Apotheosis

by Joshua Edward Smith

  When her well ran dry and there was no crying left in her, she went to the bathroom, cleaned herself up and went out to lunch. She knew what she had to do next.

  ELEVEN

  Cynthia and her oversized blueberry muffin took up their post at the corner table the next day. She didn’t bother with the book this time. Instead she watched the people coming and going, waiting for her prey to enter. He did, right on schedule at half-past ten. He was alone. She waited until he had placed his order and was paying and then walked over to him. He didn’t seem to even notice her, as she walked right beside him and sat across from him at his table.

  He looked at her, puzzled. “Do I know you?”

  His voice was not exactly as she expected it. The range was right, but he didn’t have the vaguely western accent she had heard in her dreams. She didn’t find his actual voice quite as soothing as his dream voice had been. “Ha ha. Very funny,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he replied. “This is embarrassing. I mean—you definitely look familiar. Were you a patient?”

  Cynthia laughed. “Okay, sure, I’ll play your game. If I had been a patient, what do you think I had done?” She stood and turned slowly, then sat back down.

  Evan furrowed his brow. “Breasts, maybe?”

  “Thank you! You think they look good?”

  “Judging from your face, I’d put you at mid-forties. So, yeah. They sit higher than a typical woman your age. Of course, it’s also possible that’s just reflective of a good-fitting bra, or because you never nursed.”

  Cynthia laughed. “Very funny.”

  He looked at her quizzically. “So?”

  “So what?” she replied.

  “So, how do I know you? Oh, don’t tell me we dated. That would be so embarrassing.”

  “Does that happen a lot? You sleep with women, then don’t remember what they look like?” Cynthia teased.

  “God I hope not. Oh! Wait! I know where I’ve seen you. You were here yesterday, right?”

  “I was,” she answered, a little puzzled at the observation.

  “Right! I saw you over there, and you smiled at me and I smiled back.”

  “Yes, that was me. You were with a young woman.”

  “That’s our office manager. She comes with me on my break sometimes,” he explained.

  “Not a client?” Cynthia asked.

  “No… why do you ask?”

  “Because you said she was a client.”

  “I what now?” Evan looked completely confused.

  “When I texted you yesterday,” Cynthia pulled out her phone and found the conversation. She showed it to Evan, “Right there. See—you said she was a client.”

  He took the phone and read what was on the screen. Then he scrolled up and reviewed the conversation. After scrolling a few more times, he said, “You must have me confused with someone else. I never said any of this.”

  Cynthia took her phone back and looked to make sure she was showing him the right chat. She was. “But…” She didn’t know what to say. She was perplexed. She went to his Twitter profile and handed her phone back to him. “That’s you, right?”

  Evan looked intently at the screen and scrolled the timeline a little. He looked confused, and then concerned, and then he rolled his eyes. “Oh, fuck.”

  “What?” Cynthia asked.

  “I’m so sorry. No, this isn’t me. This is Samantha,” he paused, as he looked deeper into the timeline. “Jesus, how long has she been doing this?”

  “Who is Samantha?” Cynthia asked.

  “My stalker,” he replied, still scrolling. He put the phone on the table and looked Cynthia in the eye. “She did this before. On Facebook. But someone saw it almost right away and reported it and she got shut down. I guess she’s been more careful about who she follows on Twitter.”

  Cynthia felt nothing. She was in such shock over the revelation—she didn’t know what to think. She stared at Evan, mouth open.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “So she’s been chatting with you and pretending to be me?”

  “Apparently,” Cynthia said.

  Evan shook his head. Then he glanced at the phone on the table. “Oh hell. I’m sorry. I have an appointment, like, right now. I need to know more, though. Are you free for dinner?”

  “Sure,” Cynthia shrugged.

  “Okay,” Evan pulled out his wallet and fished out a business card. “Call me at the office this afternoon, and we can sort out the details. I gotta run,” he said, standing. He put out his hand to shake hers, “It was nice meeting you…”

  “Cynthia,” she said.

  “It was nice meeting you Cynthia. I’m Evan. I’ll talk to you later,” and he rushed out the door.

  Cynthia sat back down. She stared at his empty chair. She felt a little dizzy. The world around her was spinning and she thought she might pass out. She put her head down on her arms and closed her eyes and waited for her body to recover from the shock.

  ¤

  Cynthia arrived at the restaurant a little early and went to the bar. She ordered a martini, instead of her usual white wine, because she was a bundle of nerves. She had been in a fog all day, trying to sort out what was real. There was a whole version of Evan in her mind that was a mixture of dreams that had no apparent basis in reality, and texting with someone who wasn’t actually him. The yoga, for example. He didn’t seem to do yoga at all. Did Samantha do yoga? It was all so confusing.

  She was lost in her thoughts when Evan sat down beside her and bumped her shoulder with his. “Hey kid. How are you doing?” he asked.

  Cynthia felt immediately at ease. That gesture was a lot more like the Evan from her dream—warm, caring. The martini infusing into her bloodstream probably didn’t hurt, either. “I’m okay. I’m still a little in shock, I guess. Trying to figure this out. Should we go to our table?”

  “No, let’s start here. I told the girl that we’re here and she said we could chill at the bar as long as we wanted. It’s not busy tonight.”

  Evan flagged the bartender over and ordered a scotch. Cynthia watched the interaction and was struck by how the bartender virtually threw herself at Evan. Touching his hand, flipping her hair, the whole bit. “Do all women do that?” she asked, after the bartender had left to prepare his drink.

  Evan flashed his smile at her. “Pretty much.”

  “So what’s the deal with the author?”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “There was a picture online of you and a romance author. I forget her name. A few weeks ago. It said you were ‘getting serious,’” Cynthia made air-quotes with her fingers.

  “Oh! Yeah, her book came out and she left on a tour and things kind of fizzled out,” he explained. “Also, that was a while ago. I didn’t see the picture you are talking about, but sometimes they hold on to those paparazzi shots for months until they have space.”

  “I see. So how serious were you? I mean, if that’s not too personal. I wouldn’t think a book tour would break up something serious.”

  “We were exclusive,” he said.

  “And exclusive equals serious?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Are you serious with anyone right now?”

  “Nope,” he said, receiving the scotch from the bartender and taking a sip so small Cynthia wasn’t sure he drank any at all.

  “But you’re dating?”

  “Sure.”

  “So you are sleeping with multiple different women?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer, but gave her the same smile.

  Cynthia rolled her eyes. “I see. You must meet a lot of women in your line of work.”

  He nodded. “I do. I don’t date my patients, though.” He paused. “I mean—I date former patients. But I don’t date anyone who is going to have work done.”

  “That’s good of you,” she said.

  “It’s kind of a rule. Ethics and stuff,” he said.

  “Damn ethics,” she replied.

  He smiled again
. The smile was getting old.

  “So,” Cynthia continued, “do you do yoga?”

  Evan laughed. “No… what a weird thing to ask.” He tilted his head and then continued, “I do work out though. Free weights and sit-ups and stuff. Just at home. I have a stationary bike. Why?”

  “Oh, that was one of the many things you—I mean your stalker—and I bonded over. Mutual love of yoga.”

  “Sam does yoga now? Good for her!”

  Cynthia laughed and shook her head. “I don’t know if she does or she doesn’t. She said she does, but she seems to have a tenuous relationship with the truth. Wait. I mean, she didn’t say she does, she said you do. I guess. It’s so fucking baffling.” She took a long pull on her martini.

  The two sat in silence a minute. “So tell me about Sam. What’s the history there?” she asked.

  “Let’s get dinner, and I’ll tell you what I know,” Evan said, standing. He took Cynthia’s arm. The hostess saw them coming and grabbed menus and a wine list, and then she led them to their table. Cynthia glanced at Evan as they walked and noticed his gaze was fixed on the hostess’s ass. She followed his gaze and decided to let it pass without comment because it was undeniably beautiful, as asses go.

  ¤

  “Sam and I went to high school together,” he explained after the hostess got them settled. “Well, I assume we did. She’s in the yearbook. But I don’t remember her at all. I guess she was that girl that hid in the corners with a secret crush on some guy—”

  “You,” Cynthia interrupted.

  “Right, a crush on me. And she never acted on it in any way. Just built some fantasies in her head and stuff. I learned this years later from a mutual friend. Right about the time the Facebook thing happened.”

  “Why would a stalker pretend to be you?” Cynthia asked. “I mean—that doesn’t make sense even in crazy town, does it?”

  “My guess is she intended to make a fan page. I’m not on Facebook or Twitter, so I don’t know, but I think that’s a thing. Where you make a page to talk about someone you are a fan of, right?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Cynthia agreed.

  “So my guess is that she was just worshipping me from afar or something. There were a lot of pictures of me on the thing you showed me on your phone. But then when you thought she was me, maybe she just went with it.” Evan shrugged and took another tiny sip of his scotch. Cynthia was puzzled by that tiny sip behavior. The glass still looked full, as far as she could tell.

  The waiter came and took their order. Cynthia switched to wine, and Evan said he’d stick with the scotch he wasn’t drinking.

  “So have you traveled?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, internationally?”

  “Not much. Been to Mexico, of course. But I work a lot, and when I take vacations I tend to just stick around here and surf.”

  “You surf?” she asked.

  “Not as much as I want to. It’s such a rush. And the waves here can be amazing. But like I said, I work a lot. I do surf when I can.”

  Cynthia marked off another difference between dream-Evan and real-Evan on the list she was keeping in her head. So far, the only thing they had in common was the way he greeted her at the bar. She wasn’t going to bother asking about romance movies. That one was obviously a big fat “No.”

  “So how did you end up talking to Sam on Twitter, anyway?” Evan asked. “I think of Twitter as a place people get news and entertainment and stuff.”

  Cynthia took a gulp of wine as she tried to figure out how much of her story to confess to. “Well, my coworker, in the next cube over at work… she has kind of a crush on you. She has a picture of you on her desk.”

  “Wait. What? Seriously? This just gets weirder and weirder,” Evan laughed.

  “Yeah, so I saw it and she told me your name and I looked on Twitter and found that account.”

  “Okay, and why did you message? Do people use Twitter as a dating app? I thought it was like Facebook where you just interacted with people you already know,” he said.

  “It kind of is like a dating app. Or, like a flirting app? Since I doubt that people on Twitter ever actually end up dating. But yeah, there’s definitely a lot of private messaging like in a dating app. Getting to know you stuff.”

  “Sexting?” he asked.

  “Definitely. But Sam and I didn’t do that.”

  “Okay. But you messaged to… flirt?”

  Cynthia shrugged. “I guess so, yeah. I mean, look at you. You’re gorgeous. I just wanted to say hi, I guess.”

  Evan took another imperceptible sip, then nodded. The rest of the meal was uneventful. They talked about various things. It was a lot like a first date, as Cynthia came to grips with the fact that she didn’t actually know this man at all. He wasn’t the man in her dream, and he wasn’t the man from Twitter. He was merely somebody completely different.

  As they finished and Evan graciously insisted on paying the check, he asked, “So, you want to go back to my place after?”

  Cynthia looked at him a little confused. “Why?” she asked.

  He said nothing, but flashed that smile again. The one she was now starting to hate.

  “I thought you had a pool of beautiful women you were sleeping with. Why would you want me?”

  Evan shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re smart and funny, and we seem to be getting along pretty well. And you look good, and older women, as a rule, are better in bed.”

  Cynthia coughed as she was drinking her water. “Excuse me?”

  “What?”

  “I’m younger than you!” she said, perhaps a little too loud.

  “Well, yeah. I mean, no offense. I just mean older than the women I usually date.”

  “Like the hostess and the bartender?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “I’d date either of them, for sure.”

  “What about the other women you are ‘not serious’ with?” she asked, making quotes with her fingers again.

  “What about them?” Evan asked. Then his eyes lit up, “Oh! You mean—you want me to call one to join us? I can definitely—”

  Cynthia burst out laughing. She couldn’t control it, and once she started she fell into an almost uncontrollable fit of giggles. She held her hand over her mouth and tried not to make a scene, but she could feel the eyes of the other patrons turning toward her. Evan looked mortified.

  She held up her hand, forced herself to take a deep breath, then took a long pull from her water glass. “I’m sorry. But… Oh my God. You are the most arrogant asshole I think I’ve ever met,” she said. “I’ve been trying so hard to find the silver lining here, but you are just one hundred percent awful.”

  She stood up, grabbed her purse, and headed for the door. Evan didn’t move.

  TWELVE

  Cynthia’s heart skipped in panic when she realized she didn’t have a corkscrew. Then she looked more carefully at the Pinot Grigio she had picked up on the way back to the hotel and saw it had a screw top. She tore the paper off a water glass next to the sink and poured herself a full glass. Then she turned off the water and settled into the tub.

  She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. She focused on her breathing. Every time a thought came into her head—Evan, Samantha, the hostess’s ass, any of it—she would visualize putting that thought into a box, tying the box with string, and placing it on a shelf to be dealt with later.

  Cynthia was numb. She had left the restaurant in a strange state of euphoria, suddenly freed of any illusions about who Evan was. That feeling had transformed into something like depression as she stopped at the wine shop. And by the time she was running her bath, she was feeling nothing at all. Her brain simply wasn’t capable of processing the mix of information and emotion that had been thrown at it in the past 24 hours.

  She took a long pull from her glass and sank down into the bath.

  “Ahem.”

  Cynthia kept her eyes closed.

&nbs
p; “A-hem,” he persisted.

  She opened one eye and saw Evan leaning against the sink. “Go away,” she said, closing her eyes again.

  “This isn’t about me,” he replied.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s about you. You just took everything too literally,” he explained.

  “I see,” she said, eyes still closed. “So this is all my fault.”

  “Of course it is. I’m not even here,” he said.

  Cynthia sat up and looked him in the eye. She turned onto her side and leaned on the side of the tub. He watched her move, leering at her the way he had leered at the hostess. She rolled her eyes. “Stop that,” she said.

  Evan smiled. Cynthia cringed.

  “What?” he asked.

  “If you could never smile at me again, that would be good. Do you think you could do that for me?”

  Evan sat on the edge of the tub and ran his hand down the back of Cynthia’s head. She shuddered. She at once despised him and wanted him. She leaned back into the tub and spread her legs. Evan put his hands on her shoulders and forced her under the water. Cynthia panicked. She felt her lungs filling with water. She struggled to push herself back up, but she had nothing to press against except the slippery bottom of the tub. She thrashed and squirmed in his grasp, flailing her hands and kicking her feet as if to swim her way to safety.

  The pressure on her shoulders suddenly disappeared and Cynthia sat up and coughed. She had not inhaled any water, but she saw that her ad hoc wine glass was sitting on the bottom of the tub. She looked around the bathroom and confirmed she was, in fact, still alone. Brilliant, she thought. Fucking brilliant. Fall asleep in the tub and drown. Great plan, Cyn.

  She opened the drain and climbed out of the tub. Wrapping herself in a towel, she took the other water glass and her bottle of wine and moved to the bed where she could wallow more safely.

  ¤

  Cynthia’s windows were down as she heard the familiar crunch of her wheels rolling onto the gravel of the inn’s parking lot. She parked in a shady spot and gathered her things from the drive. By the time she opened the door, Emma was standing beside the car with an expectant look. Cynthia dropped her things and fell into Emma’s arms. It felt so good to be held—she squeezed Emma and when she felt Emma’s grip loosen she held on tighter.