14
It’s around 3:00 a.m. when I wake up to my phone ringing. I’m in a bit of a fog, but the one thing that is very clear is that I fell asleep on the couch and I’m the only one in my apartment.
I squint at the light and see the caller ID is my building’s front desk. Usually they only buzz when the Jimmy John’s delivery driver is in the lobby with my sandwich. So either my doorman is drunk-dialing me, or I’ve got a sleep-eating problem.
“Hello?”
“Allie, it’s Quincy from downstairs. Sorry to wake you.”
“That’s okay. What’s going on?” I ask, clearing the hoarseness from my throat.
“Uh, your boyfriend, Benji? He’s outside in the front drive. Been outside for the last, I don’t know, thirty minutes or so?”
“What? What’s he doing?”
“Chain-smoking cigarettes and pacing back and forth.”
Oh god. My first thought is that his mom must have called. They hardly talk, maybe twice since we’ve been together. But for as few and far between as they are, phone calls from Bonnie Zane are never pleasant. Benji always has to excuse himself because she’s usually drunk or hopped up on pills as she blubbers about how both Benji and his father left her behind like a piece of roadkill. That really sets Benji off, obviously. I mean, she’s the one who turned herself into a lifeless piece of shit while he was doing everything a teenager could to financially support his mom. It sucks that ten years later, she still has the audacity to pick up the phone and call him a bastard. And I thought the phone call with my mom was brutal.
Regardless, Mark suggested it was best for Benji to send her calls to voice mail until he had at least six months of sobriety under his belt and I agreed with the treatment plan. I wonder what made him pick up tonight, but realize he probably wanted to tell her about Here. She’s still his mom after all.
“Shit, sorry, Quincy. I think he’s probably on the phone with his mom. She calls late like this every now and again. Sometimes the conversations can get a little loud.”
“Nah, Allie. I went out there to check on him. He ain’t on the phone.”
“He’s not?”
“Nope, haven’t seen him with his phone at all, actually. He’s just kinda talkin’ to himself, twirling his keys around his finger.”
Damn, I’m lost. But I’m waking up fast. Benji always has his phone, usually in his hand. Even if it got lost between the couch cushions, he would immediately make a mad dash for mine to call his like he’d misplaced a seven-carat diamond.
“I poked my head out there,” Quincy continues. “Stinks a little bit like booze, Allie.”
There’s no need for me to be alarmed. Benji’s dinners are BYOB. People come to eat, drink (a lot) and be merry. The smell of a good time just sort of absorbs into his hair and clothes, with the unfortunate result of making him reek like a homeless drunk. Ironically, I find it comforting. It’s the stench of a man at work in the industry.
“Give me a minute, I’ll come down.”
Before I get out of bed, I toggle over to the Locator app. I haven’t checked it all week, just like I promised myself I wouldn’t. Being with Benji means believing in Benji, right? But if Benji lost his phone and is agitated because of it, it’ll help calm him down if I can tell him exactly where it is.
My prying right now is based purely on logic, not paranoia, I tell myself.
The app takes a second to load, but sure enough his phone pops up. At the corner of Hoyne and Cortez in the Ukrainian Village. Nowhere near Pilsen.
I immediately think his phone must have been stolen by someone at the dinner and the thieves have now made it to another part of the city, six miles away from where the pop-up dinners were. But the fact that Benji isn’t up here “Babe! Babe! Babe!”–ing me about it until he is blue in the face tells me that theory is off.
I hit the refresh button on the app. Then one more time for good measure. The icon of his phone is like a beacon in the night, still showing strong from somewhere it’s definitely not supposed to be right now. I shoot out of bed and get into the elevator, heading to the lobby in my sweats, without so much as a bra on under my washed-a-bazillion-times, practically see-through T-shirt.
As I whiz right past Quincy, sure as shit there’s Benji in the driveway, walking in circles, smoking a cigarette and looking like someone who doesn’t belong anywhere near this higher-end building. I need to retrieve him before anyone else happens upon a front-row seat to this shit show.
“Benji, what the hell are you doing?” I say, my voice louder than I expect in the predawn quiet. It feels like the whole world is asleep.
“Allie, shhhhh.”
I’ve never seen Benji in this light, at this hour. Frankly, I’m amazed that Quincy even recognized him because the man who was just on the cover of Men’s Book Chicago now looks like a lunatic with sunken eyes, wild hair and a ripped hoodie.
“Benji, come inside. How long have you been out here? Where is your phone? Have you been drinking?”
“Damn it, no, Allie. Keep your fucking voice down.”
He’s talking to me like I’m his sous chef and I’m not into it.
“Where is your phone, Benji? Or should I ask, why is it in the Ukrainian Village?” I shove my phone in his face with the screen still on Locator. Exhibit A is irrefutable.
“Get outta here with that,” Benji says, walking away. He may be slurring his words but at least he’s heading back toward our building, where we can discuss what happened tonight like civilized adults in the privacy of the apartment.
“Everything okay, guys?” Quincy gets up from his chair when Benji starts to stalk through the lobby. This is clearly the most action he’s seen on the overnight shift in a long time.
“Just fine, Q. Thanks.” I cross my arms across my unsupported chest and walk purposefully past the front desk toward the elevator bank.
The next thing I know we’re in the elevator heading up ten floors. Never has the ride up felt so long and painful. I stare at him from just a foot away, waiting for him to say something. Benji refuses to make eye contact with me but his pupils—the size of dimes—have nowhere to hide.
Speaking of nowhere to hide, the elevator doesn’t leave Benji’s aroma anywhere to go either. I know the smell of kitchen and sweat and other people’s drinks usually hangs on his clothes like a patina, but tonight is different. He smells like a bottle of Jack and cigarettes and that’s it. I don’t get eau de chef—I get the sharp tang of hard liquor.
Quincy was right. Benji’s been drinking. And my heart sinks to the bottom of Lake Michigan in a matter of seconds as I realize it. I feel hurt, angry and betrayed but most of all I feel sad. This is a huge loss and I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next because this wasn’t supposed to happen at all.
Back in our unit, Benji unzips his hoodie, hangs it on a chair and walks toward the bathroom like he’s Ward Cleaver getting home from a day at the office.
“Nothing to say, Benji?” I’m not sure how exactly to bridge the silence. What I do know is that I’m losing my cool. I want answers to a lot of questions. The first of which is, was Rita right?
“I’m taking a shower,” he says, slamming the bathroom door. I hear the lock turn into place.
He starts the water and offers no further discussion. I quickly run to his sweatshirt to raid the pockets. I can’t believe he’s left it, a direct line to clues of where he’s been the last several hours.
I fish around his pockets like I’m the experienced mother of a rowdy teenager. I can’t believe I’m doing this—that it’s come to rummaging through his sweatshirt the moment he turns his back so I can prove some devastating point. It takes me twenty seconds to search every nook and cranny but I find nothing. No cell phone. No cash. No evidence.
Except—my fingers close on something. A tiny, empty button bag.
My heart sinks. I know exactly what comes in a clear plastic bag this size. I clutch it in my palm and take a seat on my sofa. I am numb.
Benji emerges looking refreshed and acting like nothing is unusual. I think he may even be looking for the remote control and when I don’t offer to help find it, he haphazardly asks, “What’s your deal?”
My apartment may be carpeted, but there isn’t a rug in sight to sweep this whole thing under. I explode.
“What’s my deal? What’s MY deal? Cut the shit, Benji. Where’s your phone, huh? Where’s the money from your dinners?” By now, I have to imagine that I’ve woken up the neighbors. I pray to god they won’t call the cops, but I can’t keep my voice down.
“You have literally lost your mind, Allie,” Benji says, giving up on the remote and climbing into bed. “Do you wanna have sex?”
“What? Are you kidding me right now?”
“God, never mind. I don’t know why you’re being such a bitch tonight,” he says as he pulls the covers over himself and turns to face the wall like a moody teenager.
I walk over to the bed and crouch down next to it. I’m eye-level with him as I shove the baggie right up to his face and demand answers.
“You’re using,” I say, knowing full well I can’t take an accusation like that back.
“What even is that?” he says as I present Exhibit B.
“You’re using,” I say again.
“No, I’m not,” he says nonchalantly.
“You are!” I shout, begging for him to sense my urgency and somehow offer me comfort, even if that means confessing my greatest fear.
“Get that garbage out of my face!” He raises his hand and swings to smack the bag out of my grip. But his palm connects with my eye instead.
The clock isn’t the only thing that feels like it stops right then, at 3:46 a.m.—my world as I know it does, too. There’s a slight ring in my ears. Or maybe that’s just the sound of silence, but not the peaceful kind, returning to the apartment.
I feel my cheekbone start to bruise right away like a time-lapse of a tomato sprouting from a vine underneath my skin. The pain is immediate, but I don’t think about it. Instead, I think about the fact that we are now a very long way away from where we began. From a string of innocent, flirty tweets fired off from behind the safety of a computer screen. I want to go back there. In fact, I wish I never left there.
No further thoughts enter my mind in the seconds that follow; none at all. It feels like I’m floating in a pool, completely alone. I come to when I hear Benji’s voice.
“Say something. Babe! Say something!”
“You hit me” is what I say, calmly. Quietly. Factually.
Benji springs to his feet. Whatever he’s on, I’m completely fucking with his high. I wonder if he’ll flee the scene or stick around to clear the air. Suddenly, my studio apartment feels like it’s shrinking down to the size of a dollhouse.
“I would never hit you. You know that.” Benji’s panting like he just sprinted a mile.
“You. Hit me.”
“Babe. Come on. Stop. I didn’t hit you. Now let me see your face.” He moves toward me slowly and gingerly, but I jump back like his fingertips are made of razor blades.
For the first time since I sat next to him at the bar the day we met in person, I see Benji differently. And that’s not because he’s drunk or high or both right now and so the bags under his eyes protrude, his pupils are large and his demeanor is chill as fuck for just whacking me.
Nothing he did or said before this moment could make a dent in my feelings for him, or my utter belief in him. I never imagined drugs would come before me, or between us—literally, between us—and it makes me doubt everything I thought I knew. Who is this man on my bed? Who is this monster in my apartment? And why won’t he just flat-out admit what just happened? I need him to admit what we both know so that I can figure out my next move.
“Benji, what are you on right now?”
“Nothing, I swear. Nothing.”
All I can do is shake my head. There’s no point in arguing. I feel so defeated. He needs to sober up and then we can talk, but I’m not doing this right now. I can’t do this right now. And so, he needs to go.
Against every part of me that has tried to stay one step ahead of him, protect him and make sure his needs were addressed before he even knew he had them, I’ve got to ask him to leave. I don’t know where he’ll go or how he’ll get there with no phone and no money, but him not being here is the only thing that makes sense right now.
I know I’m taking a gamble when I draw in a deep breath and announce: “Get out.”
“What? Babe, please. I’m sorry, okay? I’d never—”
“Leave your keys and get out right now...or I will call the police.” My voice quivers as I deliver the threat and I cover my eye, which is swelling shut.
“Seriously? Let’s chill out here, Allie.”
“LEAVE OR I CALL THE COPS.” I hold my phone up in my right hand, finger on the dial button. If worse comes to worst I’ll scream as loud as I can. Someone will hear me. Someone will call down to Quincy.
Benji gets up and starts to dress. I swallow hard with relief and sneak toward the front door, where I unlock the dead bolt. Just in case things turn ugly—well, uglier—I can bolt.
All the while, he maintains a steady monologue in a voice I’ve never heard before. When someone’s high, you can hear it. It’s like there’s a whole other person temporarily inside the skin of the one you think you know so well. It’s rather eerie, actually.
I try not to think too hard about this, because I really don’t want to cave on what I’ve just done, but does Benji even realize that he’s seconds away from not having a roof over his head, a stove to cook on or a girlfriend to fuck when he wakes up later? Does he even know that once he walks out these doors, he’s got to figure out a Plan B? Does a man who lives in the moment even have one of those?
“Babe, I know you think I relapsed. I didn’t, okay? I swear,” he says, pulling on his left shoe. “I wanted to get drugs, yes. I did. I’ll admit that. But only because I saw all the press come in and I got excited. I wanted to celebrate a little.” Right shoe. “But when I went to do the deal, they jumped me and stole my phone. Stole all the cash.” Hoodie. “I didn’t want to tell you because I figured you’d leave me.”
So it’s my fault.
“Out. Now.”
He crosses the other side of the threshold and turns to look back at me. I shut the door on him before his hollow eyes get one more chance to haunt me.
I slide the dead bolt back into place and turn my back to the door. My legs give out and I sink to the floor in a heavy heap. His admission is a weak attempt at a partial version of the truth. I believe him when he says he went out to score drugs. I don’t believe him when he says he wasn’t successful with the score.
Because through it all, I haven’t let go of the tiny button bag. It’s still crumpled in my fist, balled up with a little bit of sweat and tears, but I won’t drop it just yet; it’s my true north in a situation where hope feels entirely lost.