Lost and Found (12 page)

“No,” he says, “normally you dress like a hippy who’s an hour late to a peace rally.”

I stand up suddenly, tampons in hand, sending the chair backwards again. At least this time I’m not in it.

“Hey!” I point at him with a fist full of feminine products. “Watch it, bud! That’s just plain rude and totally uncalled for.”

He crosses his arms, the gun no longer in sight. “I’ve met you four times, and three of those times you’ve run smack into me without looking where you’re going.”

I want to laugh, but I’m too pissed. The sound that leaves my lips is some kind of crazy bird-bark.

“Ha! That’s called projection, buddy. It ain’t me, it’s
you
. Don’t try to put your shit on me. You’re the one who thinks he’s soooo important he doesn’t have to look where he’s going, even when he’s in a crowd of people in the middle of New York City!”

He points to the door. “Get out.”

“Gladly!” I yank my purse off his desk and turn to go.

“And don’t ever come back here!” he says loudly.

“As if! You wish!” I’m shouting at the top of my lungs, not even sure I’m making sense at this point. But I don’t care. All I know is I’ve done what I came to do and my lips feel like they’re about to fall off. I have to get rid of this lip gloss, like
yesterday
. I swipe at my mouth with the back of my hand and feel my very large lips move sideways, literally folding over onto my face.

The receptionist is staring at me like I’ve grown two heads when I fly past her. I don’t bother with pleasantries, I just take off, thrilled to not be carrying that damn ring around with me anymore. Let Doctor A-hole Oliver deal with that bad juju from now on. He seems like the kind of person who deserves it.

My pulse finally calms down by the time I reach the lobby. Then I start laughing so hard, tears come to my eyes. My lips are on fire.

I reach into my purse to get a tissue to dry them off, and my fingers wrap around a wad of them that feels way too familiar. I stop dead in my tracks as I pull the tissues out.

I don’t want to believe it’s happening, but it is; wrapped inside the layers of white, scruffy, nasty-looking tissues is that damn frigging fracking frucking ring!

Did I put it back in there, thinking it was a tampon? Would he have shoved it in while I was goofing around under his desk? Who would do that with a ring this valuable?

I shake my head. It must have been me. He’s really going to think I’m nuts, coming in there demanding he take his ring back and then stealing it from him.

Stealing?

Now I’m panicked that I’m going to really be called a thief. And this time, the police might actually agree with that assessment. I can’t go to jail. I’d totally end up being someone’s bitch and having to clean toilets all day. I hate cleaning toilets.

Knowing that I’ve been backed into a corner by a glorified Ken Doll with probably a fake nose, I want to smash all the glass out of the totally see-through lobby; but instead, I grit my teeth together and storm back to the elevators. No freaking way am I leaving here with this ring in my possession.

I’m sure the doctor doesn’t have another patient in there yet, so I go back up to his floor and stride over to the double doors, certain I’ll be let in. I hold up the tissues towards the camera a smile. “Yoo hoo! It’s me again! I accidentally took this with me when I left.” I grin like I’m trying out for a toothpaste commercial.

“Doctor Oliver can’t see you,” comes the zombie voice from within. “Please go away.”

All I want to do is hand over the ring, but the bitch won’t open up. I buzz nicely, I bang loudly, I plead with all kinds of crazy stories, but nothing works. Several minutes into my campaign, two security guards show up and escort me out of the building.

Chapter Twenty-Three

RALPH IS GLARING AT ME.

“Don’t look at me that way,” I say, sipping my chai.

“I told you I wasn’t going to do anything like that again.”

“Come on,” I plead, “just this one time.”

“You already got your one time.” He crumples up his paper coffee cup and tosses it in the trash bin we’re walking by on the way to work. I managed to accost him when he went out for lunch and got myself a muffin out of the deal when I refused to leave his side at Starbucks.

“Pleeease, Ralph, I promise, I won’t ask again. It’s just that this guy is nuts, and I’m not sure if I accidentally took the ring back or he put it back in my purse, and I really don’t want it.”

He stops and faces me. “Why not? It’s worth a lot of money. If he told you to keep it you should keep it.”

“Hell no. Do you have any idea the bad karma that’ll follow me around for the rest of my life? I’m not falling into that trap.” I finish my chai and toss the cup into the trash behind Ralph. Two points!

“You’re crazy. There’s no such thing as karma. There’s just you and me and the rest of the world, everyone trying to get a nut.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know. Anyway, I’m not pretending to be your manager or whatever. It’s done. Over. Sayonara.”

“No, see? That’s the beauty of this thing. You don’t need to do that. No more manager, no more Shay Dee, whoever she was.”

He’s walking so fast now, I think he’s trying to ditch me. Good thing I wore my sneaks today. I could run a marathon in these puppies.

“I don’t want to know.” He’s refusing to look at me, but I don’t let that dissuade me either.

“I have two plans. Plan A is you pretend to be a delivery guy and deliver it to him.”

“After hearing Plan A, I’m absolutely sure I don’t want to hear Plan B.”

“Plan B is you call up from Cartier and say that I left the ring there with you.”

He stops and points in my face, his cheeks growing two bright pink spots on them. “No. Absolutely not. You leave Cartier out of this.”

I back up a half-step. “Fine. No need to get your perfectly starched undies in a bunch.”

“Just mail it to him.”

“No way! It’s worth a half-million bucks! I’m not putting it in a box and mailing it. It’ll get stolen.”

“So? Then it’s not your problem anymore.”

I snort. “You have no idea how karma works, do you?”

“Whatever. I’m not helping.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Not even if I tell you that I have a dreadful illness that’s going to end my life any day?”

He snorts. “Talk about bad karma. Pretending you have cancer? I’m pretty sure that’s tempting fate.”

“Who said cancer?”

He stops and stares me down. “What are you talking about? Do you really have something wrong with you?” He pauses. “Other than the obvious, I mean.”

“Hey!” I hit him in the arm. “Not funny.”

He smiles. “Yes it was.”

I smile back. “Fine. It was a good one.”

He’s not smiling anymore. “Seriously, do you have something going on?”

I get very serious. “Yes. I’m dying.”

“Of what?” He lifts a brow.

I try to look pitiful but I can’t help it. He looks so stupid with that hard-candy-shell hair. “Of life! I’m dying every day. Every single day I’m one day closer to dying. It’s terminal. Incurable.”

He rolls his eyes and takes off, leaving me on the sidewalk.

“Please?!” I shout out at his back.

“No! Go away! Never talk to me again!”

I laugh because we both know that’s never going to happen. He’s way too good a fake-rapper manager for that.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I GO TO VISIT MEL in the hospital later that day and he’s lying in bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Hey, Mel, what’s new?” I walk over and put my hand on his arm, hoping he isn’t dead. He looks kind of zombie-ish; his skin is very gray.

“Nothing much,” he says in a gravelly voice. “Just learned I’m about to have surgery is all.”

I cringe, not really wanting the details but knowing I have to ask anyway. “What kind of surgery?”

“You don’t want to know.” He turns his head and looks at me with tears in his eyes.

I feel terrible, instantly. Time to lie. “No, I do want to know. Tell me.” Reaching behind me, I grab the closest chair and pull it over to the bed. I take his hand after sitting.

“My diabetes caught up with me. Can’t get that foot to heal. I guess I let it go too long.”

I nod. There’s nothing to say to that, is there? I sure can’t think of anything. Sorry about your foot. I’m going to miss it. Probably not as much as you are, though. No, that would be insensitive. I opt for silence.

“Should’ve taken better care of myself, they said.”

“Kind of hard to do when you’re homeless,” I say in a soft voice.

“Oh, there’re services out there. But I never liked being a charity case. Being inside makes me feel cooped up.”

Mentioning that he begs for change on street corners at this point would be very counter-productive, so I tuck that factoid away for another conversation, the one where I tell him he has to let me help him after he gets out of here.

“So what’s your plan for after?” I ask. “Rehab, probably?”

“Rehab, I guess. I don’t know. I don’t really care, to be honest.” He looks at the window.

“You should care.” I shake his hand a little.

“Why?”

“Because. You have friends. Like me, for one. I’d be sad if I didn’t see you around, share a coffee with you once in a while.”

A ghost of a smile floats across his face before it fades away again. “You’re a good girl.” He looks at me and reaches over to pat my hand. “Life’ll be good to you. Just keep doing what you do, and it’ll all pay off.”

I roll my eyes. “If you say so.”

He frowns. “Aren’t you happy? Is there something wrong?”

The irony that a guy with his feet rotting off him is worried about my wellbeing is not lost on me. I work up the biggest smile I can find in my repertoire. “I’m totally great, Mel, you don’t need to worry about me. Seriously, I have a great job, I have great friends … I have a boyfriend.”

Yeah, I said that. And why Doctor Oliver’s face popped up in my mind when I said it is an even bigger WTF moment. But now I’d said it and there was no going back.

“You do? Oh, that’s wonderful news. What’s his name?”

I panic. “Doctor. Oliver. Doctor Oliver is his name.”

Mel is confused. “That’s not his first name is it? Doctor?”

I fake-laugh, trying to play off the fact that I just realized I don’t know his first name. Had I ever seen it? I can’t remember.

“No, don’t be silly. That’s what the rest of the world calls him. But I call him … Boo.”

“Boo.” Mel frowns and shrugs his acceptance. “I guess that’s what all the kids are doing these days.”

“We’re hardly kids, Mel. I’m a grown woman. Twenty-nine this month, in fact.”

“How’s your brother?”

I have to think for a few seconds so I can process that totally weird and out-of-nowhere question.

“Brother? I don’t have a brother.”

“You don’t?”

Mel looks as confused as I do.

“Iii’m pretty sure.” I grin, worried his medication is making him weird. I don’t want him to feel bad about it. “Last time I checked, anyway.”

Mel blinks a few times and then shakes his head. “I’m sorry … I thought you told me once that you had a brother.”

“Nope.” I keep grinning, hoping the awkward moment will pass soon. “Not me. I’m an only child.”

“And your birthday is this month, right?”

“Yep. June twenty-fifth.”

“Nineteen eighty …” Mel waits for me to finish.

“Eighty-five. I was born in eighty-five.”

He nods, staring at me. “That’s what I thought.”

He stares at me for so long, I get nervous. “Soooo… can I get you any jello? Pudding? Salisbury steak?”

He smiles and looks at the window again. “No, I think I’ll just take a nap.” He closes his eyes and makes me feel like I’ve been dismissed.

“When is your surgery?” I ask.

“Tomorrow,” he whispers. And then he starts to snore.

I leave the room wondering what the heck is going to happen to my homeless fake-father-in-law. I almost think it’s the ring that’s brought this bad luck into his life, and that renews my desire to get rid of the damn thing as soon as possible.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I CAN’T BELIEVE I LET you talk me into this,” Ralph says, smoothing down the front of his brown shirt.

“You
so
rock the UPS look, Ralph. You should wear this thing more often.”

“If you ever tell anyone that I wore a UPS uniform, I’ll never speak to you again.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “You realize you threaten to never speak to me again every time you see me, right?”

He sighs, adjusting the large box at his waist under his arm. “I have zero willpower. Plus, you’re pushy.” He pulls at the collar of his shirt. “This thing is giving me a rash.”

“That’s just your nerves,” I say, pulling open the door to Doctor Oliver’s building. “As soon as you’re out of here, it’ll go away.”

“How do you know?” he asks, turning to look at me as we walk through the lobby.

“Because, it happens to me all the time. Panic-hives. It’s totally normal.”

He shakes his head as he steps into the elevator without me. “Now you’re really scaring me.”

The doors slide shut before I can respond.

It takes him just five minutes to come back down.

As soon as I see him, I’m elated, but then a split second later, I’m pissed. He still has the frigging package under his arm.

“Why are you still carrying that?” I ask, hands on hips.

He’s walking so fast I have to run to keep up. He answers at the doors leading to the street. “They made me.”

“They made you? They
made
you? What does that even mean?”

“It means, my cover was blown, that’s what it means.”

“How?” I’m running out of breath, jogging next to his long strides. “Did you get nervous?”

“No, it wasn’t
me
, it was
you
. I was totally rocking this uniform but then you had to go screw everything up.”

“How could it have been me? I wasn’t even there.”

“No, but you were in the lobby, weren’t you?” He glares at me.

“So?” I put my hand on his arm to make him stop. “I’m having a heart attack, slow down.”

We stand face-to-face on the sidewalk. “As soon as they came over the intercom, they asked me who was delivering the package. When I told them I didn’t know, they called the lobby and described you, asking if you were hanging around.”