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He motions toward a table where we can all sit. And he steps away from us, as if giving us a choice. And I can see he means it—in his eyes. He looks more sorrowful than mad.
But his skin is still bright red, and I don’t trust the anger I saw, the fear. Wherever it came from, I can’t have Bailey around it, not until I know what his stake in this is. What I suspect his stake in Bailey is.
So I turn to Bailey. I turn to Bailey and grab her shirt at the small of her back, roughly, pulling her toward the door.
“Go!” I say. “Now!”
And, as though it is something we know how to do, we run down the stairs, together, then outside into Austin’s streets and away from Charlie Smith.
Careful What You Wish For
We move quickly down Congress Avenue.
I’m trying to get back to our hotel room on the other side of the bridge. I need to get us somewhere private where we can collect our things and I can figure out the fastest way out of Austin.
“What happened in there?” Bailey says. “Was he going to hurt you?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think so.”
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nbsp; I put my hand on the small of her back, steering her in and out of the after-work crowd—couples, groups of college kids, a dogwalker handling a dozen dogs. I move sideways, hoping to make it harder for Charlie to follow us—in case he is trying to follow us—this man who was so angry at seeing a photograph of Owen that he exploded.
“Faster, Bailey.”
“I’m going as fast as I can,” she says. “What do you want me to do? It’s a clusterfuck.”
She isn’t wrong. Instead of the crowds letting up as we get closer to the bridge, there are more people, all clamoring to get onto the bridge’s narrow walkway.
I turn back to make sure Charlie isn’t following us. Which is when I see him—several blocks behind. Charlie. He is moving at a fast clip but he hasn’t spotted us yet. He looks to the left and to the right.
The Congress Avenue Bridge is straight ahead. I grab onto Bailey’s elbow and we head onto the bridge’s walkway. But the foot traffic is moving slowly, if at all, the entire walkway jammed up with people. It’s good in the sense that it is easier to blend in, but everyone seems to have stopped moving.
Mostly everyone on the bridge is at a standstill, many of them looking down at the lake below.
“Did these people forget how to move?” Bailey says.
A guy in a Hawaiian shirt, carrying a large camera—a tourist, if I were guessing—turns back and smiles at us. Apparently, he thinks Bailey’s question is directed at him.
“We’re waiting on the bats,” he says.
“The bats?” Bailey says.
“Yeah. The bats. They feed every night right around now.”
This is when we hear, “HERE THEY COME!”
And—in a bright flood—hundreds and hundreds of bats start to fly up from beneath the bridge out into the sky. The crowd cheers as the bats move in an almost ribbonlike formation—an enormous, orchestrated beautiful swarm of them.
If Charlie is still behind us, I can’t see him. He is gone. Or we are gone, two revelers observing the bats take flight on a pretty Austin night.
I look up at the sky, flooded with the bats, moving as if in a dance together. Everyone applauds as they disappear into the night.
The guy in the Hawaiian shirt angles his camera to the sky, shooting pictures as they depart.
I slide past him and motion for Bailey to keep up. “We have to move,” I say. “Before we get stuck here.”
Bailey picks up the pace. And we make it over the bridge, both of us breaking into a jog. We don’t stop until we turn down our hotel’s long driveway. We don’t stop until we are in front of the hotel, the doormen holding the door open.
