by Dan Taylor
She opens the door, frowns, smiles, and then frowns again, says, “Jake, you haven’t been in contact.” And then, without missing a beat, says, “What the hell are you doing here?” before she slaps me full force, and then leans over and kisses me.
Her lips are soft and her kiss is tender, but this isn’t in my plan, so I grab her to stop her, with force.
She says don’t over and over again.
And I ask, out of interest, “Don’t what?”
“Resist me.”
“Tracy, we’ve got to talk.”
“I know, just let me kiss you first.”
“It’s not right.”
“It feels it. Doesn’t it to you?”
“No.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
“You’re a no-good rat, you know that?”
“I do, and I apologize.”
“Then let me kiss you.”
The whole of this conversation, her face is right next to mine, her neck straining, trying to get her face close enough to mine to kiss me—imagine a hamster squeezing its face through bars to get to a nut. And the equal and opposite force during this conversation is my holding her ears. I hear a cough, and then look to my left, at the neighboring identical porch, where Tracy’s neighbor stands—a heavier guy in a tracksuit holding grocery bags—a concerned look on his face.
Not knowing what to say, I nod at him, slower than I’d like, and say, “Nice to meet you.”
And then I wrestle Tracy inside her home, lifting her onto my shoulder when we’re out of sight of the neighbor. I close the door behind me with the sole of my shoe and head for the living room.
Two weeks ago, Grace and I had an argument. It seems insignificant now, but I’d come home with the wrong size diapers. How was I supposed to know that the particular ones I’d bought were adult size? It’s not like you can take them out and inspect them before you buy them. But this argument didn’t wash with Grace, as it turns out the manufacturers had clearly stated it on the packaging, in some crazy scheme to ensure their prospective customers could make an informed choice. I guess it’d been a difficult week, or maybe I couldn’t swallow my pride, but I lost my shit. Told her if she’s so good at reading, maybe she should’ve gone to the store herself. I then stormed out, and headed for a bar. Any bar. Preferably one where adult-size diapers weren’t placed on the shelves right next to the ones for baby’s asses.
I attract trouble at bars: either from angry dudes with a penchant for skipping lunch and drinking whisky, or ladies who can smell an easy mark when they go past and smell my signature cologne, which is sweet.
Sometimes both at the same time.
So it was no surprise when, eight fingers in—whisky measures, not an orifice—a lady came up to me, took the stool next to mine, looked at me like my eyes contained a bunch of constellations mixed with romantic quotes from poems, and asked me, “Are you drinking alone because you’re a creep, or because you don’t like to make small talk?”
I’ll tell the rest of that story afterwards, as Tracy’s bucking and thumping my back, providing training for when Ellie’s a teenager, and I’m struggling to make it to her couch, where I hope to put her down.
“Let me go, you pig,” Tracy says.
“Stop moving and I will.”
“Put me down. There’s no way I want you to take me into my bedroom and have your way with me.”
“I’m heading towards the couch, you fruitcake.”
“Don’t call me that. You’re ruining the fantasy.”
Oh, boy.
“That’s not what this is. We need to talk,” I say.
There’s a pause. “Have I been a bad girl?”
Treading carefully, or at least trying to, I say, “You’ve been naughty, but in a bad way. This is serious.”
I finally make it to the couch, and I put her down, a little too hard.
She bumps her head on the backrest, screams my name a couple times, help a couple times, including at least one accusation of rape, and then calms down. She then fixes me with a stare, licks her lips and asks, “How did you know I like it so rough, Howard?”
I take the seat next to her, sigh, and say again, “We have to talk.”
“About what? Is this the secret rendezvous you were talking about? Are you ready for the hit yet?”
Okay, so now’s a good time to tell the rest of the story at the bar. Tracy and I got talking. Initially, I explained the real reason for my being at the bar, and I was more than a little tipsy by the time I said I was a hitman, who works as a P.I. as a front, using the alias Jake Hancock, and that my real name is Howard. She laughed, said she’d seen my billboard, and that I was cute. Usual stuff. I thought we were bantering. Hell, we were laughing so much, there’s no way I thought we were being serious. She all but confirmed it when she confessed she was in the middle of a divorce, and saw it as fate that we’d bumped into other this evening, when earlier she’d been checking Craig’s List for hitmen. I should’ve told her right then and there that I’m not a hitman, and that we hadn’t technically bumped into each other, as she’d come up to me, and practically forced me to have a conversation with her.
But I didn’t. I allowed what I thought to be banter to continue, and I thought she’d turned it up to eleven when she confessed to suffering from a range of mental illnesses, including auditory and visual hallucinations, and an ailment where she sees what other people typically consider to be beauty as ugliness, and vice versa.
The worst part of the story is the next morning. I ran out of this very duplex, phone to my ear, calling a cab, not remembering what happened after we left the bar. All I knew was that the girl whom I’d met the night before was naked in her bed, and I’d woken up beside her only wearing my socks and having not brushed my teeth or flossed, and that my pant pocket contained a little red book with her telephone number and address in it, punctuated by a lipstick impression.
I kept the book in case of an emergency, who walked into my office earlier, wearing pants too small for him.
Back to now, and I’m looking at her, pleading with her with my eyes, as I say, “Tracy, everything I told you in the bar that night was a lie. And probably everything I said afterwards.”
She looks deep into my eyes, a neutral expression on her face, and says, “So you’re not going to be able to take out Dick?”
I frown. “Who’s Dick?”
“My husband.”
“I won’t be able to do that. I’ve never killed a man in my life, and probably never will.”
She smiles. I don’t like it. “You would tell me that. I know what you’re doing.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. You’re covering your tracks, so I’m unsure it’s you when Dick dies.”
I grab her by the wrists and pull her towards me. The skin on the underside of her wrists feels rough. She recoils, and then we both look down at my white knuckles, and then I release her and tell her sorry, before continuing: “Tracy, I’m not doing that. I’m here to tell you I’m sorry for what happened at the bar, and what happened afterwards, and that we can never see each other again.”
Her eyes well up with tears. “I don’t like this conversation, Howard. I preferred you when you were drunk.”
I stiffen my expression, grab her by the shoulders, and shake her a few times. Remembering shaken-baby syndrome from the nineties, and the British au pair who accidentally on purpose killed the baby she was looking after, I stop, but still keep a hold of her, and say, “My name’s not Howard. It’s Jake. And my P.I. business isn’t a front for a kill-for-hire service, but my only source of income.”
She frowns. “So you are married, to a wife called Grace, and have a kid called Ellie? That isn’t just a front?”
I think a second. “I made up that too. I’m single.”
She cups my face in her hands. “So why can’t we be together? I thought we had something special. You’re the ugliest man I’ve ever seen, which means you must be t
he most beautiful. You’re also the ugliest man on the inside I’ve ever met, so must be the kindest.”
“It’s true that I’m beautiful and kind, and that’s precisely the reason why we can’t be together.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I’ll explain it to you the simplest way I know. Because I’m so beautiful on the inside, I can’t let you into my life. Someone will get hurt, and it won’t be me.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“It boils down to this: I’m so beautiful and kind that there’s too much temptation in this world for me to stay faithful. And I couldn’t do it to you. Not you, Tracy. That’s why I’ve sworn a vow of celibacy, and promised myself, and my shrink, that I’ll remain a bachelor for the rest of my life. I’m toxic, Tracy, and I couldn’t do it to someone as beautiful as you, on the outside and in.”
“Oh stop it. I’m the ugliest lady I’ve ever seen.”
I place her head on my shoulder. “That’s just your disease messing with your head, Tracy. You’re a B minus when you get out of bed, and an A plus when you’ve showered and applied makeup.”
She starts sobbing, and I console her. I can’t wait to get out of here, but there’s something I need to address first. I think about what I’m going to say, when something catches my eye. She’s holding her arms out in front of her, cradling one hand in the other. She’s got scars on her arms, the ugly marks of self-harm, but that’s not what’s got me worried. There are scars larger than the ones I mentioned, on her wrists.
I soften my voice, and say, “Tracy, did you tell your brother what I said in the bar that evening, about my planning to kill Dick?”
She sniffles. “No.”
I breathe a silent sigh of relief.
I cross my fingers and toes, figuratively, and ask in a voice even softer than the one before, “Then what did you tell him?”
“Oh, just the usual stuff.” She scoffs, getting a bit of snot on my neck. “That I’d met a guy in a bar, we’d gotten along well, and that I think he’s marriage material.”
“That’s all you told him?”
She pauses. “I might’ve told him you said you loved me.”
I cringe. “Did I say that?”
“No, but I figured you would on our second date.”
I soften my voice even more. At this point I sound like a nature show host lying mere feet from the opening to a badger’s den, commenting on what he’s observing. “Tracy, I’m gonna need you to tell your brother that you made all that stuff up.”
She looks up at me and asks, “Why?”
“Because he came into my office today, and I denied knowing you, or having ever met you.”
“Why did you say that?”
I rack my brain. Earlier in the conversation I denied being married and being a parent, for good reason. If I hadn’t, it would’ve given me the perfect reason for having denied knowing her to her brother. Me and my big mouth.
A thousand reasons race through my mind, and I reject nine-hundred and ninety-nine of them, mentally Whack-a-Mole-ing them, and go with, “Because I’m a figment of your imagination, Tracy. I’m a hallucination.”
“Then how come I can rest my head on your shoulder, and hear your beating heart?”
“That’s also part of the hallucination.” I gamble. “You haven’t been taking your meds recently, have you?”
She sighs. “I haven’t taken anything since Sunday. They make me sleepy.”
“Then that’s what I am.” I do the math. “The result of four days of not taking your meds.”
She frowns. “It’s been three days.”
“Shh,” I say. “I’m going to leave now, but I need you to promise you’ll phone your brother, tell him you’ve been suffering from a delusion.” Adding fuel to the fire, I say, “You must’ve suspected I was, right? With me being so beautiful-ugly?”
“I did think you were too good to be true. I’ll make the call. Soon as you leave.”
“You’re making the right decision, Tracy.”
I’m about to slip out from under her, to the safety of my car, home free, when she says, “If you’re a hallucination, then why did I see you at the bar, when we met? I was taking my meds then.”
5.
“So let me get this straight,” Tracy says after hearing my explanation. “My schedule of meds needs to be revised by my psychiatrist, and that’s why I started to see you at the bar last week?”
Tracy’s head is no longer resting on my shoulder. She’s sitting upright, looking perplexed. Like all this is hard to believe.
So I add, “I’m not a medical professional. Hell, I’m not even a real person, so can’t be educated. But it makes sense to me. Think about it a second. Why would a guy like me be sitting in a bar all alone?”
“For the reason you said. You had an argument with your wife.”
She’s doubtful, so I say, “She doesn’t exist, either. If you don’t believe me—”
“I believe you, Jake. Don’t say things like that,” she says, putting a hand on my imaginary knee.
I continue, “But still, your peace of mind is really important to me. How about we prove it?”
She thinks a second. “It would make me feel better. How about we check to see if there’s a Jake Hancock living in Hollywood, and if he’s registered as married in the state of California?”
“That’s a really good plan, but it has one fatal flaw.”
“What?”
“It would be much quicker if we just looked on White Pages for the existence of my wife.”
“How’s that a fatal flaw?”
I ignore her, as I already have my phone out, and am bringing up the White Pages webpage. I glance up at her to see her scratching her head. It takes me a second to work out why. “Dang it! I just realized my phone is imaginary too, as it doesn’t have 3G, let alone 4G. We’re going to have to use yours.”
“Okay.”
She gets it out, unlocks it, and then hands it to me. Her background image is a photo of a really angry silverback gorilla, spit flying out its mouth, as it flings feces at the cameraman. To her, it must be the most beautiful photo of nature she’s ever seen. I bring up White Pages. She has the app installed on her phone, and I regard this as ominous foreshadowing. I think a second, and then type in the name of someone unlikely to exist and press the search button.
A second later, I say, “Yep. Just as I thought, neither I nor she exists.”
“Let me take a look.”
I hand the phone to her. She looks at the screen a second, and then says, “Who’s Hornet Grapevine?”
“My wife. Did I not mention her name last week?”
“Nope.”
“She didn’t take my second name when I married her. Well… if I had married her, and if she did exist.”
Tracy sighs. “So I guess that settles it.”
I glance at my watch as she stares into space, looking depressed. Then I say, “Tracy, I hate to say it, but I can feel whatever force that gives me life fading away, and I fear I’ll disappear for good this time.”
She looks at me. “You’re not fading or nothing.”
I shrug. “But still, I can feel it. I should probably leave.”
“That’s a shame. I was hoping we could share a bed for one last time. For old imagination’s sake?”
I kiss her on the cheek. “I wish we could too,” I say, and then get up.
I leave her sitting on the couch and slink off. When I’m at the front door and out of sight, or at least think I am, I fist pump. But turn around to see Tracy standing there, her arms crossed over her chest.
She has one final question. “If you’re a figment of my imagination, then why do you have to leave through the front door? Why don’t you—puff!—disappear?” she says, not critical, but hopeful, I reckon, of finding a way for our relationship to be genuine.
“I don’t make the rules. Bye now.”
I kiss her on the cheek again, and slip out the front door. I get in
my car, and then catch her neighbor looking at me through his living room window. I wave at him, smiling, and then start up the car.
Two minutes later, on my drive home, I’ve come up with at least seventeen holes in the story I gave Tracy for why she should phone her brother to say she imagined her whole encounter with me. But still, I think I nailed it, and I reckon I’m out of the hot water.
It’s probably prudent to get the billboard taken down, at least for a little while, until Tracy forgets about me or, failing that, meets someone else.
I give it a couple weeks for either of those two things to happen, and make a mental note to give the task of getting it temporarily removed tomorrow to Daisy, citing a reason like my chin looks big in that particular photo. I’ll eat the cost.
Anyway, I feel like I’ve experienced my fair share of stress for today, so I phone Grace. She answers pretty much straightaway, and says, “Jake, how’s it going?”
“I’m done for tonight.” I force a yawn. “I’m beat.”
“Did it go well?”
“I’d say so.”
“Did you get any evidence of him being a bad pet owner?”
“He doesn’t have any pets without Mrs. Pickles, so anything I get is purely character destroying.”
“Oh. Then did you get anything like that?”
“I know he puts his underwear away in his dresser without having ironed it. It’s a start.”
“Okay, honey. Do you want to say goodnight to Ellie before I put her to bed?”
“Does she have to go straightaway? I was hoping I’d get back before. Read her a bedtime story.”
Ellie’s at the age where she doesn’t need a bedtime story. Hell, she doesn’t need anything apart from a pacifier, for us to be silent for five minutes, and to hear this weird noise Grace makes, like a cat purring, and she’s zonked.
“I think I’d rather put her straight to bed. Her eyes are closing as we speak.”
“Put her on.”
“I’ll hold the phone next to her ear.”
I’m still practicing talking to my baby daughter, and often sound like the coach of a little league team who’s trying to pretend his team did well when they sucked. “Ellie, it’s your dad here. Well done today for going easy on your mom for me.” I think about what to say next, and come up with: “One day when you’re older, I’ll get you icecream.” I pause a second, and say, addressing Grace, “I’m done.”