19. Brian (VIII)
Days
after his discovery, Brian found himself parked on the very street where his
donor had died.
The
street itself was nondescript, hardly recognizable in daylight. After all, he had only seen it when it was
dark in his dreams. But the record store
across the street looked identical to the photograph he’d seen on the store’s
website. Housed in the lower level of a
two-story brick building, it had a big picture window featuring a cluttered
display of concert memorabilia and a neon sign over the door that spelled out
the store’s name: Vintaj.
It
was owned by Marjorie Wilder’s former fiancée, Alexander McLean, and when Brian
had learned of the store’s existence, he had wanted to come. When he discovered its location, a mere two
blocks down the street from where the hit-and-run had occurred, he knew he had to come.
Becci
had been against the idea. It was only a
two-hour drive to Lockland, Ohio, but she worried about Brian traveling that
far alone. “What if something happens?”
she’d fretted.
“Like
car trouble, you mean?” he’d teased her, knowing that was the furthest thing
from her mind. “If the car breaks down,
I’ll call a tow truck.”
“Brian
Thomas Littrell, you know that’s not what I mean,” she’d replied, putting her
hands on her hips and giving him a stern look.
He returned it with his most charming smile, the one he knew she was
unable to resist.
“Babe,
my heart’s fine, and that’s because of her and whoever agreed to donate her
organs. I owe them both my life. The least I can do is go up there and see
what I can find out. If I see the street
where she died, maybe it’ll help me remember more details from my dreams. Maybe I’ll even meet her fiancée.”
“What
would you even say to him if you did?” Becci wanted to know.
“Thank
you, for starters,” Brian said and then shrugged. “I’m not really sure what else. I guess I’ll figure it out on the drive up.”
She
hadn’t been happy about it, but he’d made the trip anyway, and now, sitting in
his car outside the record store, Brian realized he still didn’t know what to
say to the man inside. He couldn’t just
waltz in and announce, “Hi, I’m the proud new owner of your girlfriend’s
heart!” That would be too weird. But he felt like some sort of stalker just
sitting there, scoping out the place, so he knew he would have to go in and say
something. He’d driven too far just to turn around and
leave.
Summoning
his courage, he climbed out of the car.
He crossed the street and stopped on the sidewalk outside the entrance
to the record store. Then he sucked in a
deep breath and held it as he reached for the door handle. A bell tinkled over his head as he opened the
door and walked inside. A man behind the
counter looked up, acknowledging him with a nod and a wave. “Hey.
Looking for anything in particular today, or just browsing?”
For
a moment, Brian hesitated, unsure of how to respond. He recognized the man from photos he’d seen
online: deep brown eyes, receding black
hair, artfully-trimmed goatee, and tattoos everywhere. He was the owner, the fiancée, the one Brian
had come to talk to. But he had no idea
how to begin, so instead, he said, “Just browsing.”
Alexander
nodded. “Cool. Lemme know if you need anything.” He returned his attention back to the
magazine he’d been reading behind the counter.
Brian
wandered slowly through the store, pretending to browse while he worked out
what to say. He fingered racks of
vintage band t-shirts and thumbed through bins of old records. He gazed in wonder at the wide array of
posters that plastered every inch of the walls. He flipped through a box of old prints and
pulled out a photograph of the John Lennon Memorial in Central Park, a circular
mosaic inscribed with the word IMAGINE. Someone had arranged flower petals in the
shape of a peace sign around the center circle.
Finding himself drawn to the beautiful picture, Brian decided it would
work as the opening he needed. He
carried it up to the counter.
“Ready
to check out?” asked Alexander, standing up.
“Just
about,” said Brian. He set the print
down on the counter and proceeded to rifle through a box of buttons on the edge
of the counter, stalling for time. “Cool
place you got here,” he remarked, hoping the comment sounded off-handed.
“Thanks. This your first time stopping in?”
“Yeah. I’m not from the area. I live two hours south of near, near
Lexington.”
“Oh,
cool. So what brings you to Lockland?”
Alexander asked conversationally.
“Just
visiting someone,” said Brian vaguely, keeping his eyes on the buttons. “How long y’all had this place?”
“Going
on three years now.”
“Nice.” His fingers closed around a Beatles button
that said “All You Need is Love” in a
psychedelic font. “I’ll take this, too,”
he said, setting it down on top of the IMAGINE
print.
Alexander looked down at the two items.
“Beatles fan, I take it?”
“Yeah…
only recently, though. It’s the weirdest
thing – I had a heart transplant last
November, and ever since, I’ve been listening to the Beatles and other rock
bands from that era, stuff I never really listened to before. Isn’t that crazy?”
Alexander
raised his eyebrows. “Pretty crazy,” he
agreed, ringing up Brian’s purchases.
“You look good, though, man. Four
months doesn’t seem like a long time to recover from something that major, but
I never would have guessed.”
It
wasn’t the reaction Brian had hoped for, but he was struck by something
Alexander had said. “Four months, that’s
right. Good math!”
The
careful tone of flattery he’d inserted into the comment had exactly the effect
he desired. Alexander snorted and shook
his head. “Not really.” He looked down at the button in his hand,
running his thumb over its smooth surface.
Then he added, “It’s just that I lost someone close to me in
November. When you lose someone that
special, you never forget how long it’s been.”
For
the first time, Brian caught the scent of whiskey on his breath as he spoke,
and his heart – her heart – ached for
the man she had left behind. “I’m
sorry,” he said softly.
“Thanks. That’ll be $12.78, by the way.” Alexander dropped the button into a small bag
with the photograph. “You would have
gotten along great with my girlfriend, Jori.
She was a Beatlemaniac.”
As
Brian handed him a twenty dollar bill, he looked directly into Alexander’s eyes
and said, “I know.”
When the two men locked
eyes, Brian could see the look of bewilderment flicker across Alexander’s face,
which paled a few shades. “What do you
mean, you know?” he asked gruffly.
Brian hesitated, looking
around the store. Besides the two of
them, it was empty; he was the only customer.
Still, he didn’t want someone to walk in as he was having a conversation
around such a sensitive subject. “Is
there somewhere more private we could talk?”
Alexander hardly hesitated
at all. “Howie!” he shouted
suddenly. “Yo, D!”
A short, Hispanic man
emerged from a smaller room at the back of the shop. “What’s up?” he asked, looking between Brian
and Alexander.
“My business partner,
Howie,” Alexander said, with a vague wave toward the other man. “Can you cover the counter for me? I need to talk to...” He looked uncertainly at Brian. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Brian,” he supplied,
wondering if it would sound familiar. He
had only been allowed to use his first name in the letter he’d written to the
family of his donor. “Brian Littrell.”
“AJ.” The nickname suited him. As AJ extended his hand for Brian to shake,
Brian noticed that even his knuckles were tattooed, and his fingernails were
painted black, ragged around the edges where he had picked at them. “C’mon.”
AJ led Brian into the back
room, where there was a table and two chairs.
They sat down, staring across the table at each other. “So what’s your deal, Brian?” AJ asked
finally. “Who are you really?”
Brian took a deep
breath. “I think you may have figured that
out,” he said. “I’m the guy who got
Jori’s heart.”
Time seemed to stand
still, as he waited for AJ’s reaction.
For a few seconds, AJ just stared at him. Then he said, “Are you serious?”
Brian nodded. “I’m pretty sure. It all fits.
I found her obituary online. I
got my transplant the same day she died.”
“Worst day of my life,”
muttered AJ, bracing his head against his hand as he slumped over the
table. “Probably one of the best of
yours, huh?”
Brian swallowed hard. “I sure felt blessed that day,” he said,
choosing his words carefully. “I
wouldn’t have made it much longer without a new heart. You and Jori gave me the greatest gift I
could ever hope for you. Her heart saved
my life. So thank you.”
AJ nodded, acknowledging
Brian’s gratitude without looking at him.
In the brief silence that
followed, Brian remembered how he had felt when he’d woken up in the hospital
after his operation: weak, sore, but
grateful… so grateful. Thank you, he had whispered to his
donor, after hearing her heart beat for the first time. Now he looked at her grieving fiancée and
wondered if there was a way to give him back a part of the loved one he’d lost.
“Do you want to feel it?”
he asked timidly. “Her heart?” He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his
shirt and parted the material to expose the tip of the scar, barely visible
over the top of his undershirt. “Here,”
he said, reaching out to take AJ’s hand.
AJ recoiled. “No,” he said quickly. “No, that’s okay.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind.”
“Thanks, but I’m
sure.” Abruptly, AJ stood and crossed
the room to a small desk in the corner.
“It wasn’t my idea to donate her organs, you know,” he said, opening the
bottom drawer. “They asked at the
hospital, and I just did what I thought she’d want.”
“Still… thank you,” said
Brian, watching as AJ pulled a flask out of the desk drawer. He twisted off the top and took a long swig,
wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You want some?” He offered the flask to Brian, who shook his
head. “Yeah, you’re probably not
supposed to drink after a heart transplant, huh? That’s smart.
Jori liked her liquor a little too much.
Not as much as I like mine, though.”
He sighed and slammed the flask down onto the desk. “So,” he said, looking back at Brian. “Did you drive all the way up here just to say
thanks?”
“No, not exactly. I wrote you a letter to say thanks, not long
after the transplant. Did you get
it?” It didn’t really matter if AJ had received
the letter or not. Brian was just
stalling for time while he searched for a way to explain why he had come
without sounding crazy.
AJ shrugged. “Yeah, I guess maybe I did. Sorry I never wrote back or anything. I was in a pretty dark place after she died. Still am, some days.” He picked up the flask again and took another
drink.
“I’m sorry,” Brian said
again. He couldn’t imagine what it would
be like to lose Becci – or Calhan. AJ
had lost both a fiancée and a child.
AJ swallowed and set his
flask back down. “So why did you come
then?” he asked.
Brian collected his
thoughts, struggling to put them into words.
“Ever since the transplant, I’ve felt this… connection to my donor that
I can’t quite explain. I wanted to know
more about her, so I did some research online.
I found Jori’s obituary and some articles about the accident, but they
didn’t give me a sense of who she was as a person. I wanted to know about her life, not just how
she died.”
It was half true, even if
it wasn’t the whole story. Only through
learning more about his donor’s life could Brian expect to answer the questions
he had about her death. Like who would
run down a young bride-to-be in the dead of night? And why?
AJ stared at with a
hardened expression for a few seconds before his features softened. Sagging in his seat, he sighed and said, “So
what do you wanna know?”
Brian considered the
question. Of course, he knew more about
Jori than he was letting on, but he wondered what other information AJ had to
give. “I don’t know. Just… tell me about Jori. What was she like?”
AJ chuckled, actually
smiling for the first time since they’d sat down together. “Oh man… where to begin? Jori was… Jori was a real firecracker. Wild… unpredictable… even explosive at times…
but a whole lot of fun, too. She even
had the red hair to prove it, though it was totally dyed. Her mom gave her so much crap about that
color…” He paused to laugh, shaking his
head. “I loved it, though. It was bright… and different. That was Jori. She was one of a kind.”
Brian smiled. “I didn’t know she had red hair. The only picture I saw of her was in black
and white.”
“Really? Here… hang on…” AJ sat forward, pulling his chain wallet out
of his pocket. From inside it, he took
out a photograph and passed it across the table to Brian.
His breath caught in his
throat as he looked down at the picture of a petite girl with vivid red hair
that went almost to her waist, posing against a pick-up truck. The truck’s paint job looked like rainbow
tie-dye, and it cast a bright backdrop against the neutral colors of her
clothing. “She was beautiful,” Brian
said, bringing the picture closer to his face as he peered into hers, noticing
the blueness of her eyes and the light dusting of freckles across her nose.
“Yeah, she was. Seriously, the day I met her, it was love at
first sight.” And AJ proceeded to tell
him all about his and Jori’s history, how they’d met at a tattoo parlor in
Florida, how he’d given up his whole life there to follow her here to Ohio, and
how he’d opened the record store to support her as they started their new life
together. It was strange and sad to hear
the story told when he knew what a tragic turn it would take, but Brian sat
back and listened without interruption.
“We even had a kid
together,” said AJ, the light in his brown eyes fading as he glanced up at
Brian. “I guess you probably read about
Lucy.”
Brian nodded. “I’m so sorry,” he said for the third time.
AJ’s chin jutted forward
as he clenched his jaw. Brian could tell
he was trying not to cry. “When we first
found out she was pregnant,” he went on hoarsely, “I didn’t know how to
feel. But Jori was thrilled, and she got
me excited about it too. We had a blast getting
ready for the baby. We decorated her
room with a Beatles theme, and Jori painted this whole mural on the walls; it
was awesome.”
Brian could clearly
picture it, the nursery from his dreams.
“And when she finally
came, I felt…” AJ paused and shook his
head, seemingly at a loss for words. “I
can’t even describe the feeling.”
“I know that feeling,”
said Brian. “I’m a father myself.”
AJ nodded. “Then you can imagine how it felt to lose
her.” His eyes were bright again, shiny
with unshed tears. “I loved that little
girl more than life itself. When she
died… I felt like my life was over. It
was never the same after that. Jori took
it even harder than I did. She just shut
down. Fell apart. Started drinking again. She was drunk the night she died, you know.”
For the first time, Brian
felt truly surprised by this bit of information. “She was??”
None of the articles he’d read had mentioned it.
AJ nodded again.
“So what happened?” Brian
blurted, before he could stop himself from asking.
“She was out walking. She got hit by a car.”
It was a truck, thought Brian, but that wasn’t the only detail that seemed off. “She was out walking in the middle of the
night?” he wondered aloud. “The article
I read said she was hit around two a.m.”
“Jori was a night owl,”
said AJ, “especially after Lucy died.
She had insomnia. She liked to go
out for walks after dark, when no one would see her. She was still trying to lose her baby weight,
and she was self-conscious about how she looked. I guess she’d stayed up late drinking that
night and decided to go out to get some air or stretch her legs or something.” He shrugged.
“I don’t know; I’d already gone to bed.
I woke up to the sound of screeching tires. I looked out the window, and that was when I
saw her, just lying there in the street.”
His voice had taken on a
flat, deadened quality as he narrated this sequence of events, but Brian was
shocked. “So you didn’t see what
happened?” he asked in a whisper.
AJ shook his head. “I’m guessing she stumbled out into the
street and got hit. I don’t know,
though. The car that hit her was long
gone by the time I got out there.”
Brian bit down on his
bottom lip. Here was a grief-stricken
man who thought his fiancée’s death had been her own fault. How could he tell him otherwise, without
revealing too much?
“You can’t blame her,” he
said gently. “Whoever was driving should
have stopped.”
“It wouldn’t have done much
good,” replied AJ, looking at him sadly.
“Jori would have died either way.”
He seemed to have resigned
himself to this reality, but Brian wasn’t ready to accept it. He felt angry on behalf of his donor and this
broken man she’d left behind. He wanted
to see the person who had caused them both so much pain caught and put behind
bars. He wouldn’t rest until justice was
served.
But he had to rest, for
only when he was at rest could Brian sleep.
Only in sleep could he dream. And
only in his dreams could he hope to see something that would shed light on this
dark tragedy.
***
He did dream that night,
the same dream as before. He was running
down the very street on which he’d driven earlier that day. Cold air, heavy with rain, rattled around in his
lungs. Little clouds of breath puffed
from his open mouth as he panted. His
heart was pounding, as fast and as hard as his feet upon the wet pavement. Dead leaves squished beneath them as he ran
through the darkness. The icy wind
whipped through his hair and the fallen leaves, pelting his face with stinging
raindrops.
He
tried to keep his head down, but he kept looking back over his shoulder. The street was dark and deserted, but
suddenly, in the midst of the darkness, there was light. At first, it was just a pinprick in the
distance, like the glimmer of sunlight at the end of a tunnel. But it grew nearer and seemed to split itself
in two, twin halos of light that expanded outward, filling his vision. The headlights were bright, almost blinding.
He
forced himself to look away, but he could still hear the growl of an engine
gaining on him, the roar of tires splashing through puddles. When he chanced another glance over his
shoulder, the truck was coming right for him.
Startled, he spun around and tried to jump out of the way, but his foot
sunk into a pothole he hadn’t seen. He
tripped, turning his ankle as he stumbled out into the street. As he straightened up, he was bathed in
brilliant light. He stopped, frozen, but
the headlights kept coming, so close they threatened to swallow him up.
At
first, he couldn’t see anything, but as the light surrounded him, he could make
out the silhouette of a pick-up truck.
He saw a flash of color and recognized the paint job – rainbow swirls,
spray-painted over the rusted white exterior, giving the illusion of tie-dye.
His
pain turned to fear.
He
was going to die.
The
thought crossed his mind a split second before he felt a crushing blow. His body was thrown violently onto the hood
of the truck. As his head collided with
the windshield, he caught a glimpse of the face behind the wheel, as familiar
as the truck itself.
Then
it was cast back into the shadows, as the light faded to impenetrable dark.
Brian sat bolt upright in
the dark, already breathing hard. He was
trembling violently, enough to disturb Becci, who stirred beside him. “Brian?” she asked sleepily, sitting up. “What’s wrong?” She looked over at him in concern, putting
her hand on his shoulder to stop it from shaking. “Did you have another nightmare?”
He nodded. “That’s not all, though,” he whispered. “This time, I saw his face.”
“Whose face?”
“The face of the person
behind the wheel. The one who was
driving the truck. The one who killed
Jori. It was him.”
“Who, Brian?”
He shook his head, not
wanting to believe it, yet he was sure of what he had seen. “Her fiancée,” he said. “It was AJ.”
***