Subject Seven

Chapter Seven
Gene Rothstein

The sound of the garbage truck rumbling a few feet down the alley woke Gene Rothstein from his troubled sleep. He opened one eye first and looked around, seeing garbage, graffiti-covered brick walls and a rat gnawing on what might have been a piece of donut.

That woke him up in a hurry. He should have been looking at his bedroom wall and the poster of Lindsay Lohan in a bikini, not at a brick wall or a half-starved rodent.

“Ahh!” Under the circumstances, it was the best thing he could come up with to say.

Gene stood up, wincing at the pain in most of his muscles, and did his best to figure out exactly why he was in a strange alleyway. To add to the fun, he wasn’t even dressed in his pajamas. Instead he was wearing a ratty pair of blue jeans, shoes that felt too large for his feet and a T-shirt that fluttered around his narrow shoulders in the stale wind that blew across him.

“Ahh!” He looked around again, desperate for anything that looked familiar. There was nothing.

“Oh, shit, Mom’s gonna have a cow.” He muttered the words under his breath as he started for the closest exit from the alleyway. The rat looked at him indifferently and kept eating its breakfast.

Gene looked around at the buildings on the other side of the street and felt his stomach churn a bit. He had no idea where he was, but Cioffi’s Transmissions across the way didn’t even come close to looking familiar.

With no idea what else to do, Gene crossed the street to the garage and stepped into the air-conditioned reception area.

The heavyset woman behind the counter looked at him for a moment, her face twisted into a bitter scowl. “May I help you?” If the air hadn’t already been chilly, the tone of her voice would have cooled it off.

“Um. I think I’m lost.”

“Hon, you’re either lost or you ain’t.” She looked him over from head to toe and seemed ever so disappointed in what she was examining.

His stomach did another roll over.

“I’m supposed to be in North Tarrytown.”

The woman stared at him for several seconds, her dark eyes narrowing in suspicion. Maybe she thought he was joking, but he was deadly serious.

“If you’re supposed to be in North Tarrytown, then you’re lost. This is Brooklyn.”

Gene nodded and tried not to hyperventilate. Oh yes, he was lost.

“My mom’s gonna kill me.”