I didn’t want to go inside. Inside was the answer to the most important question I had ever asked. I rested my forehead against the door for several seconds. My heart beat a Morse code. Finally, I stuck the key into the lock. It had been a while since I last prayed, but I asked for a few things and promised many more.
The lock turned smoothly and the door swung inward, the bottom hinge greeting me with its familiar squawk. I stepped over the threshold very, very tentatively.
This was not the place I shared with Melissa, but I knew it all the same.
I checked the kitchen first. There were the familiar red-and-white boxes stacked in a Leaning Tower of Pizza. Beer cans were piled in the recycling bin while dishes waited patiently in the sink for a trip to the dishwasher. I hadn’t been this sloppy in two years.
I went into the living room and examined the furniture. Everything was where it had once been. The leather-and-chrome sofa lay against the wall, clashing with the brown recliner and the mahogany table. I was once proud of my living room decor, and paid good money for it, too. That was before Melissa came along to point out that the furnishings blended as tastefully as a blue pinstripe jacket with plaid pants.
This was my place and my place only. But it could still be that Melissa and I just didn’t move in together. Maybe she’d just decided this apartment was beyond repair. There had to be a trace of her somewhere in here. Maybe a photograph, or a postcard, or just a yellow sticky note with neat handwriting resembling calligraphy. What about Sierra Club magazines and tourist guides for the Amazon jungle? Tofu and bok choy in the fridge?
But there wasn’t a single indication that she’d ever stepped foot in this apartment. That she’d ever walked into my life.
I collapsed into the recliner, grateful for the support of its plush, narrow arms. Something crunched underneath me. I looked down and saw a crushed Cheese Doodle that left an orange blotch on my pants.
“This can’t be happening,” I shouted to walls that did not answer. “This isn’t the way it was meant to be.”
I heard a sound.
“Melissa?”
Yellow eyes regarded me curiously from the foot of the chair. The cat jumped up into my lap, then just as quickly jumped out again.
“So I lose Melissa but I still have you, Wizard. Tell me life is fair.”
Wizard licked his paws. Then he meowed and rubbed against my leg in the universal feline signal that it was feeding time. Absently, I got up, took a can of cat food from the cupboard, and fed him. At least one of us would have what he wanted. This Wizard was a little chunkier than the cat I’d seen this morning. I used to share my takeout lasagna or Kung Pao chicken with him before Melissa convinced me that it was terribly unhealthy to feed him this kind of food.
I reached down to pet the cat, but he slipped away from my fingers. We were back to uneasy coexistence. I sat on the floor and stared off at this familiar/foreign apartment. Then I noticed the red light blinking on the answering machine. The digital counter indicated that I had two messages. I hit the play button. First came the sound of traffic. I forgot that I was being recorded when I called from the street.
Next came a woman’s voice. “Hi, Ken,” she said, and my heart skipped a beat. But the voice was higher-pitched and bubblier than Melissa’s, with a Southern accent and the bright and friendly tone of an airline reservation clerk. “This is Lori. Your friend Paul said you might like to get together. Someone I work with has two tickets to the Kennedy Center that he can’t use Wednesday night. Let me know if you want to go. It should be fun.”
I’m a logical man, magical trips to someone else’s past notwithstanding. As an attorney (at least I assumed I was still an attorney), I was trained to assess facts, not speculate. Now the facts assembled themselves in front of me in all their heartless glory:
Fact: There was no sign that Melissa lived with me.
Fact: A woman named Lori left a message asking me out on a date that my friend Paul set up.
Fact: That Paul was setting me up with women meant that he believed I was dating and not getting married next weekend.
Fact: I had managed to make an incomprehensibly huge mess of my life.
Recovery Page 7
