surrounds me like a cloud. My head flaps wildly between them.
These men are stoners. They sport an eerie, echoing smile.
“Look, I don’t know what you want,” I pant out, “but—ahhh!” My foot connects with stone, and I goflying, straight over the path’s low, rocky border, down the short embankment below, and into a reedy patch of smelly, stagnant water. I come up gasping, spluttering dirty water out of my mouth. The creepy twins are in the distance now, their shoulders quaking in synchronized laughter.
I hobble to my car, sneakers farting in a wet, squelching harmony as I glance nervously over my shoulder. There’s a message on my windshield, scrawled in sunscreen:
Withdraw the complaint.
Nomi senthenchmenafter me?!
My windshield wipers smear the sunscreen into an impenetrable, mineral glaze, and I growl, grab my sweat towel, and start buffing the glass.
I’m still wet when I reach downtown, sloshing angrily toward Nomi’s dispensary to confront her when my face stares back at me from a lamppost. On neon pink paper, there’s a photocopied picture of me pretending to smoke a beer bottle, which must’ve been taken at Nomi’s Pot Luck. In bold font, it states:have you seen this cat?
There are only three rip-off tabs at the bottom left, which feature myactualcell phone number.
As if on cue, my phone rings from an unknown number.
“Hello?” I answer in horror.
