Read Online Epiphany Jones by Michael Grothaus - Free Book Online Page B

was: humour them. It was: show them you’re their friend. It was: try to get them to see that you’re on their side. Try to get them to think you’re an equal partner, if possible.
    So I say, ‘Look, you need my help for something, right? So you’re gonna need to trust me. I’ll hold this while you pay for the stamps – with my card.’ I tap my father’s watch. ‘You don’t have a lot of time.’
    I can’t read the look on her face and a sudden fear grips me. I could never pull off confidence. What if I’m just pissing her off? What if she catches on to what I’m trying to do? And then I realise that the reason those shitty daytime talk shows are always interviewing the hostage’sfamily and never the hostage are probably because the host’s advice is horrible. The hostage is probably dead because of it.
    But as I’m about to hand the package back to her she says, ‘I need your PIN.’
    Call it a trust-building exercise.
    She enters my PIN and the mailing label rolls from the machine like it’s sticking its tongue out. I gesture to the label. Then for the second time tonight Epiphany brings her hand over her ear like she’s having a migraine or something, but it passes as quickly as it came. She looks at the package and considers me for a moment before handing me the label. And as I drop the package down the slot, in the green glow of the stamp machine, I think I catch a grin creep across her face.
    Behind us on the street a car passes but it’s just a minivan.
    ‘I have a place to stay,’ Epiphany says. ‘South of downtown. We need to find a bus.’
    ‘No problem. The fifty-five goes south. There’s a bus stop just a few blocks this way,’ I lie. I need to get her three more blocks, to the Clark and Division intersection. There’s a 7-Eleven there and it always has police parked in the lot.
    As we walk, the night is chill and damp and the streets are virtually empty. This neighbourhood is mainly residential and most people are already home from work, settling down to watch their prime-time imaginary friends. The only person I see besides us on the first block is a teenager jogging down the other side of the street.
    Curiosity mixes with my attempt to keep Epiphany occupied so she doesn’t realise we’re headed in the wrong direction. ‘You said you need my help. Why?’
    ‘That’s not for now,’ she says, surveying the street.
    We cross to the next block. Halfway down, on the opposite side a man walks with the help of a cane. Epiphany’s eyes sweep the neighbourhood. Briefly I imagine she’s a robot and her eyeballs are little cameras recording everything she looks at; like she’s someone’s creation just brought to life and doesn’t fully understand the world she’s been placed in.
    Suddenly she seems distracted. Then I hear her whisper a name. I think she said ‘Michael’ but I can’t be sure.
    ‘You have a slight accent, you know?’ I say. ‘What is that? Polish? Russian?’
    No reply. Her pace has slowed. On the other side of the street, the old man with the cane is walking faster than we are now.
    Nervously I play with the little stab wounds on my hand. The lights of the 7-Eleven illuminate the night just a block and a half away.
    ‘You said you’ve been looking for me for a long time,’ I say, trying to sound cool and natural. ‘I mean, I’ve only lived at my apartment and my mom’s house. Haven’t moved around a lot. How hard could it have been to find me? How long have you been looking?’
    ‘Twelve years,’ she answers.
    I stop in my tracks. ‘Twelve years ago I was still in LA.’
    She holds my gaze.
    ‘But, how old are you? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? You’ve been looking for me since you were a teenager?’
    Over her shoulder I see a police car pull into the 7-Eleven. She turns to see what I’ve looked at, but the police car has already parked out of view.
    ‘This is wrong,’ she says.
    ‘What? No,’ I panic. ‘The seventy-two bus stop is just up