Last Girl Ghosted(11)

I don’t know what to say. It’s clear by her wide-open expression that she’s telling the truth, or she’s a very accomplished liar—which most people are not. Again, I glance at the doorway, the buzzer, the intercom. It’s the right place, the place we were together. I’m sure of it.

“Thank you.” Because what else is there to say?

“Good luck finding your friend,” she says, and the screen goes black.

A glance at my phone reveals that there are no more calls, no answer when I try your number again. Another text:

I’m sure there’s a good reason that you stood me up. Call me. I’m not—worried or anything. Not freaking out. At all.
No little dots pulse, telling me that you’re about to answer. Of course, you’ve disabled the read-receipt option on your messages. So, I don’t know if you’ve gotten my message. I feel the throb of unhappiness, such a familiar emotion. The helplessness of a lost connection. People only stay in your life if they want to. So often, they just go away. And there’s really nothing you can do.

I stand helpless on the street, ticking through my options. Wait and see if you show up here? No. Try you again? No. Another call to you and I’ve veered into hysteria. You’ve stood me up. There’s a woman and child in the apartment I thought was yours. It occurs to me, in just this moment, that we have no friends in common, no one that you know who is known to me, as well. There isn’t someone who I could casually call and say: Hey, have you seen Adam?

Is that weird?

Standing awkwardly on the street for another minute, I stare at my silent phone. And then because my options are few, I just go home.

When I get down to the subway platform, the train is idling in the station. I slip into the seat next to an old woman reading a Bible. In general, I seek to sit next to people who have books in their hands, or people who are writing long hand in a notebook, or just staring off into space. Those types of people seem safer, kindred somehow. The train pulls from the station, then races, wobbly, squealing. Not packed but crowded enough, it winds its way to Brooklyn Heights, and I exit at Borough Hall.

On the street a cold front seems to have moved in quickly and definitely. It’s grown downright frigid as I make my way home. This dress is way too thin.

Why did I not wear a jacket?

Where are you?

I bow my head and walk quickly. Brooklyn has a different rhythm than Manhattan. It’s slower, easier. But there’s still a pulse.

For a second, I imagine that you are sitting and waiting on my stoop. I lost my phone, you’ll say. Or: you won’t believe what happened. And we’ll go inside my brownstone—which in every way is the opposite of your place—and I’ll pour us each a glass of wine and light the fireplace in the living room. And you’ll tell me what happened. And there will be some very good reason why there was a strange woman in your place, claiming that it was a vacation rental. And the incident will be forgotten as we make love.

I can feel your skin, my fingers in the thick of your hair, the way you hold me, hold my eyes, make me feel things—a hunger, a falling, a desire so intense it’s frightening.

But you’re not on the stoop. Inside, the house is dark and silent.

I flip on the downstairs lights, lock the door behind me. The place, the home that I’ve built, is a comfort. Dropping my bag by the door, I sink into the soft embrace of my couch and pull the cashmere throw around me, still holding my phone in my hand. The screen gives back nothing.

I’m not sure how long I stay there, curled up, waiting for word from you. A long time. I must have dozed off, because the vibrating of my phone startles me awake.

Something’s happened. I have to go. I’m sorry, Wren.
I don’t understand, I type quickly with my thumbs.

I know. I’m sorry.
Just tell me what happened.
But an error message comes back, telling me that my text could not be delivered. I sit there and stare at the red, trying again and again to reach you.

I flip on the television for a distraction. An impossibly coiffed, plastic male face delivers the news. He doesn’t look real. Is he real? I wonder. Maybe he’s one of those avatars, a computer-generated image of what a newscaster should look like. But no, on my high-def television I can see the cake of his makeup. The news is all bad, of course. A virus is sweeping through China at an alarming rate, images of men in hazmat suits spraying down some kind of plaza fill my large screen. The stock market, which has been a come-one-come-all party for the last few years has started to slide. There’s a big red zigzag to show the downward trajectory of our wealth. A plane has crashed in the Middle East, all passengers lost. Now, a fiery wreckage fills the screen. “The new aircraft model,” the newscaster says, voice low with disapproval, “had known mechanical issues. An investigation is underway.”

Even though I don’t want to, I hear my father’s voice. A newscast like this one would have him thundering about how the world of men was about to fall. How humans were a virus in the body of God, and eventually we would be ejected. He used to thump his fist on the table when he really got going. I hear the china rattling.

A pall settles over me, as it always does when the news makes my father’s ranting seem sane. My phone stays stubbornly dark.

There’s an almost physical twinge in my solar plexus, the severing of our connection.

I don’t know how I know this. But my whole body aches with the certainty.