Gone

by Cronk, LN

  Probably because the muzzle of an Uzi was pressed tightly against the underside of his chin.

  I was taken into what I assumed was an interrogation room. Telling them I lived in Mexico City and forgetting what kind of car I drove was nothing compared to the mess I made of things once I was separated from Laci and Tanner and locked in a room with three armed guards firing questions at me one after another. The more worried I became about Laci and Tanner, the less I was able to focus on their questions. I was barely able to answer anything that they asked.

  After a few minutes, however, a knock came at the door and a fourth guard stuck his head in the room. After a brief discussion in Hebrew, one of the guards looked at me.

  “You are free to go,” he said, pointing toward the door.

  “I can leave?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, nodding toward the door. “Go on from here. We have more people to ask questions. Go out.”

  I stood up slowly and cautiously, having this horrible feeling that I was misunderstanding him. I took a tentative step toward the door, praying they weren’t going to level their rifles at me if I really did try to leave.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly, nodding apologetically. I walked toward the door, quickening my pace as I went. Once I got out of the room I immediately saw Laci. She was sitting in a chair against the wall and she stood up when she saw me, rushing to my side.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Are you?”

  She nodded back

  “Where’s Tanner?”

  “In there,” she said, nodding toward another room a few doors down from where I had been. She took me by the hand and led me to where she had been sitting. We each took a seat.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, looking at her.

  “It’s not your fault,” she assured me, shaking her head. “I told them what was going on and they believed me. They went right in and got you.”

  “Did you tell them Tanner’s with us?”

  “Yes,” she nodded, “but he got kind of . . .”

  She sighed and rubbed her forehead. She looked exhausted.

  “You know how he is,” she finally said. “They weren’t going to put up with anything from him.”

  “But you told them he was with us?”

  “Yes!” she said, irritably. “I already told you.”

  I shut up.

  We sat quietly for about ten more minutes and finally the door to the room where Tanner had been taken opened up. Two guards came out, followed by Tanner. Laci and I stood up as he approached. He refused to look at us.

  “Are you okay?” Laci asked anxiously.

  He ignored her.

  “Tanner . . .” she pleaded and he finally glared at her. Next he glared at me, and then he stalked out of security without saying a word to either one of us.

  We found a driver and I handed them the address of the hotel we were going to be staying at, and then we took our places in the van. I let Tanner sit up front and Laci and I sat in the back.

  “How long before we get to the hotel?” Tanner asked the driver.

  “One and a half hours,” he answered.

  Tanner put his head back on the head rest, closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep again.

  In about an hour I leaned forward to get Tanner’s attention.

  “Hey,” I said, smacking him on the shoulder.

  He opened his eyes and turned his head to glower at me.

  “What?” he growled.

  “There’s your stupid sea,” I told him, motioning out his window. That got his attention and he looked out the window toward the Dead Sea which was barely visible off in the distance. He didn’t pretend to sleep anymore, but stared at it intently, craning his neck whenever buildings got in the way.

  “It’s pretty,” Laci mused.

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  Tanner didn’t say anything, but Laci looked at me and we both smiled at each other.

  We got closer and closer and then – when we had almost reached the sea – turned and drove along, parallel to the coast, for about ten minutes. Finally our car slowed and we turned in to the gated parking lot of a sprawling, ten story, waterfront hotel.

  When the driver parked and Tanner finally realized what was going on, he turned around to stare at me with his mouth half open.

  “You’re kidding,” he finally managed in a hoarse voice.

  “I think I did it,” I told Laci, smiling and not taking my eyes off of Tanner. “I think I’ve finally surprised him.”

  “I think you’re right,” Laci laughed.

  He stared at me for another moment, but then quickly recovered, saying, “You surprised me one other time.”

  “When?” I chortled skeptically as the driver turned off the car.

  Tanner reached for the door handle but glanced back at me before getting out of the car.

  “When you talked her,” he said, nodding toward Laci, “into marrying you.”

  Twenty minutes later I rapped on the door to Tanner’s room. It was three o’clock in the afternoon – Israeli time. He opened the door and let me in.

  “Everything to your satisfaction, sir?” I asked, giving him a little bow.

  “It’s . . . it’s unbelievable,” he admitted contritely, gesturing to his balcony. “Do you guys have this view too?”

  “As if I’d give you a room with a view and not get one for us,” I scoffed.

  “It’s unbelievable,” he said again.

  I grinned at him and we walked to the balcony where we stood at the rail, gazing out at the beautiful water. “Ready to go float?” I asked.

  “Is that really okay?” he asked, hesitantly. “I mean, what’s on the schedule for the rest of the day?”

  “Now see,” I scolded, “if you had looked closely at the itinerary then you’d know what was on the schedule for the rest of the day!”

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. He couldn’t have looked more repentant if he’d tried.

  I studied him for a moment and then decided out loud, “I’m not going to try to surprise you anymore.”

  “What?” he asked, looking at me questioningly. “Why?”

  “I don’t like this apologetic, reticent you,” I explained. “I want the old Tanner back.”

  “The old Tanner?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “You know – the swaggering, arrogant, smug, self-satisfied–”

  He tilted his head at me and raised an eyebrow. Then he raised a finger.

  “There he is!” I said, giving Tanner a grin. “That’s the one.”

  “So why are you so excited about floating?” Laci asked on the elevator ride down to the lobby.

  “Because I’ve never floated before,” he explained.

  “What do you mean, you’ve never floated before?” she asked.

  “I mean I can’t float. Whenever I get in the water I sink like a rock.”

  “He thinks it’s because he has no body fat,” I told her, rolling my eyes.

  “It is!” he insisted. “Body fat’s what makes you float and I don’t have any. That’s why I sink.”

  I rolled my eyes again and Laci said, “That must be why I float so well.”

  “No,” he told her as the elevator slowed to a stop. “You float because you have boobs.”

  I glared at him.

  “What?” he asked innocently. “She does!”

  “Thank you!” I said, giving him a shove toward the opening doors as Laci laughed. “I noticed!”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “I noticed too.”

  “So let me clarify here,” I said as we left the lobby and walked past a clear, shimmering, pool. “Your theory is that the only reason I can beat you in swimming is because–”

  “Because I have to expend so much energy just trying not to sink,” he finished for me. “If all I had to worry about was going forward like you do . . .”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “If I really do float while we’re down here,”
he said, pointing at the water, “I’ll prove it to you.”

  “You mean like a race?” Laci asked.

  “Yeah,” he nodded.

  “I don’t think that’s going to work,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Whatdaya mean?” he asked.

  “Everything I’ve seen online says that you can’t really swim here . . . all you can do is float.”

  “Online?” Tanner said in disbelief. “You actually went online?”

  “She’s been very excited about this trip,” I told him and she smiled.

  “Obviously,” he said, shaking his head. “I never thought I’d see the day when she voluntarily used a computer.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said, smiling. “I’m not that bad!”

  “Yes, you are,” Tanner and I said in unison.

  “So I don’t understand how all you can do is float,” Tanner said. “I mean, you’re floating in water . . . you’ve gotta be able to swim.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “I just know everyone says you can’t really swim.”

  By now we had reached the beach. We stopped and looked up and down, searching for a place to put our towels. The beach was a private one – owned by the hotel – and there were oversized umbrellas and chaise lounges scattered all around for us to choose from.

  “How ’bout there?” Tanner suggested, pointing to an empty group of chairs not too far away.

  We dropped our towels, stripped down to our suits, and headed toward the water.

  “Wait a minute!” Laci suddenly said, startled.

  “What?” I asked. Tanner and I both stopped and turned around to see what was the matter.

  “The beach!” she said, looking down at her water shoes. “It’s . . . it’s sand!”

  “Yes, honey,” I said, condescendingly. “That’s what beaches are generally made of.”

  “No,” Tanner said, shaking his head. “She’s right. I saw it online too. It’s supposed to be made of rocks . . . rocks made of salt. The whole beach is supposed to be salt.”

  I looked around and then squinted down the shore.

  “It’s salt down there,” I told them. “They must have just made the beach sandy for the tourists.”

  “Well I wanna see the salt!” Laci complained.

  “We can walk down there and see it,” I promised her.

  “Now?” Tanner cried. “We have to do it now?”

  “No,” Laci said, shaking her head. “We can go later. I know you want to float.”

  “Thank you,” Tanner said, dramatically.

  Several yards out into the water, a dozen or so people were floating. One man was lying flat on his back, having his picture made while reading a newspaper which was propped open on his belly. Laci and I cast sideways glances at each other and smiled. Then we stopped at the edge of the water and watched as Tanner waded out into the Dead Sea.

  After he got about ten yards off shore, he turned around and faced us. Then – with a big grin on his face – he fell backward into the water and . . .

  “Whooo-hoooo!” we heard him yell. He lifted his head, looked at us again and yelled, “I’m FLOATING!”

  Laci and I grinned at each other again and followed Tanner out into the clear, warm water.

  Laci had been right: you can’t swim in the Dead Sea. It was weird, but you really couldn’t. It felt as if you were sitting on a noodle – without the noodle.

  We laughed and talked, marveling at this new experience, but after a few minutes, Laci and I were ready to get out. She was lamenting the fact that the water burned her legs and underarms from where she had shaved, and I made the mistake of rubbing my eye with a wet hand and learned that that is something you never want to do in the Dead Sea.

  We got out and stood on the shoreline, watching Tanner, waiting for him to get out too, but he was in no hurry. As a matter of fact, if we hadn’t started complaining loudly, I think he would have fallen soundly asleep, floating in the water.

  After a while, however, we finally convinced him to come out and join us at the pool where, before long, all three of us fell sound asleep in our lounge chairs.

  The next morning I got up before Laci did and sat down quietly at the hotel desk. When Laci woke up, she found me writing on a small piece of plain, white paper.

  “Good morning,” she said, propping herself up on one elbow. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m writing something to put in the Wall.” I didn’t believe that writing prayers out on a piece of paper and stuffing them into the cracks at the Western Wall made them any more special to God, but it was still something I really wanted to do.

  She looked at me for a moment and then asked, “What wall?”

  “The Kotel?!” I said in disbelief. I mean, honestly, how many walls did she think we were going to visit today?

  She sat up in bed and looked at me with great concern etched into her face.

  “David . . .”

  “What?”

  She swallowed hard.

  “What?” I asked again.

  “David – we already went to the Kotel.”

  “No we didn’t.”

  “Yes,” she insisted worriedly. “We did. We went there yesterday and spent about two hours.”

  “The Western Wall?” I clarified.

  She nodded slightly.

  I looked at her for a moment and she looked back at me. I think both of us were at a total loss for words.

  “What did we do?” I asked finally asked.

  “We went there and looked at it and Chayyim told us all about it and showed us the tunnels and everything and then we got to go up to it and touch it . . .”

  (Chayyim was the tour guide we had hired for our trip. I hadn’t even met him yet . . .)

  I nodded and then looked down at the paper that I’d been writing on.

  “Did I leave a prayer?” I asked, looking back up at her.

  “I think so,” she nodded, and then I remembered that she wouldn’t have been with me when we were actually at the Wall because women and men were kept separated from each other.

  “What are we doing today?” I finally asked. “Rachel’s Tomb?”

  She nodded and I nodded back. Then I looked down at my paper again, folded it, and looked back at her.

  “Come on, get up,” I told her, stuffing the paper into my pocket and smiling. “I’m starving.”

  She looked at me, nodded again slightly, and then got out of bed and headed for the bathroom.

  I heard her turn the water on in the tub and I heard it running for a long time, but I never heard her switch the water so that it was coming out of the shower instead of the faucet. I kept waiting for the sound, but it never happened, so finally I stood up and walked over to the bathroom door and pressed my ear against it, listening.

  Laci was crying.

  I suddenly remembered, very vividly, when her mom had been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. For three months, Laci had wrapped her arms around me and sobbed against my chest every day. Usually she would cry for a couple of minutes and then stop, step away from me and wipe her eyes. I’d brush her hair away from her face and ask her if she was okay and she would say that yes, she felt better. I don’t know why it made her feel better, but I guess sometimes she just needed to have a good cry because she was losing her mother.

  But now she was losing me . . . and she was in the bathroom . . . all alone.

  I opened the door gradually and peeked in. She was sitting on the edge of the tub – still in her bathrobe and nightgown – with the water running full blast. At the sound of the door she glanced up quickly and then frantically tried to hide her face from me, turning toward the tub.

  “I can’t get the temperature right,” she stammered, pretending to adjust the faucet.

  “Laci,” I said, walking over to her. She refused to look at me, even after I shut off the water, but she dropped her head and her shoulders heaved in an uncontrolled, silent sob.

  “Come here,”
I insisted, pulling her gently into a standing position. I made her wrap her arms around my neck and then she put her head on my chest and let herself sob.

  I hated it when Laci cried – absolutely hated it – and I hated it even more this time because I knew that I was the one who was making her cry. But I stood there, dutifully holding her against me, waiting for her to finally stop. And eventually she did, stepping back and dabbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her robe.

  “I’m sorry,” she sniffed.

  “Don’t be sorry,” I assured her, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and then wiping a tear from her cheek that she’d missed. “Do you feel better now?”

  She nodded and gave me a little smile.

  “Guess what?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “I’m still starving.”

  She made a noise somewhere between a laugh and another sob and smiled a little more.

  “Go have breakfast,” she urged. “I’ll be down in a little bit.”

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah,” she nodded. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. I grabbed the belt to her bathrobe and pulled her up against me. I stroked her cheek again. Her eyes were red, her face, flushed.

  “I love you,” I said softly.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered. We kissed for a long moment and then I rested my forehead against hers.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Go eat,” she said, giving me another quick peck on the lips before she turned me toward the door and patted my shoulder as she steered me out of the bathroom.

  I made sure my room key was in my wallet and then I headed out the door and down the hallway toward the elevator. After I pushed the “Down” button I waited for what seemed like a long time.

  While I was waiting, I stood there and worried about what I always worried about these days – Laci. I thought about how upset she had just been simply because I’d forgotten one, single day. How was she going to handle it when I didn’t remember anything? When I never knew her name or couldn’t remember who I was? When I was slumped in a wheelchair like my dad, drool running down my unshaven chin . . . my eyes, vacant?