by Vivien Vale
By now, I know that it’s just Darren, wearing Velcro running shoes, tearing back and forth my apartment floor.
It turns out he really loves to run back and forth, for hours on end, especially in the morning.
I drift in and out of half-sleep. Maggie calls her son from just inside my bedroom.
“Are you hungry for lunch?”
Her voice is so fucking loud. Everything within me just wants to grab the two cushions my head is resting on and press them against my ears, but I don’t want to cause any problems by acting all melodramatic and frustrated.
“Are you hungry for lunch?”
Maggie just keeps yelling, and Darren keeps doing laps back and forth across the floor in front of me. I give up and open my eyes just to make sure it really isn’t Andre the Giant this time.
It’s not.
It’s still Darren.
He’s cute, and I appreciate his childish glee. He’s getting some exercise, too. Maybe he’ll be in the Olympics someday. That is if they invent a new track event―a relay race where the competitors keep running the same twenty meters, back and forth, only handing the baton off to themselves.
I think Darren could even get a gold medal today if it existed.
“Do you want McDonalds?” Maggie screams. “You should ask Daniel to go get you McDonald’s!”
“Is it really you who wants McDonald’s?” I shout in Maggie’s direction.
“I’m vegan!” She’s still yelling from my bedroom.
“Yeah, I remember now,” I grumble. “Sorry.”
“Actually, I guess I could have a Filet-O-Fish,” she says, a little more quietly. “Just tell him to hold the cheese...and the tartar sauce.”
“So you’re not vegan?” I try to speak loudly without yelling as I sit up.
“I am vegan, but we’re talking about a fish sandwich. Fish doesn’t count—it’s not meat, and it’s not really an animal by-product. It’s just an animal that’s not meat.”
I can’t take it. I fall back into my sleeping position.
“What the...heck.” I stop myself from uttering a much less appropriate word.
I hear sweet silence for a moment when Darren stops running.
The silence doesn’t last long.
“What the heck! What the heck! What the heck! What the heck!” Darren takes the opportunity to start running back and forth again, this time adding his new favorite phrase to his usual racket.
“What the heck! What the heck!”
“Oh!” Maggie yells. “Now you’ve fucking got him swearing!”
Darren only gets louder.
“What the heck! What the heck!”
“Attaboy,” I mumble, closing my eyes and slowly falling asleep, hoping to not wake up until we get the DNA test results.
“Daniel!”
A shrill voice slices through the rich tapestry of my sleep.
“DANIEL!”
The voice makes another slice, lengthwise through my slumber, forcing my eyes to open and see the early dusk light on my ceiling.
At least I slept a bit more, even if it was all fucking day.
I sit up to see my darkened living room, Maggie watching me with an overwrought frown, holding Darren at her side.
Maggie doesn’t notice that Darren’s now bringing his finger out of his nostril.
I stay silent as Maggie scowls at me and Darren looks at the greenish, gooey treasure he found, examining it like a jewelry appraiser in the Diamond District.
Darren’s face scrunches up in serious contemplation. I can almost see his thoughts.
“Should I enjoy a little snack now?” he’s thinking. “Or should I make this into a real investment and smear it somewhere on the living room wall?”
Darren shrugs and slurps the booger off his finger, smacking his lips proudly.
I’m glad it’s dark in the living room, otherwise my stomach would really be turning right now.
Darren’s finger goes right back into his nostrils, maybe for another chance at a long-term investment.
“Why haven’t you turned on the lights yet?’ I ask Maggie.
“Why haven’t you actually woken up yet?” she flings back.
“It’s Saturday...catching up,” I mumble.
Christ, now Darren’s toddling over to the coffee table, and a pint glass is sitting there without a coaster.
From what I can see, he’s poured all kinds of random ingredients from my kitchen into the glass: maple syrup, maybe rolled oats, some tonic water, avocado oil and...god, he’s not going to put what he found in his nose in there, is he?
And wow, somebody moved two of my end tables, placing them so they’re just sitting next to each other haphazardly by the coffee table.
I stumble over to the dimmer switch just to get a bit more light into the room.
Darren’s still hunched over coffee table, making Lord only knows what kind of foul creation. He’s humming a random little tune to himself, obliviously happy.
I don’t mind his little song, but I don’t think I’ll ever use that glass again.
I spin slowly around the room. Somebody’s been doing some interior decorating—I’m surprised I slept through it.
The only two pieces of furniture still in place are the coffee table and lounge chair serving as my bed during this interminable waiting period.
Everything else is rearranged, but it doesn’t look like it. Not by any sort of logic or sane sensibility.
“What the heck?” I ask Maggie quietly.
“What the heck is that we’ve been waiting for you to get us food, and now it’s almost dinner time.” Maggie shoves her forefinger at her nonexistent wristwatch. “There’s nothing left in your kitchen for us. I don’t think my diet’s unreasonable...”
“Did I dream that you asked about that Filet-O-Fish earlier?”
“What? No. I don’t eat carbs, but I do eat fish...”
“And bread. Or do you take the bun off?”
“Why would I take the bun off?”
Maggie’s voice doesn’t have a hint of awareness. Darren’s still toiling away, and I hope I somehow can avoid ever seeing the final result of his big experiment.
“Let me get dressed and I’ll run out to get you food at…someplace.”
“Just the Filet-O-Fish for me,” Maggie says like she’s ordering at a drive-through. “Or a fish sandwich from somewhere. Fried, please. And no cheese, and tell them to go easy on the tartar sauce because that might have carbs in it! And a hamburger for Darren—I’ll let him hear the call of veganism when he’s ready. Fries for both of us, please!”
“No carbs,” I grunt under my breath.
I need to shower and shave and brush my teeth, but right now I just need to get dressed and get the fuck out of here for a few minutes.
Later, while Darren and Maggie are eating on the sofa, with their greasy fast food bags and wrappers heaped on the sofa next to them, I grab a dish towel from the kitchen.
With my hand over my eyes, I navigate back to the coffee table, peeking through my fingers just enough to not bump into anything in Maggie’s new arrangement of my living room.
I’m trying with all my might to not see whatever’s in Darren’s pint glass project.
I get a small glimpse of the glass, just enough to see a few colors: black, gold and green.
My stomach starts to protest at the sight, but I grab that pint glass with the towel and walk it quickly as I can straight to the trash compactor. I throw the glass away, followed by the dish towel right on top of it.
Hopefully, I’ll never see it again.
The next morning, after another night of fitful sleep, I wake up to Darren’s Nerf football bouncing hard off the bridge of my nose and hitting some piece of furniture that’s somewhere it shouldn’t be.
“Now I know how Jan Brady feels.”
Darren halts his back-and-forth across the floor and looks at me with wide dyed curiosity. “Who the heck is John Brady?”
“I’ll get back
to you on that.”
I jump out of the chair, sensing that something’s even more amiss than usual. I hit my shin on one of the misplaced end tables while weaving through living room, but I limp on.
Before exiting the room, I turn to face Darren.
“Actually, that’s Marcia Brady who gets hit with the football.”
“Marcia?”
“Marcia,” I pronounce carefully.
I give up the limping and hop on one foot through the kitchen.
Yep, something’s amiss.
Nearly every bottle from both my wine rack and my wine chiller is missing, except for two bottles in the chiller.
I take a quick look and see that a bottle of chardonnay and a bottle of white zinfandel are the only two left—all the red wine I’m keeping in the kitchen are missing.
The pain in my shin eases, and I get a waft of a strong odor.
It’s red wine, and it’s coming from the...bathroom?
I run to the bathroom door. The light is on, and I smell a pungent mixture of merlot, pinot noir, and cabernet.
“Hey, what’s going on in there?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of vino therapy?” Maggie chirps, sounding just as happy as a clam.
“What’s...what?”
“You know, a red wine bath.”
The sound of my face hitting my palm is probably loud enough to be heard all the way from Connecticut to Cape May.
I don’t even want to continue the discussion. I’m just ready for this to be over.
“Say, Maggie, you haven’t seen any messages, have you? Or missed calls? Maybe you borrowed my phone for something, and you saw something and forgot about it? I’d love to know.”
God, please let her say yes. I just need to know that Rose hasn’t given up on me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maggie projects in dramatic shout, like she’s auditioning for an off-Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire.
The combined smell of all the red wines is becoming too much. I step back from the bathroom door and almost knock into another randomly placed end table.
At least Maggie didn’t bring my phone along for her vino therapy—it’s sitting face-down on the end table.
It’s a sign, or at least that’s what I tell myself. I scoop up my phone, and for the first time in days, I walk into my own bedroom and lock the door.
I walk to the far side of the room so I can have some privacy as I call Rose...
But, fuck. I can’t call her yet. Not before I have solid news about the test results.
It’ll just have to wait.
And I’ll have to wait, too―with Maggie.
Unfortunately.
Chapter 41
Rose
Two weeks.
Fourteen days, or thereabouts.
I’ll be honest: this entire time—an entire half a month—I never let go of the notion that I would be on this route again someday.
The route back to Daniel’s penthouse.
Someday. Someday soon.
I’ll continue my honesty, although this gets a little embarrassing: my definition of soon, in this case, has been sooner than two weeks.
I know. I’m asking a lot, right?
I look at today’s date on my phone, and I look at it in the context of the calendar hanging on my kitchen wall.
There’s no hiding from the LED light bulbs turned up to full brightness. It’s printed in stark black and white on the free calendar from the Thai delivery place.
Fourteen days exactly. Almost two dozen empty, eventless days. No word from Daniel, and no feelings of motivation strong enough to contact him myself.
Until now. Because it’s been two fucking weeks.
Fourteen days. Couldn’t he just call me?
It can’t be worse than the fears running through my head during that weepy taxi ride from his place.
Or it could be. The fact I’m yet to hear from Daniel is evidence it could be that bad―or worse.
I place my hand gently over my stomach while walking. I’m feeling butterflies again.
I wish I could say they’re butterflies of excitement, but these are more like butterflies of apprehension.
The fluttery feeling grows briefly, then fades when I stop at a crosswalk. I keep my hand where it is, as if my abdomen were its natural resting place. It gives me a feeling of security as Daniel’s home draws closer.
I don’t know why it gives me that feeling, but I’ll take what I can get.
It feels nice.
During these past two weeks of waiting to take the trip back up to Daniel’s penthouse, not once did I think I would enjoy the journey.
I’m still learning that it’s impossible to predict these things. It’s warm, it’s sunny, and there’s a light breeze and a jovial mood in the air...
This might be okay. I don’t know how, I couldn’t imagine the scenario, but I can’t predict anything.
It could’ve been a misunderstanding.
Yeah, a big misunderstanding, and he decided to just not call for two fucking weeks.
My right hand, resting so comfortably on my stomach, rejects the idea of burrowing through my purse to get my phone so I can check it yet again.
My right hand will hear none of that nonsense.
Even if my phone’s full of missed calls and messages, two weeks is enough of a chance.
And I can see Daniel’s building. I’m close enough to see that big picture window at the top floor.
The butterflies in my stomach are fluttering again. I get the feeling I shouldn’t be here.
I rub my fluttery stomach and regain control. There’s no stopping now.
I hold my head up high and tread into the lobby with purpose.
“Good evening.” A booming voice fills the lobby, greeting me with lots of natural reverb.
“Hello, I’m just going...”
“Up to the penthouse?” I don’t know if the large, suited man in front of me is the doorman or the concierge or what... “You can go on up.”
But he recognizes me.
I smile and nod, getting oddly flustered. Maybe I should be here after all.
“He won’t be home for about half an hour, though.”
The booming voice interrupts my fast walk to the elevator, but the concierge/doorman is all smiles as he hands me a key fob without saying another word.
I turn the key over and over in my hand on the way up to the penthouse.
Fuck it—if he wants to leave things like that and then not call for two weeks, he can handle the surprise of me waiting for him when he gets home.
I smirk while opening the door, picturing a startled Daniel finding me sitting on his leather lounge chair.
After that, there’s a good chance he’ll just tell me it’s over and that’ll be that, but...
I’m hit with bright lights while opening the door. It looks like every light in the penthouse is going at full throttle.
What is going on?
“May I help you?”
It’s her again. How could I have not guessed?
“Maggie.”
I remember her name at the same moment I say it out loud. That’s what I couldn’t remember last time. It’s Daniel’s ex-girlfriend―and the villain of his online fan base.
I’ve never seen a smile like the one that transforms Maggie’s face as she stares at me.
It’s technically a smile, but it looks cold, sinister, almost frightening. Thankfully, it doesn’t last long.
The kid is there, too. Maggie’s son, and...
I don’t know what’s going on. I can’t even gauge what’s happening. My brain is frozen, and I’m feeling paralyzed—just like the last time I was standing in this doorway.
The kid is glued to the TV, which is playing a daytime talk show. The audience is shouting, getting unruly, and the sound is loud.
It’s really loud; it must be turned up all the way. I don’t know how I didn’t notice it earlier.
“
What are you doing here?” Maggie’s voice is almost drowned out by the television, but she keeps talking. “What are you doing in our house?”
I grab my stomach with both hands, no longer paralyzed but suddenly queasy. Maggie looks like she’s trying to suppress a grin, and I stop.
“Where’s Daniel?” I ask quietly.
I know he’s at work or on his way back.
Or is he?
I put my hand over my mouth.
Maggie’s evil grin is back, like she can’t stop it.
I try to gather my thoughts, at least to get through this moment, but the TV sounds like it’s getting louder.
I glance at the screen, but nobody’s changing the volume. The kid’s not even watching it anymore. He’s now looking at me.
The TV’s playing an ad for an action movie, and the sound becomes deafening.
“I think Daniel’s at the store, picking up stuff for Dar...Darren, mute the commercials, honey.”
Darren, that’s the kid’s name. Like a pro, he aims the remote and ends the horrible barrage of noise with a push of his thumb.
“Dear, I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I won’t push it.” Maggie’s condescending tone is tying my stomach in knots. “It really is over. You should know that, if you don’t yet.”
Even though I’m just standing on flat, solid ground, I stumble slightly and almost fall.
Regaining my balance, I see Maggie grinning with pure delight.
“Process it,” Maggie chirps cheerfully. “Let it sink in. Daniel has a family. There’s no more hope for you.”
Darren unmutes the television, and the sound of the shouting, shrieking crowd suffocates me. Tears are flooding my vision, but I can see Maggie still focused on me, smirking, her hands gripping the arm of the sofa with glee.
I clumsily run out the door and to the elevator. The sound of Maggie laughing at me competes with the sound of the TV coming from Daniel’s apartment.
Thank goodness the elevator opens as soon as I press the button, the empty car waiting to take me away from this hell.
I don’t know what’s carrying me on the walk home. I’m drained of all energy and all motivation for any fucking thing.
