Chapter Two
"Sometimes it hurts so badly
I must cry out loud
I am lonely…"
Walt takes a train from the airport to downtown; he decides he'll check into his hotel first, before looking for Jesse. He doesn't know, after all, where he'll find the young man – at his home, at Temple, at a job, or a friend's? Or maybe this is a wild goose chase - but if it isn't… Walt can hear his heart beat faster as he pictures Jesse's faces… He isn't even sure exactly what he'll say, what he would say, if this actually works.
The hotel is a much more surmountable obstacle. He finds it quickly – it's an extremely large affair with huge potted trees and marble halls. He floats up to his floor, 28, walks down the hall and hears a ring of silence tap against his ear. It's the sound of death come knocking for him, come ringing his bell.
He reaches in his pocket and feels for his keycard, slides it into the slot and watches it pause, pause, turn to green. He pushes the handle forward, steps inside and sees the bed, a bed seemingly way too big for just him. If he were about twenty years younger, maybe he'd dial an escort service, ask for a blonde – no, not a blonde, a brunette, curvy and dark-eyed with a nice, firm ass. Now it would just seem pathetic; he has no desire to turn into some prostitute's Make-a-Wish Foundation.
He throws his suitcase on the bed and throws off his coat before walking into the bathroom and looking at himself in the mirror, looking at himself like Jesse would see him. His eyes have grown lighter, his skin paler, and his skin has gotten hard, peeling in a few places, pockmarked with spots of what looked like over-scratched bug bites.
He could look worse.
He strips off his clothes and steps into the shower, turns the faucet all the way in the direction of "H", scrubs until he's bright red, yet his anxiety isn't abated; he gives up and steps out on to the tile floor, grabbing a white fluffy towel off the rack. He wraps it around himself and dries, then pulls on a fresh set of clothes. He looks dapper, professional, like he's going to a job interview.
He leaves the hotel and walks to the Clothespin, the center of the city, and ogles at the strange monument for a few moments. He crosses the street in a mob of people and when he arrives at the other side, he finds himself flanked by big blue plastic tents and a cluster of people holding signs proclaiming that they are the "99%".
He ignores the political movement, despite hearing a catcall as he passes through, and walks down the coiling staircase, past two men who are begging with coffee-cups in hand, clinking them and rattling the change within.
He follows a long orange bar-sign to the Broad Street Line, a dark and dirty tunnel of a station.
A blinding light bursts out from the oncoming train, and when the train finally stops in front of them there's a long lingering moment before the doors grind open, letting in Walt and the cluster of jostling passengers behind him.
He wonders if this is Jesse's daily commute, if Jesse's become an urbanite, a city boy. He had apparently become a college boy, Walt remembers, if only briefly.
Too soon, he has arrived at Lombard-South Station, the stop to get off at for Jesse's house.
He walks above ground, down another block, and there it is – a huge house, must be three or four bedrooms, with a yard and a metal fence.
Walt takes a breath; here goes nothing.
He walks past the gate, up the steps, and rings the doorbell – and waits. His mind cycles through possibilities – a completely different person answering who has never heard of Jesse, an angry Andrea who warns him away, a new girl entirely fluttering over to him and telling him that Jesse is "out". He expects any of these.
The door opens, the inside wooden one and then the outside metal frame (in which designs of flowers and some kind of bird are coiled); Walt finds himself staring at the slack-jawed, older, taller (just an inch or too, or maybe that's because his hair is no longer shaved off but grown in a rather conservative fluffed-up cut), but still so completely recognizable form of Jesse Pinkman. He no longer has any idea what to say.