Chasing The O

by LaBelle, Lorelai

“Everything all right, Alma?” I asked, drowsily.

  “Well, that’s why I’m calling you,” she started, then paused to yell at someone in her office. Her voice split my head in two. “As you can guess, Vince has been severely depressed lately, and has stopped going to his NA meetings.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m worried about him, Maci. Look, I don’t know what happened between you two, but whatever it was, I’m afraid it will drive him to start using again. He hasn’t picked up my calls for two days now. He’s shutting me out.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “I want you to go and talk to him. I know you’re miserable, too. I’ve been getting updates through the grapevine. Please, as a friend . . .”

  Friend? She thought we were friends? She had been terrible to me for months and months. She certainly had an odd way of showing her friendship. As far as her request, I had attempted several times since the funeral to gather up the courage to call him. I guess this was the push I needed because I agreed. “Fine. I’ll call him—”

  “You won’t regret it, Maci. Talk to you later.” She hung up before I could say goodbye.

  My hands shook as my finger hovered over Vince’s number. After fifteen minutes of talking myself up, I hit the green call button. With each ring, my stomach knotted more and more, and I could feel the impending vomit in my throat. Relief filled me at first when it went to voicemail. I gave it a second thought and called again. His voicemail answered again. Alma had made it sound like he was desperate for my call, but I guess that wasn’t the case.

  Despite the computerized rebuff, something felt wrong about the calls. Why would Vince show up at my mother’s funeral if he didn’t want to talk? Digging through my closet for something to wear, my fingers came across the marble that had truly started it all, sending me into Vince’s arms all those months ago. I had stared for so many hours at that marble, playing with it on my desk, day in and day out, and for what? Why? The swirl inside it bewitched me to some degree, like magic, and in an instant, I replayed all the memories, all the awkwardness that faded into warmth and tenderness, even love. I could see Vince’s charming smile in my mind as if he were there, sitting in my room with me, composing the list that brought us closer and closer together, creating a connection from the purely physical to the intensely intimate and emotional. The marble reminded me of our bond—our love.

  I pocketed the marble and hardened my nerves, with the decision made to pay Vince a face-to-face visit. The marble gave me the courage to fulfill the promise to my mother.

  I almost turned back twice during the drive to his condo. Afraid his security staff would stop me in the elevator, I paced the cramped box, talking to myself. They’d definitely think I was crazy if they overheard me. As the elevator halted at the penthouse level, the doors slid open, revealing the mirrored door. I had never given back my key, so I tried it.

  To my luck, it opened; he hadn’t changed the locks. Inside, stale air greeted my lungs. “Vince?” I cried out. “Hello?”

  No one answered. I hurried into the game room but found nothing except a mess of dishes and dirty clothes. The bedroom door lay cracked. I pushed it open and saw Vince lying on the bed. His skin was ice blue. When I touched it, it froze my fingers.

  I glanced at his nightstand and the glass of water next to the bottle of pills, and let out a glass-shattering scream as I gazed at his pale blue face in horror.

  26

  THE PRICE OF HAPPINESS

  “No, no, no, no, no! Vince!” I tapped him on the cheek. “Vince, wake up.” He was out cold. “Wake up! Vince! Vince!” Hysterical, I ran around the room, searching for the radio, then into the kitchen, where I found it on the counter. “Avery, are you there? Avery! Hello, anyone?”

  “Who is this?” a resonant voice asked.

  I instantly recognized the voice as Vince’s new bodyguard. “Maci Goodwin,” I squawked, and started running back to Vince’s bedroom. “It’s Vince, Avery, he’s dying—there’s a bottle of pills—bedroom—he’s dying!”

  He didn’t fool around. I heard him yell at another guy to call nine-one-one. “Hold on, I’ll be up in a sec.” And a second later the elevator doors opened and I could hear his feet pounding the floor as he sprinted. He rushed into the room with an emergency medical kit. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I think he took these.” I handed him the half-empty unlabeled pill bottle. He plucked one of the capsules from the bottle and broke it over the nightstand. The white powder smelled vaguely like vinegar.

  “Heroin,” Avery concluded. He went to the medical kit and extracted a box labeled NALOXONE HYDROCHLORIDE. Dumping out a syringe, he applied an odd foam tip to it, and then inserted a tube of medicine into the syringe. He stuck the foam tip into Vince’s nose and pushed down on the syringe. When it was all gone, he fiddled with his watch, making it beep several times. “It should take two to five minutes to work. If it doesn’t, I’ll give him a second dose. Stand back, I have to give him rescue breathing.” He waved me back, so I bolted around to the other side of the bed and watched, going out of my mind with worry.

  Avery tilted Vince’s head back and checked if his airways were blocked. He pinched Vince’s nose closed, grabbed his chin, then blew a breath into Vince’s lungs. His chest rose as Avery gave a second breath. He started breathing into Vince in routine as a minute passed.

  Two minutes.

  Nothing.

  Every second killed me.

  Three minutes and still no response.

  Four minutes.

  Suddenly Vince came to life, his body ejecting a stream of vomit. Avery rolled him over and let him get it all out. “Get a towel,” he ordered. I darted for the bathroom linen closet and hustled back with a handful of towels.

  Vince stared at me through a fog. Avery wiped off the vomit as Vince spit into a towel. His breaths were ragged and shallow, but he was breathing. Color and warmth eventually returned to his skin as he recovered on his side.

  More tears came. It seemed like all I did lately was cry. Avery left us alone, getting a fresh glass of water from the kitchen.

  “You scared me so much,” I said, kissing his forehead. “Why? Why did you do it?”

  “I don’t know,” he rasped. “After one, more just seemed right. It made me forget, and I liked that.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I cried. “For everything.”

  He sat up with his back against the wall. “No,” he said. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. It was me—I pushed us into that situation. It was my fault.”

  I shook my head, holding his hand. “It was my insecurities. I made myself believe that you didn’t love me all because of a look . . . I love you, Vince. I want to be with you.”

  He rubbed my face with the back of his hand. “I love you, Maci, more than I could ever show . . . I’d do anything for you, you have to know that.” Both our sob engines were full bore by that point.

  When Avery returned, he found us in a strong embrace, tears soaking the sheets and our clothes. He cleared his throat, and we parted as he handed Vince the cup of water. “Sorry about the puke reaction. I’ve never been able to give the right amount of air—always too hard, goes right to the stomach.”

  “It’s okay,” Vince laughed. “You saved my life, Avery, and I don’t know if I can ever repay you for that. But I can start with a new car, or anything. You name it and it’s yours.”

  Avery smiled. “If I said something like, ‘Doing my job is its own reward,’ I’d sound pretty cliché, so I’ll, yeah, I’ll take a car. A damn nice one, too.” Vince choked from laughter. “Easy now, we don’t need to go through the process again.”

  When the paramedics arrived, Vince apologized for their unnecessary aid, and tipped them even though I was pretty sure that wasn’t normal or exactly legal. Avery drove us to the hospital, where Vince requested admittance for a night of observation. He made a sizable donation in the process.

  I stayed with Vince throug
h the night, sleeping in the chair beside his bed, but only after several hours of admitting our wrongs and talking through what happened. In the end, we came out all the stronger, and I silently thanked my mother—and the marble—for her wise guidance. Without it, I could have been lost forever, and Vince might have been cold and six feet under instead of warm and wrapped in my arms.

  “SO, TELL US HOW it happened,” Danielle begged. A week had passed since Vince OD’d. Vince and I—together with my closest friends, my brother and his family, and Alma and Eric—sat on Vince’s terrace, sipping champagne in celebration of our engagement. “Did he get on one knee? You know I did when I proposed.”

  “I would’ve done it if I’d known you were ready,” Ashley said, already two glasses deep, and completely thrilled.

  Bridgett waved for silence. “So?”

  “Well, I’ll start at the beginning,” I said, squealing in delight. I was on cloud nine and buzzing with love, sunshine, and champagne. “This morning I woke up with a note beside me, instructing me to be at the spot where we had a picnic in the Rose Garden, near the amphitheater. Anyway, the note was a riddle, and I had to figure it out. When I got there, I found Vince with a picnic basket filled with breakfast. Then he gave me a chocolate coin—you know, the ones wrapped in gold foil. He also gave me a second riddle. That began a full-day scavenger’s hunt. Every place we went I found a new clue and a chocolate coin. And we went practically everywhere in town—parks, breweries, you name it.

  “Anyway, after touring the city, we eventually arrived down at my brother’s brewery in Oregon City. After that, I ended up in a huge field that Vince rented just for today. I dug in six different locations before I found the last clue. On the last one, I dug and dug and dug, until I finally hit the lid of a plastic storage container. When I opened it, I was staring at gallons of chocolate coins.” I hefted the container onto the patio table. “The riddle told me to dig through the coins, so I did, until my hands pulled this out.” I removed a small ornate treasure chest, made from assorted wood, with a dome top, and brass corners, hinges, straps, and fasteners.

  Everybody oooh’d and ahhh’d at the chest’s marvelous beauty. I unlatched the fastener and opened the top to reveal the green velvet lining. Inside were more gold coins and a wooden heart-shaped ring box. I started crying when I saw it. “My father—” I paused, checking my emotions. “My father proposed to my mother with that box thirty-six years ago. Donny—” I stopped, unable to continue.

  “I remembered it when I was going through our parents’ house on Monday,” Donny said. “I decided Vince would have a better use for it after he told me about his plan to propose.”

  “To answer your question, Danielle, yes, I did get down on one knee. I didn’t have any heirlooms of my own, so I bought the ring from a little jeweler down in Milwaukie. I actually also bought a ring box, but when Donny offered me such a precious and sentimental gift, it really completed everything.” He hugged me with tenderness and kissed my forehead the way he always did.

  Danielle shared my tears, and the others were moved by the sentiment as well. “To finding Mr. Right,” Danielle toasted, and everyone had a laugh, raising their glasses in the air and clinking them. That was one of many toasts that night; the party lasted long after sundown, ultimately switching to Vince’s fresh taps of beer. With fine food and endless laughs, I didn’t want the night to end. I showed off the ring to everyone about a million times, struck by disbelief, awe, and joy.

  All in all, it was the happiest day of my life.

  AFTER OUR ENGAGEMENT, VINCE started addiction therapy, and returned to his regular NA meetings again. We had also celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday on the sixth. I quit my job and started getting my mom’s house ready for the market, which was no easy task for me. The appraisal for the house and land ended up around six hundred and fifty thousand—about a hundred grand more than any of us had estimated.

  I also scouted out new locations for the bakery during this time, planning to use the money from the sale like my brother wanted, though I didn’t plan on accepting it all. He needed it much more than I did, after all, without a billionaire fiancé.

  Nearly two weeks after Vince proposed, I decided to hit the gym for the first time since we broke up and reunited. I went later in the evening to avoid Emma, who Vince said had begun stalking him after our night together. He now had a restraining order against her because it got so intense. And even though her gym membership had been revoked, she still prowled the area, waiting for Vince.

  On the way there, my hackles stood on edge; I had a bad premonition of bumping into her. My nerves only settled halfway through the workout. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 8:23, and I cursed the number, heading back to my car. The apprehensive feeling returned in the parking garage. With the key turning the car lock, I felt a thick cord suddenly wrap around my neck.

  I struggled to get free, thrashing my elbows back, hitting whoever trapped me. My efforts were in vain. My lungs burned as I fought for air. Black spots appeared in my vision before the darkness swallowed me whole.

  WHEN I WOKE NEXT, my lungs filled with a burst of air, and my world returned suddenly, shockingly. Crammed, and surrounded by black, I couldn’t make out anything until my eyes adjusted. That took a while. I figured out where I was long before I could see: I heard the hum of an engine, and felt the abrupt bumps that sent me up and down. With my hands and legs bound, tape over my mouth, and no room to maneuver, I was trapped in a car trunk.

  A nightmare any way you looked at it.

  I had once seen an episode of “Psych” where the main character was kidnapped in the same situation and kicked out the taillight to get his bearings. When I tried, my foot nearly broke, so either that was a lie, or it was bolted in its socket better than the standard vehicle.

  For every actual minute that passed, I swore it was a year, the endless journey suffocating my confidence. The longer it took, the more I told myself everything wasn’t going to work out okay.

  Either from the lack of oxygen, or from hysteria, I nodded off after a while, my head swimming and delirious. My forehead smacked the back of the trunk when the car rolled to its final stop. The trunk opened all of a sudden to a black night and dim porch lights.

  “Wakey-wakey, sleepy head,” a soft voice said. It was familiar—too familiar. A pair of hands grabbed at my arms and legs, and I wiggled to get free as Emma’s face popped into view. “Already awake, I see. I thought I heard you kicking around back there. I bolted everything in extra secure for you. I did my research on ways people escape from abductions. I think we covered all our bases.”

  “WE?” I screamed into the tape.

  I heard what sounded like a screen door opening. Another figure stepped behind the trunk, a silhouette of a lanky man. The jean jacket confirmed my worst nightmare. “She giving you any trouble?” Luke asked. His throaty voice shot jolts of terror down my spine.

  “Her? Are you kidding? What about yours?” She latched onto just my arms, while he gripped my legs, both hauling me out of the confining trunk. They had someone else? Oh God, they have Vince too! They’re going to kill us both.

  “I’ve got the other one downstairs,” he said. “She fought me, so I had to beat her up some. She got the message real quick.” She? Who else were they planning on torturing tonight? Who would they kidnap besides Vince?

  The air smelled like salt—like the ocean. I could hear the crashing of the surf not far away. All the clues pointed to Emma’s beach house that she’d once offered for the Hood to Coast race. So we were in Cannon Beach. What little good that information did me, my limbs bound and useless.

  As they carried me inside, Luke kicked the prop out of the screen door and it slammed shut. “The neighbors are gone. There was a family renting the other one yesterday, but they’re gone. We’re alone for tonight.”

  “Tonight is all we need,” she said sweetly, a joyous smile spread across her face. They lugged me through an ancient house. The walls
and carpet even smelled old. The entire trip I couldn’t believe what was happening. Luke and Emma? How did they even know each other? It was too unreal to wrap my mind around.

  I struggled against them as much as I could, earning a slap to my back from Luke. “Don’t take too much of the fight out of her, love,” Emma urged. “Tonight won’t be much fun if she’s broken.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he agreed. A large unfinished living room lay at the bottom of the stairs. I saw a bathroom as they dragged me into a musty bedroom, where loud whimpering drowned out the silence.

  “You can scream and cry all you want. No one’s going to hear you through these walls. I’ve had them soundproofed,” Emma said to the woman in the corner. She was tied to a chair, now tipped over in an effort to escape.

  The two sat me down, and Luke brought the other captive upright, revealing her face. “Alma!” I shouted into the tape. They bound me to an old wooden chair that looked on the verge of disintegrating, angling me so that I faced her. Luke hadn’t lied when he said he had beat her up. She had a bluish-purple eye, and bruises marked her body along her arms.

  They simultaneously ripped off the tape covering our mouths. I wasn’t sure which of us screamed louder, as we pierced each other’s ears like a knife stabbing flesh, and the pain rung on after the screams faded.

  “Go ahead and scream, sweetie,” Luke laughed. He slapped Alma hard across the face. She bit back any response besides a mild whine. “No?” He waved the back of his hand at her face and stopped before he sent her reeling. She flinched. Emma and Luke both laughed. “How disappointing, Alma. I thought you had more in you. I thought you were one of those strong, I-don’t-need-a-man types. Oh, wait, you do need a man, but he rejected you over and over and over, just like you rejected me.”

  “Why?” I blurted.

  Luke knelt between us, staring at me with the craziest look I’d ever seen in real life. He made Crazy Eyes from “Orange is the New Black” look sane. Taking out a switchblade from his pocket, he flicked it open. “You think Vince is so goddamn perfect, don’t you?” His harsh laugh was starting to nauseate me. “Don’t you? Well, he’s not. Oh no, Mr. Perfect is really Mr. I’ll-fuck-you-over-the-first-chance-I-get. He charms you one moment, then swindles you the next. He took everything from me. I mean, we were partners for fuck’s sake, and he took all my money, my future—even my girl.”