“Hello, Ming’s Café. What you want?”
“An order of egg rolls, Hot & Sour Soup…”
“…and Pork Lo Mein, right? I know your voice. 3337 Guadalupe Street #2 ?
Same credit card?”
Sigh.
“Yup.”
“20 minutes.”
Click.
John tossed the phone on his grey, tweed couch and glanced
around the apartment. The oily, plastic tubs, used chopsticks and red &
white, cardboard trapezoids served as evidence of his dietary apathy. A living
museum. Empty cartons petrified in time. A hunger that was once wrenching and
desperate—now reduced to a low grumble. Eating was more like an annoying habit
these days.
Six months. Six months since she left. Only two things
remained: her white sapphire and 18K yellow gold engagement ring and a 43-second
message on Google Voice. He had it memorized. Verbatim.
Katherine didn’t really say much. After almost two years,
she just—poof—vanished. Said her heart wasn’t in it. Said she didn’t want to hurt
him. When he returned home to Austin from his
mother’s funeral in Mobile ,
she had packed her things and placed the custom-made ring on the top of his
dresser. Where it still sat. Untouched. An orphaned relic of a past life.
Their courtship was short-lived. She was an intern in the
hospital where his mother was staying. They had known each other for about five
months before he popped the question. She had comforted him through the
toughest parts of his mother’s MS. Perhaps their bond had formed out of
security rather than love, but still, he had never opened himself with anyone
as much as he had with her. If it weren’t for the ring’s insistent existence,
he might have believed their relationship was just a passing dream. That would
have made things easier.
But it was real. And he now had the Chinese take-out boxes
and extra 40 pounds to prove it.
He looked into the mirror and slid up his greasy, white
tank.
“Something’s gotta change,” he thought to himself. “Jesus…man.
I feel so numb inside. Like I’m spending my life waiting to die or something. I don’t want to live
like this. The fucking Chinese
delivery lady knows me better than anyone else, for Chrissakes! How fucking
pathetic is that?”
He sat back down on the sofa and absent-mindedly reached for
the remote.
ABC
CNN
Comedy Central
TBS
He paused. TBS was playing Die Hard. Again.
“Typical,” he muttered. He loathed this movie. Or rather, he
loathed his inadvertent affiliation with it:
“John
McLane!? Like that Bruce Willis character in ‘Die Hard’? I love those movies!
Are you gonna save the Nakatomi
Tower
No,
you fucking moron. I’m gonna bash your fucking brains in with a two-by-four.
“Uhhh…yeah,
funny. No, not saving anything. He spells is differently anyway. L-A-N-E. I
spell mine L-E-A-N.”
“Well,
we know who to call when the Germans come to town, eh?”
Fucker.
But on some level, he knew it wasn’t their fault. His name did have a level of notoriety. If he had
met a woman named ‘Elizabeth Taylor’, he’d probably say something just as
douchey like, “Really? How are the ex-husbands?”
And yet, like a scab he couldn’t stop picking, he didn’t
change the channel.
“Ironic.” he reflected. “The hero and the loser. The
champion and the deadbeat. John McLane, the savior of humanity and John McLean,
the king of Chinese delivery.”
The tinny sound of Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ jolted him
from his self-loathing.
“That’s strange,” he thought, “no one ever calls me. Maybe
the Chinese place ran out of eggrolls or something.”
He looked at the phone, but didn’t recognize the number.
“Oh what the hell,” he said, answering. “Hello?”
“Well hello yourself! I have been waiting for over an
hour-and-a-half at Spider House! Where the hell are you?!” shrieked a woman’s
voice on the other end of the line.
“Ummm…what?”
“What? WHAT?! Jenna said you were a little flaky, but this
is RIDICULOUS!!!”
“Jenna? Who…who the hell is Jenna?”
“Jenna…your cousin? Wait. Is this Randy Morgan?”
“No. My name is John. John McLean. You must have the wrong
number.”
“Oh my God…I am so sorry.
It’s just…my co-worker—well, former co-worker—tried to set me up on a date with
her cousin and she texted me his number and…well, clearly she made a mistake
and sent me the wrong number and…oh, Christ, it’s just been a long day—a long
week really. Oh who are we kidding, this whole year has been pretty shitty,
what with the divorce settlement and losing my job and my father’s accident…,”
she trailed off, stifling her tears.
“I’m sorry,” John said, genuinely moved by this strange
woman’s pain.
“No, no, I’m sorry…for dumping all that on you and for
screaming at you and…geez, you must think I’m some sort of crazy woman, huh?”
“Well, actually, I think you’re pretty spot on. I mean, if I
had to deal with a divorce and losing a job and the father thing—and on top of
all of it, being stood up—I’d be upset too.”
“Thanks,” she said, softening. “What did you say your name
was?”
“John McLean.”
“Why is that so familiar?”
Ugh.
“Um, Die Hard?” he
muttered, grudgingly.
“What?”
“The Die Hard movies?
The main character is John McLean?”
“Never seen them. Not a Bruce Willis fan.”
“Oh.”
“Wait a minute!” she cried. “Westlake High? Class of ’92? Well, I guess
you were ’90 or something…?”
“Uhhh…’89…?”
“Yes! This is Marsha! Marsha Graves. Well, Marsha Reynolds
now, but soon to be back to Graves . We were in
band together. I played sax and you were trumpet, yeah? You were pretty good in
those days.”
John remembered her. Pretty. Blonde. Soft features. A little
flighty. Spent more time smoking weed under the bleachers than in band
practice, but she was always kind.
“Sure, I remember you. What you been up to since high
school?”
“Oh, local community college. Left after a year. Got it
together long enough to get my aesthetician license and been doing nails ever
since, though the place I worked for closed down last month. Tough times, ya
know. Plus my father just got in a car accident. He’s alive, but his legs are
crushed. Not sure if he’ll ever walk again. And he has no pension and no insurance—what
with being the local handyman all these years.”
“Medicare?”
“Too young. He was 17 when I was born. So mom and I just
have to do what we can to scrape up the money to pay for it.”
John glanced quickly at the ring on the dresser.
“Hmm. I’m sorry to hear that. Seems mighty unfair, if you
ask me—for God to rain down a bunch hard stuff on just one person.”
“I stopped believing in God a long time ago,” she answered
coldly.
“Me too. It was just a way to get my point across. Haven’t been
to church since I stepped foot out of my momma’s house. Though I do miss the music.
Always liked Amazing Grace and…”
“In The Garden,”
they both said simultaneously.
“Ditto!” she cried. “That one was always my favorite!”
“Heh, yeah, mine too,” he laughed.
His laughter took the edge off his uneasiness. He hadn’t had
a conversation that lasted more than three minutes in some months. He feared he
wouldn’t be able to remember how to be politely sociable. But the clumsy
frankness of Marsha felt open and fresh. It gave him permission to reveal a bit
more of himself.
“Well. Nice to hear we have something as lovely as In The Garden in common,” he said.
“Indeed. So what about you? I’ve been talking this whole
time. What happened to you after you left school?”
“Well, I went to A&M, got a degree in computer science,
found a job where I could work from anywhere, so I moved back home to be with
my momma. She was sick with MS for a long time.”
“Was sick?” she
asked.
“Yeah, she died about six months ago.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not. The years of hell that woman went through. I’m
glad she’s found her peace,” John retorted, a bit too callously.
“Oh.”
“Anyway,” he said, trying to soften the moment, “we
scattered her ashes in her hometown of Mobile ,
like she wanted. And that was about the same time that my fiancée decided to
skip town. Left me just a phone message and a ring. Haven’t heard from her
since.”
“Wow, that’s a little selfish, if you ask me.”
“Yeah, it felt that way at the time.” John was surprised at
how quickly he’d opened up to Marsha. He hadn’t revealed this part of his life
to anyone since Katherine left. He did most of his work from home, had no
siblings or close cousins and his father had been out of the picture since he
ran off with one of the neighbors’ wives when John was 12. They both died in a
boating accident one year later. John never forgave his father for leaving him
alone with his sick mother. He allowed himself a maximum of 30 seconds of grief
when he heard of his father’s death. The rest he packed away in a hermetically-sealed
time-capsule lodged in the back of his heart.
“But, you know, time heals all wounds, I guess,” he said,
brushing off the memory.
“Yeah, except yours don’t seem so healed.”
“You’re poking a little too deep for someone I just re-met
over the phone,” he said jokingly, but not without a real intention to end the
conversation.
“Haha…ok…another time, perhaps.”
“Perhaps.”
Silence.
The hard, electric buzz of John’s doorbell jangled the
pregnant stillness.
“That’s my dinner, Marsha,” he said, somewhat relieved at
having an excuse to get off the phone.
“Oh, OK,” she replied. “Well, maybe I’ll give this Randy guy
another 20 minutes or so before I give up on him.”
“Yeah, maybe he lost his phone or something and is caught in
traffic...”
“Yeah, maybe…”
“Yeah...”
Silence.
“OK, well. 20 minutes. Spider House. Then I’m heading home,”
she firmly declared.
“Good luck, Marsha.”
“Yeah, you too John. Maybe I’ll see you in band practice
sometime,” she joked, a little too nonchalantly.
“Heh. Yeah, I wouldn’t count on it. I haven’t touched a
trumpet in ages.”
“Hm. Pity.”
Buzzzzzzzzzzz.
“Better answer that, John.”
“On it,” he said, without moving a muscle.
“Goodbye,” she said.
“Bye.”
Pause.
Pause.
Pause.
Click.
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Stillness.
The phone started ringing again. John eagerly prepared to
answer it, only to find it was Ming’s Café, no doubt wondering where he was.
He sat motionless until the ringing stopped, the driver
stepped off his stoop and the car drove away, undelivered Chinese food in tow.
“What the hell just happened?” he thought to himself. “It
was just a simple wrong number. She didn’t actually want to talk to me again, right?”
And yet, he remembered the hint of an invitation in her
voice when she joked about band practice. And there was something in the way
she said ‘Pity’—it was almost like she was seeing deeply into him and pulling
out…what? He didn’t know how to explain it, but, for the first time in a long
time, he could feel. His heart hurt.
His forehead was hot and slick. His skin felt tingly and tight all at once.
And then he knew was it was—that simple piece he would not
allow himself to acknowledge.
Joy. Pure, innocent joy. The joy he felt when he played his
trumpet. They joy he felt when his mother sang in church. The joy he felt when
his father bought him his first Miles Davis album. And the joy he felt when he
and Katherine used to slow dance in the hospital stock room, sharing one pair of
earphones.
But unfortunately, with joy, comes hope. And dreaming. And
love. And history had proven to him, over and over again, that every time he
allowed himself the luxury of love, life was going to abandon him in a swamp of
unfulfilled desire.
And yet something’s
gotta change, he reminded himself. He knew it. He didn’t just know it—he felt it. The truth was pouring out of
his body. In his shaking, his sweating, his crying.
He didn’t have much time. He slipped on his tennis shoes,
threw on his leather jacket and grabbed the ring from the dresser. He didn’t
know if it was worth enough to cover her father’s medical expenses, but he knew
it could help.
“Something good needs to come out of all of this,” he
thought, as he stuffed the ring in his pocket.
As for what would happen next, he wasn’t sure. Would he and
Marsha strike up a friendship? A love affair? Marriage? Or would she even still
be there when he got to Spider House?
Honestly, none of that mattered. He wasn’t doing this to try
to win a relationship. He was doing it in gratitude to the gift of joy that God
(or whatever) had given him that day.
Before rushing out onto Guadalupe Street , he pulled his iPod from
his jacket pocket, stuck an earpiece in each ear and pressed the bottom of the
white circle. And as he closed the door behind him, he raised the left corner
of his mouth in a slight smile as Bye Bye
Blackbird began to play.
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