Please Don't Go (24 page)

Dusty books. Glossy books. Fat and thin books.

In the aisles, in his hand, in a large plastic bag. Books.

Charles Rattup was a man reborn. “And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me,” he whispered, giggling at his approaching tomorrows.

Part II

Wherein The Boy Gets To Know The Bitch

1.

Jackie stared at the stiff door of their apartment, awaiting his imminent return, listening to the tick of the clock above the stove as it taunted her with every moment that passed. He had stiffed her on their date night, and he may never be allowed to stiff her again. At this thought, she giggled to herself but felt an immediate shame for doing so. Zephyr would not be freed from her meat hook without considerable toil. He had screwed up just enough to keep her on the payroll of Zephyr Industries, but his moments of redemption were dwindling with every ticking moment that he was absent without explanation. Only a freak accident or mugging could save his ass now. His excuse would need to come hard and fast, and it would have to be fulfilling to Jackie’s perceptions.

Attacked by a shark.

Kidnapped by Neo-Nazis.

Locked in a freezer.

Abducted by aliens.

These were tragic, but acceptable.

Her mother had warned Jackie against moving too fast, as had Zephyr’s mother with him. Jackie supposed that it was the role of parents, to combat prolific haphazardness where possible. Things were different now, though. They had taken their short life together to new levels, both consciously and without careful regard. It was now the hour to shit or get off the pot, as Jackie’s uncle Harold may have said between sips of warm whiskey at Thanksgiving. They were at a crossroads, and their lives were becoming complicated. All in? Or fold?

Complicated.

An understatement.

She watched the door, biting her lip and scorning his good name. Jackie had known about the secretive engagement ring for some time. So why, still, did he hold back? What was his purpose in doing so, to drive her mad with anticipation? She had no female friends to share the joy with, and so she had reluctantly told her mother of his shiny symbolic purchase. “Are you leading him on?” her mother had asked. Jackie replied that she was not quite sure what signals she had sent to Zephyr. It didn’t feel as though she was
leading him
on
. There were so many thorny complications in their relationship, hidden beneath the surface, any of which could send them bounding out into a rocky field of marital treachery, but that was part of the thrill of it for Jackie—the uncertainty. The pair of young lovers liked to believe that they had quickly built a perfect situation between them, but Zephyr and Jackie were still too young to know the difference between the ideal and denial. “You’ve got a choice to make, little miss,” her mother had said with a judgmental snap, the hesitance towards Zephyr apparent even from a great distance. “Decide
before
he asks you, because you make rash decisions. You’re legendary for it, in fact.”

Jackie nodded to herself, explaining that she understood, that she would give it careful consideration. She had some serious soul searching to do, but could not help her dragging feet. The harsh realities of adulthood could go in either direction... a life of bliss or a life of utter shit. Her heart sunk at the heaviness of it all.

Where was the goddamned ring? What was he waiting for? She thought to herself that he should
get it over with
. Not the best train of thought to start from, with an insidious implication in
getting it over with
. A bad omen, she admitted. But now was not the time to take stock. There were more important matters at hand.

Where the hell had he disappeared to?

The clock chuckled inside of her head.

***

Zephyr swam in and out of consciousness, awakening to find a sharp pain shooting through his entire body; next to find that he was too exhausted to hold his eyes open for more than a second or two. He would drift away again, lost in dizzy fuzz and foggy thoughts. Red-headed women and dark haired children taunting him on the rim of wakefulness, saying his name between anxious giggles and whispered secrets; agendas that were dull roars, making all the sense in the world and none at all simultaneously. The voices became as real as his own unreachable mortal mouthpiece as he spent an increasing amount of time in that garbled world of In Between.

The smell of the awful rag in his mouth would awaken him, gasping and snorting in disgust.

A gust of rancid wind would course through his nasal cavity, and he would be adrift in his own mind again.

The first night went by without any clamor or notation. While asleep, his turmoil was given to the back burner as unnecessary. Sleep, he found, was welcoming. Even though he could not rightfully grasp his summarized condition, sleep was the one thing he could feel for certain. Though there were wenches taunting him in that world, they seemed further away from him than when he was awake. This made little sense to him, but he accepted it as a new dogma.

The second day was chilly, so much so that Zephyr woke to find his entire body trembling in the throes of insurmountable shivers. He tried to shout out to his captor, to get her attention, but found the rag was hindering any form of communication. The smell of the house was wretched, a mix of twisted pungent odors that did not belong in the nose of a man. An angry skunk dipped in rotten warm eggs, sprayed down with turpentine. Burning plastic. Melted rubber. Molded wood. Spicy asbestos and sweet peaches. As he inventoried the smells that bound him to reality, occasionally bringing him forth to the land of the wakeful living again, they also served to dissuade him from staying that way, realizing that sleep was a much simpler option. He had become, for intents and purposes, addicted to unconsciousness. He craved it like a junkie.

Stay asleep, my lover. Stay asleep while I figure out what to do with you. You’ll need your rest.

She spoke to him at that cusp between two hemispheres of consciousness.

When you awaken, we’ll have our fun. For now, you rest. You are my most brilliant conquest, and I have only just birthed you. For now, you must dry out, so that we may gaze upon your beauty. When you are dry of those reckless hurtful emotions that plague man, we can explore setting you free. You must be fully broken before we can put you back together again. So
break
, my sweet prince. Break and let me lick your wounds. I’ll stitch your fabric up and we’ll bring in that delicious resurrection. So rest. And dream. My sweetest dear. My heart. My lover.

***

When morning came, Jackie called Richter’s to instantiate her official investigation. A snarly beast answered the phone, claiming to have seen nothing of Zephyr since the day before when he had left with a delivery. When Jackie asked if that particular delivery had been to Rattup’s home, the voice barked that it was confidential information (as a doctor may), and that she was not at liberty to give out such details to anonymous callers. Of course, had it been concerning any other employee, Karen may have let Jackie in on the requested information. Since the girl on the other end of the phone was presumably Zephyr’s live-in whore, Karen offered her most bitter portrayal of herself.

Jackie refrained from calling Karen a bitch, but slammed down the phone in anger.

Zephyr’s cell phone was still deactivated and that worried her. Jackie followed up her call to Richter’s by dialing his mother. Lana Simmons answered in a less hostile tone than the harping sow at Richter’s, but was frigid all the same, as Jackie expected.

Jackie broke the news to Lana in a broad stroke and Lana was understandably concerned.

“
Have you called the police yet? Jesus, Jackie. You should have called me about this sooner,” Lana said with a tone that implied she had doubts as to whether Jackie was a suitable yin to Zephyr’s yang; that if she could not protect her son from a total disappearing act, then what other life challenges would she fail at?

“
I called a friend of the family, who’s a retired cop in Massachusetts. He said I need to wait a little longer before I make an official call and start a report. It’s only been one night, and there aren’t any accident reports that match his car. My only theory at this point is that he’s still at Rattup’s house,” Jackie said. “That was the last place on his agenda yesterday. We were supposed to meet up after that.”

“
Who the hell is Rattup?” Lana lashed out. It was always pestering to a mother that her children held back any of the gruesome day-to-day details of their lives. There was a discomfort in knowing that children were inevitably set to be free of full disclosure once they were of the mind to do so. They grew up, moved out, and never wrote home. The truth of their lives uncovered by missteps or coincidence in communications. This fact would not help Jackie in winning over Lana... how dare Jackie know of her son’s life more so than his own mother?

“
He’s this retired writer who lives outside of town. Zephyr’s been making deliveries to him for awhile now. The guy orders his food from Richter’s and they make home deliveries for him because he’s sort of a shut-in. But Zephyr would have called if he was running even five minutes late. This isn’t like him, and that’s what worries me.” Jackie sighed.

“
You’re damn right
this isn’t like him.” Lana implied behind her words that she knew more of what was and was not
like Zephyr
than Jackie did. “I’m calling the police, Jackie. They need to know about this, to get rolling whatever processes they have in place. Being that I’m so far away, my next question is this: what can
you
do to get my boy back from wherever he’s wandered off to? Huh? What can
you
do?”

“
Well... my next step was to find Rattup. Richter’s wouldn’t tell me where he lives, but I can ask around. Somebody ought to know. He’s not listed in the phone book, but I’m sure I can dig a little,” Jackie replied in defense, unable to hide the annoyance in her voice. Was she really such a bad mate to Lana’s precious son? Had she not already done the right thing in calling her? “You have my cell number, and I have yours. So we’ll keep each other posted?”

“
Yes.” It seemed as though their conversation was over, but Lana had one more prod before working her way through the telephone directories of the state and local police of Maine. “Jackie, did you do something to make him not want to come home? Are you and he on bad terms right now?” There was a sliver of optimism in Lana’s timbre.

Jackie stuttered at the thought and felt as if she had been stabbed by a tiny knife, shocked at the implication. “No! Nothing like that.”

“
Are you sure? You know he’s a sensitive boy,” she told her future (potential) daughter-in-law, informing her as to the delicacies of her fully grown child. There was a purpose in all that Lana said, Jackie quickly discovered. To let a phrase slip by without a psychological interjection would be an abject failure. “Even with his sensitivity, I’ve never known him to just run off, even when he was little. It would mean something pretty awful would have happened. You should be more worried than you seem.” Another poignant jab.
Bravo
, thought Jackie.

They stayed on the phone for a moment, both silent in their own inner workings and contemplations. There were so many sharp words that Jackie wanted to unload upon Zephyr’s mother, but held back for a brighter tomorrow. It was not the proper time or place to draw lines in the sand. They would have an entire life together, if she accepted Zephyr’s imminent proposal, to work out their differences and thoughts on life and the universe. “I’ll call you when I find Rattup,” Jackie said.

***

You need to eat.

She jostled him awake and the first thing that Zephyr noticed, as compared to his previous groggy half-awakenings, was that the rag had been finally removed from his mouth. It took him a moment to realize where he was and even longer to cast away the misty confusion that encircled his head space. He was glad to be free of the putrid rag, but still felt a pressure on his arms and legs, as though kept in place by invisible shackles. He pulled his forearm up by his chest to find that he could move, but that the realistic mobility was akin to swimming through pea soup. “Let me go,” he protested, grunting as he lifted himself from the couch, soon recollecting the full details of his captive state.

You need to eat. If you die, I’d never forgive myself.

Trying desperately to pick his entire body up from the confines of Rattup’s couch, Zephyr collapsed to his knees, exhausted and woozy from his strained attempt at forward progress in a gravitational world that was not allowing such boldness. “I don’t want to eat. I wanna go the fuck home.” He pulled himself up on the wicker coffee table, gasping for breath.

That’s not an option.