Collide

The answer was, never. I’d had crushes before, plenty of them. In seventh grade I’d thought I would die unless a sophomore named Steve Houseman liked me back. I hadn’t died. And even then, when I’d gone to sleep every night wishing on every star I could see that he’d look at me like I was a real girl and not some junior high geek, I hadn’t ever felt like this.

The curb was icy, but the sidewalk in front of Johnny’s house was bare and well-salted. Unfortunately, his neighbors weren’t as conscientious. I was so busy trying to peek through his windows without making it obvious I was a pervert, I didn’t pay attention to where I put my feet. I hit a slick patch and slid, arms wheeling. I’d never been a gymnast, but I managed a pretty nice split that had me gasping in gratitude I was wearing a skirt, even though I tore my stockings.

So focused on keeping myself from totally wiping out and doing a face plant into the pile of filthy snow, I didn’t pay attention to the man who’d just crossed the street and stepped up onto the curb in front of me. I caught a flash of a black coat, a striped scarf. I had time to think, Oh, shit, it’s him, before I took another step and slid with that one, too.

We collided hard enough to snap my jaws together. I caught my tongue between my teeth and tasted blood. I looked into Johnny’s face, those green-brown eyes so close I could count his lashes. He had a mole at the corner of one eye I’d never noticed before. He grabbed my upper arms.

I smelled oranges.

I was falling.

Chapter 05

“Hey, foxy mama.”

The man in front of me gripped my upper arms to keep me from falling. I’d tripped on a loose piece of concrete in the sidewalk. I stared at it, thinking there was something wrong.

And then I knew.

Holy shit, it was summer. The man in front of me, Johnny. And he was … young.

“You okay? You having a bad trip or something?” He laughed and shook his hair out of his eyes. “Trip. Sorry.”

The moment Dorothy steps out of her black-and-white house into the Technicolor glory of Munchkinland is one of the greatest in movie history. I was Dorothy now, my eyes wide, legs trembling. I looked around at the way my world had changed and ducked instinctively in case a house was getting ready to fall on me. I’d have fallen if Johnny hadn’t held me up.

“Chill, little sister,” he said in a kind voice, and led me to the porch stoop where he eased me onto the heat-soaked concrete and sat beside me, my hand in his.

The colors were all so bright. I heard music, the steady disco thump of a song my mother had sung to me when I was a kid. A woman in short shorts and a tube top roller-skated past us, jumping effortlessly over the crack that had tripped me up. Her hair flew behind her in a long, gleaming wave.

A garbage truck rumbled past on the narrow street lined with wide cars all in shades of brown and green. It said New York City Municipal Services on the side, and I swallowed a sudden rush of saliva.

Bright sunshine. Heat. And yet I shivered, teeth chattering even as my butt scorched against the steps. The backs of my calves were worse, having no protection but my ripped panty hose. I hissed and shifted.

“Chill,” Johnny said again, soothingly.

I didn’t smell oranges. I smelled car exhaust and the faint whiff of sewage, probably from the alley next to this house or the garbage cans lined up along the curb. I smelled sun-baked concrete. I smelled him, too.

I leaned closer without thinking to take a long, deep breath of his neck. His hair tickled my cheek. He smelled like a man should—not like cologne but clean skin, a little bit of summer sweat, fresh air. He smelled better than I’d ever imagined he would, and I’d imagined he’d smell pretty fucking fine.

“Hey,” Johnny said softly.

Blinking, I pulled back, the heat in my cheeks and throat having nothing to do with the summer sun beating down all around us. I’d just sniffed him like a dog testing out a fireplug. During my fugues lots of things happened that didn’t in real life; I behaved in ways I’d never have done while conscious and never felt embarrassed about it the way I did now.

“Sorry,” I managed to say, and tried to pull away, but his hand holding mine kept me anchored onto the step.

“No sweat. What’s your name?”

He was even more beautiful than he’d looked in pictures. It wasn’t fair to compare this young Johnny to his older version, but I couldn’t help it. This Johnny smiled at me, while the older one never had. He ducked his head a little now, peering at me from the silky fringe of long bangs.

“You have a name, right?”

“Emm,” I said. “My name’s Emm.”

“Johnny.” He lifted our hands and shook them before letting them drop, this time to his thigh.

I felt his skin beneath the back of my hand. I shivered again. I blinked and breathed. This was a fugue. I was imagining all of this. Somewhere else I’d gone dark.

“Oh.” The word eased out on a moan and I closed my eyes. “Johnny.”

I meant the one in winter, in the black coat. The one I’d run into and was now likely making a fool of myself in front of.

“Yeah. That’s me.” He shifted, our thighs touching. “I don’t know you, but you seem to know me. How’s that?”

This was a fugue, I reminded myself. It wasn’t real. But no matter how hard I tried, I could sense nothing but this now. This place. This man in front of me. No glimmers of anything else, even though I knew it had to be there, in front of me, if only my brain would let go of me long enough to get back to it.

I didn’t want to get back to it, I realized, looking at Johnny’s smile. It was for me, that grin. So was the appreciative gaze he swept over me, his eyes lingering on my breasts a second too long before he focused briefly on my mouth and licked his lips. When his gaze swept up to meet mine again, I got lost in those eyes.

“You don’t talk much, huh?”

“I just … This is a little …” I couldn’t explain.

He laughed and stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “You must be on some pretty good shit. But you should be more careful. This neighborhood, it ain’t so great. I mean, I live here and all. But you don’t. I’d have seen you around here before. Are you new, or just visiting?”

“I was just walking past.” It wasn’t a lie.

“You want to come inside? Gotta bunch of friends over, just hanging out. Having a little party. C’mon,” Johnny said, as though I needed any persuasion. “You’ll have a good time, I promise.”

He stood, tugging me onto my feet. The earth didn’t rock. I didn’t spin. With Johnny holding my hand, I wasn’t going anywhere but wherever he took me.

His house here in 1970s New York was a tall brownstone a lot like the one in present-day Harrisburg. It had to be newer, but it wasn’t as nice on the outside. Inside, it was so similar to my own I let out a low murmur of surprise as we entered the foyer. Stairs in front of us led up, a long and narrow hall pointed toward the kitchen and an arched doorway to our right led into a formal living room. A beaded curtain hung in the archway.

I heard music, louder in here, from upstairs. I heard voices, too. I smelled pot.

“C’mon in.” Johnny linked his fingers through mine and tugged me down the hall toward the kitchen, where a group of men and women sat around a wooden table or leaned against the counters to watch another man cooking something on the stove. “Hungry? Candy’s cooking.”

At the sound of his name, the man at the stove turned and flashed a grin of straight white teeth. He bent his head, Afro waving, as regally as any king welcoming a subject, his stirring spoon a scepter. “Welcome, welcome, sister. We got enough to feed you, if you’re hungry.”

I was hungry, intensely so. My stomach rumbled. I’d never been hungry in a fugue before. Oh, I’d eaten and drank, but never from need. I put my free hand, the one not still clutching Johnny’s, over my belly.

My clothes hadn’t changed. I looked down at the familiar friction of material under my fingertips. I was even wearing my winter coat, though it had come unbuttoned. No wonder I’d been so hot outside. No wonder everyone was looking at me so strangely.

“You can take that off,” Johnny offered.

I nodded and let him help me out of it. Women’s lib might be going strong, but Johnny was still a gentleman. He hung my coat on a hook behind the door and put his hand on the small of my back as I stood under the scrutiny of everyone in the kitchen.

“This is Emm,” Johnny said, like he brought strangers home all the time. He probably did. “That’s Wanda, Paul, Ed, Bellina and Candy’s at the stove. Say hi, everyone.”

They did, in a chorus, while I stared and tried to keep my mouth closed. I didn’t recognize Wanda or her name, but Bellina Cassidy was a playwright, her shows performed on Broadway by casts of the biggest names in theater. Edgar D’Onofrio had been a celebrated poet who’d killed himself sometime in the late seventies. Paul was probably Paul Smiths, the photographer and moviemaker who’d directed a handful of Johnny’s early movies. And Candy …