Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger

by Beth Harbison

  “So that’s one thing we need to find out. It should become evident.”

  “It’s only going to become evident if we see someone. If we don’t, we still won’t know if that means no one’s there or they’re just asleep.”

  “Stop borrowing trouble. And did you hear what you just did there? You said they. I, myself, am almost positive there’s no they, only a he. Furthermore, I have a feeling we’re going to catch at least some sort of glimpse of him.”

  “Almost positive?”

  “Okay, positive.”

  “Too little, too late.”

  “Sh!” He pointed toward the window. “Did you see something?”

  Nothing had changed. Not one light in one window of the house we’d been staring at for almost an hour now. “No.”

  We fell silent. Rain ticked, thin and sharp, on the soft convertible top that was a delight to have down on a sunny day but more depressing than a Siberian winter to sit under in bad weather.

  “I can’t be this person,” I said after a bit.

  “This is exactly you.”

  “No, this is exactly who I don’t want to be.”

  “Consider this a bonus round in our game. Another thing you’re uncomfortable with—facing the truth.”

  “What if I don’t like the truth?”

  He steeled his gaze on me in the mostly dark car and said, “Make no mistake. You can handle the truth. It will set you free. That’s why we’re here, to exorcize the demon Burke from your mind once and for all.”

  “You’re mixing up your references there.”

  “Sue me.”

  “Anyway, what if you’re wrong? What if we see something really upsetting and then I have to live with that? What if the suspicion becomes a visual certainty that I can never unsee?” Panic at the idea built in me. “I can’t do this. I can’t. We have to go.”

  “Face it!” His whisper became a fierce stage whisper. “Conquer this!”

  “No!”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  This was asinine. “What do you mean, yes? You can’t just yes my no and think it’s over. Your yes doesn’t trump my no, and you don’t trump me.”

  “Oh, yes, I do.” He gave a slow, purposely maniacal chuckle. “I’m the one driving.”

  I reached for the door handle.

  Glenn must have read my mind, because he clicked the automatic lock button before I could touch it. One tug at the door handle told me he’d pressed the child safety lock too.

  “Good thing you locked the doors,” I cautioned. “This isn’t the best neighborhood. I hope no one comes along with a blunt instrument and smashes the windows.”

  “You don’t scare me, little one. There isn’t a house in this neighborhood priced at under five hundred grand. This isn’t exactly Thugville.”

  “Thugs don’t hang out in Thugville, they go to wealthy neighborhoods to steal.”

  He flashed me a wordless look.

  “He’s not there,” I said after a few minutes. “No one is. This is stupid.” But the thought made me feel curiously bereft. I’d been ready to see him. Ready to glimpse him. Eager, I guess, to glimpse him.

  “He’s there,” Glenn said, suddenly serious. “Look. Top left window.”

  My eyes were not what they used to be, but I stared hard until I saw the flicker of someone walking past a distant light.

  “Oh!” I felt the familiar cocktail of excitement and fear at the prospect of seeing him.

  “Careful, Quinn.” I felt Glenn’s hand on my shoulder. “Someone’s liable to think you care.”

  “At this point, we’ve been looking at this house for so long that anything is going to make me feel like a lion pouncing its prey.”

  Rain drizzled against the window, forming teary rivulets against the glass. It was a perfect metaphor for the way I felt, sitting outside this house feeling emotions that hadn’t changed one iota since I’d been with him, even though our lives had changed immeasurably.

  Or Burke’s had anyway.

  We sat in the stillness for a long time, watching the darkened house, waiting for some follow-up. The distant light was extinguished and I waited with bated breath for a light to click on in the bedroom, like a movie flickering onto a big screen, but it didn’t happen.

  Then Glenn’s voice broke the silence. “What would you do,” he said slowly, “if he swung past the window right now, buck-naked, on a trapeze?”

  The image was so unexpected I cracked up. “Okay, that’s it. I’ve had it. This was a dumb idea, albeit a good dinner.”

  “Wait!” He pointed silently. A shadow form appeared in the window upstairs.

  “That’s him!” There was a strange gratification, even while panic filled every inch of me.

  “He looks alone.”

  “Maybe. But what does that prove? We’ve got to go, Glenn. Please. Please. I have a bad feeling. It would be so humiliating to be caught out here.”

  “Calm down, we’ll go.” He reached for the ignition, then glanced at the house and said, “Oh, shit.”

  I looked. Burke was coming out the front door, heading straight for the car.

  “Why?” I asked. “How did he know we were here?” I looked around frantically, and that’s when I noticed the red glow illuminating the street, the trees, the cars behind us. “Oh, my god, Glenn, have you had your foot on the fucking brake this whole time?”

  Immediately he lifted his foot and the red light went out.

  Oh. My. God. The brakes had provided a beacon of light through the misty night, much like a lighthouse three hundred yards off the coast.

  “I’m so sorry,” Glenn said, uncharacteristically humble. “It’s habit. If you’re sitting behind the wheel, unmoving, you keep the brake on. I’m so sorry, Quinn, really.”

  I couldn’t speak. It was too late.

  Burke was approaching the driver’s window.

  Chapter 19

  “Hide!” Glenn rasped.

  “Where?” I returned frantically. “Gun it! Get out of here! Maybe he hasn’t recognized us yet!”

  “He’s here. Turn your face to the window,” he said through his teeth. “And don’t look back for anything. Act like you’re asleep.”

  I tried to scoop my hair to the side, and turned so I was completely facing the window. One good thing about the dark little convertible I had just been complaining about having the top up on is that when the top is up, it makes the inside that much smaller and cramped and dark. It was possible that Burke, at six feet tall, could stand at the driver’s window talking to Glenn and never see anything higher than my ass.

  Which he would probably recognize.

  Also, who else would be here with Glenn? Or, better question, why would Glenn be here at all?

  This was all so obvious.

  “Go,” I barely whispered. “Drive, drive, drive. I don’t care what he thinks he’s seen, he can’t be sure—”

  “Sh! I’ve got this covered.” This was followed by the sound of his window slowly lowering, then, “Hey, man, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “That’s my house,” I heard Burke’s voice say.

  “No kidding!” Glenn sounded genuinely surprised. I made a mental note of his ability to lie convincingly. “We were just at a party at the Barcowskis’.”

  “Yeah? The Barcowskis’? Right across the street from me?”

  Glenn gave a casual laugh. “Small world, huh?” He started the car.

  “Who are you with?”

  Another laugh from Glenn, who shifted his voice to something just above a whisper. “She’s beat, I think she’s sleeping. Anyway, it was good to see you, I’m sure I’ll see you around the ol’ hometown.”

  “No doubt. Or if you come back to the Barcowskis’ house.”

  “Whew! They’re going to be cleaning up for a while, I’ll tell you. We had a ball.” I felt the car shift into gear. “See ya!”

  “Night.”

  And then, finally, m
ercifully, the car started to move. When I felt him round the corner, I turned around and looked at him. “The Barcowskis’? How did you come up with that?”

  “What, you think this is the first time I’ve stalked someone?”

  I looked at him, the streetlights illuminating his face like a strobe light as we passed. “I’m gathering it’s not?”

  “Oh, hell, no!” He returned his attention to the street in front of him and adjusted his grip on the wheel. “First rule of stalking someone who thinks you shouldn’t know where they live is look up the people around where they live. Get some names, other streets nearby. So, depending on the circumstance, on who catches you, you can either say you were here but at someone else’s house, or ask for directions to a nearby place. That way it’s understandable that you’re a few streets off.” He glanced at me and I could see the smugness in his expression.

  And I had to hand it to him, I was impressed. These details would never have occurred to me, but maybe he was right, maybe it had saved us this once.

  “Do you think he knew it was me in the passenger seat?”

  “Naaah.” But something in his expression allowed for doubt. There was an unspoken I hope not.

  By both of us.

  I leaned back in my seat and made myself take a few deep breaths. “He hasn’t been around,” I rationalized, more to myself than to him. “He doesn’t necessarily know how close we are. I mean, sure, he saw you in my shop that one time, but that doesn’t mean I’d be with you at some party. In his neighborhood. On a Wednesday night.” My own words were deflating me quickly. “Oh, I am so screwed. He totally knows.”

  “No, he doesn’t!”

  “If he doesn’t know it was me here, he at the very least thinks I sent you here. Which is probably worse, come to think of it.” I covered my face with my hands. “Oh, my god, he thinks I sent you to spy on him!”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Glenn said, as I felt him accelerate onto 15. “You just agreed that kissing him was a mistake and that you don’t want to get back together. Why would he think you were spying on him after that?”

  “Because everything he needed to know about how I feel about him was very clearly communicated in that kiss, believe me.”

  “Slut.”

  I laughed. “That’s me!”

  He was laughing as well. “That doesn’t give him X-ray vision, though. He’s too tall to have seen you in that seat when he was standing right next to my door. Trust me.”

  “I did trust you! Look where it got me!”

  “Tell you what, I’ll give you a day’s credit for this, even though it was a miss. Stalking was definitely outside your wheelhouse, so it was still a worthwhile assignment. You’re done for the day.”

  “Thank goodness. Does that mean tomorrow will be something easy, like Wear a Red Shirt Day?”

  “No.” He looked thoughtful. “But I’ll definitely come up with something that’ll make you feel better after this.” He nodded slowly. “Actually … yes. I’ve got it. Tomorrow will be fun.” He glanced at me. “I promise.”

  Yeah. I’d heard his promises before. We’d have to see.

  At least there would probably be cheese involved.

  * * *

  Suffice it to say, Improv Class Day was every bit as bad as you might think it would be.

  After two hours of instruction from a community theater actor who himself couldn’t act like anything less than a caricature of an actor—to say nothing of the simple happiness of the other students (obviously I was the only one who had been forced there by a friend on a mission to crack their shell)—I was feeling like a little black rain cloud.

  No, a big black rain cloud.

  At another time, under different circumstances, I might have gotten a kick out if it. I’d never want to be an actress, I’d never be comfortable on a stage, I had no illusions about that, but the enthusiasm of most of the people there was the kind of thing that’s normally infectious.

  Not tonight.

  When it had finally ended—late, of course, because people had questions and apparently the Groupon had only been for one class—I’d driven home alone, feeling more and more melancholy by the minute.

  It’s funny how heartache can take up residence in you and live on and on and on, even if it’s not fed for years. It whispers in your mind, insisting things weren’t as bad as you remembered, as sharp as you remembered, as whatever painful thing as you remembered.

  Obviously I hadn’t gone for ten years without ever thinking of Burke. It wasn’t as if I’d flipped a switch, turned the feelings off, and never thought about him again until he was right in front of me. If it were that easy, I would, at least, have been encouraged that maybe I could flip the switch again when he was gone and this turmoil would pack all its questions into a bag that was never to be opened again and would lock away all my tangled feelings with it.

  But as I sat on the stoop outside my house looking at the waxing moon and starry sky, it was small random moments that came to me and pinched at my soul. A sunny day when Burke and I were meeting in the afternoon but he’d missed lunch so I’d stopped by Puccio’s Deli and picked up a steak-and-cheese sub for him. Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, onions, sweet peppers, Italian dressing. I’d placed the order and waited in the little dining room at a Formica table, completely content with every single thing in my life. I was in love, I was so lucky—I truly thought this at the time—to have never had to go through the heartbreak most people did. It wasn’t a remarkable day, I honestly don’t even remember what he and I were doing when we met up that afternoon, I just remember the small ordinary moment of picking up lunch. The way the sun felt on me when I got out of the car, the way the deli smelled when I walked in, the cold of the refrigerator case when I reached in and picked up a bottle of Coke for him.…

  Silly, right? A totally unremarkable event on an otherwise unmemorable day. Puccio’s is still there. I can’t even imagine how many carryout orders they fill per day, but I bet more than one went to a girlfriend picking up for a boyfriend on a day she’d never imagine would stand out as remarkable.

  For a long time after we broke up, those were the kinds of memories that haunted me. The wedding dress was easily dismissed—too big, too obvious. It was almost sarcastic in its sadness. Likewise any recollection of sewing it, of picking bridesmaid dresses, wedding rings, and so on. It wasn’t even that I avoided those thoughts, it was that they were just too big to take in and wholly redigest.

  But cleaning out a closet and coming across a bag containing an old nightshirt and a Ziploc bag of little hotel toiletries I’d packed to take on an overnight at the farm could reduce me to sobs.

  A cheap aluminum spoon I’d taken from a restaurant after we’d had lobster bisque and a crabby waitress made grief well up in me and spill over my body, bringing physical discomfort to what was otherwise just emotional distress.

  Dredging up those memories now led, necessarily, to the memory of the end and the long ellipsis it had left in my life where I would have preferred a period. Or an exclamation point.

  Instead it was like opening a can of flat soda, there was just a soft, fizzy sigh and then … nothing. I was heavy with the knowledge that I had to deal with all the things that had been woken up in me. Sad things. Ugly things I didn’t want to look at. Hard things I didn’t want to know.

  Things I probably should have confronted at the time. No, not probably, things I definitely should have confronted at the time. Somehow I’d thought if I didn’t look at them they’d go away. I think on some level I even believed in fate, and trusted that if Burke wasn’t the right guy, then someone even better—someone unimaginably wonderful (I certainly couldn’t imagine him)—would come along.

  Fairy tales die hard in the minds and hearts of some girls.

  I wish I were cooler than that, but I’m not. Deep inside, I’m Cinderella. I still hope the shoe fits. Unlike the conclusion I’d drawn about Dottie, my standards for happily ever after were decidedly romantic.r />
  So, sitting there looking at the sky, I felt very aware of how familiar this heartache was. I had looked at this same sky years ago, wishing on the first star I saw that something would happen in my life and make me forget all of this pain.

  I don’t recall the exact date, or what had happened during the day or week that might have ratcheted up my loneliness for Burke, but I remember it was more than a year after we broke up because I felt I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. Friends who had been patient and supportive at first had, understandably, begun to look or sound distracted if I broached the subject. Sometimes there was a tiny snap to the responses, which always struck me like a blow, and I would back off quickly, trying to assert that I hadn’t meant I was still really thinking about him or, god forbid, missing him. Of course not! We all knew he was El Diablo, I’d have to be a complete idiot to waste one more tear on him.

  Etc., etc., etc.

  So it was a peculiar feeling to look back on that memory as a moment of some sort of warmth. At that time it had felt very cold, but with all the distance of time wedged between then and now, it almost felt quaint compared to how reality had shaken down.

  Ten years later and here I was, alone. Sad. Thinking about kissing him, touching him. Thinking about getting him a sandwich. Thinking about holding hands while walking across the parking lot to a restaurant under a lipstick smear of sunset in a sky that could have been April or November. I can’t even recall.

  When you find yourself looking back on previous melancholy with melancholy, you’ve got some crap to deal with.

  I went inside to my computer and, calling on that fate that I had only a tenuous belief in—and some anger at, if it did exist and had abandoned me—I opened my e-mail and typed his old address into the “to” box. It might not be his anymore. It probably wasn’t; now that he’d moved and opened his own business, he probably had a different account. In which case he’d never get this and maybe I’d be relieved.