When we reached Brad's place, he parked on the street about two houses down. Brad lived in the upper flat of a three unit building in a reasonably quiet neighborhood. It was a small place, but he lived alone and didn't seem to mind the sloping ceilings in the bedroom and living room too much.
We went upstairs to his flat, and Brad unlocked the door and ushered me in.
Lydia was there, waiting for me.
I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at her, my mouth slightly agape. I looked back at Brad, and he shrugged.
"Traitor," I muttered at him.
He rolled his eyes and shut the door.
Lydia stood up from the sofa and slowly walked towards me.
"Don't slap me again," I said. "That bit's getting old."
"You ungrateful bastard," she said through clenched teeth. "What the fuck did you think you were doing?"
I sighed and went to run a hand through my hair, but discovered that the fedora was still atop my head. I removed it and dropped my hands to my sides again.
She looked me up and down. "What, were you at some kind of a costume party you couldn't tell anyone about?"
"He was at the sci-fi convention down at the Holiday Inn," Brad chimed in.
I looked back at him again. "Try not to help, Brad," I said.
He shook his head and headed towards the kitchen. "Whatever, man. Just whatever."
I looked at Lydia again. She reminded me of a kettle that was just about reach its boil.
"I wasn't at the convention," I said. "I was at the hotel where they're holding the convention."
She looked at the ceiling. "And how much sense was that supposed to make?" she asked.
"Look," I said. "You're never going to believe me, no matter what I tell you, so why don't we just skip this whole thing, and you give me your copy of my apartment key, and we can all get back to our lives."
I heard a snorting chuckle come from the direction of the kitchen. "Nice try, dude," Brad said.
I turned away from Lydia for a moment and sat down in one of the Brad's wicker chairs. When I looked up at Lydia, she was eyeing my getup again.
"I thought you hated those bloody things," she said.
"What bloody things?"
"The conventions, you arse. I thought you hated them."
"I do. They're a haven for social misfits."
"Well then, what the fuck were you doing there in a costume, for Christ's sake?"
I hung my head forward. "I told you. You're not going to believe me."
She turned with a huff and sat back down on the sofa. "Well, then, why don't you just tell me your sad fiction so we can get that part over with and I can go back to telling you what a shit you are."
"Oh. Lovely. I look forward to that."
Her face turned red, suddenly and violently. "Will you tell me where in fucking hell you've been for the last day? I was worried sick about you."
I put my head on the back of the chair and tried to breathe normally. "It starts with that woman I saw in the hospital."
"What woman?"
"The one in the 1940s coat. The one that nobody else seemed to be able to see."
"Oh, this should be good."
I proceeded to tell her about the reappearance of the cobblestone path, my conversation with Irene in the parking lot, the man taking measurements in the parking lot during the night, my abduction, my rescue, and the many and varied details of the world Irene and Greaves inhabited.
"You going to write all that down?" Lydia asked. "Cause it'll make one helluva lot better novel than it does an explanation."
I nodded weakly. "Yeah. I know. Didn't I already say you wouldn't believe it?"
"Yeah. And I don't. So now tell me the real story."
Brad reentered the room, bearing three beers. Brad had blond hair, so I immediately thought of him as Goldilocks and the three beers. I refrained from saying it out loud however. I was in enough trouble as it was.
"Here, dude," he said, handing me one of the frosty cans. "You look like you could use it."
"Thanks, man," I said. "I appreciate it."
Brad settled himself in the remaining wicker chair. "That's quite a story you just told. I think you should write it down too."
"Yeah. Okay," I said. "I will. Just as soon as I'm able to get back into my apartment and grab some paper."
I glanced at Lydia. She was scowling at me, her arms crossed over her breasts. I always hated it when she did that. It blocked my view of her breasts.
"Well," she said. "If you were kidnapped by some shadowy organization, then you're probably not safe going back to your apartment, are you?"
I pursed my lips and furrowed my brow. I actually hadn't thought of that.
"You know," I said, "for someone who doesn't believe my story, you're actually being quite helpful. You make an excellent point."
She rolled her eyes and hissed. "Good God, Jack. You can't even tell when your lies have inconsistencies in them. What kind of writer are you, anyway?"
"I'm the kind of writer who is fucking exhausted from a full day of extraordinary experiences and unimaginable stress." I glared at her. "Okay?"
Lydia looked at Brad. "What are we going to do with him?"
Brad put his hands up. "Listen, I don't care what you do with him. You can leave me out of it."
"Thanks loads," Lydia said. "Big help you are."
"Hey, I got him here, didn't I?" Brad said. "I hand him off to you at this point. He's your problem."
"I'm still here," I said. "Stop talking about me like I'm not."
Lydia curled her lip at me. "Yes, I know you're still that, you prat. I almost wish you weren't. Your level of self-absorption seems to have jumped up a few notches while you've been gone, and I'm not sure I can deal with it anymore."
It slowly began to dawn on me that I was now in a postion not much more enviable that that of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. My best friend and my best female friend were both sitting there, looking down upon me in judgement, and I suddenly knew that I deserved it.
It was true that I was often preoccupied with my own problems. It was also true that I sometimes trivialized other people's problems. It was further true that I had occasionally told untruths to avert potential consequence disaster after I'd done something questionable.
This was now catching up with me. The fact that I was a creative writer didn't help matters at all.
"So, where does that leave us?" I asked. "You don't believe my story, and I don't have another one to tell you."
"Except for the one where you hook up with some bimbo at this stupid convention and lose your clothes and wallet."
I half-closed my eyelids and half-opened my mouth. "Well, sure. If you want to be completely unoriginal. Not to mention tasteless. You can go ahead and believe that if you want. There's nothing I can do about it."
Brad gave Lydia a look. "He's not protesting. That's kind of a new thing, isn't it?"
Lydia looked at me through narrowed eyes. "What are you up to?"
"Oh, God," I said. "Now I'm up to something. That's just great. Just bloody brilliant." I put my head back on the chair again.
Lydia sat forward and scrutinized me. "You don't really expect us to believe that story, do you?"
"I expect nothing. I just want to sleep. That's all. You can both go fuck yourselves, or each other if that would help any, and let me wallow in my misery. That wouldn't be all that different from any other day, really. Except for the suit."
I closed my eyes and crossed my arms.
"Do you want me to take you home?" Brad asked.
"No, actually," I said. "Now that you mention it, I don't. Lydia made a very good point in the midst of all that sarcasm. If I go home, I'm just setting myself up to be nabbed by the men in black again."
"Men in black," Lydia scoffed. "Of all the ridiculous—"
"They wore dark suits," I said, "so I shall henceforth refer to them as the men in black. I don't know if they're good guys or bad guys. They might be goverment spooks, or they might be evil corporate goons, or they might be criminals. I have no fucking clue. I just know that they're very unlikely to be cheerful about my disappearance from their detention area."
Brad chuckled. "Man, he sounds pretty convincing."
Lydia turned her scowl upon him now, giving me a short break from its intense heat. "Don't you dare," she said to him. "He's giving a load of bollocks, and you'd better not forget that. You know how smug he can be."
"Still here," I said, raising my hand into the air.
"And you can shut up now," she said, swinging the scowl back towards me again. "I'm not hearing another word of this. You've done enough, and you've said enough. If I can't get a straight story out of you, then I'm out of it. You can go whine and moan to someone else."
She stood up and grabbed her purse. "Here," she said, digging into one of the compartments and pulling out a set of keys. "You can have these back." She tossed them in my lap and stormed to the door.
She turned for a moment as she hauled the door open. "I'm handing him back to you, Brad. It sounds like you're starting to believe him, so the two of you can just go roll around in your little fantasy. I'm done."
She stomped out into the hall and slammed the door behind her.
I sank further into the chair. "That was not completely unexpected," I said.
Brad crossed his legs and shook his head. "Jesus, man. Do you have any idea what you do to her?
Did you even see her face just now?"
"No," I said. "I was leaning back with my eyes closed." I opened my eyes for a moment and glanced at him, just to drive the point home.
"You hate everybody, don't you?"
"No. I don't. I simply have a very low threshold for tolerating stupidity. That's all."
"Lydia is not stupid, man. She's fucking out of her mind worried about you."
"Lydia can be very stupid at times. She's overly emotional, and she doesn't think things through."
Brad stood up and took a swig of his beer. "You're a piece of work, man. A real piece of work."
"So I've been told."
He returned to the kitchen, leaving me to my turmoil, anxiety, and confusion.
The truth was, I was scared. I hadn't the first clue what I should be doing. I didn't know how to protect myself, and any plans I might in that regard would be rendered exponentially difficult by the simple fact that nobody would believe my story. If two of my best friends wouldn't believe it, then nobody would. Nobody who would be able to help me, at any rate.
I had no proof of anything I'd told them. I didn't know how to find the agency that wanted to interrogate me, and I had no means of returning to the alternate world, so that left me with a highly implausible tale of unexpected adventure and a whopping headache.
Brad returned and resumed his seat. My eyes were still closed, but I could feel him staring at me.
"What?" I asked. "What now?"
"Listen, dude," he said. "Did you ever think that maybe…"
He spoke much more quietly now, more tentatively. This got my attention. I opened my eyes and raised my head.
"That maybe I'm losing my mind?" I asked.
He looked at the floor.
"Don't you think I've asked myself that question at least three times a day ever since I got out of the hospital?" I hadn't intended to raise my voice, but the volume came unbidden. "Don't you think I wondered that every single goddamned time I saw that woman? I still can't believe the things I saw over there. I don't know what's happening to me. But I don't have any other memories except for being kidnapped and going over to another world. So what does that make me? Delusional? Psychotic? Schizophrenic? Insane?"
I was breathing rapidly now. Brad's gaze remained fixed on the carpet.
"I don't know what I did to myself with those stupid drugs," I continued. "I don't know if I damaged myself in some way, or made my problems worse. I didn't think it worked that way, with fucking over the counter medication, but maybe it does. Maybe it flipped some kind of switch in my head, and now I'm some kind of fucking maniac. Or lunatic. Or worse. I'm scared half to death that I've damaged myself permanently. Do you understand that?"
He looked up at me again. "I'm sorry, man. I didn't mean to stress you out more. But you do seem different since you got out of the hospital."
"Exactly," I said. "And that's what scares the hell out of me."
"Then you need to get yourself checked out. I mean really checked out. Cat scans, or whatever it is they do now. Find out if there's something screwed up."
"That scares me even more. If there really is something wrong, then they'll probably institutionalize me. And that'll be pretty much the end of life as I know it."
"Yeah." Brad stared past me at the wall for a moment. "So you don't want to go back to your place."
"I'd rather not," I said.
"Yeah." He got up again. "I'll grab some blankets."
At that moment, I could have kissed him.
"I'll say it again, Brad. You're a prince."
"Save, it, man," he called from the hallway. "Just return the favor some time, okay?"
"Sure," I said. "I owe you yet again."
Brad stepped back into the room and tossed a blanket and pillow at me.
"Who else is going to take care of your sorry ass?" he asked.
I thought he made a good point.
