Chapter 5

"They found us! They must have followed you."

There was a flurry of movement. Sounds of gunshots. The movement was blurred, but there was a shape. A human shape. He still couldn't see anything very well. It was still mostly sounds and those were loud and intense, almost painful. Too loud. He wanted to quiet things down but he was a slave to what he was witnessing. No, not just witnessing. He was a part of it.

And he was speaking.

"Out here."

"What?! You're crazy. It won't hold us!"

"Now! We don't have a choice!"

More gunshots. A loud thumping.

"They'll kill us. What do you want more?"

Another flurry of movement.

The sound of metal rattling. Then, a piercing scream.

"No! No!"

More metal.

No movement, but he really wanted it.

Gunshots.

And one clear thought that came into his mind.

How did they even know we were here?

A feeling of grief, of guilt, of fear.

...and pursuit.

There was anguish accompanying this movement. Anguish and guilt. It was so intense that he thought it might choke him.

But he had to escape...even though he wanted to stay.

No.

Joel sat up in bed and was surprised to feel tears on his cheeks. He was shaking and breathing heavily. In the two weeks that he'd been here, he'd had a nightmare like this every night. The thing was that the dreams, whatever they were, kept changing. He got more information as the dreams continued. It was just that the details remained tantalizingly blurry. He got no information about where he was, who he was with, what exactly was happening. The gunshots were new this time. Well, the extent of them was new. He had heard them before, but there were more this time. The other issue was that things didn't happen in quite the same way from nightmare to nightmare. If it was a real memory, shouldn't it be the same every time?

Regardless, it didn't change the fact that he was deeply affected by it every time. He tried to push it away, but he couldn't. He tried to tell himself that he didn't want to know what it meant, but he was lying.

No matter how often he told himself that his past didn't matter, he couldn't help knowing that it was all a lie. His past did matter. Even if his dream wasn't completely accurate, his mind wasn't letting it go, no matter how much he wanted it to.

...or rather, no matter how much he pretended he wanted it to.

He sat where he was for a long time, just trying to push away all those strong emotions that came out when he slept. He needed to get in control of himself because he was about to ask for a little more of Jack's trust and he didn't want to let Jack see his inner turmoil. He'd got some inklings of it on occasion, but Joel wasn't about to let more out than he could help. Jack might be soft and he was probably trustworthy, but Joel couldn't be completely sure. He couldn't fully trust anyone so he needed to be careful.

Finally, he felt like he could get out of bed. He stumbled into the bathroom and reluctantly looked at himself in the mirror. He still didn't like to do that because, while he had learned to recognize the face he saw as himself, it still didn't conjure up any particular self-image and he didn't like that. The graze on his head had healed up, and the wound on his arm was mostly fine as well. He was grateful for small favors. The last thing he'd wanted was to deal with something infected.

But there was still that look in his eye, the one he couldn't hide first thing in the morning.

He forced himself to go through the sort-of-normal routine of getting ready for this Sunday morning. It wasn't very early. His plan for this coming week was to find a part-time day job that would get him better income than Jack could pay him. He wished that he could just work for Jack and be done with it, but while he had jumped in to help with service a time or two, mostly, Jack had the people he needed to run his bar.

For now, he needed to wait for Jack to arrive. He seemed to come in on Sundays fairly early (the two Sundays that Joel had been around). Well before the bar opened. If that was a real pattern then, this could work well.

So once he finished his breakfast, he took up a vigil of sorts, looking out the window and watching for Jack to get there.

It took an hour. Joel watched him go into the bar and then he took a breath and drew on that self-confidence that seemed to come so easily to him. He felt really uncertain and even afraid quite often but he had found that he had the ability to hide all that most of the time. Some of it got out on occasion but he could still be very sure of himself. He had no idea why, but he could.

He walked down the stairs and then knocked on the back door, knowing that Jack would realize it was him. It took a few seconds but then, the door opened.

"What's up, Joel?" he asked.

"I was wondering if I could ask you for something."

Jack stood aside and gestured for Joel to come in.

"What?" he asked, gruffly.

"I was wondering if I could come in here and practice the piano some days."

"You sound fine."

"But I could sound better... if I could practice, maybe learn some new songs."

"You running out of them?" Jack asked.

Joel smiled, hiding how uncertain that answer was. "Not so far."

And it was true. He seemed to have a very wide repertoire of music in his head, although he did notice that the genres were rather restricted and nothing he played was new. It didn't seem to matter. Most of Jack's clientele seemed to be older, beyond the techno/hip-hop/pop/whatever that was popular with younger drinkers. No one had complained about his less-than-cutting-edge music.

"If you don't want to trust me alone in the bar, I get it. I've only been here for a couple of weeks and you don't know if I'm legit or not. It could even be just when you get here early, if you can stand to listen to me for that long."

Jack looked at him for a long moment without speaking. Joel found that he didn't mind it at all. Even though he was nervous, the evaluating silence didn't really bother him.

"You find another place to work yet?"

"Not yet. That's my goal for this week."

"You sure you really want to?"

Joel smiled. "Well, I'll admit that there's quite a lot of appeal for living on next to nothing, but I think I'll try to suffer through making a little bit more money."

"I told you I couldn't pay you much," Jack said, seeming a little insulted. "I even said that you couldn't live on what I could pay."

"That's not what I meant," Joel said, quickly. The last thing he wanted was to insult the first person to give him a chance here. "I meant that I'm serious about getting another job. You warned me and I like what I'm doing here. If I could make more here, great, but since I can't, I really am going to be looking this week."

He was relieved when Jack smiled a little. He didn't joke much. He didn't talk much. But Joel was coming to appreciate his straightforward approach to life. It was just that he couldn't read him very well.

"I don't care if you play, but only when I'm here. I'm not giving you a key to the bar."

"That's fine," Joel said. "I'll play for a bit and then I'll go up to my room and get out of your hair."

"Fine by me."

Joel nodded and walked over to the piano, noting that Jack went on with his own work which seemed to be paperwork. Even a bar had bills, Joel supposed.

He sat down and spent about half an hour plinking. He didn't really outright play anything. What he was really doing was going through songs in his head and seeing how many he thought he could reproduce. And there were a lot of them, but at the same time, Joel didn't think that he had much ability to read music. This was playing by ear. Maybe he could, but he didn't know if he could... but he did know that he could play by ear or by memory. What he played probably wasn't really very close to the real thing but it was recognizable. He went through a few Frank Sinatra songs, some Broadway songs, even some 60s hits. But then, as he played, his mind went back to Billy Joel again. He found himself thinking through how many songs he knew by Billy Joel and he knew a lot of them. Some, he was sure he wouldn't be able to pretend to play without lots of practice, but many he could do.

Absently, he started picking out a tune and before he knew it, he was singing along.

"They say these are not the best of times

But they're the only ones I've ever known."

The words stabbed him in the heart and he stopped for a moment. He couldn't keep playing that song, even though the rest of the words had nothing to do with his situation. He forced himself to start playing again, the first song that came to him.

Billy Joel, of course.

And it wasn't any happier than the previous song, but he started playing and he didn't stop this time.

"I've been livin' for the moment
But I just can't have my way
And I'm afraid to go to sleep
'Cause tomorrow is today."

As he kept playing and singing, the song dragged him down to the same place he'd been when he woke up. No matter how he tried to live in the present, his unknown past and his uncertain future pulled at him. He couldn't just live as he was, no matter how much he tried. He finished the first section and the bridge and then moved into a loud, almost defiant instrumental part. He didn't remember if the instrumental part had originally been defiant, but he was playing it that way, but then, he dropped the volume to finish singing the song.

"I don't care to know the hour
'Cause it's passing anyway
I don't have to see tomorrow
'Cause I saw it yesterday

Though I'm living and I'm singing
And although my hands still play
Soon enough it will all be over
'Cause tomorrow is today."

After he finished, he stopped playing and just ran his fingers over the worn keys of the piano. He didn't know how it could really be over. He didn't even know what the start or middle was. How could he know what the end would be?

That panicky feeling rose up inside him and he decided he was done playing until it was time to play for pay. He got up and hurried to the door.

"Thanks, Jack," he said, but he knew his tone was anything but grateful.

Still, he kept moving, barely looking over at where Jack was just standing up from whatever work he was doing. Joel left the bar and ran up the stairs, opened the door to his room, slammed it shut, locked it and then nearly collapsed onto the bed. For the first time in the weeks since his initial awakening, he let himself truly feel. He didn't try to pretend that it was fine. He didn't try to ignore the horror in which he was existing. He didn't try to stave off all those dark emotions roiling around inside him.

He lay on the bed, curled himself into a fetal position and covered his head with his hands. There were emotions begging to be let out and expressed, but while he would let himself feel them, he wouldn't let himself express them. Not when someone might hear him.

He let himself feel the panic. He let himself feel the fear. He let himself feel the grief, although he didn't know what the grief was for. He let himself be afraid of the fact that he knew nothing.

He didn't know how long he lay there, lost in the miasma of his swirling emotions, but the effort it took to feel them and not to let them out eventually exhausted him and he fell asleep.