Thirteen
Mary felt as if head hadn’t stopped pounding in hours. She considered taking painkillers again. There was no good reason not to take them. Except that she had simply decided not to. It was stubborn of her, but stubbornness and perhaps just a little bit of stupidity was what had gotten her where she was so far in her life. The bad places, and the good ones. There was no reason to change horses in the middle of a race.
She looked at her phone. It was almost nine. Which meant that in San Jose, it would be almost six, which meant that Cara would be finishing dinner. She still hadn’t called. Probably didn’t need to call. But she’d been thinking that she should for the past three days, and even if she had everything under control, thinking it twice meant that she shouldn’t blow it off.
The phone rang. It rang again. It rang a third time. And a fourth. She ticked the rings off on her fingers as they went by. Five. On six she ticked her little finger down again. And then it went to voicemail.
“You have reached the voicemail box of—” the metallic voice was replaced for only a moment by Cara’s low, rich voice, when she said “Cara Washington” before it was replaced again. “This Verizon customer is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone.”
A moment later, the tone sounded. “Hey, Cara. It’s, uh. It’s Mary. I just thought I ought to talk to you. It’s not a big deal or anything, just call me back when you get a minute. Have a great day!”
She hit the red button and put the phone down. Once upon a time, Cara wouldn’t have missed the call. But once upon a time, a lot of things were different. Given how well Mary did on a day-to-day basis, there wasn’t much of a chance that it was a life-or-death thing. Not like the first couple of weeks clean.
She got up and turned the television on. There was a remote for the den television, somewhere. But it wasn’t in evidence right then, and besides, there was nothing wrong with hitting the button. It got her moving. Her head hurt and her body was tightening up in spite of itself. It was better to walk even if it was only the few steps to cross the room.
The phone buzzed, and blinked blue when she looked over at it. A message. She crossed back over and picked the phone up without sitting down. There were a half-dozen or so people who had her number and might message her. Her parents had it. They hadn’t used it. They weren’t going to use it, far as she could tell. And she wouldn’t use theirs, either. But she had it in her phone regardless.
‘Sorry I missed your call,’ it said. Nothing else.
‘No problem,’ I answered. Hit send, put the phone in my back pocket, and started to clean up the room. It was a mess. Everything always was. At some point, Pete would have to learn to clean up form his own messes. She sucked in a breath. No reason to get upset.
The phone buzzed again in her pocket as she stood up holding a Batman action figure that would have hurt like the dickens to step on by accident. Mary pulled it out.
‘What’s up?’
‘Just worried about a bunch of stuff.’
‘Worried about falling off?’
She didn’t know. She really didn’t know at all. Which was the problem. If she was worried, she had outlets for that. She could address it directly. Or at least, she could make the effort.
Instead, she was stuck in this halfway-worried position, where there was nothing that directly made her worried about it. Just the vague sinking feeling that things were going to go wrong because they always did when she wanted something.
How was she supposed to explain all that? So she went with the simplest truth.
‘Someone from my old life showed up.’
‘User friend or something?’
She took a deep breath. She didn’t know. She didn’t know the answer to any of these questions, and it felt like they were all obvious. Too obvious for her to not know a single answer.
‘I don’t know what he is. I don’t think he’s using.’
The cleaning had pretty much stopped. Cara was in no hurry to reply, but Mary stood there waiting for each new message regardless.
‘Is he hot?’
Mary’s eyes rolled. That was immaterial. Yes, he was hot. But why should that matter? Plenty of guys were hot.
‘Maybe.’
She tucked the phone back into her hip pocket. No reason to lie right out. But now it sounded like she was… Jesus wept. She was sending as many weird signals to Cara as she was getting from Roman, and it was making her head spin. At some point, hopefully, she had to get everything straight. But for some reason it was proving to be a lot more trouble than she had really expected.
Now if only she were aware of a single thing in her life the way that she was acutely aware of every word that she was about to say. Not that she had any more control over how she was sounding than she did over her situation with Roman.
‘Just fuck him and get it over with then, girl. Easiest way to get out of a hole is to fill YOUR hole.’
Mary blinked. Read the message again. What the fuck?
‘Dude what?’
She stared dumbly at the message. Her skull felt like there was a big, wide open space that filled the whole thing from front to back, top to bottom, and side to side. Her mouth opened and completed the feeling of absolute stupefaction.
Cara’s response was short and sweet: ‘lol ;p’
Mary read it again.
Maybe it was bad advice. Maybe Cara was dumb. It wasn’t like she was some kind of wise monk. She was a coke-head, former or not, no better than anyone. But at the same time, maybe she wasn’t dumb. It had been more than a little while. And it couldn’t be… that bad. Right?