WHO: Ellie and Greg. WHAT: Ellie asks Greg to take her on a trip. Things get a little scary. WHERE: Streets of New York. WHEN: March 26 RATING: High for violence. STATUS: In progress.
The promise of runners in the area hadn't deterred Ellie.
Greg had put it in her head to leave the library, which had devolved into a mess of imagery and memory that was hard to ignore. Perhaps she should have expected that his reappearance in her life would bring with it not only some measure of purpose, but act as a catalyst. She was thinking of things now that she hadn't thought of in years, and one that came to her more strongly than the rest was the thought of an apartment that had belonged to a good friend.
She remembered spending time there in her senior year. She remembered keeping things there, too: a change of clothes, a little jar of pins, spare lipstick. It seemed to Ellie that getting her possessions back was a good idea. It stood to reason that if it was a friend's place, it had to be in Manhattan, and after a night or so to meditate on the idea it came back to her readily enough: a route she could remember walking repeatedly, stumbling back home along.
And Greg had agreed to take her.
They had entered the apartment building through a side door, climbing over a barricade that had been put up in the alley. Standing here on the first floor, Ellie felt a lingering dizziness, like waking from a dream into a dream.
It was familiar. Yes. This was precisely what she'd remembered, albeit draped in dust, left in disarray by whoever had come and gone before. Furniture had been overturned. There was an empty sleeping bag near the entrance, a splayed collection of empty cans. The smell was enormous.