THE CITY WITHIN
© Copyright 2010 James Andrew Wilson
ONE
Twenty-twenty Foresight
“This is the last one.” Daniel Owens stretched the dollar bill and held it up to the dining room light. “Good news. It’s real.”
Grace reached across the table to take his hand in hers.
He lowered the single mark of cash and set old George on a pile of unopened envelopes—power and water bill, rent bill, phone bill. “There.” He entwined his fingers with his wife’s and smiled at her. “Now they’re covered.”
Grace breathed a laugh and wiped tears from her eyes. “We’ll make it. We always do.”
Daniel pushed the envelopes to the side and propped up his face with his elbow. He let his eyes savor his wife, swimming through her locks of brown hair, wandering among the few freckles dotting either side of her nose. Drew Barrymore, he thought, only prettier.
She mimicked his actions, resting her elbow on the dining table and tilting her head into her palm. Her hazel eyes danced with his blue eyes and they played footsie between their chairs.
He didn’t feel like a thirty-two-year-old with three daughters, practically no money, and a crummy job as a garbage truck driver—not in these moments when he was alone with Grace and they flirted like they were still in high school.
“Did you think it would be this hard?” she asked, rubbing the back of his hand with her thumb.
“Actually,” Daniel said, “I figured we’d win the lottery the year after we got married and then buy a mansion on snob hill and walk around in our bath robes and slippers all day, sipping martinis and gossiping about our neighbors.”
Grace leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. “I’d rather be right here with you any day.”
“Even if I come home smelling like garbage?”
She touched his cheek, her soft hand gliding over his stubble. “Even if you come home smelling like garbage.” She kissed him again, and he pulled her out of her chair and onto his lap.
Grace made tiger sounds, snapping her teeth and nibbling on his lip.
He was the luckiest garbage truck driver in the world.
She reached down and started to pull off his shirt.
“I have to get up early,” he said.
She knew his excuse was part of the game, so she played her role by sitting back on his knees and pouting. “You gonna go to bed and leave me all alone?”
“You won’t be alone. Jester will keep you company.”
Grace looked over her shoulder into the living room where their calico cat was perched on the back of the couch. The feline opened one eye, stared at them, yawned, then started licking himself.
Grace turned back to him, crossing her arms and putting on a glare that could peel an orange. Daniel laughed and pulled her close again. “Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?”
“You think you can win back my heart with your tired lines?”
He reached up and gently touched the back of her ear. “I’m Peter Parker and you’re my radioactive spider.”
A hint of a smile played at the side of her lips, but she tamed it with a frown. “You’ll have to do better than that if you want to know my secret.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, so now you have a secret?”
“Of course I do. And I’m not going to tell you what it is.”
“I see how it’s gonna be. Make me work for it.”
She adjusted the collar of his polo shirt then looped the top button closed. “Don’t you know that the best things in life never come easy?”
“First hand,” he said. Three weeks after Daniel met Grace he knew that he wanted to marry her. The notion had scared her half to death, and during their two years of dating they must have broken up and gotten back together at least a dozen times. Then one day, out of blue it seemed, Grace told him that she was madly in love with him and that she could never be happy with anybody else.
He gave her a ring a month later and they were pronounced man and wife the summer following their engagement.
With his shirt buttoned up to his neck and Grace still fidgeting with his collar, Daniel reached up and unbuttoned the top of her blouse. “You know we’ve been married for almost ten years?”
She swatted his hand. “Slow down there, cowboy. You think your charms will work better if I’m not wearing a shirt?”
He grinned. “Okay. How’s this? You’re the pot of gold and the end of my rainbow.”
Her eyes widened. “Daniel! Keep it PG. The girls might still be awake in their room.”
“So what,” he said, moving down her shirt and undoing the second button. “Let them hear. Let them know that Mommy and Daddy love each other more than anything in the world.”
She wasn’t stopping him from undoing her shirt, but he hadn’t broken her playful stubbornness yet. She said, “You still haven’t taken care of that bee’s nest in the back of the house.”
“What bee’s nest?” He knew exactly the one she was talking about.
“The one you said you’d knock down a week ago.”
“I’ll take care of it before I go to work in the morning.”
She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him close. “You better.”
He gripped her shirt and pulled her closer. “I will.”
They faced off for a moment, then she smiled. Oh, how he loved her.
“Even if they cut off the power,” she said, “even if we lose our house, I love you. You’re my man, and you work hard to take care of us.” She fingered the top button of his shirt and pulled it open. “Now lets go to the bedroom so you can show me some of your moves . . . Spider-Man.”
Their plans were interrupted by the sound of a gunshot outside, followed by a scream.
Daniel and Grace stared at each other, eyes wide, listening.
Someone screamed, “Help!” which was followed by another gunshot.
Grace leapt off Daniel and he was up in a flash, darting for the front door and throwing it open. He was halfway across the front yard when he saw the body in the street. An amber glow from the streetlamp circled the man like a spotlight. He was flat on his back. Something was pooling on the pavement beneath him.
Daniel turned to see Grace standing in the doorway. “Call nine-one-one,” he said. “It looks like he was shot.”
Grace rushed back into the house and Daniel hurried out to the road. The man who had been shot rolled over onto his side, facing away.
When Daniel was near enough to see what the injured man was wearing, he stopped cold. Blue jeans, green polo shirt with thin white stripes, brown walking shoes—the exact same outfit that Daniel was wearing right now.
Odd.
A cold breeze whispered over the street as Daniel crept closer. The man’s face was pointing away, but he could hear him moaning.
“Hold still,” Daniel said. “You were shot. We’re calling an ambulance.”
He glanced down both directions of the street, looking for any sign of the shooter, but there was no one wearing a black trench coat and hurrying off into the night, no get-away car speeding over the pavement.
The man moaned. “Help . . .”
The voice was familiar.
Daniel knelt down behind him, still unable to see the face. He noticed a white bag of frozen green beans lying on the pavement. There was also an open cell phone.
“Hold on,” Daniel said, “an ambulance is coming.”
There was a square bulge in the back pocket of the Levi’s. A wallet.
Daniel carefully wedged his fingers into the pocket and pulled out the wallet. It was black leather and worn at the corners. Looked like any normal wallet—except for the two letters stamped into one side: D.O.
Daniel felt his heart beating in his ears. Those were his initials. They were carved into his wallet as well.
Fingers trembling, he pulled open the billfold and recognized the silver debit card, the video store card, the green library card. He pulled up the familiar flap on the left side and found his driver’s license. This was his wallet.
Impossible.
He’d changed clothes at work, packing his Waste Management uniform into a plastic bag to help contain the smell, then upon arriving home he’d set his wallet on top of his dresser. Like he always did. It was sitting there right now.
But then it wasn’t because he was holding it in his hands.
Curious, Daniel peeled apart the money flap of the wallet to find a pair of one hundred dollar bills and a bundle of twenties. Around four hundred bucks. If this was his wallet, there must be some mistake, because he hadn’t carried that much dough in months.
The injured man was wearing a watch on his right wrist, and it looked exactly like Daniel’s watch. He bent around to see the face of the timepiece. The time was correct—8:18 PM. But the date looked wrong. Wasn’t it the twenty-first? The watch said it was the twenty-second.
The man moaned again, and it sounded weaker. He was fading. Dying.
The clothes, the wallet, the watch . . . Daniel had the sudden feeling that none of this was a bizarre coincidence.
The injured man suddenly went limp and Daniel could sense the cold presence of death. Trembling and sweating, his heart racing, Daniel rolled the man onto his back so that the face stared up into the streetlamp.
There was no mistaking it. There was no denying it. Daniel Owens was looking at Daniel Owens.
And Daniel Owens was dead.
“Daniel!”
He spun from the dead man—himself—to see Grace hurrying down the front steps of their house and across the lawn. “The ambulance is com—” Her eyes flashed to the street behind him.
The blood drained from her face. She was seeing the dead man, the dead Daniel Owens.
“Where is he?” Grace asked.
Daniel whirled and looked at the asphalt. The body was gone. There wasn’t even a stain from the blood.
Grace came to stand beside him and reached out and gripped his hand. “You’re shaking,” she said. “What’s going on? Where’s the body?”
Daniel wiped his forehead. Was it a vision? A hallucination? “He’s gone.”
“What do you mean he’s gone? What happened?’
He looked at her and took both of her hands into his. “Grace, something just happened. Something really . . . really weird.”
A fly hovered above them, smacking into the streetlamp, buzzing in a circle, smacking into the streetlamp.
“Daniel, you’re scaring me.”
He swallowed. “I saw myself. I was the man on the road. I was dead.”
Grace blinked three times. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the man who got shot was me! I saw his face—my face. He had my wallet with my driver’s license. He was wearing my clothes. He . . . he was dead.”
She studied him for a moment, weighing his outlandish claim. She flipped open the phone and punched in three numbers.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Canceling the ambulance.”
“You believe me?”
“Yes,” Grace said into the phone. “I called just a moment ago reporting an accident with a man getting shot. Yes. I’m sorry, I was mistaken. No, we don’t need an ambulance. No need to send a police officer. I think it was just some kids playing a prank. Yes. I’m very sorry. Thank you.” She hung up and crossed her arms.
He waited for her to say something. “Do you believe me?” he asked.
Grace bit her lip. “Are you sure that it was you?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head and looked down at the empty spot on the road. “You were dead? It was really you?”
Daniel stepped forward and wrapped her in his arms. “I’m not dead now. It was just—” Just what? He had no idea what he’d just seen.
“Why?” Grace asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Why would you see yourself dead?”
His watch suddenly beeped, signaling that he had one hour to get to bed if he had any hope of making his 4:30 A.M. wake-up call.
The watch.
He pulled back and stared Grace in the eyes. “It was a vision. It was the future.” The sense of the matter rolled over him like a wave. He ran a hand through his hair, blowing out a breath of air. “It makes sense. It makes total sense.”
“What does?” Grace asked. “You saw the future?”
It sounded so ludicrous when she said it. “His watch—my watch.” Daniel shook his head. “The watch that the dead man was wearing.”
“You,” she said. “The dead man who was you?”
“Yes. The dead man who was me was wearing my watch, but the date was different. It was the twenty-second.” He waited for it to register. “It was tomorrow.”
Grace stared at him without blinking. She chewed on a fingernail.
He breathed and felt his heart pounding like a racing horse. “Say something!”
She inhaled, closed her eyes, opened her eyes, let out the breath. “What does this mean? If this is real, and you saw yourself. Dead. What does this mean?”
“It means—” He pulled his trembling fingers into fists. “It means I’m going to die. This time tomorrow, right here in front of our house, I’m going to die.”