by Crowe, Stan
Moiré had left me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Nicky? What would you do if I got lost during our trip to Cabo?”
“I’d do everything I could to find you, baby. Call the cops, search the streets, put up missing person posters, whatever. I’d spend however long it took to make sure you were safe and well. You know that.”
“Oh, Nicky. You’re so sweet.”
“How’s your Spanish, by the way?”
“What do you think, Nick.”
“Can you use a GPS?”
“Oh, those things are so annoying with those little computer voices that are always saying you’re an idiot because you don’t know where you are.”
“Maps?”
“Are they in English?”
“Let’s assume not. Maybe I should just get a leash for the Cabo trip.”
“Nicholas Cairn!”
“I’m kidding, Els. Just don’t get yourself lost.
I was surprised at how much better the world looked with the rising sun, which had been edging over the mountains not long before I fell asleep. I had nothing better to do that day.
When my eyes finally opened, time was a blurry, unimportant mass. The apartment was silent; who knew where my roommates were? I rolled over like a brick and squinted at the clock next to my bed. Already 3:00 p.m.? So what? Was there even a reason to get out of bed? I reviewed the possible reasons: my neck and back were killing me from my awkward sleep position. I could handle that. I was hungry—no biggie. I needed to pee. I could ignore that for a while.
I was burning to talk to Moiré. That I couldn’t deal with.
I was on my feet so fast that my vision clouded in a blink and I was on my hands and knees before I could realize it. When sight and balance returned, I grabbed my car keys and wallet and raced for my car.
Jump in. Start engine. Shift into gear. Time for a little trip to Vegas.
Then I realized that Las Vegas wasn’t exactly an island village. Searching that place would take time. I headed to campus. A search of the student directory only gave local contact information. The data she’d given when she hired on with me was no better. I had a better plan—tap Ella. She owed me at least a little information in return for so kindly tearing out my heart the night before. I’d pry it out of her one way or the other. Now I could ram the accelerator into the floorboard.
The nameless roommate answered the door again. She looked faint the moment she saw me. I quickly assured her all the adrenaline was out of my system and that no one was going to get hurt. She kept the door chained anyway. I wasn’t going to press that issue.
“Look, I know Moiré isn’t here,” I said as calmly as I could, “but I just wanted to ask Ella for Moiré’s home address. I know this might sound sappy, but I’ve just gotta find her. And by the way, I’m Nick.” I stuck out my hand.
Her dark eyes regarded my hand warily, but ultimately she reached through the crack in the door and timidly shook it. “Carla.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Carla. On… non-violent terms.”
That earned a hint of a smile.
“So,” I resumed, “may I speak with Ella?”
“No.”
I blinked.
“No, Ella is not here. She and… that man… went somewhere for lunch. She did not say anything about when she would return. I’m sorry.”
I groaned, but it was fine. I could wait. Well, no, actually, I couldn’t wait to find Moiré, but I was clueless as to her whereabouts so what choice did I have but to wait? My shoulders heaved once and I propped myself up on the wall.
“I miss Moiré,” I murmured.
Carla nodded. “Moiré is a nice girl. You are right to love her. She has taken good care of me while I’ve been here. She made me feel like part of her family. My family is far, far away in the Philippines, but having Moiré here was like having a sister all over again. She even took me to her own house, once, for a weekend stay.
That got my attention.
“Wait, you mean, you know where Moiré lives?”
Carla faltered. “Her parents paid for us to fly. They collected us at the airport. I cannot drive there.”
“But you know the name of the street she lives on?”
Carla shook her head. “Las Vegas. It is such a large city. So many streets, so many buildings. I couldn’t learn it all in one weekend.”
It wasn’t much, but it confirmed the general location. With luck, Moiré was only about seven hours from here. It wasn’t terribly specific, but I was so excited the rest of the details could be taken care of later. I thanked Carla as profusely and genuinely as I could manage, before turning to dash for my car.
“Hey!” The squeaky exclamation pulled me up short.
I peered back to see Carla beckoning me. I complied and she opened the door all the way. She motioned for me to lean in close. I did and she glanced around nervously.
“Ella would kill me if she knew I’d told you this. Please do not tell her.”
I vowed silence.
Carla seemed relieved and went on. “I think you should know some things about Ella.” With that, she invited me to have a seat. I sat and Carla told me the real story. Only an hour or two before Moiré had left, Carla had overheard Moiré and Ella fighting. No surprise, it had been about me. Ella, of course, was furious that Moiré would dare interfere in her life. Moiré’s defense was that she had saved me from marrying a woman who only saw me as an easy cash cow. Moiré argued that if Ella really loved me, she would either care enough to let me go, or to grow up and actually take care of me and be a real wife.
Ella had shot back that I wasn’t an easy ride anyway and had made up some story about me being doomed to eternal unemployment.
Moiré had pointed to that as a perfect example of why she’d tried to persuade me not to marry Ella and called her something Carla wouldn’t repeat for having been cheating on me with her “guys of the week” ever since Ella and I had been engaged.
Ella’s retort was that her love life was none of Moiré’s business and that I didn’t know the difference between a kiss and a handshake in the first place. Consequently, Ella needed to get her passion from somewhere else. It got uglier from there, until Ella’s final shot was something about Moiré’s chances of getting me being less than nothing—even someone as dense as I was wasn’t blind and even a moron like me wasn’t stupid enough to fall for some unrepeatable name as Moiré. The fact that I hadn’t even bothered to stop her, after our argument, was the icing on her caustic cake.
In finale, Moiré decided she’d had enough of life with Ella and had stormed out of the apartment. When Moiré returned, Ella started up on her again, but Moiré shut her with a quick slap and a comment that she was already on her way out—she was finished living with a two-year old. Moiré had packed to leave immediately after that.
Ella had been in hysterics for almost a half an hour wailing about “being poor forever,” before storming off as well. Moiré left as soon as her packing was complete.
Sometime later, Ella returned with “that man” in tow and drunk with giddiness. They charged into the backroom to play. Fifteen minutes after that, I’d knocked on the door.
And that was that. There it was. The whole truth.
“One more thing,” she added before I could run. “Moiré… was always so happy when she talked about you. I have never seen her so happy. Maybe she misses you too?”
I thanked Carla once more, startled her with an impromptu hug and sprinted for my car. I would fix this.
I hunted for Moiré until I was out of cash and out of gas. My fortnight nosing through Vegas had proven incredibly disappointing. Moiré’s voicemail box had always been full. There were no phone listings for any “De Lanthes.” Failure on every listing of “Abel.” The handful of people who knew the family (peripherally) were unwilling to give my anything other than a promise to “let her know if I see her” when I asked for Moiré’s whereabouts.
On the bright side, my
trip was a cultural experience. I was cussed out, talked politics with a teenager from Detroit, was blessed by some evangelical Christians and a Buddhist, learned an entirely new meaning of “kosher” from a woman who claimed she was really an elderly Jewish man trapped in a woman’s body and found out how I, too, could make millions overnight with a few great tips from an expert!
The highlight of the trip was meeting a kindly old lady who took me in and insisted that I was her grandson and wouldn’t I please stay for dinner and a chat? What else could I do? The sun was sliding down the west side of the sky by the time “Granny” had bid me a tearful farewell. Her cooking and hospitality took me back to childhood and I was glad I could give her some company in return.
I’d marked the old woman’s house on my map. Maybe I should stop in to visit again, if I were ever in this area. I’d take Moiré and we’d go to Granny’s house together and I’d make Granny happy by introducing her to my new, auburn-haired bride-to-be. Granny would fuss and smile and clap and insist we stay for dinner and kiss our cheeks and put her own wedding veil on Moiré before standing her in front of a mirror to make sure she looked unquestionably beautiful. It was perfect. Except for the part where I wasn’t actually engaged to Moiré. And the part that I still had no idea where she was despite my work.
The empty passenger seat haunted me the whole drive home.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Jim?”
“Huh?”
“I realized something funny last night.”
“Yeah?”
“I think I may still love you.”
“Get my car keys. I’m taking you to the doctor.”
Forty-eight hours after my failed quest, I was interviewing for an on-campus job. It was just a little part-time gig in the eatery at the heart of the student union building. I nailed the interview and they told me they’d give me a call within a week to let me know if I had been selected from the cesspool of candidates. Leave it to a bum economy to make a guy with a college degree have to fight for a fast food job.
Fall semester was soon in full swing, so I had to swim through the human rivers of a passing period when I came out of my interview. With no particular reason to go home, I fell in with the crowds and let myself be swept along, a lonely branch on a stream of college-aged humanity. I drifted around campus and only left the stream when I found myself gazing at a building that was a virtual part of me. I glanced up at the windows of my old classrooms and lab. Why not have a look? It felt a year had passed since I’d last been there. The view of the lab welcomed me silently—the workstations around the walls, the back room for napping. And ah! The Chair; still there, though sporting patches of duct tape over rage-induced perforations. I’d have to apologize to it for my abuse; maybe buy it a milkshake or something.
Seeing The Chair still in place, even after my demise, made me feel slightly immortal. I breathed in the scent of the room just for the nostalgia and turned to leave. An odd feeling gave me pause and I turned to look back; something was out of place. But what? Time to peruse the lab.
My old computer accepted me when I logged in. At least I might be able to salvage some mementos of the last three years of my college career. Maybe one day I’d could show future children some of the silly notes or graphs I’d made and tell them stories about the time their old man almost got a doctoral degree; I’m sure they’d be so thrilled to hear about my failure. When I reached my desk, something caught my eye. A large, pink sticky note was attached to the top edge of my computer’s monitor and covered a large portion of the screen. I picked it off the monitor and read the neat scrawl.
Dear Almost Dr. Cairn,
Sometimes, miracles do happen. Your work on the wonders of love is more valuable to more people than you know. On behalf of the members of the Women’s Education and Learning League—W.E.L.L.—I have taken steps to, shall we say, help your department’s doctoral review board to rethink their opinions concerning your work.
You have a very special young lady to thank for bringing this to our attention. She had her scholarship rescinded for challenging the Board’s decision to disenfranchise you. Fortunately, the Board’s members (those silly, stupid old men) are not immune to their wives’ influences and we have graciously changed their collective mind and did us all a service by allowing for the continuation of your work.
The ladies and I are looking forward to a most enlightening presentation. I trust that you won’t let us down.
Best wishes and happiness to you,
~A Fairy Godmother.
I stared blankly at the note for some time. When I came to, I realized that the difference in the lab was a freshly printed set of notes arranged neatly on my desk. Next to that was a memo on Department letterhead formally (dare I say, grudgingly?) stating what the Fairy Godmother had already told me. A stack of shiny CDs sat mother hen-like on my notes; stick-on labels indicated the discs had electronic copies of all the notes beneath them. My books, those old movies and my whole music collection had miraculously escaped a trip to the city dump. Glancing back instinctively, I noticed that despite the patches, The Chair was sparkling clean, the sensors all neatly arranged and ready for…
“The one-thousandth experiment,” I muttered, somewhat disappointed that I’d been in no state of mind to test that final couple. Completing the experiment would be no problem. It hurt to think I’d be doing it alone again. One more pleasant reminder of what my stupidity had pushed away.
I read the sticky note again. Moiré had had feelings for me after all. But with her own money gone and her family suddenly struggling, her odds on her coming back to this place—no, on coming back to me—were slim to none. And why should she? For all she knew, I hated her. I sighed and shrugged, happy—in a dazed sort of way—for this sudden, massive reversal of fortune. Barely a salve for losing Ella and not at all helpful for Moiré’s loss. At least habit meant I could lose myself in comfortable familiarity. Hey, it was better than getting plastered, right? Without another thought, I went right back to work, reviving what I could. We couldn’t disappoint the Fairy Godmother, right? No reason to let Moiré’s sacrifice go to waste.
Before I knew it, I was alone in the lab again. Emergency lights dared illuminate the halls and crickets were telling them to switch off and let the stars do their job. Noting the hour, I pulled out of reviewing my dissertation and realized I was actually quite tired. Save my files. Shut off the computer. Stand and stretch before leaving.
“Doctor Cairn?” a voice asked, politely.
I froze. No… Yes?
I turned to look. If I was hallucinating then it was a really nice trip. I didn’t even try to look nonchalant as I stared at her. Like a man who has been without water for days, my eyes drank her lovely image—the silken, fiery hair; her radiant ginger eyes; that sweeping jawline under perfect cheekbones and everything else.
“P-please, just call me ‘Nick,’” I finally stammered. “I’m… not done with my dissertation yet.”
She smiled demurely. “Which is what I was hoping to hear.” She gestured around the lab. “They told me I’d find you here. I’m Moiré, your previous undergraduate assistant.”
“Yes, Miss De Lanthe—Moiré, sorry. If you’re still looking for an internship, I think you’ve come to the right place.”
“Then you’re the one who’s still writing a dissertation entitled, ‘Human interrelations in romantic settings and neurophysical responses to prescribed stimuli’?”
I nodded stupidly. “Yeah, I’m him. Are you, um, sure I’m the one you want to be talking to?”
She gave me a thin, teasing smile and I made a mental note of my reaction. Heart rate still increases in response to her smile. “I asked specifically to work with you.”
I continued to stare. “You realize that the pay is just this side of nothing, right?”
She nodded.
“You know the hours are long and that some of what we’re doing stands a pretty good chance of breaking hearts?”
She nodded again.
“Were you informed that even after you study a large body of literature, listen to hours of sappy songs and watch several days’ worth of mindless films as part of core research, you still might not know the right thing to say to someone when you finally realize that you really do love them?”
She indicated she was aware.
“And you know that you deserve most of the credit for saving someone from a doomed relationship that he was too blind to see?”
She nodded again, more eagerly than I’d expect.
“You… really seem excited about this.”
Her smile widened and her eyelids drooped seductively. “Yes, I am,” she said quietly, as she paced slowly toward me. I automatically clutched at my chest, feeling my heart pass the one hundred miles-per-hour mark.
“You’re the only one in your field—in the world, really,” she said, “that I’d even want to do anything like this with.”
“Flattered, really,” I said hoarsely.
She laughed lightly at that. I was pleased that it wasn’t getting any easier to control my pulse count as time went on.
“It’s… been a long, difficult, heartbreaking job,” I croaked. “It won’t be easy on you either, I imagine.
Think you can handle that?”
She nodded once and placed herself inches from me. “It’s a privilege to work with you.”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice barely audible.
“So… I see you got the note my godmother sent. Lorena is a sweet old dame.”
I buried my face in her hair and breathed deeply. The aroma was rich and warm. Without thinking, I began nibbling on her ear. She giggled and shuddered just a bit, but sighed into it.
“Did you ever get that thousandth experiment?” Moiré asked, dreamily bumping her nose into mine.