Miss Misery (35 page)

I tried to picture it in my mind. “So what did you do?”

“Well, I tried to find you. But it was hard—it was so packed in here, and things kept shattering and more people kept showing up. It took me almost an hour to go through the whole apartment. And people kept handing me drinks and…you know how it is.”

“I do?”

She gave me a look. “Yeah, you do. But when I made it to the bedroom and saw for sure that you weren't here, that's when I sent you a text. I didn't understand where you could be. But you never wrote back.”

“I know. I should have.”

“Where
were
you?”

I sat back with a sigh. “Utah.”

Cath looked confused. “Utah?”

“Yep.”

“Like,
Utah
Utah?”

“The very one.”

Cath laughed. “You really get around, you know that?”

“So I've been told. What happened next?”

“Well, I waited for you to write back. But it kept getting later and later. And I was drinking a lot—actually I was still probably drunk from the night before. And then you—
other you
—offered me drugs and I figured that I shouldn't leave. That someone responsible had to be here.” She looked around at the destruction, gave a helpless shrug. “I'm sorry. I tried to be the responsible one but…I guess I just fucked it all up. As usual.”

The cute and by now familiar band of red blossomed across the bridge of her nose. I felt tired and used up. I was no longer angry. “Cath, where did he go?”

She took another sip of 7-Up and continued. “It was around three or four a.m. People were still raging and you number two had somehow got me cornered in the bedroom. He had his hands all over me, rubbing my legs and my shoulders. He was nibbling at my ears and kept trying to kiss me. I was pretty far gone, but I knew enough to push him away. And finally I just exploded, made some joke about how it was like the exact opposite of the night before—you know, with
you.
And it was like he got hit by lightning. He just went stiff and cold and pulled away from me and started yelling, like, ‘What happened?' and what had I done with you. He was scary.” She reached around on the floor, found a paper towel and blew her nose into it. She inspected the results, smiled, and said, “Ha. No blood.” Then she balled up the towel in her tiny fist.

“What did you tell him?”

“The truth! Just that I had invited you to a party and we had a good time together. That we, you know, hooked up a little.”

“And what was his reaction?”

“He started saying, ‘You invited
him,
' over and over. And he stood up suddenly and walked away from me, and it was like something changed in him.”

“What do you mean ‘changed'?”

“I don't know how to describe it.” She shook her head, shivered a little. “Like I said, I was pretty wasted. But it was like…like watching a candle melt, but sped up. Like he was melting a little from the inside.”

“Melting?”

“God, I don't know. That sounds so weird. It was like his insides were
soft
or something. Like he was changing from the inside out. Like everything was shifting, like sand after high tide. But then he snapped back, and anything that had been soft hardened up again. When it was over, his eyes were different. And he started moving differently too. Like he had just been radioed new orders from mission control. That's when he attacked your clothes in there.” She gestured toward the bedroom. “He put on that T-shirt you were wearing the day I met you. And he kicked everyone out.”

“And what did you do?”

“Well, it took a while for everyone to leave. So I lay down on the couch here to wait for them. Like I said, I didn't want to leave him alone here. But…I guess I fell asleep. I heard the door slam shut at some point, but I don't remember when.” She looked up at me with moist eyes. “I'm really sorry, David.”

“It's OK,” I said. “It's OK.” But I didn't feel like I was telling the truth. I stood up, starting walking back toward the bedroom. I felt like I was made of eggshells. Like I was already cracked and empty.

Cath called out to me. “What are you going to do?”

I didn't even turn around. “I don't know anymore. I don't have anything left.”

“What are you talking about?”

But I ignored her. I was broken. Nothing that I cared for or held close was mine anymore. Everything was gone. There was nothing left. I kicked off my shoes and stripped off my jeans. A wave of blackness and sadness washed over me, and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

 

Sometime during the morning Cath Kennedy joined me in bed, pulled the covers over us both, and rested her head in the crook of my arm. She wore only her underwear, and she twitched with dreams as she slept. It was those tiny movements that woke me. I didn't move, didn't pull her close. Just felt her presence and pressure up against me. It wasn't unpleasant, but it wasn't anything greater than that either. I felt like we were all alone together, adrift, like abandoned cosmonauts in some forgotten satellite. There was a hollow feeling in my chest where my heart usually was, and I realized: This isn't the end of sadness. It's the beginning. Sadness and loneliness aren't destinations. They're roads that lead us away from everything we once loved. I had felt desperate and sorry for myself on that lost, wild night after the Madrox, thinking I had finally bottomed out. But that wildness in my bones had just been the start of it all, not the end. I was falling now. And there was no bottom.

I blinked my eyes open and they stung with tears. As if she could read my mind, Cath sighed and snuggled in closer to me. “There was something else,” she murmured into my ear.

“What?” I whispered, staring at the ceiling fan as it made its lazy revolutions in the breeze.

“Right before he left, I heard him next to me on the futon. He was on the phone. He was talking quietly—so much so that I didn't recognize his voice. He was talking all lovey-dovey to someone. I couldn't make out much before he hung up. Then he was gone.”

I sat up like I had been electrocuted. “On the phone.”

Cath groaned and rolled away from me. “Yes.”

“Oh my God,” I said, leaping to my feet.

“Where are you going?” Cath whined and jammed a pillow over her head. “It's time to sleep still.”

I ignored her and raced through the chaos to the living room. I pulled the phone from its holster and hit the redial button. There was only one number displayed. An international exchange. The Netherlands. Amy.

“No,” I said out loud and threw the phone onto the futon.

From the other room I could hear Cath Kennedy rustling the covers. “What is it?” she said from under the pillow.

I ran into the office and swept the beer bottles onto the floor with a vicious crash.

Cath was sitting up now. “What's gotten into you? What are you doing?”

I buried my hands in the stacks of paper that covered my desk. The photo was missing. The photo of Amy was gone. I bashed at the keys of the computer and the screen saver blinked off. A Web page was open. Travelocity, thanking user David Gould for confirming his booking: JFK to Amsterdam, then a commuter flight to The Hague. The itinerary had been paid for by credit card. The flight was leaving today. I checked my watch. It was nearly two p.m. The plane was due to leave at six-twenty with a required check-in at four. Two hours. I had two hours.

I stood up with a start and raced to my dresser, ran my hand through the bottom of the sock drawer like a wild man. My hands skittered across the liner like a rabid spider. It was gone. My passport was gone. I turned to Cath Kennedy, who held a pillow balled up in front of her for protection and was staring at me like I was insane. Maybe I was. “Come on,” I said, throwing her a T-shirt. “Get up. Get dressed. We have to get moving.”

She didn't move. “Where are we going?”

I jumped into my jeans. “We're going to end this.”

She just nodded shakily and pulled the T-shirt over her head. “OK,” she said. But I was already dressed and sitting back at the computer. “Wait, what are you doing now?”

“One last thing to do here before we go,” I said over my shoulder. Then I called up a different Web site, cracked my knuckles, and placed my fingers on the keys.

Cath asked, “What?”

“It's time to tell the truth,” I said. And then I started typing.

This is me writing now. Me: David Gould. The only one. It's time to set some things straight. For who? you might ask, since this diary has pretty much never been read by anyone except for me and, well, other less-polite versions of me. Please think of it as an undelivered letter to the future–and especially to the two people I've been lying to for so long: to Amy and to myself.

I started this thing as a fantasy, then sat around passively as it turned into first a comedy and then a tragedy. No longer. True stories can be more than one thing at any time and so can people. I know that now. So let's tackle the unpleasant stuff, the half-truths, the clever omissions. Let's fill in the convenient blanks, particularly those from the other night when even though I was falling I still had to somehow feel like the hero. I came close to the truth, then backed away from it. So let's fix that now and then fix the rest. First on the screen, then in the world.

So, to review, what happened after the fistfight in the bathroom was:

1. Clarence, the bouncer, did not make a glib comment about there being two of me. He saw me sprint past him, yelled “Hey!” and that was the last I heard of him.

2. When the doppelgänger was speechless in the bathroom and just before I washed my hands I took the baggie full of drugs away from him and put it in my pocket. He offered no resistance.

3. Zaina did not follow me out of the club. I saw her leave and ran after her. I did that. Only me.

4. Because the truth of it is: I knew what I was doing the whole time. That's the thing about the way the drugs made me feel: I wasn't out of my head, I just found a different part of it to hang out in. I objectively knew that this was wrong, that this was cheating, that I was betraying something or someone–Amy, myself. But there was a new vibration in my blood that seemed to quiet any doubts, seemed to justify anything that I wanted as being worthwhile. So what happened was we:

5. Walked hand in hand to Orchard and then down south of Delancey. We stopped at a bodega to buy a six-pack of beer. Zaina also bought a giant bottle of water with one of those pully-straw-things at the top. I pretended to walk away and look at the magazines while she paid, but she also bought cigarettes, sugarless gum, and condoms. The she led me down another street to the border of Chinatown–the streets were still damp and the air smelled vaguely of seafood. At a graffiti-scarred door we stopped and she rang a bell. We were buzzed in, walked up four flights of stairs, and entered a loft that was all white–the only thing on the walls was a complete set of Monaco Grand Prix posters from the years 1972–1985. Beyond those few flashes of color were a bare-bones kitchenette, a black couch, and an enormous cheap wood-grain entertainment center with a flat-screen TV, stereo, PlayStation, and shelves of CDs. There was a loft area over the kitchenette with a futon and a dresser. The stereo was blasting music; I recognized fragments here and there: Out Hud, Pinback, Little Brother, Ms Dynamite. The floor was hardwood but cracked and mildewed. The air was crisp and humming with central AC. The sink was full of dirty dishes. Someone had apparently attempted to cook a curry and failed.

6. The loft was owned by a girl who was currently sleeping off a tequila drunk up on the loft futon. We were told this by her boyfriend, a barrel-chested Australian with a ponytail and a goatee whose name I never caught. He was playing the role of host and told us to shush when we arrived, but never once thought to lower his own voice or the music. He took the beer and greeted Zaina with a kiss on the cheek. Seated on the couch was a tough-looking Asian girl with spangly ribbons in her hair and a bearded indie-rocker who I took to be her boyfriend who kept rubbing his face in his hands and moaning about how wasted he was. There was also a thick-armed girl with long black curly hair dancing alone to the music in the center of the floor.

7. The Australian guy was keeping everyone entertained–or trying to–by talking about the heavy-metal band he used to front back at home in Brisbane called ‘Chaotic Neutral.' I made a joke about Dungeons and Dragons and he didn't seem to find it funny. He was sipping Red Bull and vodka and it was one of those parties where long pauses are appropriate, where the hour is so late that no one feels much motivated to fill the silence but no one wants to give up and go home.

8. Every so often Zaina would give me a look and we'd pretend like we were going to get a drink from the fridge but instead we'd go to the bathroom and giggle and point out the expensive hair products and jars full of cotton balls and we'd do bumps and then try to hide what we'd done by swigging beer and running our fingers under the faucet then wiping at our nostrils. We were allies and so everything we did seemed to be hilarious.

9. It was the Australian who finally noticed what we were doing. He was pounding on the bathroom door because he had offered to trim the wasted boyfriend's raggedy beard into a goatee like his own. This all seemed incredibly homoerotic to us and perhaps to the guy's girlfriend too, but the Australian seemed very Iron John about it all. When he saw what we were doing his eyes got glazed and he licked his lips and he starting talking about how it had been ages since he'd done any and could he please etc. etc. etc. We offered him some and then soon the Asian girl wanted in and then everyone did except for the sleeping girlfriend upstairs who somehow stayed unconscious. It was the Australian guy who wanted to call for more. It was nearly 3 a.m. at this point but I was the hero and I was the go-to guy and I wasn't myself tonight, remember? So I called Pedro–who was safely home in bed–and got Screwie Louie's number.

10. Screwie Louie answered but he was back home too. He lived in Washington Heights at the very top of Manhattan. But yes he'd come but it would be a while. I hung up and told people the news and everyone pooled their money and there was energy and excitement and a renewed round of drinking.

11. But an hour passed. And then another. And he didn't show. And I kept calling and he kept promising soon, soon, soon. But something was wearing off and the party felt more and more like a hospital waiting room. The black-haired girl fell asleep on the floor and the Australian, in his boredom, had managed to shave all of the boyfriend's beard off and maybe tried to kiss him too. The music had stopped and no one had any inclination to start it up again. I was lying on the couch staring at the ceiling and Zaina was next to me sort of tickling my arm but the things she was saying just weren't funny anymore and there was a serrated edge to my thoughts, like a bread knife cleaving through my cerebellum. Back and forth. Back and forth. I didn't laugh at her and barely bothered to respond. This wasn't clever and it wasn't exciting. It was shallow and stupid. And I hated myself for believing otherwise.

12. So I gave up. I stood up, walked out, and ignored people's cries of “where are you going” and “for god's sake leave us the number.” I walked down the stairs and on the 2nd floor realized that I had left my iPod at the Madrox and on the 1st floor heard Zaina taking the steps behind me two at a time. She joined me on the sidewalk–I knew I had to find a taxi, that I couldn't still be out when the sun came up. But she pulled me close and I put my hand on her side and we awkwardly hugged good-bye, but she lingered and pushed her face close to mine and I realized I was supposed to kiss her. Her cheek was soft and my heart pounded as I sort of half-nuzzled it and she didn't seem to know what to do either so she rubbed her face against mine. And I almost did it, really I did. But instead I pulled away just as I saw a cab drive by. The driver didn't see me and I stepped in a puddle and slipped and I fell on my ass in front of a girl who I was too nervous to kiss good-bye. And I scrabbled to get to my feet and I slipped again and my face burned and she laughed and looked at me with something like pity.

13. And I got in another passing cab and I took it home. And there was nothing glamorous about any of it. Not at all. I was livid with regret before I even heard the messages blinking on my machine.

14. Oh, and: the only way I fell asleep that night was with some sleeping pills I found in the medicine cabinet. Amy had bought them once for a flight back from Mexico. That's how I knew what brand to buy in the Salt Lake airport. Also, the phone number left by the concerned bank employee didn't really begin with KL5. That's a fancier way of saying “555,” which is a fictional telephone exchange used only in movies and tv shows so people in the audience won't start calling the characters and bugging a real person, a la “Jenny” from that old Tommy Tutone song.

Which brings us all up to date, except for the biggest lie: Amy. She's been the ghost haunting this entire diary and I've never even paused to explain her or get a grip on my feelings. But sometimes what you leave out turns into the most important thing of all. There are so many details that I've never written down, just assumed could stay a part of me even after she left. How her intelligence and grace humbled me, how her jokes left me wiping away tears. And all the little, silly things that add up to something greater: like how she would snack on cereal while reading in bed and wake up with bran flakes stuck to her beautiful shoulders. How she pored over the New York Review of Books and Melrose Place reruns with equal gusto. How holding hands with her and sleeping next to her and just simply being with her filled me with a happiness so deep that I knew I'd never reach the bottom of it.

So let's say what I've never been able to say on here–or anywhere else–these past few weeks: that I love my girlfriend. That all the things I tried to do–and tried not to do–were about me and my failings, not hers. It wasn't that she closed me off, turned me into a prematurely old housebound bore. It's that I wasn't confident enough to share an entire half of myself with her. Instead, I locked it up, denied it, until it came–quite literally–crashing out of me.

I recognize it now. It's all me. All of it. I can be bad. I can fail.

And it's time for the person I love to know all of that. This is my diary, after all, and I'm back in control of it. And now I'm signing off. Enough writing–I've wasted far too much time sitting here as it is. It's time for doing.

Oh, and the punch I threw at the doppelgänger? I think I hurt myself more than I hurt him. The truth is, he barely flinched.