Authors: J. C. Gatlin
“That
yours?” she asked.
Gunz
shook his head and
stepped away, moving toward the men's room.
As the
waitress picked up the plates of uneaten salad and nearly full glasses of diet
soda, Addison scrambled back into the diner. He ran to the table and grabbed
his laptop.
“What are
you doing?” he said to the waitress with an accusatory tone. The woman paused,
holding the dishes, and glared at him.
“I'm
campaigning for re-election. What do you think I'm doing?”
Addison
ignored the sarcasm. “What happened to the ladies who were accompanying this
booth?”
“Ladies?
That's a
laugh.” The waitress chuckled and turned her back, walking into the kitchen.
Closing
his laptop, Addison looked around the coffee shop. The girls were gone.
Perplexed, he rubbed his bearded chin.
His
pocket vibrated, startling him, and he removed a cellular phone from his
jacket. Flipping it open, he brought it to his left ear. It was Dr. Whitman on
the other end
“You just
missed the girls,” Addison said, then paused as he listened.
“Unfortunately
I'm at a loss,” he continued. “They just abruptly departed. But I informed
Kimberly of your regrets and that you were detained once again by an unstable
patient.”
He
glanced toward the front entry. The lug of a baseball player who had been
pursuing Mallory was exiting the diner. Addison paused a moment, watching him,
then turned his attention back to the phone.
“No,
Alec. I don't know if Mallory has said anything to Kimberly yet... but I'm most
certain she will.”
7
A Close Call
“That was
close.” Mallory laughed, pushing Kim out the diner doors and onto the sidewalk.
They crossed the intersection against the light and headed back to Mallory's
parked Miata. Making it clear that she was not pleased, Kim walked several
steps ahead. She crossed her arms, swinging her purse. Mallory caught up to
her, telling her to slow down.
Kim
picked up her pace. “I can't believe you tried to set me up with that old
psychologist again. You just don't know when to quit, do you?”
“He’s a
psychiatrist, and…” Mallory grabbed her arm to slow her down.
“Stop being so melodramatic.”
“Melodramatic?”
Kim whipped around to confront her friend face to face. “Not only did you
ambush me, but this is the second time he's stood me up - second time in a row!”
“He just
got detained with another crazy patient, that's all.” Mallory punctuated that
with a light, throaty chuckle. “The whole town is freaked out over the
Congressman's murder so it's understandable.”
“You're
changing the subject.” Kim turned and stepped off the sidewalk into the street.
She headed toward the car parallel parked in front of a meter. Mallory followed
her into the oncoming traffic.
“Would
you just wait?” She grabbed Kim’s arm again. Mallory stopped her in the middle
of the street. A car honked and swerved around them. Oblivious, Kim pointed a
finger at her and leaned forward.
“You
sandbagged me with another blind date. You know I’m involved.”
“Ross
went M.I.A. on you, what, six weeks ago? He’s gone.”
Another car
blared
its horn. Mallory waved it away. “I just wanted to get your mind off it.
Besides, Dr. Whitman has lined up a very exciting date.”
“You just
don't give up, do you?”
“Listen
to me, Kim. He's really been putting a lot of pressure on me lately. He's
talked about you for ages and he's been asking me to set you two up for a long
time. Ever since...”
Breaks
squeaked on a truck as it swerved to miss them. Kim ignored it.
“Ever since what, Mallory?
Since Ross dumped me?”
“No -
since Ross disappeared.” Mallory paused. Her eyes softened and a faint smile crossed
her lips. “Kim, he's not coming back.”
Kim was
about to protest. It was a knee-jerk reaction to tell Mallory how wrong she
was. For a moment, Kim considered explaining about the mysterious poems and the
invitation for dinner on Friday night. She wanted to tell Mallory about the
phone calls. All those cryptic messages and notes – it had to be from Ross. It
just had to be. They were meant for each other.
Instead
Kim looked down at her feet and sighed. “I'm just not in the mood to be sweet
and sociable. You know what I mean? I'm angry. And I want to hit something. I
want to rip something apart and stomp on it and crush it
and
...”
Another
car honked and the driver screamed obscenities as he whizzed past. The girls
were unfazed standing in the center of the road.
“Exactly my point.”
Mallory snapped her fingers, seemingly very pleased with herself. “That's why
this handsome, debonair doctor suggested a double date at a mock war camp.”
“A what?”
“A mock
war camp,” Mallory repeated. “Instead of miniature golf or going to a movie,
we'd play weekend warrior.”
Kim
hesitated, watching her a moment, then followed. “What kind of date is that?”
“The kind that’ll get you over Ross!”
Mallory headed toward her Miata parked at the curb.
Unlocking
the car door, she paused and leaned against the hood. She turned back toward
Kim.
“It’s the
kind of date where you can be tank girl and rip men apart and blow them away
and stomp on them... only with paint pellets.” Mallory’s eyes enlarged and she
took a breath, as if waiting for Kim to protest. When she didn't, Mallory
continued. “He's a head shrink, Kim. He knows about these
kind
of things.”
Kim
opened the passenger side door. “I just don't think...”
“Listen
to me. What better way to release all this pent up emotion than by shooting
macho guys in camouflage with red paint balls?” Mallory insisted. “It's what
you need right now. I think it would really do you a lot of good.”
Kim
watched Mallory a moment,
then
slipped into the car. “Is
this a date?”
“It's
anything you want it to be.”
Kim
hesitated, biting her lower lip,
then
continued
walking again. “No,” she said. “Ross is coming back to me. He left me a...”
“Too little, too late.
Besides, I've already signed you up.” Mallory fastened her seatbelt and put the
key into the ignition. “So really, the only question left is --- Who should I
ask to go on this weekend excursion?
The wealthy and
distinguished Addison Gaynor or the tall, dark and exciting ball player
Gunz
Gonzales?”
Kim
hesitated again. “Mallory, since we're being completely honest with each other,
I've got
some thing
to tell you.”
“Decisions.
Decisions.”
Mallory continued as Kim wasn't even there. She
backed out of the parking spot. “Sometimes I wish I was more like you. Then I
wouldn't ever have to worry about men.”
Driving
west toward the university campus, Mallory rambled on like she always did, and
Kim considered telling her that if Addison and this Alec Whitman were such good
friends, it made little sense to take her secret ball playing lover. But like
any good friend, Kim let Mallory have her fantasy.
And, so
that she could keep her own, Kim decided to let the upcoming dinner date remain
a secret.
A secret only shared with Ross.
Their
secret rendezvous.
It was
all she thought about that afternoon in class. The Professor had moved on from
Cyrano de Bergerac. The odd boy dressed in black still glared at her though,
tossing daggers with his eyes. She didn't care. Her mind was elsewhere.
* * * * * * *
Ross’
invitation to dinner still weighed heavy on her mind when she entered the old
folks
home and Nurse Carla, wearing her aqua-colored scrubs,
holding a clipboard in one hand and waving with the other, called out. “Miss
Bradford, your
grandaddy
isn’t
feeling so
well today. He hasn’t gotten out of bed yet.”
Kim
paused. “Is he okay?”
“You know
how it is, child. He’s got his good days and bad days,” she said. “He didn’t
touch his peas and carrots last night, but he still had a solid bowel movement.”
“Glad to
hear it.” Kim waved a hand, moving down the hallway. “I’m going to go check on
him.”
“That’s
good, child!” Carla called after her. “That’s good for him. He likes visitors.”
The door
was shut when Kim made it to his room, and she
creaked
it open to peek inside. His room was stuffy and warm, unusually dark with the
curtains drawn.
“
Grampa
?” she asked, allowing her eyes to adjust.
He was
lying in bed, chin up, staring at the ceiling. She slipped into the room and
shut the door behind her. Approaching the bed, she reached for him and took his
hand.
“
Grampa
, the nurse said you’re not feeling well today.” Kim
watched him a moment, then put a hand on his forehead. “You’re not running a
fever. Why didn’t you eat your peas and carrots?”
Without turning
his head, his eyes moved toward her. She smiled at him. But there was no
recognition. He looked back up at the ceiling.
Thinking
he might be too warm, she folded down the heavy quilt, freeing his arms but
keeping his legs and feet covered. Her grandmother had made that quilt, and it
looked similar to the one draped over the recliner back home. Then Kim stepped
to the window and opened the curtains. She could feel the draft coming through
the window panes along with the warmth of the sun.
Grampa
flinched slightly in bed as sunlight filled the room.
“Now
isn’t that better?” Kim asked, turning to him. She then walked over to the
television sitting on top the dresser and turned it on. She flipped through the
channels twisting the knob beside the screen.
“Let’s
liven it up a bit in here,” she said.
She
turned the stations, but found nothing worth watching. Propped up against the
side of the television, three black, rectangular VHS cassette tapes collected
dust. With blue magic marker, one was labeled “
MR. ED, THE TALKING HORSE
,”
the other two were marked “
I LOVE LUCY
” She picked up one labeled “LUCY”
and pushed it into the VCR. She then turned the station to channel three.
Glancing
back to her grandfather, she smiled at him again. “You want to watch Lucy?”
From the
bed, he watched her but didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the TV. The
screen went black before the familiar gray heart appeared and the theme song
crackled through the speakers.
Kim moved
over to the bed and sat down beside him on the edge. Leaning toward him, she
wrapped her arms around his frail shoulder and put her cheek next to his. “Life
doesn’t get any easier,” she whispered. “We just get stronger.”
She
squeezed him as they watched the show. Lucy mistakenly thinks Ethel is the
female bank robber she just heard about on the news, and hatches a plot to
catch her in the act. Watching, Kim laughed.
For the
first time in a while, she felt warm inside. She felt like the little girl who
would climb in her
Grampa’s
lap when he was trying to
read the newspaper, and he would turn on old reruns to appease her and she
would curl up beside him, and they would laugh together.
Glancing
at her grandfather, now a thin, wisp of an aged, fragile shell lying in bed,
she noticed something else. Something she hadn’t seen in a long time. Her
grandfather was laughing too.
A little
over an hour and three episodes later, Kim left the nursing home. She had to
stop at the grocery store and was away longer than expected. Still, despite the
time and the heavy bag of groceries in her arms, Kim took the long way home.
She
walked along Morris
Munger
Road.
Coming to
the sharp bend, she set her bag of groceries down on the shoulder. Noticing an
ant hill, she decided to move the grocery bag,
then
ran along the side of the road to the weathered real estate sign. She searched
around it, and then a few feet further away.
Cars
whizzed past her on the street, and Kim laughed at herself. She had walked
along this shoulder so many times over the last few weeks, searching this area
time and time again, that she imagined getting struck by a hit and run and
dying right here on the road. She would probably become a tormented ghost, she
thought, roaming this haunted highway, searching for an eternity. Never finding
it, but always looking. Kim shuddered at the thought as darkness encroached. It
was time to give up for the day, and go home.
When she
finally made it back to the gated community and approached her townhome, she
saw Zeus’ arrow-shaped head staring at her through the front bay window. His
ears pointed, his paws on the glass, he was waiting like a sentinel and barked
as she approached the front door. Yelling at him to pipe down and fishing for
her keys, she removed a flyer rubber-
banned
to the
doorknob. It was from a cheap Chinese dive around the corner. Tossing it into
the bag on top a loaf of bread, she unlocked the door and Zeus greeted her as
if she had been gone a year.
Or at
least five weeks, one day and fifteen hours
* * * * *
* *
Next door,
inside Mallory's dark townhome, a man stood at the upstairs window, watching.
He had been waiting for Kimberly to walk through the gated entry. When she did,
he studied her approach. She walked slowly past the front gates and parking lot
with school books and a bag of groceries in her arms.
He
wondered if the poetry book he'd given her was among them.
Balancing
the books and groceries in one arm, her other arm disappeared into the purse
strapped around her right shoulder. He knew she was fumbling for her keys.
There was a matching set hanging on the key-hook downstairs by Mallory's front
door.
The
thought made him smile as he watched Kim finally pull her key chain from the
purse and then reposition the grocery bag and school books. With so much fuss, she
headed to the porch and approached her front door. She yelled something to her
dog, something he couldn't hear from his perch above. But he could imagine what
she was saying.