How To Disappear Completely Page 13

  When I finally knocked on the door, Nicole opened it with a “What took you so long to–Oh my God! What happened?” She helped me the rest of the way into her apartment and over to her sofa where I plopped into the same spot as the night before. For a second I wondered which was worse, the feeling I had last night knowing that Allison had betrayed me long before I had made the mistake of asking her to marry me, or the dog bite still clenching my leg. Ultimately I decided that the feelings from last night weren’t gone yet, and so today’s pain won over all the negative emotions I had about her and life in general.

  Nicole, being amazing, was finishing preparations of dinner for the two of us. She made scallop risotto that smelled unbelievable. She had a bottle of wine ready and a few candles set up to be lit for a romantic mood. “I hope I didn’t ruin the evening you had planned,” I said, wanting her to know that I had noticed everything she had worked so hard on. “Oh, Josh, I certainly know it’s not your fault,” she said as I made my way to a chair at the table. Right as I sat down, she placed my plate in front of me. I rarely had scallops and I never imagined that the bubbly, slightly nerdy MIT girl that I met at Our House earlier in the week would be cooking them for me, trying to impress me.

  Between each amazing bite, I recounted a small chunk of the ridiculous day I had. I told her everything. I told the story about the little ducks at the duck pond, which made her smile. I told her about how I couldn’t find my ring and freaked out. I told her about how I called Allison out about Sascha.

  “She hates me now, doesn’t she?” Nicole asked.

  “Well to be fair, she probably started hating you last night. Nothing I said today changed anything. She just still hates you. She actually tried to make me out to be the bad guy. Even after she admitted that she didn’t want to marry me because she was unsure of her and me because of her and Sascha.”

  “Yeah, well we do that. It’s always your fault, you know. Whatever it is.”

  Eventually I told her about my encounter with Allison and her evil dog.

  “She refused to give you the ring back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What? Why? I don’t understand.”

  “You got me.”

  “What does she want to do with it? Was she wearing it?”

  “No, I think I would have noticed that.”

  “But it wasn’t in the box?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t think she would have sold it, do you?”

  “Apparently you know her just as well as I do, so you tell me. I doubt it. She doesn’t need the money.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “Could she have lost it, but she didn’t want to tell you?”

  “Lost it? How could she have lost it?”

  “Well I can imagine that if someone asked me to marry them and I was unsure of what I wanted to do, I would have at least tried it on to see what it looked like. Every girl wants an amazing engagement ring. It’s a lot like trying on wedding dresses whether you’re getting married or not–you like the thought of it.”

  I often felt as though I understood a lot about girls that many guys didn’t, but I certainly never understood their desire for a wedding. Why was it ingrained in their souls? A giant party for what? You’re married when you sign some papers, not when a guy waves a magic wand in a church or in a hotel banquet hall. Why not just have a party like any other party and save the money you’d spend on the wedding for retirement or your kid’s college fund or anything else?

  “Hmm… ” I hadn’t thought of her losing it.

  “Well couldn’t she have told me that she lost it instead of demanding that she keep it?”

  “Would it have made a difference?”

  She was right. I would have been just as upset if she had lost it. I wouldn’t have punched and kicked her dog, but I would have hated her just the same either way.

  “No, that doesn’t add up for me. I know her pretty well and I didn’t think that she was hiding anything from me.” Then I realized that she had kept Sascha from me for 3 months and I didn’t have a clue. “Well, maybe she could be lying, but I don’t think she just lost it.”

  “So it has to be somewhere else in her apartment, right?”

  “It has to be.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the little trinket that would elucidate what I was planning. “You still have a key to her place… . You sneaky bastard.”

  “In all the hullabaloo today, she never thought to ask for it back. It was probably the last thing on her mind, so here’s what I’m thinking… .” Nicole was genuinely intrigued in knowing my plan. She leaned forward to hear better, excited, listening intently as if she were at a murder mystery dinner playhouse and she had just figured out whodunit. She didn’t take much pleasure in having figured it out first, as she was just glad to be a part of it all.

  “I was thinking I’d just walk in, snoop around, with gloves of course, and leave with the ring that’s rightfully mine.” After all, I still had the receipt to prove it. I wondered who would win if it went to court. Perhaps Judge Judy would rule in my favor because of my quirky charm, but Allison would turn on the fireworks and it’s hard to tell a girl she can’t have her engagement ring when she’s bawling–whether the tears are real or not.

  “What about the dog?” she asked, like the kid in the front of the class telling the teacher she didn’t have enough homework for the night.

  “That’s where I’m unsure of what to do. I’m hoping that it’s still hurt from today, but if it’s not, then I don’t really have a plan yet.”

  “Hmm.”

  We both sat eating our risotto as if it was some sort of magical potion and we were waiting for the acid trip that would reveal the answers to our questions. Unfortunately life doesn’t work that way and magic potions are hard to come by these days. The wine certainly helped. Without realizing, during my detailed descriptions of the day’s events, I had drunk two full glasses. Apparently Nicole was a ninja trained in the deft art of shadow wine pouring.

  It suddenly occurred to me that our relationship up to that point had revolved around alcohol, which seemed odd to me. From the get go, we met at a bar. The rest of the week was one bizarre occurrence after another that deserved a drink or two after having to deal with the drama. I ate the last bite of risotto and bowed to the chef. “Dinner was unbelievable. Thank you.” The sincerity of my praise made her blush a bit as she offered to clear the plates. Instead of doing the dishes right away though, she helped me back over to the sofa and sat down next to me with her head on my shoulder as we had been the night before.

  “You know, I could really get used to this.” I whispered just loud enough to reach her ears, but no further.

  “Me too.” Her words had to wrap around her head to reach my ears.

  All of a sudden she jumped up. “I have an idea!” she exclaimed. “PETA won’t approve of this, but it’ll probably work.” She bounced over to her desk and opened her top drawer. After rustling a few odds and ends around, she pulled out a small case with a snap at the top.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a taser.”

  “You want me to taser a dog? Can you do that?”

  “I don’t know, but it’ll definitely stop him, right?”

  She did have a point. I already punched and kicked the thing, would it really make a difference on my moral permanent record if I tased the son of a bitch? A quick tutorial on the usage of the taser and I was ready to go. Aside from the fact that I was a little wounded myself, I was prepared for my mission. We went over possible locations for the ring. “If I were hiding a ring I wouldn’t put it somewhere obvious. It wouldn’t be with the rest of my jewelry. But she did take it out of the box… .” We both made speculations based on what I could remember about her room and the various containers in it. We drew out a little map of her room with all the possible places notated with symbols.

  At the e
nd of our secret meeting, the plan sounded so simple: use my key, taser the dog, find the ring and walk out. Satan would be back to normal by the time Allison came home and she probably wouldn’t notice the ring was gone until I had already returned it. After going step by step over the plans and all possible locations for the ring, we lounged back in the sofa and took sips of the last of the wine. “We’ve had quite the eventful relationship so far, haven’t we?” I asked playfully.

  “We sure have.”

  “Are we going a good pace?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well both of us just got out of pretty long relationships. You happen to know the extent of mine. I happen to know the severity of yours. I don’t want to rush anything with you. I like you. A lot.”

  Her face melted into a smiling wax statue of herself.

  “I think we’re going a good pace. Do you?”

  “I just wanted to make sure that you’re ok with everything.”

  “I had to practically beg you to stay over. It took that whole mess with Allison to actually make it happen.” We both laughed and I wrapped my arm around her shoulder.

  “I just like that I already feel comfortable with you even though there’s still so much to learn about you. I don’t feel like I have to impress you or anything and so I just have a lot of fun with you. Who would have thought plotting a faux felony against my ex-girlfriend could be so fun, right?”

  “And my ex-good friend. I’m becoming less and less caring of her well-being. What a terrible friend I am.”

  “Whose fault is it?”

  “What?”

  “Who’s the bad guy in all of this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I started seeing you without knowledge of Allison’s affair. You started seeing me knowing full well that I was Allison’s boyfriend. Allison started dating Sascha 3 months before I asked her to marry me and therefore 3 months before I started seeing you. Arguably, everyone involved is at fault for something.”

  “Why does there have to be a bad guy?”

  “I guess I’m just used to the idea that there is always a bad guy in a story. Blame Walt Disney.”

  “Hmm. Well, everyone was just doing what was good for them, right?”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “Then one could argue that we’re all the bad guys.”

  “Oh.”

  “Or we can both just blame Allison and call her the bad guy.”

  “But then she’ll just blame us and call us the bad guy.”

  “And that is how all wars are justified. Everyone thinks that God is on their side and that they are the ones that deserve to win.”

  “But then–”

  “Let’s not worry about who’s the bad guy here, ok? I’d rather just enjoy the night with you.”

  “You’re right. But she’s the bad guy here, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She stretched her neck to kiss me. A few moments in tender embrace and she broke away to start doing the dishes. Her computer was the focus of the room for Act Two of that evening as we both checked out our social pages to see what the word was on the digital street. The Bayside Ramblers had written back to me and liked my review as well. Two out of two is a good start and just like Wally and the Whale they had asked me to possibly review their new album when it came out. This whole reviewing thing was going better than I could have expected so far. The only thing to do now was to go see as many shows as I could, or as many shows as I could afford until I found an actual job.

  A few more glasses of wine and the fermented grapes called forth the longing in our bodies, like spirits from another plane. Soon we had re-staged the performance of the night before. Lying there before falling asleep I asked her, “Do you think this is a bad idea?”

  “What, us?”

  I laughed. “No I’m sorry. My plot for tomorrow. Is it ridiculous?”

  “What’s ridiculous is her not giving you back the ring. You have an odd sort of right to being wrong on this one. I’ve known her for a long time and it still just doesn’t seem like something that she’d do.”

  A breath or two. “I know, right? That’s what worries me about the whole thing. She’s been so out of character for the past few weeks. You think she’s ok?”

  “I don’t think either of us will be able to find out at this point.”

  “Yeah.”

  The thick Boston wind whirred and screeched against the windows of her apartment, like fingernails dragged across a chalkboard. Eventually the exhaustion and wine took over my body and I drifted off to sleep. That night I dreamt of Allison. I would rather have dreamt about the angry, drunken carnie ramming his car into the carnival again, than dream of her.

  She was sitting quietly at home reading a book, looking rather sullen. She kept switching positions, never finding one that she could sink into and relax. She just couldn’t stay still. Her whole afternoon went like that. She had a glass of wine to help her relax, but even that didn’t help. Someone came to her door. Of course, it was Sascha, except he didn’t look like the tool he was when I met him. He looked like a sophisticated guy. As he walked through the door, she immediately took off her shirt, ran over and jumped on him. It went on and on and on. I knew that I was sleeping but I couldn’t wake up and I couldn’t control anything. It was as if my mind was forcing me to watch, holding my internal eyelids open.

  I woke up to Nicole wiping my forehead and whispering, “Shhh, it’s ok. Shhh.” I jumped up and landed back down in the same position. “Bad dream?” Nicole asked.

  “Terrible.” I told her all about it, sparing her the details that no one would really want to hear. After about five minutes I finally started to calm down and started to think about Allison in the dream. I couldn’t remember any time when she was as excited to see me as she was seeing Sascha. It was as if Sascha were a drug and she was addicted to him. Restless until she got her fix of someone other than me. It was terrifying.

  “I just have to tell you, so that it won’t fester inside me. I’m not all that mad, but it does bother me a bit. Forgetting for a moment that you knew that I was dating Allison, you still knew that she was dating Sascha, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t tell me, why?”

  “That would have given away that I knew her.”

  “Right.”

  “I was going to eventually tell you. I just didn’t want to be the reason that everything ended. I wanted you guys to work it out as if I weren’t there.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What can you do? Everyone’s the bad guy here, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  That morning we decided to forego the usual habits of the last few days and to go out for breakfast. My leg felt surprisingly better and I could walk normally again. We made our way to a small café that sat like a fat cat on the edge of the MIT campus. Everyone came to it in spite of the usual long wait, and for good reason. A meal fit for a warrior was what I needed and that’s exactly what I got. I hadn’t eaten so much in one sitting in years. It wasn’t heavy, though. I ate and ate and just felt my body absorbing everything that it could to prepare me for what lay ahead.

  We went over the plans and I made sure I had all my tools. Nicole paid the tab and then kissed me for good luck before waving goodbye and walking briskly to her class. Fear crawled up my legs, grabbing at the top of my pants to hoist itself up. Then it grabbed my spine like a shaky ladder and climbed higher up to my neck. I got a cab to quickly take me across the bridge as walking across it would still have been tricky. I got out at the top of Newbury because the cabbie didn’t understand my directions, so and I decided that a coffee would do me good. I needed that extra jolt to get the job done right.

  I went back into Starbucks by ‘the Nasty’ and got myself a large coffee. Even though I worked there, I still refuse to say tall, grande and venti. Just make it small, medium or large. Please. A s
eat was open by the window and I decided that a moment to prepare would be nice. People watching was a sport in this city and I was one of the team captains. One of the best. A couple caught my attention as they broke stride and pulled their hands apart right across the street. The girl was yelling at the guy and he looked horrified. Normally if someone is yelling at you like that, you know what you did. He seemed completely clueless.

  Maybe he was just acting like he didn’t know, but I didn’t think so. The poor guy was getting berated by what seemed to be his girl, right in the middle of a busy pedestrian highway. They blocked foot traffic, and if people had horns built-in, there would have been many of them honking at the two. She slowly made the transition from anger to tears. I had never seen a girl yell like that without eventually ending up dripping in tears. I was so caught up in my own life that I forgot other people out there were likely having their own dramas, like I was having the last few days. Maybe names and events were changed, but enough was the same to make any life a movie “based on a true story”.

  I had more sympathy for both of them than I would have, eight days ago. I probably would have blamed him for being the one to do something wrong, when really she was probably trying to blame him to hide what she had done. We’re an amazing species, I thought, as I checked my pockets for the taser and the keys to Allison’s apartment. Tossing the empty coffee cup into the trash, I walked out the door and imagined that I was walking in slow motion like in a Wes Anderson movie. The hero’s moment of slow motion. Mine came as I approached the apartment building soon to be six thousand dollars less valuable.