Feeling almost giddy with relief, Pete crunched down the popcorn, took a long cool sip from the cup of shared soda.
The cell phone vibrated in his pocket.
At first, he was going to ignore it. Only an asshole would pull out a cell phone halfway through a movie in a semi-crowded theater. But Gina was with the sitter and Pete’s was the only number she had.
I’ll just check, make sure it’s not important, he thought and pulled out the phone.
He stared down at a generic shadow-faced icon. The screen below it read: JIMMY.
Pete’s chest constricted so tight he thought his lungs might pop like packing bubbles. He grimaced, rubbed his eyes, looked at the phone again.
The screen was the same.
JIMMY.
“What the fuck …?” Pete mumbled, felt his face grow hot as panic built in his chest, crept up his throat, constricted his breathing. The nightmare, the nightmare he’d been having for months, came rushing into his mind.
In the dreams, he was back in the trailer with Holly Pages. She’d be lying unconscious on the bed. He’d call out to her. “Ms. Pages? Ms. Pages!”
But she never moved. Terrified, he’d try to leave the trailer, to get away. He’d turn to the door … and see Jimmy standing behind him. His white hoodie stained with splashes of crimson, his face inflated and purple like a baby suffocated in the crib, the flesh on his hands puffy and dark; his glasses were gone, and his eyes bulged and leaked, his tongue hung lifeless from his lips like a dying dog. He raised his hands, clenched around fistfuls of filthy money. He came closer, pushing the dirty money at Pete, who turned away in fear, in shame.
Then she’s there. Holly. Waiting. Smiling that movie star smile.
The dream ended the same way it always did, with him jerking awake.
Screaming.
Noemi leaned over, tried to see the phone screen, but Pete tilted it away. Noemi’s eyes flicked up.
“It’s work,” he said numbly.
“Then put it away,” she whispered harshly and turned her head back to watch the movie. Pete thought this good advice. He pressed the button to silence the phone, tucked it back into his pocket.
Holly’s voice filled the theater. “Aren’t you going to answer it, Pete?”
Pete’s head jerked up and he stared, unbelieving, at the giant screen.
Holly was looking at him. Her face—forty-feet-high, ice-blue eyes the size of manhole covers—filled the screen, smiling that smile, the one from his dreams.
“Well?” she said, and Pete looked around to see if anyone else noticed that the hot-shit lawyer from the movie was addressing him directly. He grabbed Noemi’s hand, stared at her face, waited for her to react. But she didn’t. She put more popcorn in her mouth, watched the screen as if it were a car chase or a lover’s quarrel.
“Look at me, Pete.”
Pete slowly turned his head, lifted his eyes to the screen.
“Good,” Holly said, staring down at him. “Very good. I have something to show you,” she said, and winked. “You’re gonna love it.”
Pete realized that Holly now looked exactly as she had that night. Her hair was hanging loose, tangled. Her face clean of makeup … she was just like he’d found her.
But where was she?
The movie had, seemingly, skipped into a different reality. The screen was no longer a projection but a window, and through the silken glass a play was being put on just for him. He tried to get a sense of the room she stood in, but it was too dark, he couldn’t make it out.
He sensed Noemi rising from her chair. He turned wildly, clutched at her hand. “Where are you going?” he said, pleading, shaking.
She yanked her hand away, glared down at him. “I gotta use the restroom.”
“Wait, Noemi!” he said, her name coming out so loudly, so desperately, that she stopped two stairs down, looked back. An old woman sitting in front of him turned and gave a firm shoosh!
Embarrassed, Noemi waved her hand dismissively and continued down the stairs.
“That your wife?”
Pete jerked his eyes back to the screen, tried to sink (to disappear) into the back of his seat, hands gripping the armrests as if he were on a plane diving toward the ocean. He watched Holly’s eyes follow Noemi as she crossed the theater toward the exit.
“Pretty,” Holly said, and laughed. She turned around and walked away, her back to Pete, but the camera angle remained unchanged. It didn’t zoom in, didn’t follow. Not a camera, a window. She grew smaller, went deeper into the room. He could see her whole body now, and the lawyer clothing her character had worn was replaced with a black t-shirt and jeans, the same clothes she’d had on the night of her murder.
At the far end of the room, Holly leaned over and clicked on a small lamp, illuminating the dark space. Pete shot up, his face slack as his hands clutched the back of the seat in front of him, fingers clawing into rough fabric. It was all he could do to stifle a scream.
Holly was standing in Gina’s bedroom.
He saw it clearly. Her white dresser, the wall-tacked posters of soccer players and animals. The white IKEA shelves he had painted pink per her request, stuffed with toys and books. She was laying in her bed, her head turned toward the screen, eyes closed. Asleep. Pete could see her bedroom door was open. He leaned to his right, as if it would help his perspective, and tried to see into the living room. He could just make out the edge of a glowing lampshade, a sliver of gray light—the television, he realized, showing a frenetic blur of indecipherable images.
“Impossible!” he said loudly, forgetting himself. The old woman turned her head again, scowling like a witch, but he ignored her. “Impossible!”
Pete pulled the cell phone from his pocket and dialed the sitter’s phone number. I’m hallucinating. The stress … the stress and the guilt ….
Its making me crazy. He put the phone to his ear, waited, waited. Finally, it began to ring.
