Donna Has Left the Building

by Susan Jane Gilman

  And that singular kiss. Zack’s lips crushed like a rose against the cool of my neck just above my clavicle, one hand gripping my bare hip and pressing me urgently against him, the other cupping my breast. Somehow this, more than any other act in our vast repertoire, never failed to arouse me and fill me with an aching desire, no matter how many years had passed. That moment was like my secret, most favorite old record that I turned to whenever I felt my greatest despair, and played over and over again in my head.

  And now, over a quarter of a century later, here he appeared, out of the ether. Zachary Phelps.

  Belladonna Cohen!!!!!

  OMG.

  How the FUCK are you????

  Reuniting with your first love online: Whether it’s risqué or cliché, one thing is certain—it makes for absolutely banal reading. Our hour-long exchange sounded not like torrid lovers reconnecting so much as a transcript of a job interview between two fourteen-year-olds. OMG: How r u? Where r u? U have kids now? U married??

  Me: 2 Kids! Girl,19 & boy, 16. Married?…It’s complicated. U?

  Z: Am checking out yr photos on FB. U r still hot!

  Me: Is that NO?

  Z: LOL. No longer married 4 sure. 1 daughter, total badass 15, lives w her mom in Ohio.

  Me: Where r u now?

  Z: Nashville. Got some big gigs this week. Then LA, Texas, Baltimore. Miami. I’m all over the place, baby!

  My heart caught. Though I’d braced myself for the possibility that Zack was married now, I’d never considered that he’d gone into a career in music. Not him, too! I felt a sudden knot of envy.

  U r a musician? I typed.

  When he replied, No. A rigger, I was embarrassed by how much relief I felt, even though I had absolutely no idea what the hell a “rigger” was. Something to do with sailing? Welding? I pictured him shirtless, in faded jeans, wielding some sort of artillery-like equipment. I felt myself warm to it.

  Sounds HOT.

  It is!!!! I put together the whole show. Lights, tech, stage. Everything. Nothing can go on w/o me, baby! ☺

  Texting: It should be left to rot with other misguided trends like bloodletting and 8-track cassettes. It was the death of all poetry and nuance and true human connection. It was Zack’s actual voice I was craving, the sleepy scrape of it, and the throbbing heartbeat behind his lunatic laugh—not proxy in boldface. When he typed out No longer married 4 sure, what exactly did he mean—that he himself was unclear of his marital status? Or, “Not married! For sure!” like a happy definitive? The goofy emoji that he used to punctuate this with—a smile with one bug-eye—was only more obfuscating. What cartoonish symbol could possibly sum up or illuminate a Shakespearean range of feeling?

  Working fish fry @Fontanel this wkend, Zack texted. KID ROCK!!! Totally Awesome.

  Fish fry? Fontanel? Wasn’t that the soft gap in a baby’s skull when it was first born? And Kid Rock? Clearly, I was missing something. WTF? I typed.

  Big outdoor concert, he wrote. Music-fest.

  This is torture, I typed. I Hate IM & txting. Want to hear your voice instead. Can we speak 2moro when I can actually talk? Wish I could c u in person. So much better!

  DEF! Wish I could c u 2! 2 bad u r not on the road with me, B. U would totally love it.

  Me 2, I typed back. Then I stared at his message.

  Too bad you are not on the road with me. Was there any sentence in the English language more pregnant with longing and romance?

  I thought about Brenda’s cards. The Lovers. I’d seen it right there, firsthand. It was out there for me, waiting. This message from Zack could not align more perfectly with it—it was here now—a reunion out of the ether, a sequence of opening doors. It was coming together so exquisitely, in fact, it was ridiculous. I took a deep breath.

  Actually, I typed back, I happen to be heading to Nashville this week—For some music biz. I could come down early & join u.

  As I watched the screen without any new text appearing, my heart began pounding insanely. But finally, a response materialized.

  R U Kidding? When?

  I can drive down tomorrow.

  Seriously???? he wrote.

  SERIOUSLY.

  Do I even need to say that once I finally logged off, there was absolutely no way I could calm down and sleep? My skin was clammy with adrenaline. I thrashed about wretchedly on Brenda’s sofa bed until nearly midnight, tempest-tossed by the incessant rumble of trains below on Park Avenue and the whoop of sirens. The “City That Never Sleeps” never shut up.

  More than anything else, of course, my brain was on the spin cycle: Zack Phelps. Zack Phelps. Zack Phelps was in Nashville. According to Google Maps, it was just a fourteen-hour drive from Brenda’s. Of course, I’d have to make a few stops along the way: I’d need my roots touched up, a quick trim, some makeup—and, certainly, fabulous clothes! The maps showed designer outlets and a Bloomingdale’s off the highway in New Jersey—fuck it, I was done economizing, done buying clothes at Valu-Village while Joey plunked down good money for size-twelve Mary Janes and custom-made sissy outfits. There were salons at the malls, too—I could book an appointment online—good God, I loved the internet! I got sidetracked reading all the Yelp reviews, then looking at photos of bad celebrity haircuts, then bad celebrity plastic surgery—but finally I made an appointment for cut, color, the works. By the time I arrived at the Delaware border, I’d be an entirely new creature. The only problem was getting my car out of the garage in the first place; CJ’s Body Shop, I saw, didn’t open again until 6 a.m.

  Not knowing what the hell else to do with myself, I found myself starting to clean Brenda’s kitchen: washing all the dishes as quietly as I could, putting away the silverware: spoons cradled in spoons, forks in forks, knives perfectly aligned, their tips like compass needles pointing north, Tupperware nesting according to size and color! I was creating rainbows! What was that mnemonic device from elementary school? “Roy G. Biv”? I scoured all her appliances, then began scrubbing her floor with Lysol I found under the sink. My back burned and my knees got scraped, but it felt good to do something physical and taxing and transformative—the linoleum was starting to glow—why, cleansers were like magic! Really, I could be a spokeswoman! Or write a song! Why were there absolutely no songs about housecleaning?

  When there was absolutely nothing left in the kitchen, I couldn’t resist starting in on the living room with silent ferocity. I’d forgotten what a whirlwind kids were: how stray plastic game pieces (tiny boots, light sabers, wheels) and oily stubs of crayons wound up buried between chair cushions and in the piles of the carpeting. I cleaned and stacked and dusted and polished; I even straightened the Harry Potter cape and the scarf on the Skeleton, completing the look with a pair of Brenda’s sunglasses I found underneath the radiator.

  Some women would hate anybody else touching their stuff. But I knew firsthand what a neat freak Brenda secretly was. Her chastisement had clearly hit a nerve with me, and I cleaned in a stew of guilt and contrition, determined to show her that I was sorry and that I loved her and, also—that I was not nearly as much of a narcissistic asshole as she’d made me out to be.

  Finally, there was nothing left but the bathroom. It had an old-fashioned tub with a scorch-mark of rust beneath the faucet. As I scoured the grout between the tiles, I could hear a garbage truck below making some predawn rounds. A plastic cup by the sink was jammed with a candy-cane assortment of toothbrushes with different initials and names scrawled on the handles with black marker. AJ. Marisol. Jordy. Petra. I could picture all the young medical residents tromping in and out in their scrubs, showering hurriedly between shifts, discussing prognoses with Brenda over lukewarm coffee in the kitchen. She had a whole community of colleagues now—no more sitting alone in a studio, taking on the problems of the world—and for a moment, I felt a fresh wave of envy and love and heartbreak for her all at once, and I felt myself tear up again. Good God: I was a mess.

  I stripped and showered as quietly as possible, scrub-scrub-scrubb
ing myself with her organic lemongrass bodywash. I toweled off and redressed, studying myself in the mirror. And then, well, old habits die hard. Quietly—shhhh—I eased open the medicine cabinet. Just to peek. I was astonished at how many prescription bottles were inside. A forest of amber. Grabbing one closest to me, I shoved it into my bra, nestling it between the cups. It was an instinct, a sudden hunger. I didn’t even bother reading the label. I just needed to feel a vial pressing against my heart.

  As I stepped out onto the street at daybreak with my guitar case, I felt like a fugitive, but I had to keep moving. To kill time, I headed south on Park Avenue just to satisfy my curiosity until I was standing on the gardened median ten blocks from Brenda’s apartment, at which point the entire neighborhood did, in fact, transform into that other Park Avenue—the one I’d seen in all the movies—a broad boulevard full of grand, luxury high-rises with liveried doormen standing sentry beneath the awnings. An omen, somehow. As the sky blued from night to dawn, the windows above me slowly illuminated with gold lights as the rich woke up for breakfast and their 6 a.m. workouts and their waiting town cars. I watched the city awaken, then headed back uptown to East 102nd Street, where I stood on the sidewalk shivering as a Hispanic man in a tweed cap unchained the gates, quieted the dogs, and allowed me to reclaim my Subaru.

  When Brenda awoke and saw my note propped up against the peppermill in the kitchen (“I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to wake you…love to you & Eli…”), she’d likely see through it immediately and know where I’d run off to. Maybe it was cowardly, my slipping out like that. But I didn’t want to face any more of her disapproval. She herself couldn’t deny what she’d seen in my cards—and while she might have loftier ideas about the world, I told myself, I had my own little romantic destiny to follow. I’d wasted enough time as it was.

  Chapter 10

  Imagine all the love letters penned throughout history, all the wet dreams, all the desperate prayers, all the stolen glimpses and winks and kisses in marketplaces and temple grounds and school cafeterias. All the hearts leaping at the sight of the postman, the obsessive replaying of ballads and answering machines. The crotches waxed, eyebrows plucked, wrists anointed with perfume. If we could distill the great tidal wave of human desire into its purest, chemical form, it could fuel civilization for the rest of our days.

  Me, I found it was even stronger than my son’s Adderall in keeping me focused on driving one thousand miles of brain-numbing highway. When I’d Skyped Zack from a hair salon in New Jersey, his voice had sounded just as it had when we were teenagers, scraping over the vowels like velvet over sand. It had triggered a Pavlovian, sexual reaction in me. As I drove south through Delaware, Maryland, and the Shenandoah Mountains along the spine of Virginia, I kept anticipating that first lightning-bolt moment when we would actually set eyes on each other again: Would the attraction still be there in full force? Would we still click as much in person as we had seemed to online and on the phone? How much would he have changed? I imagined Zack standing in the hotel lobby, anxiously checking his watch and clutching a cellophane cone of pink roses like he used to bring me from the gas station.

  Yet when I finally arrived at the Comfort Suites Motel in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, a television bolted to the wall flickered soundlessly overhead in a deserted lobby, broadcasting the Tonight Show to no one. A chubby, brown-skinned night clerk (Indian? Pakistani?) sat on a stool behind the reception desk, playing Sudoku. She had thick glasses and wore a LADY ANTEBELLUM T-shirt.

  Twice she asked me to spell my last name. Zack had promised he’d make a reservation for me, but there was nothing in the system. I asked her to check under his name, too, but that only yielded more clicking, more frowning.

  I could feel my shoulders drop in defeat, my handbag slide to the ground with a heavy thwump. I imagined how pathetic I looked, standing there all primped and hopeful, close to midnight, flanked by my guitar case and a flashy purple roller board stuffed with new clothing.

  “Okay then. I’ll just book a room myself now, in cash,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. But we are all full already.”

  “You don’t have a single room? But how can that be?” Goodlettsville was a tiny blip on the map, a full twenty minutes away from Nashville.

  “Kid Rock’s having a fish fry over in Fontanel this weekend. Every hotel in the county is booked.” She motioned to a poster tacked above a water cooler. It showed a picture of a bass in a cowboy hat playing a guitar.

  Anxiously, I dug out my phone.

  “BELLA,” Zack shouted over a dull thump of bluegrass and traffic, “WHERE ARE YOU?”

  “Where are you? I’m at the Comfort Suites, just like you said.”

  “I’m just across the road. Do you see that sign out the window? On the right? Bailey’s Sports Bar? Come on over. I’m with some of the guys from work.”

  “You said you made a reservation for me, Zack. They’re telling me there’s nothing.”

  “You’re fucking kidding. No way.” In the background, I heard a clatter of dishes. “Hang on. I’m calling it up on my phone. Okay. Right here. ‘Donna Cohen. Reservation number 567095K.’”

  Cohen. Of course. He’d made it my maiden name. He’d never known me as anyone else.

  “We’re just grabbing some drinks,” Zack shouted. “Come on over. In fact, tell me what you want and I’ll order for you. Hang on a sec. Hey!” I heard him shout across the din. “What time’s the kitchen close?”

  I felt myself prickle. I’d just driven nearly a thousand miles. I didn’t want to meet in a sports bar. I didn’t want to meet any of Zack’s work buddies. Was it too much to ask that he just cross the fucking street?

  “Look, I’ve been driving since dawn,” I said wearily, and though I didn’t want to, I added, “so maybe I’ll see you in the morning instead?” Hugely deflated, I hung up.

  I grabbed my room key and my free breakfast coupon from the receptionist, stuffed them into my bag, and yanked my belongings into the elevator.

  Inside my room, the light flickered on spastically, revealing a bone-white kitchenette and an enormous flat-screen television bolted to the wall. A king bed flanked by two serviceable lamps. In its sterility, it looked like a controlled-living experiment in a psychiatric hospital.

  I plopped down miserably on the edge of the bed and kicked off my boots. Unbuttoning my blouse, I pulled out the one thousand dollars in twenties I had stashed in my bra and tossed it on the bureau. The wad had grown damp; the tight fist of paper had irritated my cleavage. You fool, I thought.

  Glimpsing myself in the mirror, I saw how wilted and drained I looked, despite all my best efforts in a ladies’ room twenty minutes before. I flopped back across the mattress, clutching my phone. Messages from Joey and Colleen Lundstedt and the Privileged Kitchen and our bank and Visa had accumulated all day. From Colleen: Donna, you missed another sales demo…Donna, the mall in West Bloomfield says you haven’t confirmed…Donna, irate call from woman about Via Vecchio Earthenware you were supposed to deliver?…CALL ME PLEASE…Oh, shit: I’d had alerts set on my phone for all my PK appointments, dinners I’d ignored. From Visa: Security Fraud Alert activated…From Joey: Donna, Austin keeps asking me when you’re coming home. Also: Did you forget Mr. Noodles? Pickup today? I felt a jab of guilt. Quickly, I texted my son: Hey A. Your momma loves you. But then another from Joey read: It doesn’t need to be like this, Donna. We can get you all the help you need. Am looking into rehabs for you. I swiped away the alerts and tossed my phone onto the pillow. I breathed in and out, staring at the popcorn ceiling with its little emergency sprinklers, its red-eyed smoke detector. Just one minute, I thought, closing my eyes.

  The banging on the door was so urgent that for a moment, I thought there was a fire. I scrambled up, not knowing where the hell I was. “Bella! Belladonna! You in there?”

  I yanked my shirt back on, my hands shaking as I rebuttoned it. “Hang on!” Tripping over an ottoman, I fumbled in my purse for my comb, scal
loped lipstick over my mouth, popped an Altoid.

  “Room service, room service!”

  “My fucking God,” I said as I pulled open the door. “It’s after midnight.”

  And there he was. Deliberately posed. One hand pressed high against the doorframe, the other hooked through his belt loop, his legs spread wide apart like a cowboy’s. At his feet sat a shiny white plastic bag. He was wearing a jean jacket and boots and some sort of utility belt slung low on his hips like a holster. He tossed his head back, clearing a curl of hair from his eyes, and grinned. He was showing off for me—and he knew that I knew he was showing off—his exaggerated bravado like an old, inside joke between us. “So, gorgeous.” He winked. “Somebody here order a midnight buffet?”

  “Well, aren’t you still the peacock.”

  “Bwhahaha. Oh my God. You’re still so funny. And wow. Look at you! Yep. You still look totally the same.” Snatching up the bag, he sauntered inside. I smelled a whiff of beer, of fruity shampoo. “No, seriously. I am not fucking kidding. Jesus, Bella. It’s like you’ve barely changed.” He gazed at me, up and down. “Well, okay. Now your hair isn’t pink.”

  “You are out of your mind.” He’d been drinking, I realized. I also realized that I’d expected this—and also, that I didn’t care. Seeing him, I was so instantly turned on, it was like having a seizure.

  Showily, he held up the bag. “As soon as you hung up, I thought, Hey, asshole. She’s just driven, like, a zillion miles to see you. Get over there.”

  “Yeah, well, I gotta say.” I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “I kind of thought that you’d be waiting for me.”

  “Oh? You were worried? You missed me?” He seemed to enjoy the prospect of this a little too much. He set the bag down on the little white table in the kitchenette. “Well, maybe I did take a moment to watch you arrive from the parking lot.”