Always Happy Hour: Stories(23)
“Oh no, I’m not going there. I don’t know your father.”
“You’ll be fine,” he says. “It’s safe there.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“I have to find this woman.”
“I know, that’s why we’re here. We have to find her so let’s find her.”
“You don’t understand,” he says.
“You’re right, I don’t. Explain it to me.”
I open a beer and he takes it out of my hand. I open another. I tell him I am not, under any circumstances, going to sit and watch TV with some old man I don’t know. An old man he hates and doesn’t talk to. I had forgotten that his father even lived here. I tell him to take me to a hotel but he doesn’t take me to his father’s house or to a hotel. He takes me to a bar. We get out and I follow him inside. It’s not the kind of place we frequent—a fancy wine bar with too many mirrors, where I feel underdressed and greasy. The Office Depot girl wouldn’t be here.
I sit next to him on a barstool and he orders his usual: a Budweiser and a shot of Jameson. I order a gin martini, dirty. The olives are pierced through a long wooden stick, dangerous, and I eat them carefully, one at a time, and remember that there are pleasures in life; sometimes they’re so small they shouldn’t compensate for all of the shit, but they do. They really do. Once the olives are gone, I look up hotel reviews on my phone even though I know where I want to stay: The Hard Rock. There are young, good-looking people there and they let you bring your dog.
“Hey, babe,” he says. “Hey, love.” I don’t look at him. Other women may do their best to be nice and accommodating but I try to be as unlikeable as possible, test men too soon. The right one will love me for it, I imagine, though I’ve been through enough to know that the right one doesn’t exist, this perfect man who will be whole yet malleable, who will allow me to be as ugly as I want.
Twenty minutes later, I’m in a hotel room by myself: two beds, a large bathroom with an array of soaps and lotions, everything perfectly beige. It’s on the fourteenth floor overlooking the Gulf and I stand in the window and try to make out the barrier islands: Cat Island, Ship, Horn, some other one I forget. In ’69, Camille split Ship Island in two.
It’s not the first time I’ve waited for him in a hotel room. I’ve given up so much to be with him and some of these things are for the best. He has taught me sex without love, a Buddhist’s degree of unattachment. He’s taught me that I can only rely on myself and it’s a good lesson, one I needed to learn. He also taught me to drive a stick shift and put cream cheese on sandwiches, an appreciation of westerns. Everyone leaves something behind; there are so many things I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t had all of them.
I know he’ll show up in the morning when it’s time to check out and it’ll be done: the picture taken, cash in hand, an inexplicably large amount unaccounted for. I call room service and order a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a strawberry milkshake and eat everything including most of the condiments in their fat little jars. Then I lie in bed and watch the most boring thing I can find on TV—old women selling garish jewelry and elastic waist pantsuits—and the longer I watch, the more I begin to imagine a world in which these things might appeal to me.
I call my mother; I can’t help it. She always answers, even if she’s with her priest or in the movie theater.
“Hello?” she says. “Who’s this?”
“Mom? Are you there?”
“I was asleep,” she says. “I fell asleep. What time is it?”
“Eight o’clock.” I don’t know why I called her but I do it constantly, against my will. More often even than she calls me. I call her because she is there, because she loves me, and because one day she’ll die and I won’t know how to live in a world without her in it. I don’t know how to live in this one.
When we hang up, I look at my phone: three minutes and twenty-seven seconds. It seemed like so much longer.
Sometime during the night, he comes in. I pretend to sleep as he takes off his clothes and gets into bed, reaches a cold hand beneath my shirt.
“Tell me,” I say, swatting his hand away. “What happened?”
“I got it.”
“Where’s my camera?”
“On the dresser.”
“What’d you do?”
“It was nothing,” he says. “It was easy.”
“But what’d you do? What happened?” I ask, knowing I’ll never know what happened. I’ll never know what he does when I’m not with him. When I’m alone I don’t do anything the least bit interesting. He tugs at my panties and I help him, kick them to the end of the bed. I run my hand over his prickly head because it’s what I like best about him. But once I’m safe inside my apartment, I won’t answer his calls or listen to his voice mails. I’ll watch him through the peephole until he goes away and if he acts crazy I’ll document his behavior and get a restraining order. I’ll tell Farrell, the apartment manager, to keep a lookout and she’ll be happy to be given this assignment—she loves a purpose, someone she might yell at as she hobbles around the parking lot on her crutches. I’ll even move if I have to, to Texas or North Carolina, somewhere far enough away that he won’t bother to find me unless a bad man calls and offers him money and he’s the only bad man I can say for sure I know. This is not my life. It isn’t the one, I tell myself, as I wrap my legs around him as tightly as possible.