BACK WITH YOU
Chapter Four
A thud awoke Jessamyn late in the night,
causing her to jump and blink her eyes open in surprise. Groaning, she looked
around to see what had caused the noise and stared in hatred at the stupid
person who had dropped a stack of books right in front of her seat. The
dark-haired woman was scrabbling to pick the items up while other passengers
shook their heads. Jessamyn rolled her eyes and sighed heavily.
"Damn train is never quiet," she
mumbled tiredly as she turned over, put her pillow up against the cold window,
and then leaned against it. Who in the hell carried books through a train in
the middle of the night? she wondered angrily. Now it's going to take me
forever to get back to sleep.
She was right. A half hour later, Jessamyn
was still conscious and was no closer to any sort of shuteye. And she was mad.
Lack of sleep always made her irritable and drowsy, and this was not the time
to get like that. There were set to arrive in Santa Monica at around ten the
next morning. She needed to have her wits about her if she was going to start
the search for Rose.
Jessamyn started to ponder what to do next
when something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. It was Mr.
Jack's sketchbook. The leather portfolio was resting on top of his bag, drawing
her to it like a kid to ice cream on a summer day. She looked around for a
minute, and after determining that no one else was up, reached over and poked
Mr. Jack in the arm. He swatted her hand away, but didn't wake up.
"What an interesting
development..." she muttered quietly to herself as she slowly and
cautiously reached over. Quickly, she snatched it up and turned away so that
her back was to Jack. She waited a few minutes, and then, as all was still
quiet, she started to open the sketchbook. Inside, she came to find, were
drawing after drawing, all of them in charcoal and all of them very well done.
Jessamyn was impressed. This Mr. Jack was quite an artist. There was a
prevalent theme, though, she noticed as she flipped through. All of the
drawings, although detailed and noteworthy, were awfully violent and
disturbing. They all reflected a dark sense that confused Jessamyn. Mr. Jack,
reserved and quiet as he was, seemed nice and peaceful. His drawings, though,
were certainly something else. She didn't quite understand it. And they got
worse as she went along. Scenes of funerals and graveyards began to show, and
then, she came across something that shocked her completely. It was a highly
detailed drawing depicting some sort of water death scene. Bodies were strung
across the dark water off into the dark horizon. Jessamyn tilted her head to
the side and looked more carefully. All the people appeared to be dead, frozen
in what she assumed was chilling water. She was even more horrified to see a
mother with her baby, both of them apparently lifeless.
"What the..." she wondered out
loud. She could not, for the life of her, figure out what the hell this was.
Again, she turned the paper over and was met with another disturbingly detailed
drawing. This one was of a man sitting upon a board in the middle of the same
water death scene. His face was that of someone who was truly lost and alone.
But strangely the man, other than his clothes and something around his wrists,
had no defining characteristics. Jessamyn continued to turn the pages, met
again and again with the frightful images. None of it made sense to her.
After a while, she finally put the portfolio
away and then sank back in her seat. She still wondered intently what Mr. Jack was
thinking. Maybe he had gone through something terrible, and this was his way of
expressing this anger. Jessamyn closed her eyes and tried to think. No wonder
he didn't want her to see them. There had to be something in his past that
affected him still today; many of the drawings were dated recently. She
wondered what that might be until she drifted off into sleep a while later,
still unaware as to how greatly affected her own life was by this man and his
drawings.
*****
That same night Jessamyn had peeked into Mr.
Jack's portfolio, Rose was back in Santa Monica going though some emotional
turmoil herself. She had made the mistake of letting Phoebe, who had decided
that Rose needed to get out more, take her to a dancing club type place down
the street from the bookstore. The meeting with Mr. Green had gone unbelievably
well, and she thought they should celebrate the expansion of the shop. It had
sounded good to Rose at first.
She now sat on a bar stool, drinking what
tasted like very badly made bootlegged beer of some sort--she had just taken
what Phoebe had gone off and shown up with. It really was horrible, but for
some reason she kept drinking it until she had finished three glasses. And bad
or not, the drink was starting to take an effect on her. She hadn't had alcohol
of any sort in years, not since the war had ended, and her body wasn't used to
it. That, and the combination of strong smoke and body odor, were causing her
senses to disappear. She wasn't really aware of her personal being and felt
herself start to let go. All at once, she wanted it all to go away and so she
grabbed the first available man and dragged him out onto the dance floor,
hoping to forget it all, just for a little bit.
Rose allowed herself to be taken back as she
was spun around by this stranger, back to a different place, years ago. And
after a while, she heard Irish music and people laughing, endlessly laughing.
Then the smell of the bar faded away, and she smelt him; that strong and rich
sandalwood scent that was so familiar to her. And then, this arms were around
her, holding her tightly against his body.
"I don't know the steps..."
"Neither do I. Just go with
it..."
And then endless spinning, spinning and
spinning and spinning, around and around until she was dizzy. Then Jack finally
had stopped and held her up, to keep her from falling. They had smiled at each
other, and then it was off again, dancing into the night. She felt that way
now, the release that she had felt that night.
"Oh, Jack, I've missed you." She
wasn't aware she was speaking out loud until a different voice, that not of
his, broke through her thoughts.
"Lady, who the hell is Jack?"
Rose opened her eyes and blinked, expecting
Jack and instead finding the rugged man with a scratchy beard where he should
have been. And she then was thrown into reality. There was a moment of silence
and then she screamed--what, she couldn't comprehend. All she knew was that she
screamed and ran as fast as she could, pushing everyone out of the way as she
left.
Then she was running down the beach, so
quickly that she was afraid that her legs would detach from her body. She felt
like a child again, endlessly running and running. Until finally she stopped
suddenly and stared at her house. The waves crashed behind her, providing the
only sound. She knew that she would go in there and then be all alone...once
again. He wasn't there, and never was going to be. Another dose of reality hit
her and then it happened. She became sick and ran into the water, vomiting up
what seemed like the last week of her food all at once. The strange thing was,
she didn't even care. It was like it was happening to her without actually
happening. Like some dream that she was in. And then, when it was all over, she
sank down into the freezing January water, just letting the cold ocean surround
her. It was therapeutic, in a way, and after a while she began to feel better.
Slowly, she made her way up to her house and made it inside. Once she was in
the confines of her bedroom, she slammed the door shut and then closed all the
shades. As fast as she could, she stripped off the cold, wet clothes she had
been wearing until she was completely nude. It was then that she flopped down
on the bed.
Rose still couldn't think straight.
Everything was just a big blur. But she felt more relaxed and calm, despite the
fact that she was going crazy. She reached over and picked up a small candle
off the bedside table. After looking at it for a moment, she brought it up to
her nose and smelled it--sandalwood. Slowly, she began to drift off to sleep,
keeping the candle to her nose. It smelled like Jack, and she wanted it beside
her as she succumbed to her fatigue. At least, in this way, she could pretend
he was here and that everything was indeed okay, not falling apart. And this
way, she didn't seem so alone.