Miss Misery

by Andy Greenwald

  Thing was, there were real consequences to talking to people, to involving yourself with their lives. There was nothing casual about communication, no matter what form it took. I felt the sleeping pills pulling me down into sleep and I didn’t fight them. I was like a rowboat shot full of holes. The water came up to greet me and then sank me down into its warm liquid embrace.

  I dreamed about Amy. Which was odd, really, because she rarely figured in my dreams—almost as if my subconscious assumed that if I was sleeping she was right there next to me, so why not give other characters a shot? But not this time. The details were hazy and kept shifting: I was on some sort of barge traveling between islands. The water was more like a swamp than the sea, and the air was thick and humid. Every so often my passenger would be Amy, and she’d smile helpfully, as she was the one doing all the work. But then other times I was alone on the boat, and I knew that she was on one of the islands—either the one I was rowing toward or the one I was just leaving; it was hard to keep track. Near the end of the dream there was a procession of puppies marching through the swamp. The first group looked like foxes and the second looked like Nancy—the Bortches’ pristine pile of yip. I had a new passenger then—a female one, though I couldn’t tell her identity. She shook me by the arm gently and I turned to see who it could possibly be.

  But it was only the stewardess, with her hand on my arm, calling me sir and telling me that we would be landing shortly. My mouth tasted like ashes, and my hair felt like greasy straw. There was a heavy weight behind my eyes, and my stomach churned with hunger. I was nowhere near rested, but I thanked her and somehow managed to sit up straight and open the window shade, letting in a piercing beam of sunlight. It was morning. I was home.

  My eyes were bleary and bloodshot as I stumbled past the early-morning line at Au Bon Pain, the desperate scrum in the baggage claim. I had a funny tickle of a thought in my brain that felt like freedom: I owed no one anything; I was off the grid. But even then I felt the responsibility hood snap down on my brain, nudging me into the taxi line, pushing me roughly toward routine. I pretended I was back on the moving walkway again and directed the cheery Sikh driver toward Brooklyn.

  Looking back on it now, I realize it should have been obvious that something was wrong, even before I entered my building. The taxi ride from the airport had been too smooth, too easy. There had been no traffic, no delays, and no feigned confusion on the part of the driver pertaining to the quickest—which is to say cheapest—route to my neighborhood. When I stepped out of the cab, I saw no clouds in the sky, and I felt the faintest rustle of a cooling breeze blow through the trees. It felt like the photo negative of the moment before a thunderstorm. Everything was so perfect, it felt ominous. It was then I noticed that my bedroom light was on and the windows were open wide.

  If there was one habit that Amy had drilled into my skull it was never to leave any lights on, so my heart skipped at double time as I unlocked the doors. I walked straight into Mrs. Armando standing stock-still in the middle of the foyer. She had her arms crossed and she wasn’t smiling.

  “You used to be a good kid, David,” she said.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Armando.” I tried to look cheerful.

  “Don’t you ‘good morning’ me. After what you do last night, I should throw you out right now.”

  “What I did?”

  “Don’t act like that to me. I let you live here in my house! I pay for it, I own it! And you disrespectin’ it. Have wild people over, keep up half the block with the crashing and yelling. I’m scared to see what you do to my third floor.”

  Oh, God. I wasn’t even back for five minutes and everything had already fallen apart. “Mrs. Armando,” I said, my hands out in front of me in a sorry attempt to appease her. “How did he…how did I get in?”

  She cocked her head. “You foolin’?”

  “No…I’m sorry. I wish I was. But I’m not fooling.”

  She let out an exasperated sigh. “You ask me for the key! First you say you lose the key—meaning I gotta change the locks—and I give you a spare because you always used to be a good kid, David. None of this noise and nonsense.”

  He was here. In this house. In my home. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Armando. I promise it won’t happen again.”

  “I’m not cleaning up no more messes for you, David. I tell you to throw out that bucket and you throw it into my garden? Mess up my tomatoes?” She shook her head at the inhumanity of it all.

  I started up the steps. “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I’m so, so sorry.” I felt violated, terrified.

  “I give you another chance, but only because of Amy. I always like her!”

  But I was already halfway gone. I galloped the steps two at a time, reached the third floor, and turned the doorknob. It was unlocked. I pushed open the door, and what I saw sent my stomach into freefall.

  Everything was wrecked. My living room looked like a vengeful TV cop had blown through the place sans warrant, overturning everything just because he could. The mail table was upside down, the easy chair was ripped down the middle, its cheap, fluffy intestines spilling out like it had seen the business end of a bayonet. The floor was littered with crushed beer cans, some still leaking their sticky, flat contents. There were fast-food wrappers and empty bags of Doritos. The coffee table was a graveyard of red plastic cups, some of which overflowed with cheap vodka and soggy cigarette butts. There was a thin film of smoke in the air, and the entire place smelled like the inside of the Marlboro Man’s left lung. There was a nasty, jagged hole in the middle of the television set. The mirror that used to hang by the front closet was lying face up on the far end of the futon, its surface covered with a fine dusting of white powder. And crumpled up on the other end of the futon, her legs barely brushing the edge of the mirror and her pale arms wrapped around a throw pillow stitched by Amy’s mother, was Cath Kennedy.

  I raced over to her, crushing cans and kicking over an empty bottle of Popov en route. I could hear music playing faintly in my office. “Trouble” by Lindsey Buckingham.

  I shook her arm. Her skin was clammy, and there was a thin film of sweat on her brow and upper lip. “Cath.” I shook her harder. “Cath!” Was she even alive?

  Yes, she was. But she didn’t seem happy about it. She let out a low groan, and I could see her eyes swimming around behind her closed lids like fish beneath a frozen pond, desperate for sunlight. I shook her again, shouted out her name. Finally, her eyes fluttered open. She looked confused, startled. Then she flashed me a lazy smile of recognition. “Heyyyy,” she said breathily, sinking deeper into the couch and stretching out her legs like a house cat. “You came back.”

  “Cath.” I shook her again. “What the hell happened? Where the hell is he?”

  She sat up, rubbed at her brow. “Who?”

  I stood up, stomped toward where the music was coming from. “Me!” I yelled, unable to see straight from anger. “The other me!” My office was a sea of CDs and wide-open jewel boxes, and my desk was lined with a barricade of empty Budweiser bottles. My laptop was open and on, a screen saver languidly flashing across its screen. I snapped off the stereo, steeled myself, then threw open the sliding wooden doors to my bedroom.

  It was empty. The contents of my dresser were spread out across the floor like an extra layer of carpeting, and an innocent breeze blew in from the open windows. But no one was there. I felt the sheets. They were cool and untouched. I spun around and stormed back into the living room. I sputtered at Cath, impotent with rage. She was sitting upright now, taking small sips from a bottle of 7-Up. She looked like she had been thrown from the back of a horse, her hair sticking out wildly to the left, her face pinched and battered.

  “He’s not here,” she said in a small voice. “He left.”

  I took two deep breaths, kicked a can of Rolling Rock across the floor, then sat down amid the ruined innards of the easy chair. “Cath,” I said, more sad now than angry. “What happened?”

  She blinked. “What ti
me is it?”

  I looked at my watch. “It’s eight fifteen a.m.”

  She groaned and sat back. “There was a party.”

  “I can see that.” From where I was sitting, I could see into the kitchen. The floor was a Picasso of swirled, dirty footprints, and the far window was, as I had feared, completely devoid of herb garden.

  “He called me, invited me over last night.”

  “What time?”

  She scratched at her arm. “I dunno. Maybe nine? He said he was at your apartment. That the two of you had made some sort of agreement. Like a truce. And that you both wanted me to come over.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So I had nothing better to do. So I came. And it was totally out of control. The entire VSC was here. Some band that I saw play at Lit once—from Detroit—they were all here and so were their roadies. That creepy dude with bleached hair—the Asian guy from Smashing Pumpkins who’s always hanging around the East Village?”

  I rubbed my eyes hard, until I saw stars. “James Iha?”

  “Yeah, that dude was here all night. And you—the other you…he was completely out of control. He was drinking everything in sight, snorting drugs, making out with strangers. He had his shirt off and was just, like, cackling with laughter. He kept repeating, ‘Why not? Why not?’ Over and over again. It was kind of scary.”

  I tried to picture it in my mind. “So what did you do?”

  “Well, I tried to find you. But it was hard—it was so packed in here, and things kept shattering and more people kept showing up. It took me almost an hour to go through the whole apartment. And people kept handing me drinks and…you know how it is.”

  “I do?”

  She gave me a look. “Yeah, you do. But when I made it to the bedroom and saw for sure that you weren’t here, that’s when I sent you a text. I didn’t understand where you could be. But you never wrote back.”

  “I know. I should have.”

  “Where were you?”

  I sat back with a sigh. “Utah.”

  Cath looked confused. “Utah?”

  “Yep.”

  “Like, Utah Utah?”

  “The very one.”

  Cath laughed. “You really get around, you know that?”

  “So I’ve been told. What happened next?”

  “Well, I waited for you to write back. But it kept getting later and later. And I was drinking a lot—actually I was still probably drunk from the night before. And then you—other you—offered me drugs and I figured that I shouldn’t leave. That someone responsible had to be here.” She looked around at the destruction, gave a helpless shrug. “I’m sorry. I tried to be the responsible one but…I guess I just fucked it all up. As usual.”

  The cute and by now familiar band of red blossomed across the bridge of her nose. I felt tired and used up. I was no longer angry. “Cath, where did he go?”

  She took another sip of 7-Up and continued. “It was around three or four a.m. People were still raging and you number two had somehow got me cornered in the bedroom. He had his hands all over me, rubbing my legs and my shoulders. He was nibbling at my ears and kept trying to kiss me. I was pretty far gone, but I knew enough to push him away. And finally I just exploded, made some joke about how it was like the exact opposite of the night before—you know, with you. And it was like he got hit by lightning. He just went stiff and cold and pulled away from me and started yelling, like, ‘What happened?’ and what had I done with you. He was scary.” She reached around on the floor, found a paper towel and blew her nose into it. She inspected the results, smiled, and said, “Ha. No blood.” Then she balled up the towel in her tiny fist.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth! Just that I had invited you to a party and we had a good time together. That we, you know, hooked up a little.”

  “And what was his reaction?”

  “He started saying, ‘You invited him,’ over and over. And he stood up suddenly and walked away from me, and it was like something changed in him.”

  “What do you mean ‘changed’?”

  “I don’t know how to describe it.” She shook her head, shivered a little. “Like I said, I was pretty wasted. But it was like…like watching a candle melt, but sped up. Like he was melting a little from the inside.”

  “Melting?”

  “God, I don’t know. That sounds so weird. It was like his insides were soft or something. Like he was changing from the inside out. Like everything was shifting, like sand after high tide. But then he snapped back, and anything that had been soft hardened up again. When it was over, his eyes were different. And he started moving differently too. Like he had just been radioed new orders from mission control. That’s when he attacked your clothes in there.” She gestured toward the bedroom. “He put on that T-shirt you were wearing the day I met you. And he kicked everyone out.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Well, it took a while for everyone to leave. So I lay down on the couch here to wait for them. Like I said, I didn’t want to leave him alone here. But…I guess I fell asleep. I heard the door slam shut at some point, but I don’t remember when.” She looked up at me with moist eyes. “I’m really sorry, David.”

  “It’s OK,” I said. “It’s OK.” But I didn’t feel like I was telling the truth. I stood up, starting walking back toward the bedroom. I felt like I was made of eggshells. Like I was already cracked and empty.

  Cath called out to me. “What are you going to do?”

  I didn’t even turn around. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t have anything left.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  But I ignored her. I was broken. Nothing that I cared for or held close was mine anymore. Everything was gone. There was nothing left. I kicked off my shoes and stripped off my jeans. A wave of blackness and sadness washed over me, and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

  Sometime during the morning Cath Kennedy joined me in bed, pulled the covers over us both, and rested her head in the crook of my arm. She wore only her underwear, and she twitched with dreams as she slept. It was those tiny movements that woke me. I didn’t move, didn’t pull her close. Just felt her presence and pressure up against me. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t anything greater than that either. I felt like we were all alone together, adrift, like abandoned cosmonauts in some forgotten satellite. There was a hollow feeling in my chest where my heart usually was, and I realized: This isn’t the end of sadness. It’s the beginning. Sadness and loneliness aren’t destinations. They’re roads that lead us away from everything we once loved. I had felt desperate and sorry for myself on that lost, wild night after the Madrox, thinking I had finally bottomed out. But that wildness in my bones had just been the start of it all, not the end. I was falling now. And there was no bottom.

  I blinked my eyes open and they stung with tears. As if she could read my mind, Cath sighed and snuggled in closer to me. “There was something else,” she murmured into my ear.

  “What?” I whispered, staring at the ceiling fan as it made its lazy revolutions in the breeze.

  “Right before he left, I heard him next to me on the futon. He was on the phone. He was talking quietly—so much so that I didn’t recognize his voice. He was talking all lovey-dovey to someone. I couldn’t make out much before he hung up. Then he was gone.”

  I sat up like I had been electrocuted. “On the phone.”

  Cath groaned and rolled away from me. “Yes.”

  “Oh my God,” I said, leaping to my feet.

  “Where are you going?” Cath whined and jammed a pillow over her head. “It’s time to sleep still.”

  I ignored her and raced through the chaos to the living room. I pulled the phone from its holster and hit the redial button. There was only one number displayed. An international exchange. The Netherlands. Amy.

  “No,” I said out loud and threw the phone onto the futon.

  From the other room I could hear Cath Kennedy rustlin
g the covers. “What is it?” she said from under the pillow.

  I ran into the office and swept the beer bottles onto the floor with a vicious crash.

  Cath was sitting up now. “What’s gotten into you? What are you doing?”

  I buried my hands in the stacks of paper that covered my desk. The photo was missing. The photo of Amy was gone. I bashed at the keys of the computer and the screen saver blinked off. A Web page was open. Travelocity, thanking user David Gould for confirming his booking: JFK to Amsterdam, then a commuter flight to The Hague. The itinerary had been paid for by credit card. The flight was leaving today. I checked my watch. It was nearly two p.m. The plane was due to leave at six-twenty with a required check-in at four. Two hours. I had two hours.

  I stood up with a start and raced to my dresser, ran my hand through the bottom of the sock drawer like a wild man. My hands skittered across the liner like a rabid spider. It was gone. My passport was gone. I turned to Cath Kennedy, who held a pillow balled up in front of her for protection and was staring at me like I was insane. Maybe I was. “Come on,” I said, throwing her a T-shirt. “Get up. Get dressed. We have to get moving.”

  She didn’t move. “Where are we going?”

  I jumped into my jeans. “We’re going to end this.”