by Dana Bate
The words land between us with a loud thud, and the air around me suddenly feels too thick to breathe.
“I . . . I . . .”
I need wine to answer that question. I force myself to take a sip, but as soon as I do, I know I’ve made a mistake. The wine only makes it halfway down my throat before it is met by the contents of my stomach, erupting in the opposite direction. The terrace goes blurry, and I slap my hand over my mouth to keep the chicken salad from ending up all over Zach’s bright yellow tie. I have mere seconds to spare before the horrible occurs, and so, with few options left and none of them good, I stumble past Zach and charge straight ahead and, in what I am sure is a first for this illustrious institution, I throw up in the Kennedy Center fountain.
CHAPTER 39
Of all of the embarrassing moments in my life, and I have had many, none quite measures up to heaving into a fountain in front of Washington’s cultural elite. Chunky bits of salad leaves spew from my mouth into the fountain’s basin as the men and women around me gasp and clutch their chests and back away slowly. Zach rushes up beside me, resting his hand on my shoulder as I wipe my lips with the back of my hand. I stare down at the water and watch the half-digested scraps of cucumbers and carrots disperse in the wake created by the fountain jets.
“Do you need me to get a doctor?” Zach says.
I shake my head. I don’t need a doctor. I need a magician. Or a time machine.
“I’ll take you home,” he says.
I shrug off his hand. “I can take care of myself.”
“Sydney. You’re sick. Let me help you.”
“I don’t need your help. It’s just the salad I ate for dinner. I’ll be . . . I’ll be . . .”
My stomach gurgles, and I pull my hair away from my face and vomit into the fountain a second time.
“You’ll be nothing,” Zach says. “Stay here, and I’ll talk to one of the ushers about getting us a cab.”
“No—Zach, don’t—”
But before I can finish my sentence, he has already left in search of an usher. And as I sit in front of the fountain, blotting the drool from my chin as the crowd stares at me with pitying eyes, I wonder if this is karma coming back to bite me in the ass and, if it is, why her teeth are so damn sharp.
The cab ride is torture.
Every bump, every turn jostles my insides, threatening to send whatever remains in my stomach onto the driver’s head. At this point, I don’t think I have much left to give.
As the cab flies around Washington Circle like a Tilt-a-Whirl, I hold onto the door handle and press my face against the window, hoping the cool glass will soothe my queasiness. It doesn’t, but it’s better than leaning on Zach’s shoulder, which he offered in what I can only assume was an attempt at chivalry.
When the cab stops in front of my house, Zach pays the driver and rushes to help me out. With his arm wrapped around me, he guides me up the walkway toward my front door, carrying my tote bag on his other arm, the flowers he bought me stuffed inside. Even through my nausea, I notice Simon’s doorbell is still covered by a hideous wad of silvery tape.
“What’s up with the duct tape?” Zach asks as we reach the top of my front stoop.
“My downstairs neighbor. He’s crazy.”
Zach tries to peer through Simon’s windows, which are covered with blackout shades. “What’s his deal?”
“I don’t know. He’s just the sketchy creep who lives downstairs.” I wriggle from Zach’s grasp. “I can take it from here. Thanks.”
“I’m not sending you up there alone. At least let me get you situated.”
“I can take care of myself. I’ve been taking care of myself just fine for the past five years.”
He sighs. “I know. But I’m here, and I want to help you.”
“Too bad. I don’t want your help. I’m . . .” My stomach gurgles. “I’m . . . I’m . . .” I grab the wrought-iron railing next to my front door and heave into the bushes.
“That’s it. I’m taking you upstairs. Where are your keys?”
“Small pocket in the back,” I groan as I grip the railing.
He rummages through my bag and eventually finds my collection of keys, which looks as if it should belong to a janitor or a jail warden.
“It’s the silver one with the square top,” I mutter.
He pops the key into the door and unlocks it, and then he unlocks the second door in my entryway and helps me up the flight of stairs to my apartment. When we reach the top, he removes the roses from inside my bag, sets them on the coffee table, and dumps the bag next to my couch.
“Why don’t you get into bed, and I’ll grab an emergency trashcan to put beside you.”
“Zach, you really don’t have to do this.”
“I know I don’t.”
We lock eyes, and for a brief moment, I catch a glimpse of what we used to be, so real and raw it slices me down the middle. Then he tears his eyes away, and the moment vanishes into the air like smoke.
“So where would I find an extra trashcan around here?” he asks.
I hesitate, then relent. “Bathroom. First door on the left.”
He heads off, and I pick up my tote bag and trail behind him, making my way to the bedroom, where I change into an oversize Northwestern T-shirt and a pair of red flannel shorts and crawl into bed.
Zach knocks on the door. “Okay if I come in?”
“Sure. Whatever.”
He opens the door and glances around my room, a grin tattooed on his face as he studies the clothing racks lining the walls.
“It’s like coat racks at a bar mitzvah,” he says with a laugh. He comes around to my side of the bed, setting the bathroom trashcan beside me. “I’ll be on the couch out there, so if you need anything, just give a shout.”
“You’re not staying.”
“Of course I’m staying.”
“Zach, how many times do I have to repeat myself?”
He lets out a big sigh. “You have food poisoning, and I’m worried about you. Why can’t you let me take care of you?”
“Because it isn’t fair.”
“To whom?”
“To me. You can’t just swoop in and play the hero. You haven’t earned it, and you don’t deserve it.”
He shifts his gaze to the floor, then looks up at me. “I’m not trying to play the hero.”
I pull the comforter up around my shoulders. “I don’t feel like arguing about this right now.”
“Then don’t. Get some rest, let me crash on your couch, and we can talk about everything in the morning.”
I’m about to launch into one final protest, but instead I flick off the lamp and bury my head in my pillow.
“Fine,” I say, because I no longer have the energy to fight him.
The next morning, around seven thirty, I awake to the shrill buzzing of my doorbell. I wait a few seconds, hoping the sound was part of a dream, but a moment later, it buzzes again. Given my mother’s penchant for sending flowers at every opportunity—birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, Tuesdays—my guess is that it’s someone from 1-800-FLOWERS making a delivery to congratulate me on my story. Why the delivery man feels the need to wake me before eight in the morning, I have no idea.
Moving sluggishly and with caution, I roll out of bed, my hand pressed against my stomach, which still aches from last night’s barf-fest. I haven’t thrown up since 1:00 a.m., but the trashcan next to my bed reeks of bile and barf, and my hair is matted to my head, full of kinks and knots. I slip into my blue terry cloth robe and tie it loosely around my waist, taking care not to cinch my sore belly, and slide my feet into my fluffy gray slippers. Before leaving my bedroom, I take a long look at myself in the full-length mirror. If Mrs. Doubtfire and Chewbacca mated, their offspring might look something like this.
Before I leave my room, I spot my tote bag sitting next to my bed, and suddenly I panic. Jeremy. I rush to my bag and rummage through it in search of my phone, and when I find it, I discover I have fifteen missed calls from hi
m and five voice mails, on top of twelve text messages, the last of which reads,
If you want to talk to me so bad, then where the hell
are you?????
Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.
I start calling him back when my doorbell rings for a third time. Crap. Phone pressed against my ear, I hurry toward my living room, where I find Zach sitting on my couch in his undershirt and boxers.
“Good morning,” he says. “Sounds like you have a visitor.”
I hustle toward the stairway. “I think it’s a flower delivery from my parents. Give me one second.”
Jeremy answers his phone as I rush down the front steps. “Hello?” he says.
“Jeremy—hey, it’s Sydney. Listen, I’m so sorry I missed your calls last night. I got food poisoning, and my phone was on silent from being at the orchestra, and—”
I yank open my front door, expecting to see a surly delivery boy from 1-800-FLOWERS, but instead, I see Jeremy. He stands in front of me, phone in hand, face white as snow.
“I . . . oh,” I stammer, letting the phone slide down my face. “I didn’t realize it was you.”
He stares at me in silence, his jaw tight.
I clear my throat and glance down at my furry slippers. “So . . . like I was saying . . . I got food poisoning at the orchestra last night, from a salad I bought last week, and . . . well—”
“When were you going to tell me you were working on that story?”
I gulp. “I wanted to tell you last week.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I wanted to.”
“Oh, well, in that case: gold fucking star for you. Do you have any idea the massive amount of shit I’m in? Do you even care?”
“Of course I care. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“Yeah, getting a story on the front page of the Washington Chronicle is usually an accident. ‘Whoops! There goes another thousand-word story flying out my asshole! I hate when that happens!’ ”
“You don’t understand—my name wasn’t supposed to appear on the story.”
“But it did.”
“But it wasn’t supposed to.”
He lets out a bitter laugh. “You really think that makes a difference to me at this point? How long have you been working on this story behind my back?”
I clear my throat. “About two months.”
“Two months? How did you even get your hands on those e-mails?”
“You had copies.”
“Not that I shared with you.”
“You told me about them. And you didn’t exactly hide them.”
He glares at me. “You went snooping through my stuff?”
“Not . . . snooping, no.” I play with the belt on my robe. “It was more like—”
“Sydney? Everything okay down there?” Zach calls down from the top of the stairs.
Jeremy cranes his neck in an attempt to see who it is. “Who the fuck is that?”
“Oh. That.” I clear my throat. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“Sydney?” Zach trundles down the stairs and stops when he gets to the bottom, still dressed in his undershirt and blue-and-white plaid boxers. “Hey,” he says, looking at Jeremy. “Are you the flower guy?”
“The flower guy?” Jeremy’s expression hardens. “No, I’m not the fucking flower guy. Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Zach.”
Jeremy’s eyes shift between Zach and me. “Wait, Zach? As in Zach Zach?”
I scratch behind my ear. “Well . . . technically . . . yes . . .”
“Perfect. Just perfect.” Jeremy sticks out his jaw. “I leave town for a week, and my lying, conniving girlfriend proceeds to sabotage my career and cheat on me with the weenie she dated in college.”
“Hey!” Zach says. “Watch it.”
“Maybe we should move this conversation inside. . . .” I say, eyeing Simon’s door.
“I’m not moving anywhere,” Jeremy says.
“Neither am I,” says Zach.
“Oh, see, that’s where you’re wrong,” Jeremy says. He points up my stairway. “You’re going back upstairs, putting on some damn clothes, and getting the hell out of here.”
“Thanks, but I’ll stay right where I am.”
Jeremy’s cheeks flush. “Don’t make me come over there and take you upstairs myself.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“Guys!”
But it’s too late. Jeremy rushes toward Zach, and before I know it, the two of them are a tangled mess of limbs on my stairway. The two of them wrestle their way up my stairs—Jeremy pushing Zach, Zach bashing Jeremy’s head into the railing, Jeremy heaving Zach by the waist, Zach kicking Jeremy in the shoulder. At one point I try to break them apart by throwing myself on Jeremy’s back, but Jeremy just stands, wearing me like a cape, and proceeds to rip Zach’s undershirt. Soon, all three of us are in my living room, my legs flailing in every direction as Jeremy and Zach grab and poke at each other like kindergarteners.
“Guys—stop! Please!”
I slide off Jeremy, and Zach backs away toward my couch, examining the rip in his shirt.
“I didn’t cheat on you with Zach,” I say. “I promise.”
Jeremy wipes his forehead with the back of his hand and tries to catch his breath. “Why should I believe you? Why should I believe anything you say now?”
“Because it’s the truth. There’s nothing between Zach and me anymore.”
Zach tosses his hair out of his eyes. “Bullshit.”
My cheeks redden. “Bullshit? Bullshit? I’ll tell you what’s bullshit: you thinking you can waltz back into my life like nothing happened.”
“I’m not waltzing in like nothing happened. That’s the point. A lot happened. We have a long history. And I still love you.”
The doorbell rings, its high-pitched whine filling my apartment, and someone starts banging at the front door. Now the 1-800-FLOWERS guy shows up. Of course.
“You don’t even know me anymore,” I say.
“Sydney, I know you better than almost anyone. Certainly better than this clown.”
“Hey!” Jeremy lunges for Zach again, but I push him back with my arm.
The doorbell rings again.
“Well, I would hope someone who dated me for eight freaking years would know me a little better than someone who’s dated me for a few months,” I say. “But he knows me now—the Sydney who worked in TV news and lost her job and works at the farmers’ market and had her heart broken by a guy who cheated on her with some bimbo named Georgina. You don’t know that Sydney. You gave up on her a long time ago.”
“You forgot to add the Sydney who used her boyfriend as a pawn in her quest for fame and fortune,” Jeremy says.
More banging on the front door. “It isn’t like that. I swear.”
“So you didn’t steal my private e-mails without permission?”
I stare at him for a long while. My lip trembles. “I didn’t really steal them. . . .”
“Oh, okay. You just borrowed them, right?”
“I . . . well . . .”
“I’m out of here. I don’t have time for this.”
“Jeremy, please—don’t go. Let me explain.”
“Explain what? That you’ve been lying to me for months? That’s probably the only reason you kept dating me, isn’t it? To get your big scoop.”
“That isn’t true! I didn’t want any of this.”
“Then what did you want?”
The doorbell rings a fourth time, this time with more banging. Seriously? This 1-800-FLOWERS guy must be the biggest dumbass on the planet. Just leave me a freaking note and try to deliver the flowers later. I do not have time for this.
“I wanted . . . I wanted . . .” A fifth round of ringing. Sweet lord. This flower guy is going down. “Let me get that. But please—stay here. I want to talk about this.”
“I’m not staying anywhere,” Jeremy says.
“Just ten seco
nds—please.”
Before he can argue, I run down the stairs in my robe and slippers, scurry through the entryway, and unlock the front door.
I yank it open. And then I panic.
Twenty men dressed in black are standing right in front of me, their guns pointed directly at my face. A man at the back shines a huge, round light at me.
“FBI!” they shout as they barge in. “Put your hands in the air!”
I stick up my hands as one of the officers busts into Simon’s apartment. “Is anyone else upstairs?” one of the officers shouts.
“My . . . my boyfriend.” I pause. “And my ex-boyfriend.” The officer looks at me quizzically. “It’s complicated,” I say.
An agent immediately runs up my stairway, and another whirls me around, presses my hands behind my back, and slaps a pair of handcuffs around my wrists.
And that’s when I decide, without question, this is the worst day of my entire life.
CHAPTER 40
The FBI agent grabs my arm and marches me down my front steps. He forces me onto my knees, facing the sidewalk, and my furry robe bunches up beneath me as he presses a gun into the small of my back. When I look over my shoulder, I see another agent pushing Simon out of the building, followed by Jeremy and Zach. Like me, they are all handcuffed. Zach is also still wearing nothing but an undershirt and boxers.
As Jeremy and Zach approach, Jeremy’s eyes flit between me and the FBI agents. “What the hell is going on?”
“We have a warrant to search the premises,” one of the officers says.
Jeremy balks. “On what grounds?”
The officer doesn’t flinch. “Down on the ground, sir. We’ll explain once we’ve secured the building.”
The officers force Jeremy and Zach to their knees, one on either side of me, and press guns into their backs. Simon kneels next to Jeremy, with yet another officer watching over him.
“Do you have any idea what this is about?” I whisper across Jeremy to Simon. Simon stares straight ahead and doesn’t respond. I try again. “Why are they searching our building?”
Simon shrugs without looking at me.
“All clear!” shouts an officer standing on the front stoop.