Desperate

by Daniel Palmer

  “And what about your test matrixes?” Anna asked.

  “Our test plans are fine. They’re excellent, in fact, but just having Matt call me into question tarnishes my reputation.”

  “At least you’re in the clear.”

  “Yeah, but just because the test plans are fine doesn’t mean the project is going to be a success. A lot is riding on this demo. It really has to work.”

  Anna pulled herself closer. “I’m sure you’ll be just fine, and the demo will go great.”

  I smiled weakly. “I wish I had your confidence.”

  For a time, I forgot all about Lily. I didn’t know where she was or what she was doing. I hadn’t attached a GPS tracker to her ankle. Lily came and went as she pleased, a separate but wholly connected part of our lives.

  Neither of us felt in the mood for a big dinner, so we opted instead for cheesecake and coffee at the ever-crowded Trident Booksellers & Cafe. Anna nabbed one of the coveted tables near a window, while I disappeared in search of a book I wanted to buy. When I returned, Anna had our cheesecake, her latte, and my coffee waiting.

  “What did you get?” she asked, pointing to the brown bag I now carried.

  “A book,” I said.

  “Cute, wise guy,” Anna said. “What, pray tell, book did you purchase?”

  I took the book out of the bag and flopped it on the table. Anna’s eyes went wide with excitement.

  “The Coolest Baby Names Ever,” she read, her mouth creasing into a breathtaking smile.

  “I figured we should start thinking ahead,” I said.

  Anna leaned across the table and gave me a kiss on the mouth that might have turned a head or two.

  “Baby, thank you,” Anna said.

  “The book didn’t cost that much,” I said.

  Anna leaned over the table once again, but this time to deliver a playful slug on my arm.

  “I don’t care what the book cost,” she said. “I care what it represents.”

  “It represents that I’m in this with you, all the way,” I said.

  We kissed again, more a peck this time around.

  “You know, Lily is still very shaken by what happened with my mom,” Anna said while leafing through the book. “We spoke about it this morning after you left for work.”

  “So I’m guessing she’s going to want to delay her visit with my folks for just a bit.”

  Anna made a little noise, so she didn’t have to say that was an understatement. Searching for a change of subject, I asked to see the book and flipped to a random page.

  “What about Bay?” I suggested.

  Anna made a face.

  “As a name, or something we should do at the moon?” she asked.

  “Cosimo,” I offered.

  “Is that even a real name?”

  “It’s in the book,” I said, pointing.

  Anna ripped the book from my hands.

  “How about Saffron?” she asked.

  “Too spicy,” I said.

  “Trudy?”

  “Wasn’t she on The Facts of Life?” I asked.

  “Notice how I’m picking out the girls names,” Anna said.

  “Notice that I don’t care what we have, as long as he or she is healthy and ours.”

  “Cheers to that,” Anna said, with a sip of her latte.

  I took the book from her.

  “How about Thelonious?” I asked.

  “How about it’s not tickling my ivories,” she said.

  “Oh, do you want your ivories tickled?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she answered, returning a knowing smirk.

  I stood, took Anna by the hand, ready to usher her out of the coffee shop, quick as could be, but she pulled back and held her ground.

  “Let me buy a sandwich,” Anna said. “Just in case.”

  I nodded, because she did this most every time we went out for lunch. Anna purchased a chicken panini with tomato, avocado, and cheddar cheese from the fresh-faced young woman working behind the counter. It did not take long before we came upon a derelict-looking man, with a filthy gray beard, wearing a ratty sports coat and soiled pants, sitting on a metal grating in the shade of a tall building. His hands were extended as we passed.

  “Can you spare a dollar?” he asked in a raspy voice.

  “I don’t have a dollar,” Anna said, “but I do have a meal.”

  Anna was loath to give money to those who begged for fear they would use it to buy alcohol or drugs, but she had no qualms about feeding the hungry. As she knelt down to hand over the sandwich, I thought back to the day she crouched before a girl who sat crying on the curbside of a bus stop. It occurred to me then how one simple act of kindness really did have the power to alter lives.

  We arrived home in separate cars. I parked on the street so that Anna could pull into the driveway. We walked up the front stairs holding hands. At some point in our marriage, Karen and I had stopped holding hands while traipsing through the basic rhythms of life. I can’t say when that happened exactly, but I only know that it did because I had Anna. I suspected that down the road, Anna and I would stop holding hands when we walked into the house together. It wouldn’t mean our love for each other had lessened, just that it would grow and change with the years.

  Anna wasted no time getting down to business. Standing in our narrow hallway, she began to undress before I closed the front door behind me. We were kissing now, our mouths locked together, tongues exploring. Anna pushed me away, only to undo her belt. I slipped my hands around her slender waist, pulling up the fabric of her dress, feeling the firmness of her body and silky brush of her leggings. I hiked her dress up higher and higher until the slippery fabric rested above her hips. A groan escaped Anna’s mouth as I caressed her hair while kissing her neck. My other hand was still working to touch whatever body parts had been concealed by her clothes. She turned herself around, hands pressed firmly against the hall wall, pushing herself into me, grinding her hips to feel my excitement build.

  Pivoting her body, Anna met my gaze. “We’re going to be able to do this less and less once the baby is born,” she said, breathing hard while working to unbutton my pants. She ran her hand up and down the front of my zipper, getting me even more ready than I was before. We stumbled into the bedroom, kissing and caressing, tugging at our clothes, growing hungrier by the second. Locked in an embrace, we fell onto the bed and peeled away what little remained of our clothing. When I entered her, Anna cried out softly, as though the immense pleasure still came as a surprise. The more Anna moaned, the more I wanted to please her. My body tingled as I began to increase the speed of my rhythm. We were breathless now, sweaty, our appetite for each other insatiable until we climaxed together. Anna cried out as her whole body tensed. I felt her shudder in my arms.

  I lay on my back, with Anna nestled snugly against me. She traced the contours of my chest with her long finger, her body completely spent and relaxed. I was home.

  I slid out of bed feeling lighter than I had in weeks. Anna looked over my naked body, pleased with what she saw. I took off the condom I had worn and wrapped it in a couple of tissues. Anna was terrified of another failed pregnancy and didn’t want to take the pill because it messed up her hormones. I had volunteered to wear protection. It didn’t lessen our pleasure any.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked.

  “For more of that,” Anna said, playfully slapping my behind.

  “Takeout? Italian? Chinese?”

  “You decide.”

  “Chinese,” I said, thinking about the first time we met Lily.

  “We need to do this more often,” Anna said to my back as I ambled out the bedroom.

  “Most definitely,” I answered.

  I made a bathroom pit stop, did my business, and casually tossed the condom in the trash. I turned the handles on the sink to get some warm water flowing. Steam from the water clung to the mirror on the medicine cabinet, fogging away my reflection. I threw two handfuls of water on my face and thought about
what Anna and I could watch on TV while we ate. We had a bunch of stuff on DVR if we couldn’t agree on a show. Maybe Shameless. Maybe Californication. Doubtful she’d be game for The Walking Dead.

  I was shutting off the water when something caught my eye. To be more specific, it was something that wasn’t there that had grabbed my attention.

  It should have been hanging on the upper left corner of the medicine cabinet. It had been there every single day. For the first time since I’d moved into this place, the necklace—a silver chain and tiny heart-shaped locket with a miniaturized picture of my family inside—wasn’t there.

  And I knew just who had taken it.

  CHAPTER 16

  Before I did anything, before I called out to Anna, before I put my hand through a wall, I went for my bottle of Adderall. I kept the bottle in my Dopp kit, which I stored in the cabinet beneath the sink. It wasn’t something Anna would go rifling through, so it was a relatively safe place to hide my illicit drug of choice. Anna didn’t know about it and I didn’t want her to know.

  I hadn’t planned to become an Adderall addict. I picked up the med after stumbling on an article about how college students were taking ADHD drugs recreationally. At the time, it seemed the perfect solution to my ongoing problem at work. I read up on the science behind Adderall before ingesting the first pill. Most of my research focused on people who took Adderall and didn’t have ADHD, people like me. I was curious about potential side effects. It seemed to be the drug of choice for those of us who needed to do it all and do it fast.

  I started popping pills six months after the car accident, at a critical time for the Olympian project. I needed the distraction of work to help combat my deepening depression. At least that was what I told myself. I couldn’t do my job. I couldn’t focus. If my performance at work didn’t improve, I figured at some point HR would have no choice but to let me go. This was my thinking, anyway.

  Adderall, from what I’d read, would stimulate the dopamine production in my frontal cortex to improve my concentration and focus. It’s a blend of various drugs, including amphetamine salts, which technically makes it speed, and yes, it’s a controlled substance as far as the FDA is concerned. The neurobiology was pretty straightforward. With the increased dopamine flow, an ADHD brain could carry on its executive functions as a normal brain would. For those without ADHD, it’s like being an athlete and taking steroids.

  My concentration went from fleeting to superglued on every task. Motivation? That got jacked up, too. Thinking and focus came in sharper and clearer than any HD broadcast. I felt like I could do the job they were paying me to do and then some.

  That was how I got hooked.

  Adderall gave me the focus I needed and let me forget my pain. Without it, I concentrated on all the wrong things. I desperately wanted something, anything, to numb my shattered soul. That had been five years ago. I should have weaned myself off it; I should have been able to work without Adderall. But I couldn’t, which made me an addict, and Adderall my secret.

  I popped two pills, double the prescribed dosage. If I weren’t careful, I’d go through my allotted quantity before the month was up. But sometimes I skipped days, so I had accumulated a stash for those extra-needy periods. My blood was already pumping like a steam engine on overdrive. For a moment I feared the accelerant would stop my racing heart midbeat. In some ways, I wished it would. To be with them again, to be with my son in the place that only Brad could connect us.

  The drug was in me. I wanted it inside me so I could think clearly. Think . . . what was I going to do about Lily? I pictured how it all went down. While Anna and I were at work, Lily took the key from under the flowerpot—we’d shown it to her—and let herself right in. She was looking for something to take—to sell, maybe. Why? Drugs? Cash to pay a debt?

  I couldn’t answer that question, but the necklace wasn’t worth much money. What I could do (and did) was to call out for Anna.

  A few minutes later, Anna was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, wearing a satin, floral-patterned bathrobe, watching me pace about our living room.

  “It’s gone. That’s all we need to know,” I said, changing direction like a duck in a shooting gallery.

  “I agree, it’s gone,” Anna replied, looking rather perplexed.

  Together we had scoured every inch of the bathroom floor but had come up empty-handed.

  “So, we’re going to have to talk to Lily again,” I said.

  “Are you sure it was there?” Anna asked.

  “Yes, I’m sure. It’s been there. It’s always there.”

  “But did you notice it, is what I’m asking? Did you actually see it there yesterday? The day before?”

  I thought back. Did I recall having seen the necklace? Could I pinpoint a specific moment where I was fully aware of it? No, it wasn’t like that. The necklace was just there. It was like any object that became so rooted in the familiar. Only through its absence did it become noticeable.

  “No, I don’t remember seeing it,” I admitted.

  “Why would Lily have taken your necklace?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, tossing my hands into the air. “Let’s ask her.”

  “She isn’t home,” Anna said. “I knocked and then I called.”

  “We’ll use the key and go in there and look for it,” I said, still pacing the room while running my hands through my hair. My heart was thumping now. Whap. Whap. Whap. When I wasn’t moving, I was grinding my teeth. Thank you, Adderall. Anything might have set me off. My tension could have been harnessed and used as model rocket fuel.

  “Gage, are you all right?” Anna eyed me with concern.

  A knock on the door, and we both whirled our heads in that direction.

  “Hello?” Lily’s soft and plaintive voice called. “Are you guys at home?”

  Anna stood, rubbing the palms of her hands against the shimmery fabric of her robe. Had my erratic behavior made her so nervous that her palms got sweaty? Maybe so, but this felt like a changing day around here—Thank you, Dr. Phil. It was time for Anna to see the truth about Lily.

  CHAPTER 17

  Anna opened the front door to let Lily enter, along with a thread of humid air that was immediately absorbed by the air conditioning. Lily was wearing a short black skirt, dark leggings, knee-high boots, and a low-cut, black T-shirt with the Jillian’s logo emblazoned on the front. Her long, straight hair looked shiny, newly washed. She no longer had the appearance of a wayward forest nymph. She looked confident, like she was going to hustle for tips.

  “I was in the bathroom getting ready for work and saw that you called,” Lily said. “Is everything all right?”

  “No, it’s not all right, Lily,” I said, glowering.

  Anna gave me a look—that look. I swallowed my anger, but it was tough to get down with all the Adderall kicking about my system.

  Lily shot Anna a worried glance. “What’s going on?” she asked, a quaver to her voice.

  I saw Lily’s hands rest across her belly and wondered if she was sending a message of sorts: you can’t be upset with me because I’m pregnant.

  “Come on in,” Anna said. “There’s been an incident.”

  “Understatement,” I snapped, with teeth clenched.

  Again, Anna glared. “Knock it off, Gage,” she said.

  “What is going on?” Lily demanded.

  “The necklace,” I said.

  Lily looked perplexed.

  “Where is it?” I asked. “It’s very important to me, Lily. It has a lot of sentimental value. I need it back.”

  The Adderall was doing its thing. My eyes were locked on Lily like heat-seeking missiles. I doubt I even blinked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come here and I’ll show you,” I said.

  We moved down the narrow hallway and stopped at the bathroom. I went inside, Lily paused at the doorway, and Anna kept to the hallway with her back pressed up against the wall, arms folded acros
s her chest. Standing in front of the bathroom sink, I pointed to the spot on the medicine cabinet where the necklace should have been.

  “I’ve been living here for four years. The necklace that is missing has been hanging in this spot,” I said, tapping the top left corner of the medicine cabinet several times for emphasis. “I used to look at the necklace every single morning, every morning, because it brought me a lot of comfort. There’s a picture in the locket of Karen, Max, and me and it’s very sentimental to me. I don’t always look at the necklace, but I always know it’s there. Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?” My voice was thick with sarcasm.

  “Gage, please, don’t be nasty,” I heard Anna say.

  Lily looked stunned.

  “I . . . I don’t . . .”

  “There is no necklace with a locket here anymore.”

  Lily put her hand to her chest as the first flutter of indignation. “Are you suggesting that I took it?”

  She took a cautious step back, moving away from me—the threat—and toward Anna—the ally.

  “I’m suggesting it didn’t take itself,” I said.

  “Maybe you were robbed,” Lily blurted out.

  “And all they stole was a single sentimental necklace? Anna has jewelry here. We have a nice TV, computers. If we were robbed, why would the robbers take a necklace and a locket?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Lily’s voice trembled. I saw her lower lip quivering, too. Perhaps that was what she did before she started to cry. I didn’t know, because I didn’t really know Lily. All I’d done was invite this perfect stranger into my home because she gave Anna and me hope for a happier future. Some hope. What I got from Lily was a world of doubt.

  “Check the floor, Lily. Check all around,” I said, motioning for her to come closer. “It’s gone.”

  “And you think I took it?”

  “Give me another explanation,” I said, glaring.

  “This is because of the present, isn’t it?” Lily said. “You’re still angry about that.”

  “I’m not,” I said. Adderall might help me with focus, but it does nothing for lying. Now if they could make a drug for that. . . .