Transorbital by Nathan Singer

Author:Nathan Singer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

Chapter 20

I left Dr. Freeman’s office even less sure of everything.

For three days I holed up in the cheapest hotel room I could find trying to reach Chris in Poughkeepsie by telephone. To no avail. We had planned to rendezvous in DC after I met with Freeman, but Chris was nowhere to be found. Nowhere he would normally be. Called and called and called and called, and nothing. What the hell is going on? I thought. And I wondered…if somebody might just be playing me for a chump.

So I simply hung about, waiting, pondering…with my medicine supply running low. I, of course, had keys to George Washington University, and knew the floors blindfolded. I could get into their stock with relative ease. But at that point I would officially be breaking and entering.

Just as I had at Walter’s office, I felt like a stranger in DC, a town that I had always considered home. Since I was an orphan. Since forever. I doubt that I ever really belonged, bouncing around as I did, but I surely did not now. But by this time I could hardly navigate myself around the city. As if everyone had shifted all the furniture while I was away.

On the third night, cabin fever overtook me, and I had to get out.

I made a crawl through some of my favorite, familiar old haunts. I found some of them frozen in time, and some nearly unrecognizable of late. I couldn’t decide which bothered me more.

Down on 18th and Columbia I settled in at Frank’s Place, longtime my dive of choice back when. I’d always liked this area of town (which they were now calling Adams-Morgan), close as it is to Dupont Circle where I used to live for a time some years ago. I always liked the neighbors in that area, Mexicans for the most part, folks always ready and eager to throw some dice and drain a few bottles. My kind of crowd.

In the time since I had last been around, somebody had loaded the jukebox at Frank’s with old jazz records, and this night some sad character must have dropped every coin he hand to his name on old Duke Ellington sides. They played all through the night, one after the other. It was almost enough to keep my mind off the fact that I had just shot up the last of my juice. Almost. I sat in the corner pouring whiskey down my throat, wondering why on god’s gray earth I was there.

I saw Irina enter the bar, but I pretended that I did not. I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she eased past the ripped pool tables, pensive and unsure. Slowly she approached my table, and our eyes finally met.

“Hi there,” she said with a little wave.

“Gamarjoba,” I replied.

She smiled. I indicated the vacant seat.

“Thanks,” she said, sitting, still wearing her dark, velvet swing coat. It was too dim inside the joint to see much of what else

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