Chapter Thirty-Seven - Evangeline
In the morning I can’t get down to the kitchen fast enough. My feet trip over themselves trying to skip down steps. I bounce into the hallway, sliding around the corner, eager to get back to our story.
Our book isn’t there.
“Ix?” I ask the ceiling. “Where’s your story? This is the end. You can’t deny me the end.”
It’s a joke, said jokingly. Because of course it is. Because there’s no way he’d do that to me. Because I know him so well now. I know almost all his secrets and this was the last secret. The final piece of information that will open him up to me completely.
But there’s nothing but silence echoing back in my head.
So I wait. I make coffee. I eat the almost-spoiled raspberries left in the fridge, and I wait.
But he never says anything. No notes materialize. I even get up and walk around the house, conveniently disappearing from the kitchen to give him a chance to come out of whatever secret room he’s hiding in and leave me the final chapter of our story.
I even get dressed, go outside, and swing on that stupid family swing for a while, hoping that when I go back inside, our book, the story of us, will be there waiting for me. And next to it a new note. An apology. Sorry for making you wait.
But it isn’t. He didn’t write that. There is no apology. There is no book.
It’s like… he’s forsaken me.
Why?
I have an urge to write. Every morning I’ve been writing back to him. I have the poem nearly composed in my head. It’s murky, and sad, and reveals secrets that I was, for once, ready to reveal.
I was going to give him the last piece of my puzzle too.
But he never shows. And I can’t write the poem anywhere else but in our book. That’s the only place it belongs. The only place it could possibly exist. So it sits up there in my head like a black cloud hanging over me. Like a threat. Like a menace. Like this is an omen of something very, very bad.
And unlike the last time he made me angry, I have no urge to break things. It’s like I don’t have the energy I once did. Or the… anger. Or whatever it was that was fueling my darkness.
I am ready to step into the light but the light is gone.
The stupid clock is gonging off the hours and when it gongs off eleven tones in a row, I make a decision.
Fuck it.
I’m going to meet Jordan.
I get dressed. Put on my scarf, my gloves, my hat, my coat, my sunglasses. I call for the cab and I wait outside for it to come.
I actually wait outside.
And when it does come, I get in and find it to be stifling hot because stupid Denver is having one of those sunny days in the dead of winter, like it’s prone to do. Maybe, if I don’t play my show and get over this bullshit, I will move somewhere colder. Somewhere the sun refuses to shine?
I fantasize about this. Someplace far. Like Alaska. Or Iceland. Someplace where the darkness is welcome.
But then I recall some lesson from childhood. That the sun never sets in the summer in those places. And then I feel like the whole fucking world is against me for some reason.
Why?
I have to take off my gloves and my scarf because I’m sweating underneath all this garb. And even though I really want to take my hat off, I don’t. And not because I want to stay covered up, but because my hair is a mess. I didn’t really pay much attention to it when I was leaving and… and today I will talk to Jordan and I don’t want him to see me as the woman with the fucked-up hair!
I pay the stupid cab driver using the stupid machine on the back of the headrest, and get out of the cab, slamming the door behind me, and stand there, looking up at the stupid coffee house and the people outside, and I wonder, maybe for the first time, why a guy as beautiful as Jordan comes to this stupid place every goddamned day?
Are there not better places? Less busy places? I mean, is the goddamned club sandwich so goddamned good here that these people can’t find somewhere else to eat one?
I push my way inside, probably rudely, but I don’t care. I’ve been coming here all week with a goal in mind and every day I’ve been denied. And this day, of all days, is not a day for denial.
I can’t take it. I really can’t.
So I stand there, combing the place, looking for Jordan, and who do I see?
Fucking Mike.
But I take a second look at fucking Mike. Because fucking Mike is already sitting with someone. A woman who is not me, obviously. And fucking Mike glances at me, then averts his eyes.
Averts his eyes.
Like I am someone not worthy of being seen.
I seethe. What the ever-loving fuck is going on with this day?
“Just one today?” the hostess asks me.
“Yes,” I manage to say, somewhat civilly, I might add. “Table for one.” I say it loud. Loud enough that Mike over near the window hears me and once again glances in my direction, but then quickly looks away, pretending I’m not even here as he talks to the woman across from him like they’re together or something. When I know good and goddamned well he’s got no girlfriend because just yesterday he was trying to get me to go out with him.
Huh. So that’s his game. He’s with someone who will go out with him for drinks after work. Good. Good for him. I’m not here to see him, anyway. I’m here to see Jordan.
“Right this way,” the hostess says.
So I follow her, and she takes me all the way to the back, in the shadows, where a goddamned tree in a pot is blocking my view of the door. And I really want to say, Hey, can I have another table? You know, like a good one? But I realize there’s no other tables. This is the last one. And I’m probably lucky I didn’t have to cajole Mike into letting me sit at his table as a third wheel.
So I shut up, sit down, and order the stupid club with the magic avocado and wait for Jordan to appear.
But he doesn’t.
An hour later, I’m still there, my club sandwich reduced to a bit of bread crust, and the lunch crowd has all gone back to work. Alone. As usual.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” my waitress asks.
“No,” I say, no longer manic with purpose, but defeated with disappointment. “Just the check.”
Which she has ready, pulling it out of her apron pocket and setting it on the table, like I’ve been sitting here too long and she’s been waiting for me to disappear so she can seat someone else.
I pay and go outside, ready to just get in a cab and go the hell home, and… there’s no cabs. Not one in sight.
So I start walking towards the Botanic Gardens, because at least I live next to a major landmark and there’s signs everywhere, hoping for a cab. But every single one of them passes me by. Because of course they do. This is like everyone-needs-a-cab day and they all have passengers already.
By the time I stumble through the gardens nearly an hour later, I’m dead tired.
But hopeful.
Hopeful that Ix is at home, waiting for me, perhaps out of his mind with worry.
But when I key in the code to the gate I feel despair washing over me. And when I get inside and look up at the chandelier bulb, I know. I feel it in my gut.
He’s not even here.
I drop my purse on the floor and only then realize… I left my gloves and scarf in the cab on the way over to the coffee house.
I walked all the way home uncovered except for sunglasses and a coat. And I didn’t even notice.
This should make me feel good. That finally there is something in my life that trumps my stupid fear of being watched.
But I wasn’t even seen today.
I was nobody.
Mike didn’t even see me.
Ix has left me.
And all I want right now is to be seen by him.
I go upstairs. All the way upstairs. Take off my clothes, lie on the bed naked, and then fish the blindfold out from under the pillow and tie it around my eyes.
I will wait, I decide.
I will wait just like this until he comes for me.
I wait a long time. Hours and hours. And in that time my mind goes wild with the things that have been happening here. Both under this roof and at the coffee house.
The suspicions form in my head, the clues leading me down a path. Several times I make up my mind and several times I change it.
But no matter how hard I try, the idea lingers.
Ix isn’t who I think he is.