CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ARTHUR HAD never considered himself the anxious type, but by Saturday he was twitching. Carol had tried to calm him and keep his mind off it and he now knew more about dinosaurs than he could have imagined, but there was still that nagging unease and the urge to turn around every time he heard footsteps in the hall.
When he put a stack of library books on the reference desk, he hoped to hear that Martin was already in the children's section waiting, but there was no luck there.
The children looked up at him. "Merlin is on a... I guess you can call it a business trip. So, I'll be filling in." He smiled trying to put out an aura of calm and confidence.
"When will he be back?" one of the younger children asked.
"Not entirely sure, but probably not long." The children all frowned at him. "Don't worry. This time I know what I'm doing and," he picked up the copy of the Iliad they'd been working on. "We're reading a modern English translation." The children all gave him the hard eye. He wasn't their Merlin but he would have to do for now.
HE LISTENED to the six rings and the voice telling him to leave a message while he unpacked his groceries.
"Hi. So, I didn't butcher the Iliad as badly as Beowulf. Dropped off your books. Brought in your mail, it was starting to build up. Jung was the quote of the week. 'Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.' I don't know. Seems appropriate. Been looking inside myself a lot lately for what it's worth. Anyways, look I know it's more than just you and me listening to this. I don't even know if you're getting these messages, but Andrew, if you're the one listening to this, you owe me twenty bucks from the Super Bowl pool. Stop being a cheap bastard. And if it's not Andrew, tell him he owes me twenty bucks and to stop being a cheap bastard."
"HE'S STILL not back." Carol sounded sympathetic. She'd stopped teasing him about missing his boyfriend after the first week he was gone. Arthur slowly stirred the milk into his coffee.
"His phone started going direct to voice mail." He was waiting for, and dreading the day, he called to leave a message and only got three tones and a voice telling him the number had been disconnected and was no longer in service.
"I'm sorry."
He shrugged. There was literally not a single thing he could do except to read to the children on Saturdays and bring in the mail and leave steadily longer and more rambling messages. He took a sip of coffee, not really tasting it. "I think I'm demisexual. Maybe. It would explain some things, but I'm not sure. It's all just, I don't know. Maybe I've been thinking too much."
She patted his arm. "Perfectly valid. And no one ever said you have to define yourself. I mean, some people feel better with a definitive definition, others don't. You're you, first and foremost, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."
"Thanks. This is why pretty boys need their hard-core lesbians."
Carol grinned at him. "You're not that pretty."
"And you're not that hard core."
THE STACK of mail he dropped on Martin's table was thick, heavy, and full of envelops bearing the seals of private academies. He hadn't opened any of the mail so far. There were none that said 'Over Due Last Warning' so he figured the bills must be on some automatic payment. But he decided he was going to open these even if it was a federal offence.
They were information and application packets for some of the best schools in the country. A dozen of them. Private boarding schools that cost more a term than he had paid in college. He put his hands in his face and wanted to cry. "Come home, come home."
He dialed a number.
"Hey. Brought in your mail. Whole bunch of school information packets. Exeter. Seriously, even I've heard of fucking Exeter. I get it. I get what you're trying to do. Those kids deserve so much better than the shit-hole public schools they're in. They've got to be going nuts with boredom compared to what you give them. I pity their regular teachers. The thing is, I don't know how to do this. I'm sure you have some plan to get them all the very best. You're good at planning things but I don't know what the plan is. I can only guess you never intended to be away this long or you would have left instructions or a note or something."
Arthur heard his voice crack. He took long deep breaths.
"Anyway, I've started on Jules Verne in the French because, guess what, I can read French and I've read all of Jules Verne. Maybe talk about how science fiction has influenced actual science and technology over the years. And after that, maybe take a step away from the classics for a bit. Girlfriend of a friend is a paleontologist. All kids like dinosaurs even though it turns out most of them were probably a bit fluffy. I keep on picturing a T-rex covered in yellow baby chick fluff. Makes me laugh. You need to come back because your handwriting is way neater than mine and there are a lot of applications to fill out."
FOR AN agency that dealt in secrets, people were bad at keeping them. There was a twenty-dollar bill on his desk when he got into work. He stared at it, his gut dropping and his hands beginning to shake. People knew. Or at least people would make assumptions based on his phone messages. He didn't care so much about what they thought of him, but Martin was a man of privacy and secrets. When he came back, and he had to believe there was a when, he would not like the gossip.
All heads swiveled towards him at lunch, then quickly turned back, but not fast enough to miss the looks of sympathy and pity.
He marched to his seat across from Carol head held high.
"People talk," she said kindly.
"Yeah."
"People don't know shit about shit."
Arthur didn't answer. Martin probably spent about 100 bucks a month. Most people had pay go in and bills go out of automatic accounts these days. Depending on how much was sitting in whatever account it could be months, even years, before he got that disconnect message on the phone. A sad dark part of his mind had started to whisper to him that he could be leaving messages for a ghost. "It's been two months," he finally said softly.
"Yeah. I asked Jennifer and she said she'd love to talk to a bunch of kids about dinosaurs."
He gave as much of a smile as he was able. "Thanks. I'm going to introduce her as Guinevere though."
"Why?"
"It's just sort of a thing."
IT WAS 3 a.m. and Arthur had been staring at the ceiling for far too long. He picked up his phone. There was one ring, then a computer voice telling him to leave a message.
"Hey, everyone who I know is listening to this, fuck off for like five minutes, seriously five fucking minutes of privacy. Okay?"
Arthur was silent for a few seconds, not really believing this wouldn't be listened to if someone wasn't already listening in live, but it was worth a try.
"It's been three months. Three months since I've seen you or heard from you or anything. I think so much about those last words you said to me. And I didn't say a thing. Just nodded. I understood. I understand. I'm starting to believe you're not coming back. Can't or won't. I don't know which is worse, the idea that you are fine but don't want anything to do with me or the life you had or that something or someone is preventing you from coming back. The second one is worse. The first is just self-pity. I'm afraid I'm leaving messages for a ghost. I'm afraid. It's three in the morning and I'm afraid. I'm going to fill out those forms, all of them for all the kids. No way I can pay for even a fraction. I'll have to ask for financial assistance. And I mean trying to enroll an eight-year-old in Exeter is maybe a little ambitious, but I mean there are parents who get their kids on preschool waiting lists before they're even born so why not. I'm going to keep going. I have to keep going. I know people are still listening to this and someone, somewhere must know where you are, or what happened. If someone would please just tell me. Please. It's the not knowing that's really making it hurt."
IT WAS a week later when he found an inter-office envelop on his desk. They were seldom used anymore since they were a giant security risk. He opened it up. There was a single piece of paper with three words that looked to be actually typed:
We don't know.
Arthur threw-up in the mens' room and took the rest of the day off sick.